In Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker, Job design has been a hot topic lately. With the incoming Paladin rework, and Samurai changes, more players have vocal opinions on it. In this video I cover job homogenization between the support jobs and give my own opinions on it.
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Watching this made me think of a mechanic that could be fun for GNB, It would be fun to have a defensive consecution perhaps ? GNB is all about pressing tons of weave, so why not make a combo route that allows to use specific defensive weave that start by using an offensive GCD.
I would have no idea how to build that properly. I don't want to give too much thought at bout it because it's probably never going to be real, but i thought that cool be a way to make GNB stands out while keeping the same utility as you make the class different
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I've been saying for a while, I think they should lean into the fact we can switch jobs whenever we want and push people to main a role instead of a job, change the materia system, and make the jobs have have clear strengths, wealnesses and mechanics that work better or worse in different encounters or team comps to give incentives to swap so the jobs can actually be different since they all aren't forced to do everything, this they all basically have the same kit, even DPS now woth the 2 minute burst, there is no design space anymore to make the jobs actually play differently. I've played many years and, while there were some balance and clunkiness issues for the job system in the past, I personally would rather have some job specific issues that actually let the jobs be different, than where it's going now where it feels like they're streamlining the fun out of the game tbh. I don't play to be a spreadsheet speed runner, I play for fun ultimately and homogenization is not fun.
I still remember old AST with different effects, Royal Road and Time Dilation, was it clunky, yes, did most people just fosh balance, yes, but it was still way more fun even if the RNG was less optimal. I think it'a like people, the more generically pretty someone looks, paradoxically, the more forgettable they are because the flaws and quirks are what give you character and identity that make you stand out. It's why so many plastic surgery models look great but they all look the same so they all just kinda blend into the background, streamlining is not always good.
I disagree, because if you wanna say that they are the same because they are builder spenders them by that same logic, a samurai or redmage is the same as a tank. If you really wanna make that argument, I don't know what to say to you.
I've noticed that I've lost more attentionspan tanking than as a healer to the point of fucking up easy mechanics and wiping my whole team with my fuckups because the rotations got so boring I just couldn't pay attention. Maybe I should have picked up Paladin with the big ass rota but eh xD it doesn't make the job any more exciting. Actually, it is incredibly TANK anxiety inducing.
at least the dps jobs feel relatively unique (except when they remove skills that are important to the jobs identity cough cough kaiten), but i agree. each tank feels really identical, and with tank stance you don't even need to worry about enmity. healers are ultimately green dps, where most of the time your focused on casting your dps skills and occasionally using heals. if SE wants the game to appeal to more people, they're definitely doing a good job to the point where even the worst players could still do good in game.
I'm really hoping that Paladin rework also does something unique to it rather than kick the can down the road and make it another decent, yet homogenous power builder (I played gladiator as my first job in FF14). But I'd imagine that if they really wanted to make all the tanks unique while still valid to play they'd need to look back at the core idea behind what a main tank and an off-tank is – because the latter feels to me like something that has gradually been left behind in terms of importance (and this is once again coming from someone who only recently cleared Endwalker and has only done mostly extreme level content outside the MSQ, zero savage raid experience). Sure, you have tank swaps in some circumstances that aren't cheese with invulns but if your main tank is good your going to be a blue DPS 90% of the time if you play Paladin or Dark Knight. So maybe leaning into those biases towards being top or bottom of the aggro priority would help. Like include some off-tank stance that is set by default when tank stance is off: grants a passive 5% defense buff to self and anyone within five yalms of the player, enemies other than the boss have increased natural agro on you… but while in this stance you also have slightly increased AOE potency bonuses with a faster GCD on said abilities. Then from this point forward going further into Endwalker design boss encounters to incorporate some level of crowd control or sides duties for the off-tank to take responsibility for. Maybe include environmental aspects that only the off-tank can deal with using strategic applications of their tool kit (a bash to push boulders around, a shield charge to knock enemies to the floor – a better stun that lasts far longer and has some inherent knockback to it etc.). You need to ask the fundamental question of what can the second tank do when they aren't primarily being the center of attention – an off-tank should be more on-the-move and directly supporting the group rather than just being a pillar like the main tank (which is equally important and I could see very little to change about that bread and butter gameplay).
The most fun I've had in videogames is when balance is not part of a gamedesign.
