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

I want to see them bring custom role actions into normal pve. Mixing and matching phantom jobs to normal jobs has been the most expressive i ever felt gameplay wise in ffxiv. But if we get anything like it in the main game i expect that it would be more similar to what they gave us in pvp- an approved list of role actions that you can choose from. I would like more options and variety for overworld content but i wouldnt expect full free reign on subclasses the way that elder scrolls online recently introduced because the devs cater too hard to balancing 2 minute meta savage.

I want a melee pet job, a caster pet job and a ranged dps pet job!!!

Also, I want a dot melee job, a dot caster job and a dot ranged dps job!!!

Moreover, I want every class design they took from us back in the game, as new jobs!

Gonna be Ms. Walking Casts again, but phys ranged should get walking casts like they do in PVP, BRD, MCH, and the 4th Phys Ranged specifically. For one, I think the phys ranged role needs to lean into being the 'marksman' role, jobs that use weapons like guns, bows, and other projectiles that deal physical damage... from range. And walking casts add some nice weight to attacks, like you are taking the time to carefully aim each shot. And then with how fights have changed over time, the design paradigms for phys ranged makes less, and less sense. Even now with melees having to disengage from enemies more often, fights being faster, and even with ranged baited mechanics, phys ranged still struggle to find their place in the game. The role needs to change, I think they've been paying for the 'sins' of Heavensward long enough.

Also the 4th phys ranged should not have a raid buff.

Okay I'll post there what I wrote for that 8.0 thread in the general subsection then.


Ranged Physical

The role is in the grave right now and has been since SHB released (and potentially SB as well). It has lost all party support identity because everyone and their mothers do party support anyway. Parties are drowning in a sea of mitigation tools, especially on the healer and tank side, but also that every other DPS role brings as well to a lesser degree.

- Solution 1 (easy but boring): mitigation needs to be dramatically weeded out and redistributed to the rphys role as a core of their identity.
- Solution 2 (flesh out enemy damage profiles): respecialize party support so that each tool respects a different paradigm and case scenario: introduce synergies and different types of attacks or series of attacks that favor one type of mitigation or another. Potentially introduce hit nullifiers that can totally absorb a single hit no matter the strength or anything to diversify the system.
- Solution 3 (tentative pvp inspiration): reintroduce crowd control into pve, both on the players' end and the enemies' end, and redistribute corresponding tools to deal with it like Warden's. Improve the UI to clearly show when somebody gets hit by crowd control and requires support. Introduce crowd control nullifiers that do act as wards that offer a layer of protection, namely give back Protect to healers re flavored as a crowd control ward, or as an universal ability for everyone on a cooldown (Purify). I don't think constantly eating crowd control is fun, therefore the need for layers of protection that can break, eventually making players vulnerable and requiring assistance.


MCH

The problems with the job are many:

- Flamethrower plays directly against the job's primary mechanic which is heat generation and needs to be changed. Multiple solutions have been offered over the years, either having it generating heat or consuming heat like a more powerful version of scattergun (but rooting the player in place).
- Autocrossbow has been relegated to a joke skill since it still doesn't regenerate charges (unlike blazing shot), and makes its use in AoE only a gain above 7 targets now if i'm not mistaken (it was 5 at DT's release, and 3-4 before).
- Battery still has no AoE application which is an eyesore, especially when things like Crown Collider literally have AoE visuals. It was less of a problem before the introduction of Chainsaw which is literally an AoE skill generating battery, battery which has no use in AoE.
- Nothing interacts with each other in the kit, it's just about throwing big damage tools on cooldown. It's boring and unrewarding, just annoying when the player misses a GCD and drift at best.
- Tools are all flare no substance: they're just damage buttons that can charge battery for some of them.
- Battery is utterly boring and a gameplay denial where it's just a fire and forget button, and the pet (Queen) is full of infuriating bugs (stops attacking, doesn't use the finisher when changing targets, doesn't dash to the target unless the player specifically uses an ability, doesn't work when the player gets disabled or the terrain changes, etc).

