Thread: 8.0 DPS Job Rework Workshop/Megathread. Goals, Design Principles, and Mock-Ups.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Barring that, it just means your rotation is externally affected instead, though, no? If even a single raid buff remains and there is no penalty otherwise for holding for up to 120s (no fight-specific vulnerability window for enemies or buff window for you or DPS check or %HP phase threshold, etc), you'll do it within that raidbuff.

Which is why I specifically stated in my original post that this Monk is in an environment without temporary damage raid buffs.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Moreover, let's say we do somehow remove all raidbuffs, all encounter-based variation of damage output, and all DPS checks so that one has no pressure to use a skill at any particular given time. Would that even be better gameplay anyways?

In a vacuum, who knows. Now, whilst I didn't specify this (at least, I don't think I did), it does have some interplay with encounter design. If you have 2 targets that you can potentially cleave with Masterful Blitzes, or even mob packs mid fight that it would be beneficial to have the more flexible window. Of course, other jobs will have more strict burst phases and this can lead to cases where, say, Dragoon and Black Mage's burst do not line up with the mob pack coming, but Monk and Dancer, being a bit more flexible, is more than enough, so Dragoon and Black mage can stay single target on the boss whilst Monk and Dancer take care of the adds. So it is a scenario where, rather than tying everything to the 2 minute rotation, we break things up and have the potential to split focus with different jobs handling different things based on their kit. It is about making the interaction between the job kit and the encounter more intertwined.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Would something like that work?

As I said, not a Ninja main, I just liked Dancing Edges animation. I will leave any potential changes to people who actually want to use Ninja.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Apart from a rare few mistaking DoTs for an identity (when the identity is instead usually, at best, just trading control/utility for raw throughput over time, assuming the DoT job exists in an MMO not plagued by decontextualized numbers-envy), I don't think anyone's suggested adding a DoT "just for the sake of adding a DoT".

Yeah, It was just clarification as, in the past, it seemed they wanted to add a DoT to every job just for the sake of it.

Some potential ideas:

Stance-changing Healers
Splitting healers into pure and shield was a bit of a mistake, and I feel the solution is to look at Astro from 3.X and its ability to choose whether it'll be a regen or shield healer at the start of a fight (you would activate Diurnal or Nocturnal Sect before combat and it would lock in once fighting starts). Implementing this for the four healers where a stance augments their kit toward pure or shield healing would be really handy as instead of having to search out one pure & one shield (or two shield) for PF you can instead take any healer and just have them adopt the relevant stance. Would be an opportunity as well to add some aesthetic to each job; a White Mage could have an Earth theme on its spells when being a shield healer, and the current Water theme when it's doing pure healing.


DPS Swappable Skills
Some old playstyles were lost to job reworks that have left some players without the job playstyle they enjoyed; Summoners are probably the biggest example, going from a DoT management style to the current system that's been criticised as being overly simple and a bit rigid to play around different timings in phase changes. However, there will be players who came into those jobs not knowing the previous playstyle so just reverting them would be a bad idea.

A way of restoring old playstyles could be through swappable skills on the role-action system. In the past, this system was used in a way where you'd pick a number of skills from the ones available to equip and you would take whichever ones best fit the fight(s) you were planning to do; for this system, it'd be picking one of two conflicting skills that change the playstyle of the job.

As an example, let's say you could either equip DRK's Living Shadow (does damage independently of you) or Dark Arts (buffs potencies of certain abilities while its active); the damage from Living Shadow should be comparable to what you get from using Dark Arts appropriately so that the playstyle can be changed without overly changing the job's potential damage too much; one style would be better in certain situations vs. the other, but a player could change it between pulls to better fit what they're dealing with if an issue comes up. It'd be a way of potentially getting some old styles back that sections of players weren't happy about losing, like SAM's Kaiten.

I really admire all the effort people put in the forums all to fall in SE's deaf ears. Since we all know feedback / suggestions doesnt get passed at all and they mostly look at the JP forums.