I honestly could care less if different jobs do billion points more damage if my job had destictive abilities that made my job unique and look different from the rest.
As long as each job allows for clears no one should care about DPS.
The largest downside to this approach is that in party finder people will just kick you from the party unless you go with the max dps job.
It is funny that before finding your channel a few days ago I complained to a very veteran player that all tanks are so "bland" with no real interesting mechanics besides the tanking itself. Don't get me wrong the tanking part in this game is fine but the classes kits are so uninspired.
When I pick up a new class like RDM I have to learn the proc system and even after learning it I still have to react to the procs accordingly, with the NIN I had to learn all the combos and it felt great trying to get a jutsu out faster and faster without getting the dreaded bunny. But with tanks is rather meh, play one play all the most interesting one being probably the GNB.
Now I am not saying all classes should be extremely intricate since not all want this play style, having basic classes is great specially for new players and for players that prefer it. Even I myself sometimes want to just play an easy straight to the point class and other times I want complex combos or quick decision making. The problem is that by playing tank there is no real option for this more challenging playstyle, skill ceiling for tanks is pretty low specially in comparison with some DD.
So I agree with you, SE should definitely take more risks with their reworks something as simple as giving the Paladin basic combo skills a chance to proc a buff and this buffs allows for a short time a free cast of a mana ability or something along those lines, it is so basic and yet would make the class more dynamic, maybe you get 7 procs in a row and your rotation changes completely or maybe you get only 2, it would already require you to alter your rotation on the fly and this is a very low risk basic idea there is so much more and so much better.
Wholeheartedly agree. I have SGE and SCH at 90 as well as WAR and GNB at 90 and I end up just picking 1 over the other because of aesthetics. (My choices are SCH and GNB most of the time).
I main Samurai cause I love the gear and playstyle. My first 90s were all tanks and healers and thats when I realized that they are too similar and not fun. I love it when jobs can be unique. But when the jobs are too similar to each other, it makes me think that I could be one or the other and it wouldnt matter.
Paladin is quite fun to play, but it's super deviant to the 60s burst window setting. To the point where they had to absurdly buff the damage of the confiteor combo so paladin would still be relevant in dps vs the other tanks. If you were to reduce the number of skills used to 5 and give those skills a potency equivalent to the requiescat holy spirits+confiteor combo you would have paladin be the strongest tank by a long shot. But since the skills are so spread out throughout every minute and are guaranteed to not be buffed by any 2 minute window they have to be naturally strong to compensate. They did not think enough through the 60s burst window changes when endwalker came out and the result is weird existence of skills that are on a 90s cooldown and the entire paladin dps rotation. Bloodfest was another thing that bothered me, why the fuck did they make the change to 120s, gnb had a perfect opener for a 90s Bloodfest as it was, but now you're forced to trigger no mercy super early if you want your pot window to affect your last burst strike and brutal shell.
This is an issue ive been struggling with a lot over the years so its nice to see someone else pointing it out. It feels like every big update I'm being robbed if something I really enjoyed, with my only option to just try something else. I miss the old aggro system, I miss the TP system, I miss Astrologians old cards…sure it was funky, but that's what made it so much fun. It's really depressing that I have to worry what they will take next. It seems like they just want to make everything easy for us
AST is the reason I fell in love with healing. I was bummed when our diversity of choosing shield or heals were taken away.
I disagree. Balance should never be sacrificed for the sake of enjoyment. Simply because the notion enjoyment will be different for each player. And "forcing" out a player out of their favorite class because of balance for the sake of "feeling different" is a very wrong move. You know, a lot of players will not be happy if their class is weaker than another and/or is not viable for high level contents.
Diversity is important. But it should absolutely not prevail over balance. Diverstiy will come esthetically, thematically and in some details that make it more than it seems at first glance. And that's fine.
With WAR being the self sustain beast before enwa previews hit I envisioned DRK as potential barrier tank, just tap into TBN gimmick, make siphon health as barriers and have them manage health as resource to lesser extent as well. Hell, bring back stance dance for DRK and GNB, just to make them stand out.
I do understand why they are doing it(ease of getting into a job with gianormous wave of new players + ease of fight design/job balancing)… I am worried tho because we already saw one big mmorpg gutting class identities, would be a shame if all those people who moved to ffxiv because of that experienced the same thing happen here.