What the job has lost:

- Its primary damage profile which used to be the biggest burst in the game by far (10-15s burst packed with 50% of its damage profile). This was centered around Wildfire, which encouraged skill play depending on what the player was able to put inside and constantly trying to go for the highest number possible was part of the (serotonin) reward, versus today where it just counts GCD hits (boring).
Consider splitting Wildfire into two skills: the Wildfire on a big cooldown that would work like a burst compiling damage like before (like current pvp Death Warrant), and a smaller detonator on say, 30s cooldown, that counts hits like today and could bring up different plays around multi-hit tools (like scattergun/FMF in pvp).
- Heat management (SB profile): one of the only unique resource gauges that wasn't just about building/spending gauge, and instead had the player balance heat to keep enough of it for damage but not to overheat the gun.
Bring back the old Cooldown which was used to dump heat, attach cool effects to it like potency and mobility boosts (3-5s sprint)
- Actual pets to manage and pick from depending on the situation (Rook vs Bishop).
Bring back Bishop at the very least in its pvp version: offers a pulsing barrier on a radius that also deals damage to enemies
- Ammo procs and Reload abilities: it is unacceptable to completely remove what made the job what it was and give the middle finger to everybody that loved it. Ammo was great, and needs to be back. Ammo was what brought skill expression to the job, notably adding a layer of variability in the burst patterns depending on the procs the player would start the burst with. RDM has siphoned some of those concepts notably with the newest formula behind Acceleration, but still doesn't come close at all to an unique playstyle of building up procs and spending them like MCH used to.
Consider introducing different ammo types for different uses in the rotation, or perhaps a quick reload button for ammo and a reload button reloading drill heads
- Damage party support: Hypercharged turrets would debuff the target with a vuln effect for 28ish seconds (tied to turret autos).
Rook could be a battery tool that does this
- Resource party support: Promoted turrets would regen MP/TP for the whole party, at the cost of the job's damage (since the turret would stop attacking).
I am neutral on having to sacrifice damage for this as I don't think the current community is mature enough to handle opportunity cost scenari, as seen with the long threads about damaging gap closers, but still consider bringing back a paradigm in pve where MP and resources actually matter nonetheless
- MP gauge use: Turret Promotion would use the MP gauge to refresh the party. The effect would be doubled by Hypercharge, meaning the player could choose between using Hypercharge for party damage or for party resource support.
A lot of jobs are in a dire need to have their MP gauge put back to use
- Its identity as a debuffer: suppressive fire (melee range stun), head graze (long range silence), rend mind, etc.
Not very useful in a pve paradigm where crowd control is not very useful, like foot and leg graze, but still useful in specific environments like dungeons or especially deep dungeons. If crowd control makes a comeback, this would shine all the better.

Other potential ideas:

- Minor cast times on big nukes like tools or FMF for a more tactile weight behind those, much like for SAM's Iajutsu or RPR's Communio.
- Marksman's Spite, unlocked by specific mechanics to be determined, like something inspired from the old Between the Eyes where its potency is tripled when the target suffers from Bind, Stun or Sleep.
- Bioblaster: inflicts Heavy.
- Air Anchor: inflicts Bind.
- Chainsaw: inflicts Bleed.
- Drill: would be fun to have Guard/Diamondback in pve where some mobs would use it and you could either wait it out or just use Drill to break it (some other jobs would obviously have some tools like this, like PLD's shield bash, etc).
- Reassemble: can be paired with some tools (turns the bind from Anchor into a Stun, turns Heavy from Bio into a Sleep, turns Bleed from Chainsaw into Vuln, autocrits Drill, etc).
- Make Scattergun a multi-hit like in pvp and make it interact with WF that way (uncap WF's amount of potential hits). Same for Full Metal Field.
- More flavor oriented: bring back the unheated variants of shots, and make them heated only under overheat.

DNC

Problems with the job:

- Tillana grants 50 esprit gauge but has no real control over the gauge which leads to annoying overcaps: even if the player delays it to dump gauge, nothing guarantees that a Devilment surge of esprit procs will refill the gauge just after anyway, and delaying means drifting, which isn't recoverable.
- Too simple, not enough skill ceiling. Just press what lights up and use dances on cooldown and you're set. Only optimization really possible is spooling Fans for burst (which also makes the burst funnier and more hectic).

What the job has lost:

- Procs prioritization: procs from Flourish would overwrite normal procs. Whether this is good or bad, I am pretty neutral about it, but it certainly removed skill expression. Perhaps too annoying with gauge micromanagement before though.
- Melee AoE during single target bursts: this is a big loss of range identity for the job.
- Gauge generation from Improv: why??

