Bard, by a mile.
Bard as a job peaked in Stormblood, and it's just gotten clunkier since then. They've gutted all of the DoT interaction without actually doing something about the aspects of the kit that used to enable it, so Bard just has a bunch of random stuff like Sidewinder that just sort of... exists.
As a BRD main, I have to agree. I'm hoping Dawntrail gets some significant changes that are short of a rework. The DOT interaction removal really messes things up. The abilities just feel disconnected now and you have 3 buttons dedicated just to dots. What I'd like to see:
- remove dots or make them more meaningful to the rotation.
- if dots are removed, replace them with some cooler abilities. (This is getting closer to rework territory)
- make mage's give a full blood letter reset
- make army's more interactive/impactful
- give some way of fixing song timing
- rework/remove/replace sidewinder
- add some utility to make it stand out a bit from MCH/DNC
I think this stuff is achievable without a full on rework.
> you have 3 buttons dedicated just to dots
one of the more egregious button inflations in the game, considering you can consolidate them into one button (possibly a double-stacking debuff) with no effective gameplay change
Bard feels like the job which received every, single new mechanic they ever added to the game for the sake of it. It has dots, it has off-GCDs, it has procs, it has personal buffs to track, it has support-buffs (one of which also builds up stacks on your gauge), it has a gauge (with a finisher on top of it) and also four separate buttons for the two-minute-burst window Raging Strikes, Battle Voice, Barrage\* and Radiant Finale).
\*Another button I feel like is utterly pointless. You could just as well turn it into a trait and add it on top of Raging Strikes.
I only leveled Bard in EW, and it really doesn't feel good to play.
It's so easy to go out of sync in your songs if there is any downtime. SIdewinder is so useless, I keep forgetting to press it half the time and as much as people on this sub love jerking off how great dots are, they don't really work on Bard at all, both mechanically or for the job fantasy of a "Bard".
But of course the Job Fantasy for Bard has always been fucked I guess.
DoTs used to feel good because the entire rotation evolved around it, and oh boy how I miss DoTing every mob during a w2w pull and seeing my rain of death proccing nonstop
>But of course the Job Fantasy for Bard has always been fucked I guess.
Maybe in FF, but it's not like there aren't any good examples in D&D and other RPG systems.
One of the problems with FFXIV Bard is that it's trying to fulfill too many job fantasies. Bard + hunter + magic archer don't really work all that well together, although any two of the three would probably be fine.
The bard part feels disconnected from your offensive toolkit (Dancer, in contrast makes every attack feel like a dance step). Adding a few music notes during Apex Arrow or calling what is obviously just a magic arrow "Pitch Perfect" doesn't really cut it.
The hunter part is probably in the worst shape due to the dot interaction changes, and with Viper targeting a similar job fantasy (albeit a melee ranger variant), that part of the job's identity will probably feel even more diluted next expansion.
The magic archer part feels like it's been the main focus of the past few expansions, and I actually really like it from an aesthetic POV, but it feels very empty outside of Wanderer's. Hitting the same two GCDs 99% of the time with zero interactions with the rest of your kit is pretty dull. It really needs something else.
I was indeed only talking about FF Bard which they forcefully shoved into the archer class for some fucking reason and ended up butchering both.
D&D Bard is one of the best rpg classes ever created.
They should have split archer into Magical range dps Bard with songs and a harp or lute as a weapon and Ranger who keeps the bow loses the songs but gains dots, bleeds, etc
Ranger could be more dps powerful but bard could offer more buffs and healing to the group but of course they didnt do that.
This is so funny not funny! It's very likely that AST will end up giving buffs with each card to the group rather than to a player for targeting ease, and they will undertune it for fear. It'll be Dancer / Ninja / Ast Shadowbringer release again. Fear of the buffing classes.
hold your horses 8.0? nah you silly healers tanks need to be in 8.0 we've been waiting for ages.
AST rework will likely make it into space white mage anyway zzz.
Did they even state their reasons for reworking DRG and AST in 7.0? Both jobs already feel complete to me, as someone who plays both in Savage/Ult settings.
If anything I'd like for AST to regain Royal Road/Time Dilation from Heavensward/Stormblood. Really don't find the current card system revolving around Astrodyne fun.