People who say healing is bland are not healing, if still it's boring to heal play ast and micromanage everything. Have a nice day.
I was feeling this way too. On all of my tanks and healers I have the same skill bar layouts since there are very few differences. I swap jobs but it is still 90% the same.
I think the healers feel different enough, having played Sage, White Mage and Astro. Now was healing boring in a lot of content? I mean, ish? While progging a fight you're the person that has to adjust the most based off of other people's mistakes, which is where most of the challenge from the jobs comes from. So naturally, in an optimised setting, it's gonna feel a little less exciting. However, especially this tier, healing has become significantly more challenging with heavy raidwides, busters and bleeds all around. I've really enjoyed healing this tier and I think the healers I've played feel good right now. White Mage could do with a little extra damage button though, being the straightforward "selfish" DPS healer. Maybe give it Seraph Strike from PvP or something.
As a long time PLD main that loves the way PLD plays… I'm nervous for this rework, I mean, PLD has it's problems, like it's gauge is trash, but I've spent 3 expansions playing PLD and adapting to the new skills to the point where it's second nature and I've not got bored of it over all this time, so I'm hoping it's at least fun. Just don't make it proc based that'll take too much of my focus looking for procs, and I'd prefer it wasn't like GNB too, but maybe that's only because I haven't really looked up a rotation and while the other tanks you could pick up and get how they work, GNB feels a bit weirder and is punishing for using bullets at the wrong time.
I just realised, I enjoyed Dark arts DRK and Kaiten was one of the most fun things about SAM… I'm a bit worried for this PLD rework. Though SMN is good, it's my new secondary job. If it goes too bad and PLD isn't fun anymore maybe I'll try convince my static to let me go play SMN. Though it'll be sad to let it go after maining it for 6 years
As a healer main, I see two risks in a more complex damage rotation. One is space to put abilities alongside keys to comfortably bind things to. Now that I think about it, I am reminded of a former member of my FC. This was during SHB. He played on pad and, when on BRD, didn't have both DOTs on his bars because he “didn't like the cluster.”
The second is less experienced healers tunneling or getting greedy, especially if this hypothetical new damaging playstyle involves weaving. Sometimes you need to drop everything to keep that one DNC with five vuln stacks alive. Or, again, think of how many SAMs you see in the wild who don’t use Higanbana. But I’m trying to account for the experience casual players would have with a change, rather than static raiders.
As a paladin main while I'm interested in what the changes will be, there is a slight dread that I feel that the job I like playing will be changed in a way that I no longer enjoy playing as it.
I feel like when it comes to utility, like mitigation, gap closers, stuff like that, homogenization is generally fine, and there's nothing wrong with Heart of Light and Dark Missionary being clones. In doing this, tanks can more or less mitigate the same amount of damage, regardless of which tank you pick, with the exception of Paladin this tier because of how blocking interacts with dots, and missing a personal CD. Pretty samey mitigation I think is actually really healthy for the game, as it allows encounters to be designed with this in mind, without one tank being way too good, or way too bad for an encounter, because their job is to tank. When it comes to rotations, I am sad to see the playstyle of every single tank be the exact same though, and I wished they would lean into more variety. Dark Knight could be the big 2 minute burst tank, for example. I really enjoyed the sustained damage Paladin had going on in shadowbringers, and while it didn't necessarily pump DPS into raid buffs, it always had strong GCDs happening, meaning no matter where buffs happened, Paladins would be doing the most they could to pump into them. Less than a Dark Knight, but still, you get the idea. They were more selfish, but did more sustained damage. I really enjoy that playstyle, just as much as I enjoy the builder-spender one, and I am sad to see it potentially go in patch 6.3. I hope they reverse some of these decisions in 7.0
Blame xeno. All that whiney cunt does is cry til everything is the same He is the single most harmful person in the FFXIV community he's a cancer
I love healing and being a support player. So after a year of playing as healers in FFXIV with its incredibly simple "rotation", very laid-back difficulty in any content as you are drowning in buttons to fix any issue, close to 0 thinking after you've made the healing plan as the fights are scripted and rigid, and close to no uniqeness between the different jobs (astro is like a hill in the netherlands), and the 2 min rotation everyone has that pretty much makes the button redundant, why not just have a passive that starts every 2 min at this point. I decided to leave the game. I fucking love FFXIV, I've had an amazing year in it. Met so many people and made lots of friends, even met my current gf. But when it comes to playing as a healer (It's what I know so I'm not speaking of other roles) it is so lackluster. I feel like they made it for people who dont wanna be a support and was temporarily forced to play it by their friends or that they only made it this way to reduce queues in roulettes. From what I can see, no other role has been this butchered and simplified and homogenized. It made me eventually swap to Dancer as it filled my urge to be a support better. I've played many different MMOs. I used to raid heroic and eventually mythic in WoW and push keys in Mythic+ and the healing in that game compared to FFXIV is just straight up better in most ways. Some ways that FFXIV just can't reach, like with how their fights are structured with the very rigid and scripted fights that won't allow for random damage unless they change the old content too or leave it to the side. GW2 is where I found what I love playing. It allows for unique and complex support builds and everything eles around the game like the open world and how you traverse it makes the rest of the game a bliss. I've played the game on and off since its launch and I'm going back to it after my great time in FFXIV.