Originally Posted by SegaChief

Splitting healers into pure and shield was a bit of a mistake, and I feel the solution is to look at Astro from 3.X and its ability to choose whether it'll be a regen or shield healer at the start of a fight (you would activate Diurnal or Nocturnal Sect before combat and it would lock in once fighting starts).

This would be doable on paper, but I feel it'd distract from a better solution by shoveling "dirt" on top of underlying design flaws. It's a neat style, but I think I'd rather keep it as "the thing" a specific healer does, maybe Astro, maybe someone else (I have Scholar in mind for a specific reason, below). Instead, I feel this would be better solved by:

* Massive increase to healing needed by healers (needed regardless, you can't fix healers without doing this), forcing the frequent or even near-constant use of healing GCDs over damage GCDs.
* (Possibly) increasing HP pools across the board, but not increasing healing or self-healing. Slower to die, slower to recover, giving healers time to fulfill the previous point.
* Reducing shields and regen effects on all healers in return for increasing direct healing of the same abilities. This is needed anyways to make everyone able to fulfill the first point, and it also alleviates the regen-vs-shield issue because now it's no longer as focused around this difference.
* (Possibly) splitting Eos and Selene into a meaningful difference again, fairy-provided effects (both Embrace and commands) apply regens on Eos and shields on Selene. Mind you, still a secondary element to the raw healing as per point #3!

Originally Posted by Crafoutis

To be clear: I love my self-healing on WAR, and user hunter2 lobbying to have it removed from WAR and placed on DRK is weird, what's the motivation here, theming? What do they propose DRK loses in order to steal WAR's healing identity?

I mean don't get me wrong, coming from games such as EverQuest where the Shadow Knight is the half-Warrior-half-Necromancer hybrid with the lifesteals and DoTs, give me a total retheming and re-implementation of all four tanks, and I'd go for Dark Knight as the "re-healing" tank, too.

Warrior instead would constantly stack shields on themselves, to further promote this "I ignore damage as long as I'm fighting"-idea.

But that'd both involve a near 100% ripping out of all existing abilities and mechanism, the tanks would just be 4 new classes using the existing names.

I just hope the jobs feel more distinct, but more importantly, that abilities like backstep or sticking to the boss are directional. It really doesn’t seem that hard to implement, and it feels silly having to target the boss or a teammate just to move away

My wish for 8.0 BLM:

Make Fire 3 greater again: I understand, that Flare became the main aoe attack. Its a stronger fire spell and make the rotation faster, to only use it (esspecialy with flare Star as finisher). But, it feels weird, that even high fire 3 is only around 80 (have forgotten the Real number, but shouldnt be much higher as 100). And fire 3 (as original aoe spell) is even weaker.
It feels, as if it should be stronger for the lower lvl.

Bigger change: Give us a direct rotation and not a "1 Button class".
My biggest critic again the blm is, that whe press mostly only fire 4 and a few spells in between (ok, healer are in the same situation). I wish for a bit more variation, similary to the meele DD. Or, how the picto is (or was he a 1 Button to, hasnt played him for a longer time). Give the fire spells more variation, as beeinh only a thrown fire ball. Lets fire 2 be a more clearly fire pillar, that comes up (pre-form of paradox). Maybe, give us a line attack, where whe shoot a fire stream or lightnings a straight line and attack all in it (similary to thunder spell in dnd or Palpatins unlimited power).

Than, could the ice phase be extended more again. It feels nice for the moment, that whe are mostly fire mages. But it is a bit again the lore of the blm. Maybe let us build up other ressources to in the ice phase. And, give us more variation in the spells to. Like a snow Storm or cone of frost. A wide spreaded aoe attack before you.

Maybe, change it even, that some spells has shorter distance to the enemie and are stronger. And other are weaker and has more distance. To bring movement to us (questionable, original ice 2 had zero distance and was that kind of spell, and was never used, because whe stand away).

The fire phase of the blm is ok. It feels as if they should expand the ice phase and thunder spells again.