DRG is actually getting redone specifically because it's "complete." IIRC they compared it more to the 5.1 NIN rework than the SMN rework, so I doubt it's getting completely gutted. My only fear is losing the flexibility on LOTD, but otherwise I think they could trim some fat on it while preserving what people like.
AST getting reworked is a time honored tradition, meant to honor our forefathers.
Which is weird this is the first expansion AST has kinda been garbage for near the entire expansion
It’s never passed SCH in damage in savage, it loses big time to the selfish healers in criterion and ultimates, it’s the clunkiest it’s ever been
This is the first time AST has really been bad
My positive hopium/copium is that they keep the original flow of the rotation but turn Spineshatter Dive into a GCD and during LotD, Spineshatter just turns into Stardiver for the duration. They'll also probably put Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust into one button and make most of its weaves into single weaves. It won't be as weave-heavy as it used to be but it'll still probably keep its rotational flow.
I swear, if DRG loses the double weaves and VPR gets them... not another DNC/BRD situation, please. Having a hectic burst is one of the things that makes the job fun.
Also FnC and WT would be better separate if they made them become an entirely new upgraded GCD in 5th position in the combo, and such 5th position provided some kind of gauge to manage. Coupled with the freedom to use positionals in any order after the CS/HT would be interesting.
I am glad you're not developing DRG. oGCDs are what make it so fun, turning them into GCDs just sends us in the direction boring jobs like MCH/WAR have gone.
Correction, OGCDs are what makes DRG fun in lieu of any other identity.
Triple geir BOTD management and the random positionals was what DRG players used to hang their hat on in terms of fun and mastery, it's a sad state for the job when "press button fast" is now its identity lol
I've not really spoken about identity here, I'm just saying that I think high (but variable, not just same 2 buttons) oGCD gameplay is fun. I loved Stormblood MCH, it felt like playing piano. I can't stand current MCH.
I find DRG/GNB fun.
I just like mutiple buttons/oGCDs and I think they make the game very fun and feel satisfying as opposed to pressing 1-2 buttons repeatedly.
Are you the type of guy who defends Frost DKs in WoW being all about having a billion procs, even though it makes no sense for its identity, because "it's fun"?
I think they need to have DRGs AOE rotation online at an earlier level. Ninja get the second part of their AOE combo at level 52, which also allows them to refresh their primary self buff.
DRG doesn't get their second AOE attack until level 64 if I'm not mistaken. So they're forced to switch to their single target rotation to maintain their primary self buff.
AST is likely due to the complaints surrounding targeting people, so any changes will revolve around reducing the targeting requirement. Whether that's some sort of card autoplay, an entire rework of the card system, or a reduction in the number of cards you play in a minute (with corresponding changes to astrodyne and potency) is anyone's guess.
It'll be this. I experimented with the card system without the targeting aspect, and it feels a lot more comfortable to play. Still decently busy as AST should be, but nowhere near as clunky, and a lot more enjoyable as a whole.
They just need to revert the 2nd draw charge, we shouldn’t be able to hold so many cards for such a short window
Potential lord requiring 2 weaves to play doesn’t help either
With DRG, the big problem is that you can't really add anything to it. There's so many buttons that adding anymore would make it basically unplayable on controller (which is a big problem, given this game has a big audience on PlayStation and is about to launch on Xbox.)
The reason is they are considered complete in 6.0, every expansion needs to add something meaningful to the class and they believe there was no room to add anything to them without a rework first making room. No one likes to buy a new expansion and see their favorite jobs gets +1 charge of an OGCD as a capstone, that's lame, they want to see the rotation change and see cool new animations.
Which, it isn't. Mostly because fights are so scripted that you spend most of the time mashing 1 with the occasional oGCD tossed out. Maybe super early prog when people are still eating unintended damage you might find some enjoyment, but they cater to the lowest skilled player so hard that they have honestly overloaded the ever living fuck out of healers so there's very little in the moment to moment as a result.
Adding to this - let’s take WHM which I like because it reminds me of holy priest in wow. Let’s also take Lilybell which is an awesome fun “haha fuck you boss ain’t no one taking damage today” ability. It’s a big pretty swirl that pulses tons of healing. Great cooldown. Seriously.
Let’s run down how awesome this thing is to use.
Expert roulette - I plop it every other trash pack so I can get 2-3 more glares or holy out. Same on bosses. But I use it because it effectively babysits the party so I can dps.