SE needs to do some serious changes to healers if they wanna fix this issue. It's not just me who dislike healing in FFXIV. It is clear as day that lots of healing enjoyers think the same when you look at the more difficult content like Savage and Ultimates. They either did like me and swapped to something like Dancer or Bard or they did like I eventually did and said goodbye to the game. It really sucks because the game is amazing in its social aspect but it really needs to make the gameplay fun and stop staring at statistics about player engagement that include roulletes, because ofc people are gonna pick a healer in those. The queues are so short you would be dumb not to. But that doesn't reflect on what role people pick because it is fun, it is showing what people pick to get their daily roullette done quicker.
Oh no! Homogenization! This buzzword sure does drive people wild doesn't it!? The only thing worse is the game being… UNBALANCED! These two poles will forever be a goldmine for clickbait!
The problem is not actually SE’s, though. They are responding to a problem created by players, particularly min-maxers. Complexity makes it difficult, if not impossible, to balance jobs. You can bet your ass that these players will waste no time in figuring out what’s “best” and make it first the preference, then the expectation. There is little content in the game that requires this sort of efficiency, but that doesn’t matter a lick to PF, as an example. There will be good jobs that do better, and bad jobs that do worse. And you’ll have players who prefer bad jobs screaming for them to be fixed, and when they are, they became the good jobs, and the cycle repeats.
In my reasoning, the only way to have both complexity and avoid this is by strengthening the diversity buff. But even then, within the roles, there will be good and bad. It will also restrict boss mechanics, as some jobs will have abilities that handle the mechanics better than others. To take an extreme example, imagine that a boss has a mechanic where it targets the lowest HP non-tank with a TB. You can handle it by ensuring the player is healed to full, have a shield placed on them, and mitigated. Or you can just have a Paladin use cover on them. Suddenly, the meta is have to have a Paladin, because it is so much easier and is more reliable.
Another thing that makes the game feel stale is the highly choreographed fights.
I want to heal as a healer, not do button dps while refreshing 1 DoT.
Healing is hella easy when you know what's coming next, every single time.
Bosses feel more like a dance than fights. Amazing cinematic moments, but imo, it would be a lot more engaging with some more randomness, not total randomness, but like yeah… Not the exact same fight everytime you go through.
I wish Yoshi-P would stop trying to appeal to plebs by making job classes easier and losing their uniqueness. I already dropped Samurai because of this. Please don’t make me drop Paladin too…
I mean this has more been an issue since Shb… so its nothing new, I do hope they dont change PLD in line with the other tanks. I really do enjoy running it when I dont feel like playing the others…
I enjoy PLDs unique pulls in dungeons…. if anything I hope they keep that part of it in its kit.
The thing i think is stale is its resource… i would hope they add an offensive skill that uses their gauge…
Like couldnt they just remove confeteors consumption of req stacks so on the 2 minute you can blow the whole combo without wasting 4 spells… or… have confeteor scale based on stacks… so circle can still be spammed when pull dungeon trash but in burst windows youn go straight into the confeteor combo…
They would then probably just have to adjust the length of sword dot and goring dot so they can fall in better allignment cuz losing 4 holy sumthings is like 9ish seconds
1000% agreed. Been complaining about this since start of SHB when they got rid of off tank stance and slowly made the shift to make everything standard and boring. I cant heal period due to the pure fact that its literally 3 buttons to dps unless your party is undergeared. Tanking is barely fun but only if you big pull, otherwise tanking is just a far worse more boring version of dps.