Potential ideas:
- En-Avant guaranteeing procs on the next GCD (opportunity cost scenario, if the community hates it, then scratch that)
- Starfall grants a speed boost to the DNC and the partner.
- Sabre grants a damage buff between DNC and partner.
- Please introduce one of the most rewarding pvp abilities to pve: Solo Step and Dance of the Dawn. If DotD is too much of an iconic nuke for the burst of the job, then consider using something else instead. Whether the ability just fills up party gauge when the party kills something, or whether it does something else, whatever works.
- Same for Honing Dance, it's too unique to be ignored.

BRD

Problems (where to begin...):

- Empyreal Arrow not having charges, leading to crazy rigid GCD structures making the job infuriating to play at anything else than optimal speeds, else it turns into a clipping fiesta (it's still a clipping fiesta even at optimal speeds). A simple charge would alleviate the problem almost entirely.
- Iron Jaws is a punishing mechanic that just feels bad when the player just loses attention for a handful of seconds and the dots drop at the worst time. Honestly consider removing that skill out of the game or do something else about it.
- Army's Ethos is a bad and clunky mechanic that is supposed to give Army's some meaning, but ultimately only constrains the song rotation to a fixed sequence with no agency whatsoever, and on top of it makes the following bursts insanely tight (at least similar to SB MCH overheat), which meshes very, very poorly with any latency or microclipping. If each song was more defined into when to use them and what for, we could see different song cycles not dissimilar to the summons of SMN (one of the only things that SMN does well). Songs could also benefit from having a very short recast or no recast at all, provided that the player would still want to rotate through them all notably for Radiant's Finale effects.
- Repelling shot is frankly useless/underwhelming and could benefit from more (range, etc).
- Song party passive buffs overwrite each other with multiple bards, which is terrible. Make them stack, it's not gonna break the game, I swear.

What the job has lost:
- Freeform procs attached to dot crits. This actually gave meaning to the gear treadmill and build optimization, and the more an expansion progressed, the harder and more hectic the job became to play, and a lot of jobs could benefit from this design, not just old bard.
- Freeform procs, period: currently procs are way too predictable (every 3s) and this is ultimately boring. The current design of BRD is trying to remove even more of what's left of rng in jobs today and this legitimately makes me angry.
- Like old MCH, party resource support, as in the old Ballad/Army that offered MP/TP party regen.
- Barrage optimization: now we get a free set of Refulgent when using Barrage so that people don't have to feel bad when they don't have a proc for it. It's lame and removes skill expression, but I do not know how to address the drift that we could have before.
- A more unique Troubadour that changed its effect depending on the song being played. If songs could be swapped around, this would generate skill expression.
- More healing tools as seen in 1.0/ARR, and in the opening trailer for ARR.

Potential ideas:
- A more involved party buff gameplay where it's not just about using a song that gives a passive to the party. Perhaps using repertoire would refresh it?
- More song specific abilities, for example Minuet Minne (additionally compiles all healing done during its duration and generated a shield of X %), Ballad Minne (additionally grants party refresh), Army Minne (additionally grants sprint to the party). Lower Minne's CD a little, perhaps down to 60s or something.
- Resonant Arrow detached from Barrage, instead the BRD gains one Resonant stack per combo completion (Refulgent or Shadowbite), unlocks Resonant at X amount, caps at Y for more potency. Can optionally add a minor cast behind for more weight.
- Introduce Nocturne on a short CD for silences (not interrupts), every successful use would grant repertoire.
- Song repertoire mechanics could use more depth than just "refresh an ability that the player spamms".

I want the job system to support diversity of playstyles. I think that's impossible so long as you have party buffs , so I would first remove ALL party buffs (except Bard, elaboration below).

