Evolved mode has zero failure states

[Moqi]

Evolved BRD's mitigation will not matter much either if they keep locking buffs and DPS behind using all 3 songs every minute, or we are back to a 2 min 1 min BRD meta and boss attack pattern.

Their aversion to stances is comical at this point. There is no getting out of it as long as they keep making everything a multiple of 10s and force you to cycle through all your abilities/modes to get to your finishers. They went the lazy route and just removed DPS buffs. Right now it just feels like they went from a 2min coordinated meta to a 1min personal one, but the actual cadence of button presses/ability usage isn't that different.

[TeresaFortell]

The way I see it is that the failure state seems to transition from rotations to situations, where many actions would be used in different situations. Therefore, in the former context, possible failure states may still occur, albeit at a lower rate.

[Starrya]

Yeah that's kinda what I'm going for here, it doesn't seem much has changed. Right now its Wanderer 42 > Mage 42 > Paeon 33 to maximize procs but outside of savage you currently can just hit whatever and wait for it to time out with little to no penalty. I fail to see how this is meaningfully removing skill expression when it's just the current way things are. At worst it's just tweaking the current system.

I'm trying to figure out if you're just caught up on the songs specifically, or if there's something else going on here. I agree that the songs are a tweak. The current songs can drift, making them more strict, and the new songs are more flexible. On its own, that's not a very big deal, especially if they make fights where that flexibility matters. There are people who expect it probably won't, and they have history on their side, but SE made a big deal about being able to make fights less rigid, so that is one of those things I'm willing to overlook for now. The issue is that we had DoT management in reborn BRD, prok management in reborn BRD, oGCDs that could drift in reborn BRD, and none of that is getting a replacement in evolved BRD. It's just all gone.

[Absurdity]

Right now it just feels like they went from a 2min coordinated meta to a 1min personal one, but the actual cadence of button presses/ability usage isn't that different.

This is what's making me pull my hair out. People praise evolved jobs for "being different", seemingly just going by faith instead of actually looking at the footage.

The first thing you notice is that the showcase intentionally has long pauses between each "demonstration". So every time you see gameplay the jobs have had enough time to generate resources and for everything to come off cooldown, so the devs can press all the shiny buttons and make the gameplay look significantly more "involved" than it actually is. It's kinda like if I showed you current 7.5 Dark Knight gameplay but only the opener, and then waited until the opener was ready again.

The second thing you will notice when you actually look at the footage is that there is barely any difference in ability usage compared to now.
I'm just going to copy observations I've posted in other threads here.

Your filler is still just a 4 step combo, but now you press the same button. It generates nothing, it interacts with nothing.
You have a "gauge" that just fills by existing every 10 seconds.
You spend that gauge on either the left side attack or the right side attack, each giving you a "continuation style" oGCD afterwards.
You need to do both to unlock the 3rd attack which seemingly gives you another glowing GCD follow-up.
You have an oGCD jump on a 3 stack system and 20 second cooldown that lets you ignore positionals and fills your other gauge. (And it does literally nothing until it's "full" after 3 jumps.)
That gauge lets you go into your burst, which is just Stardiver into another 4 step combo on a single button and it unlocks the PvP jump.

This means, you have a "mini burst" that you need to do every 30 seconds, consisting of 3 positionals (left flank, right flank and back), with a follow-up oGCD after each of them.
You have a "main burst" every minute where you do your Stardiver combo.
In-between those you just spam your 1 filler combo button.
And then you also have Sky High after your burst every minute. Obviously has potential but only if fights allow for it, in most scenarios it will probably just end up being a "quirky" big damage weaponskill.

So how exactly does this look "different" from what we currently do gameplay-wise?

[Derio]

The biggest failure state now will be not having all your big hitting moves be in your pot window(if pots still exist).

[Valence]

I asked how for example do you make songs more punishing than they are in Evolved because of the fact its the same, its in the post. So if not overcapping then what.

I think DoTs and procs being gone, some buttons being gone that will reduce the overall optimization like Sidewinder, are obvious but don't really make the job more fun. Putting this "back in" just goes back to Reborn mode. That's the point, while Evolved mode may be leaner overall, fail states and skill expression are not "zero".

I do not see the point of removing systems that actually do work, especially systems that are already endangered of disappearing from the game. Some people love the procs and rng and the optimization that comes with it, the same way some people love dots (I don't especially).
Have we decided that those should be axed from the game with evolved? For what reason, just for the sake of change? What does it achieve beyond more homogenization if nothing new comes up to replace it?
And why replacing it in the first place, again? Are we gonna replace positionals too? Obviously not, since they've been showcased on Evolved DRG.

This trend of sanding down and deleting battle system things from the game has to stop, period. It only serves to make the game poorer as a result, and when an initiative like Evolved crops up, it's very telling how homogenous it looks because there is nothing left to build upon.

Note on Sidewinder: it used to be a failure state ability by the way, they just sanded it down for EW too because it became kinda irrelevant once they made the dots 30s in SHB, then 45s in EW.