I am very scared that PLD is just gonna become similar to GNB/WAR/DRK, and I don't like those tanks anywhere near as much as PLD. I've played PLD since 3.0, and I've always liked the way it played. Some of my friends act as if I am a doomer or smth, and I am overreacting, but after seeing what they did to SMN, I am not hopeful at all for the future of paladin.
The idea of having classes being distinct AND balanced is a noble one but i see one problem with that: Complexity. If u want them to be disvers but at the same time not fall in and out of favor depending on the fight u would need to have some really precise mechanics to gain some really precise gameplay – and for that FF14 is to casual. At the moment the basic concept of healing and tanking is the same between all tanks and healers making it easy to find strats for everyone. If u diversfy them in a way that they play wastly different it would make it harder to summarize how jobs work.
For example: If we would include a drain tank (which i think is a awesome idea) and this tank would have none of the traditional mitigations but instead different boosts to his healing to survive big damage (maybe with 1 mitigation for tankbusters in his kit), than people would either not play them or suck to an extend that it frustrates other players.
A big portion of the FF14 community doesnt like complicated stuff. There is a reason why the MSQ is so braindead and "hard content" like extrem doesnt feel hard and just simply like a proper challenge. While even a lot of Savage Fights feel not super hard. The Community of FF14 is more casual than some people think and while that gives the game a hugh potential audience it also limits itself in what it can do and what not, at least in terms of content that is avaible for everyone like the MSQ or simple class design. So while i fully support the idea i find i very unlikely that there will be a major change in class design through out the Healers and Tanks.
Its funny in the reverse as well. I've played PLD so much that when i play my other tanks the whole build spend concept feels weird? I'll be very interested to see how the changes go. Risk is fun. Embrace the fun!
I absolutely despise how DRK feels now. The main reason I switched off of WAR was of how much it put me to sleep, in story and game play. When they changed DRK to fell cleave lite I swapped to reaper and mained a dps for the first time since Heavensward. Stop making my favorite role (tanks) be the most brain dead thing in the world.
One thing that I don't really like in the 3 tanks i've leveled so far is the tendency to have buttons you need to spam 3-5 times in a row. Paladin has it worst with the magical rotation and Atonement, I felt like it was really fun and unique in the early levels, shielding and stunning everything in sight, but the multiple one button spams kinda ruined it for me. Hell, at lvl90 they even made the final button of the magical rotation proc into 3 MORE PRESSES of the same button, how is that an interesting thing to do ?
There's also how in the early levels of Warrior you have to manage your gauge to sync it with your 3 uses of Berserk but suddenly you unlock that trait that just gives you the three presses for free without having to save up your resource and I'm like "shouldn't the gameplay get MORE complicated as time goes..?", but at least it's still fun compared to PLD.
I noticed this too; Talked about it in the Twitch chat of a "so-called-tank expert", the guy told me all the tanks are very different from each other and I was wrong, then proceeded to ban me from his Twitch channel for not agreeing with his take. What an absolute clown. You're going to get a lot of negative reactions from the raiding community with this video, purely because they're in denial of the truth because they're special little snowflakes who like to pretend that end game is harder than it actually is to make themselves feel special with their gear, mounts and titles. They're not and tanking is actually easier in FFXIV than most other MMOs – Tanks used to all play very differently back before Shadowbringers 5.1… In Heavensward everyone complained Paladin was crap, in Stormblood everyone complained Dark Knight was crap, then at the start of Shadowbringers, everyone complained that Warrior was crap; So the devs balanced all the tanks to be roughly the same, now no one complains – they all claim to play every tank job, but in reality they only have one raid main and only bother to learn to play one job, so they cry when they don't know how to play the other jobs, so over time the game is slowly becoming the way it is because of sooking raiders who refuse to acknowledge this is their fault.
I think tanks are similar because SE and yoship dont want to run into the issue of having one tank perform better than others and keeping certain tank jobs from doing end game raids. The tanks COULD do more and be more diverse like bringing back Butchers block or dark knights dark arts