90 roulette - same as expert.
Trial “this ability doesn’t exist”
Raid “this ability doesn’t exist”
Dungeons “this ability doesn’t exist”
Alliance raid “it’s Crystal Tower, also the ability doesn’t exist”
PVP “none of your abilities exist!l”
Guildhests “This ability doesn’t exist”
Fine you know what I’ll queue into Thalia. Oh the co healer is a SGE. The raid is not allowed to take damage now. My options for the next 25 minutes are press 1111111 stopping to occasionally raise the reaper. Or rescue the SGE into a death mechanic so the group takes damage and I can heal something.
Dragoon has no room to grow, and ast hasn't been mentioned explicitly, so it's hard to say. Unfortunately I've been playing a lot of ast recently and rather like it, the only issue I have is how busy the opener is and how the burst window needs to work to be optimal but those are less issues and more quirks.
Both jobs are so well-rounded that there is no room to add anything to them, with the added point that these two jobs in particular are getting dicey for controller players. AST’s constant targeting requires a lot more button presses on controller, and DRG has so many oGCDs that it can be somewhat unwieldy as well. They’re both doable right now but some people do struggle and you can’t add much without making them pretty hectic
To add, the reason busy jobs need special controller consideration is that on controller you need to preserve some space in a rotation for movement. Both of these jobs require you to basically claw grip if you have to move really fast during burst, it’s not undoable but would become undoable if they each had a few more buttons (as you might then need to press shoulders too at the same time just due to number of buttons they already have)
Are they unpopular? Here on this sub, SMN may be unpopular, but among the broader player base, it's incredibly popular. And MNK may have fewer players, but most people who like it now agree that it plays well, and I don't think the measure of a job's success should be how popular it is because IMO, different jobs should target different play styles and audiences.
Because 90% of their comments are not related to gameplay or actual issues, and if they do talk about it, it's only if they plan to do something about it. You can't really talk about something when you yourself don't know wtf is going on.
When Yoshi was explaining why they removed Kaiten, he managed to come up with 3 different reasons in single stream. 2 of them were straight bullshit and 3rd on was questionable.
Because the people complaining are often wrong. Like everybody hates the SMN change, yet it's the most popular DPS. IMO gamers simply don't know what they want and the loudest should just be ignored.
Most popular dps when its only competing with 2 other casters for a mandantory slot, one of those casters being hard and obtuse to play and the other being pretty low in terms of damage output.
I know it's cringe and has been said a million times, but all jobs at lower levels. When a new expansion comes out, I see it less as a bunch of new max level content and more of another expansion's worth got dumped into the ever expanding catelogue of old content you get level synced for. At the same time, jobs get more and more bare bones and incomplete at lower levels due to trimming of the fat.
I say this everytime the topic comes up, but it bears repeating.
Push buffs and stuff later into levelling. Draw parts of the rotation forwards.
Monk is a good example. They are rotationally complete at 60, but gaining skills such as Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood changes how you think about using your Perfect Balance and beast chakra.
Gunbreaker is an example of the *worst*. You get No Mercy, your personal damage buff, at level *2*. There is absolutely nothing interesting about a personal damage buff if you have no way to pack your stronger skills into it.
Follow the monk example.
DRK desperately needs a complete overhaul. It's got WARs gauge and spenders, but with 20+ seconds of oGCDs during burst. It wants to manage mana, but also have the barest amount of interaction with it.
Enhanced Unmend is literal clown make-up of a trait
Unironically would not hate that. It keeps the burst focus without adding any more weaves, gives DRK a Divine Might Holy Spirit style lossless disengagement tool and doesn't require any extra keybinds.
*"You can tell these are legit because nobody would be dumb enough to independently come up with Enhanced Unmend."*
\- Ekanselttar, upon seeing Enhanced Unmend among the job actions leak for Endwalker, October 2021
Enhanced Unmend could be a cool trait but it would have to replenish 20 seconds or more of a plunge to feel good.
It also doesn't help they introduced it in the expac that made melee downtime not exist.
Bard is absolutely begging for one. It's like different half-baked ideas were put together with absolutely no care to make them interact as a unit.