Now that we can have different damage profiles, it's possible to (re)introduce missing job playstyles such as:
- DoT upkeep
- random procs that change the core rotation (not just damage oGCDs)
- ramp-up damage (gradually build and maintain self-buffs)
- flat damage with no burst
- burst windows at different times (30s, 60s, 120s, 180s, etc instead of just 120s)

As for more specific changes:
- MNK: gradually build up greased lightning, which can get your GCD as fast as 1s. No oGCDs at all, they are all turned into GCDs instead. Even Feint and Arm's Length are replaced with MNK-exclusive GCD cooldowns
- BRD: you can still have the songs, just not the 120s party buffs like Battle Voice and Radiant Finale. Each song should change your core rotation more than they do now.
- MCH: walking casts
- DNC: no party buff. You still pick a partner and buff them, but your buff timing can be varied based on their rotation. You would achieve this by building a gauge which is spent on each step in Technical Finish. e.g. you could dance 2 steps every 60s for a 10% partner buff, or 4 steps every 120s for a 20% partner buff. In this way, you are rewarded for understanding your partner's rotation and matching your timing to them. Just like real dancing!
- BLM: revert most changes back to Endwalker, with the exception of
---- No waiting for mana ticks, MP is restored per-GCD used in Ice (any GCD, not just B4)
---- 2 stacks of 30s Leylines on a 180s cooldown. No way to Retrace. You are rewarded for the fight knowledge of when to safely place them.
---- Remove Amplifier and reduce the max number of Polyglot stacks. Flattish damage profile, not bursty.
- RDM: white/black stance to choose between Verraise for prog and more damage for the kill, long cooldown to change stance. Vercure builds (or spends?) white mana.
- SMN: 12+ egis unlocked via MSQ progress. You summon six of them before you can summon the first one again. Yes there will be a meta choice of six but we can make some of them stronger in AoE, twin-target or CC situations so they'll see some use in dungeons, side content and the rare add phase.
- All healers: fewer oGCD heals
- SCH: 5 DoTs & stance dancing
- SGE: a DPS rotation that is at least as complex as current Warrior
- DRK: a rotation that includes spending your HP to deal damage, then stealing it back from the enemy. If you time it wrong around a raidwide/buster, you will die.
- WAR: No self-healing, that's DRK's deal.

Originally Posted by VentVanitas

i'm trying my best to make this post not read like it's barely concealed TK rotation agenda, but i don't necessarily want that to come back.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Would love to see how that plays out if you're up for a more in-detail mockup.

Playing with a more... extreme (possibly unhinged) version myself, largely as a prototype of a couple different rehauls of the combo system (a completely open one and a consolidated ones where each job has sort of its own geometric system of said consolidation).

Going to continue with this line of thought, though it's still rather rough for now.

So, again, broadly speaking the idea is to scrap combos as they are right now, including most things reminiscent of them (Monk's ORC rotations between Blitzes, RDM 6-step combo, etc.); if it gets its own button it should at least conditionally/situationally be an independently usable choice.

This can be done in either of two ways. In the first method, you provide roughly the same number of actions as now, but free them from their rigid strictures.

Monk would be probably the very simplest of the melee thereby changed, basically only requiring two steps to de-bloat the kit a bit, make it a bit less arbitrary / a bit more intuitive, and offer some further nuance:

1. Replace the form locks with Greased Lightning now increasing damage, crit chance, and attack speed by 20%... but only on Beast skills and with the caveat that those bonuses are halved if the same form has been used within the last 2 GCDs' time and is gone completely if used within the last GCD's time.
   
   This means that in order to maintain your maximum DPS, you still rotate the three forms, but you don't need Form Shift in order to do that, and downtime, Blitz itself, and SSS itself, now offer some further adjustability.
   
2. Increase the Beast Chakra maximums to 1|2|3 (while still giving only 1|1|2), as to allow for some further rotational variance, or, better yet, go back to Twin Snakes having a duration and Demolish being a DoT, but uniquely allow them to roll-over up to 3 seconds' of duration from early reapplication.

Such would basically put us at a just more polished version of Endwalker Monk. Not something I'd be fully satisfied by, but still a decent enough result.


The other route is to just build around consolidation from the start, but have each means of consolidation work differently:

For instance, DRG might loop per 3|4|5 steps (increasing with traits), and simply be able to mix-and-match how they see fit between their "Thrust" (ST direct), "Drive" (ST indirect), and "Surge" (AoE) paths, with reason to swap between paths often enough. E.g., Impulse Drive might afflict the enemy to take bonus damage per hit, diminishing over time or existing only until a total number of hits, which Sonic Thrust [hitting several times times for, say, 15 potency each] then exploits better than any other skill, while Full Thrust deals bonus potency based on the direct potency of the skill immediately before it (without setup, Lance Barrage does the most, but with setup, Disembowel or Sonic Thrust might do more).