And yes, you do have make assumptions about encounter design to be a little more forgiving about the changes. Overall, I agree that leaning too much on encounters is a slippery slope, but it higly depends on them following up on their claims of being unchained. What does that look like. If Evolved jobs are "good enough" for one xpac worth of whatever this battle design is, well they will inevitably grow over time and possibly allow for things like procs to come back, new ways to optimize, etc. To be abundantly clear in this way, I want to see more choice driven rotation over time, more encounter variables, not just another DPS button like Sidewinder. I can see how the latter might be someone's preference, I want them go all in on Evolved.

I'm not making assumptions for what hasn't been shown yet, but I'm not holding my breath either, especially not after they already, supposedly, reworked encounters for 7.2 to make them new and exciting—which to me looked like the exact same old.

On the bolded part specifically: yeah yeah, I'm also full of copium after their track record on leaving room for building up and fleshing out nu MCH and nu SMN in the expansions following their rework too. I also do love the idea of spending yet another full expansion to be told that "yeah but you must understand it was necessary and it's only gonna become better for 9.0, you'll see surely!" only for it not to be true when said expansion finally comes anyway.

If I had to make assumptions though, all I heard from that keynote on encounter design being less constrained is just "not having to take into account a party burst every 2min so I can put my usual mechanics wherever I want".

[Turtledeluxe]

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This trend of sanding down and deleting battle system things from the game has to stop, period. It only serves to make the game poorer as a result, and when an initiative like Evolved crops up, it's very telling how homogenous it looks because there is nothing left to build upon.

I see it like this is a lvl 50 rework philosophically, which does not make it impossible to say, match failure states like for like, but that isn't a requirement for Evolved to be good since Reborn is in the game. Should we delete what works? It depends on what we are making room for now or in the future.

Procs are interesting when they have some kind of RNG as with BLM pre rework or other conditional. I didn't play when stances were a thing but the idea seems like its worth revisiting. I didn't play AST but the RNG in cards sounded cool and maybe should have been adjusted differently. I agree there's old elements to refine and implement again. I feel like it makes sense for something of this scale to be iterative.

Is this the same? Its very familiar sure. I've said repeatedly not a fan of passive timers and 1min burst design across DPS. Is it the usual sanding down? Kinda but no. Giving some tanks an oGCD counter that scales based on execution is good. Giving DRG a mit jump is good. BRD and WHM are kinda disappointing. But on BRD I'd rather see something like song modifiers that could do infinite amounts of cool things, than DoTs.

I'd love for them to go harder with Evolved and jobs in general but its encounter design and pure data (in other words, devs looking at how changes alter player behavior, content engagement, efficacy ,etc) that are guiding their thinking. In this way by aligning all the jobs and windows, by designing encounters that demand certain homogeny and simplifying, they are sort of guiding the sandpaper to an inevitable conclusion the same way a train track only goes one way. While innovation may still be possible, the space to innovate has narrowed. The same way we got here iteratively and not in one fell swoop, theoretically we may see some in a new direction that is additive.

I agree their previous encounter rework is basically same on average. I am hoping they introduce situations that call for using the new designs. That's kinda what the idea is. Although I will edit this to say, in its current form, Evolved BRD doesn't really have skill expression in song choice because of this timer design. It doesn't really make sense. So I'm not a huge of this, but its bc they don't even follow through on their design mission here.

[Valence]

I want to point out that while the counter ability unlock on tanks is new, the reduced optimal timer has existed on tank signature defensives since EW, notably with Holy Sheltron, HoC, etc. You have a 4s window of increased mitigation within the 8s of total duration. Having to time a tank defensive right is not new by any means, but I'm happy they're keeping it. To me the addition of the counter ability that it unlocks if the damage is blocked within the optimal timeframe feels like something of what could have been added naturally within reborn in EC if they had kept their formula normally without any Evolved in the works.

[Bru_Tus]

The way I see it is that the failure state seems to transition from rotations to situations, where many actions would be used in different situations. Therefore, in the former context, possible failure states may still occur, albeit at a lower rate.

You can't put "situational failure states" in normal mode content, that's an ass-backward design. There's a finite limit to how complex normal mode encounters can be. There is NO such limit for rotations.

[Starrya]

You can't put "situational failure states" in normal mode content, that's an ass-backward design. There's a finite limit to how complex normal mode encounters can be. There is NO such limit for rotations.

Exactly. Even if normal content never asks me to do my 2 min burst correctly, or keep my songs up, or maintain my DoT, or use my proks, or keep my oGCDs from overcapping/drifting, or press my mitigation, I can still choose to practice those things in normal fights, and I will still see benefits from that practice when I graduate to harder content.

Right now the best we could possibly hope for from Bard's songs is that in the hardest content in the game, using them efficiently takes pressure off the healers. In anything below that, they will just be crayons that can be used in any order. Worse, in that easier content, Bard's "thing" steps on the toes of healers right on the heels of the healer strike. Swing and a miss.