Fairly Impactful Improvements for Dungeons (w/ Comparatively Minimal Added Dev Time)

[Shurrikhan]

As per title. What general or individually small changes might be possible for dungeons that could nonetheless improve them? Any ideas?




My $0.02, in ascending order of required effort (for hopefully increasing reward):

1. Remove Tank Mastery but only reduce the damage of the most powerful tank busters (ones that might otherwise newly one-shot under the same level of active mitigation). This gives at least gives the chance of some GCD heals shaking up healers' filler-attack-spam.

However, Interject now initially Silences and Pacifies for 3s, both suffering from DR while the interrupt remains unaffected and will always interrupt any attack normally stoppable by either status, and Low Blow now always also interrupts attacks on enemies that are innately immune to stun, and both have had their CDs reduced to 20s.

2A. Reduce the maximum item level of most content to roughly that of their rewards but nerf all mob's HP faintly in turn.

--and/or--

2B. Minimum Item Level Runs now increase drop rates (including that of gil, exp, tomes, etc.) according to your stats reduced by the ilvl squish for personal drops and according to the party's average stats reduced by the ilvl squish for shared drops (gear, mounts, etc.).

Simultaneously, "Variant" runs may now use the matchmaker, seeking out others with the same settings for the given content. A new checkbox has been added (slightly shadowed, slightly smaller, to the right of the main box) to queue for one's chosen variant of each content or roulette type. This can be done simultaneously with a regular queue. Upon login following this change, this will be noted via a new Patch Information pane and the "variant" options will be set to Minimum Item Level.

So, no scaled costs by having to adjust individual dungeons (as none hit hard enough to OHKO a tank) and just a bit of tuning adjustment to Ultimates and certain Savage fights in exchange for positive gameplay shifts and increased optionality both in and out of dungeons.

[Alice_Rivers]

MINE Roulette sounds cool but I think it would have to reward substantially more for enough people to play it to make it actually work. I do agree with reducing the ilvl cap on duties though, five or ten ilvls over the gear reward maybe? I can't think off the top of my head what the ilvl range is right now but having a smaller ilvl range would make long term balance better.

[Shurrikhan]

MINE Roulette sounds cool but I think it would have to reward substantially more for enough people to play it to make it actually work.

Above was just for additional rewards proportionate to loss.

E.g., if, in going from the normal cap of i730 to i705 you (personally) and your party (on average) lost, say, 30% <(difference in primary stat)x(difference in secondary stat)>, then you'd have 30% more exp, tomes, etc. (including from the roulette bonus), and a 30% greater chance at a given drop per drop that'd normally appear. (2 chest -> 60% chance of a third chest; 5% chance of minion drop -> 6.5% chance of minion drop).

For dungeons, especially, given the time normally spent just sprinting between fights, this would make Minimum Item Level runs slightly more efficient than normal runs.