Dark Knight might have 4 elements to choose from and finish its combo only once its used the same element twice, therefore having combos of 2-5 steps, with the longer the combo, the more vulnerable the DRK is between (and less able to maintain deliberate timely focuses towards specifically Blood, MP, HP, or barrier) but the harder he'll hit, with optimal DPS requiring aligning cycles of preparation so that eventually all buffs would, say, fall off simultaneously just after a 5-step spender and ideally just as the enemy dies.

Samurai might loop its ST path at the 2nd or 3rd step, AoE at the 2nd step, and ranged skill at the first (just augmenting and then spending a bonus), with each GCD still having the option to commit oneself more deeply to ST or AoE, and timing and average loop length being the main way to pick between Haste and Damage (adjusting for the situation and to perfect the timing on Tsubame-Gaeshi and Higanbana, both).

Gladiator/Paladin might split its kit practically in two (or, two-thirds and one-thirds) between sword and shield, giving it unparalleled access to snap-mitigation but not quite so endless of max damage nullification (due to resource expenditure). It'd desire to leverage its shield to maximize counterattack (MT) or thwarting/intervening (OT) potential by playing the two halves around each other, each on a separate-ish GCD.

Etc., etc., ultimately to the goal that each has plenty of skill variety and variety not just in effects but also in playflow despite still having high density.

For Monk itself, you'd essentially have 4 dynamic actions varied by Form and Stance (interrelated, but not quite the same), with each skill having aspects of both, kind of like the faces of a Rubics cube when shifting either or both among Form and Stance.

Will take a while to give a precise mock-up for that one, though. WIP. Will edit when done.

Originally Posted by Brandr

I want a melee pet job, a caster pet job and a ranged dps pet job!!!

Now, it has to be assumed that by-and-large, pet jobs never "get created".

Or rather when they do, their pet is essentially nothing more than a persistent DoT with a model/animation. It has no functional benefit over just having a DoT with infinite duration + maybe a few extra skills you use yourself. I don't truly know why, but this is one of the few utterly consistent elements of MMORPG design: As MMORPGs age, they remove or neuter their pet classes. DAoC even reworked the Necromancer a few years ago, the one pet job that seemingly "fixed" all MMO-related issues with it by making the pet controller completely invulnerable while the pet is out.

But, speaking hypothetically, I'd love more pet classes and more pet-focused classes.

As for your specific ideas, I'd do:

Melee pet class: The Beastmaster (I know we're getting that already, but I couldn't think of a better name :P )
A job where the vast majority of the power comes from the pet, in raw damage, healing, buffing, etc output. Meanwhile the controller has the job of protecting the pet, healing it through various mechanics, and making sure it can use its abilities as the CDs come up.
You would bring let's say... 2 pets into battle. One damage "main" pet and a support-y "secondary" pet. The main pet has 6-8 CD abilities, but most of those have prerequisities, either in buffs the pet needs on itself or in debuffs that need to be on the enemy, or other such stuff (say being <50% HP). The Beastmaster meanwhile has few combos, but lots of positionals (including front positionals, "draw attention away from pet" that shield/heal the pet but you have to stand in front of an enemy to do that), and these in turn provide the prerequisites. You don't use the pet's abilities yourself however, they're all CD based. Also there's a set of abilities that move the pet, not the normal stuff but also "teleport pet to me", "teleport to pet", that kind of stuff.
The pet has a gauge, its "stamina". When exhausted, it can no longer use any of its abilities. You can feed it stamina, but this is slow. Instead you can also swap to a support pet pretty frequently that regenerates the main pet stamina very quickly while out, and brings healing / shielding / buffing abilities you provide prerequisites for instead, like designate its target to heal and such stuff.

In summary, this job would spend ~80% of its time with the damage pet, which also deals ~50%-60% of the total damage the job does. Meanwhile you yourself are needed to enable it to do this, and handle boss abilities way more relaxed than other melees but in turn you have to move your pet around AoE damage and such (it's not immune!). The pet is the raw power, you're there to make sure it can use its power!

I posted my feedback/proposed changes for Bard in another thread but they seemed relevant to this one so I figured I’d make more sense to link it than copy+paste since it’s a long post.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...79#post6720779

Think that’s it lol.