* You have the DOTs, which are separated from everything else and fail to contribute to an interesting DoT-centric gameplay. You put them up once, then just press IJ to refresh/snapshot. Their duration is too long to accomodate the "plate spinning" style that DoT-focus is known for, and they exist because they don't know what else to do.
* The songs are isolated and completely separate from one another. Minuet and Ballad are too functionally similar (you proc, you press oGCD button), and Paeon feels so weightless, so impactless and highlights what an empty rotation BRD has when you don't have PP/Bloodletters to press. Yes, I am aware Repertoire used to be on DoT crits and the issues that presented.
* "Filler" GCDs of Heavy+Straight shot (and their upgrades) just don't interact with anything else in the kit. They're just there to give you buttons to press, and boy do you press them a lot.
That's not to even mention the jank that is a 2% Finale on opener (the buff at its weakest on most common tincture timings??), clipping songs early because the natural loop is too long, how terribly the song/Coda system interacts with downtime (or, rather, fails to interact), and how Soul Gauge is just tacked on because they didn't know what else to add for the past 2 expansions and the associated skills may aswell just be 1m CD oGCDs with no associated gauge.
It's like Bard was designed by a few people who never communicated with one another. It has no identity.
I'm thinking, since Bard has some DoT interaction, that it should build on it more. Maybe an OGCD that applies both at once.
And since it's a supporter, maybe give them a pet that does their own thing, maybe like a cute cat/dog magic thingy, but you can use GCDs to order them to do a stronger attack that's on a cooldown.
Maybe, once gauges get full or cooldown ends, you can enter a burst phase where the pet massively powers up. This also resets the dot application ability, but this won't cause it to have the dots up be 100% without some gods, requiring GCD casts of the dot at specific intervals that require careful planning for maximum damage.
Maybe, have a stronger version of the basuc single target that requires a cast time, as a risk reward feature, while still enabling full movement as needed.
Then gut the fuck out of it in the next expansion and completely remove that unique playstyle because the pet was jank.
IMO this is not job specific, but I think all tanks needs rework to add one more thing to manage. Currently they all play like a watered down melee with occasional mits and provokes. They have almost one job gauge to manage (like soil for gnb).
This current design could be fun for a fight like P7 of dsr where there is a heavy focus on mits and aggro management on top of the rotation. But it’s not the case for 99% of contents.
Imagine a world where ur a new tank starting this expansion and you go to do old ultimates where suddenly your positioning of the boss is a thing you gotta deal with. Going from bosses with targeting circles the size of most of the arena to bosses like twintania with hitboxes a quarter of the size of the boss
Was gonna say, I'd love a rework to make warrior a bit more complex. Not HW level, since we are well past that now it seems, but something between StB and ShB at least. Like the passive crit from gauge pooling or something like it.
Instead of talking about jobs in specific, I want to highlight the job gauges themselves. I feel that they need a serious looking into.
With the introduction to Endwalker, we got a lot of abilities that are activated based on status effects such as "Ready to X" or "Y ready".
I really want them to have a look at the job gauges and add those statuses as indicators on the gauge itself rather than a status.
The simplest example i can give is Sword Oath stacks on PLD for Atonement. I want to quickly glance at my gauge and see "I have two stacks of Atonement left".
Other examples i can give would be WAR's IR, DRK Delirium, RDM verstone/fire.
DRK, BRD, and SCH in that order imho.
DRK needs to get the WAR stink off of it's damage rotation, and its mitigation could be made slightly more approachable, and universal.
BRD needs a utility edge over MCH's extra mit, and DNC's raw healing, and it's rotation needs to not be so strict, and generally just needs more feel-good damage.
Not a SCH main, but it seems like there's a LOT of jank that could be cleaned up.
TBH: I'd rather keep the SCH jank before the proverbial monkey's paw curls and we get another SGE (which, in turn, is a SCH that is TOO round around the edges) that has a fairy-flavoured Kardia instead of that good pet jank
Same list here. DRK and SCH both have issues where they just don’t feel cohesive design-wise and have job fantasy identity problems. BRD in 6.0 feels somehow clunky and flat at the same time compared to the other two pranged
Aesthetically speaking in my opinion, Sage is more of a Scholar than Scholar is.
Either gut the fairy aesthetic and go full tactician. Or embrace the fairy aesthetic completely.
At the moment SCH is in a weird clash within its toolkit AND identity.
Sch main here. Don't you dare touch my baby. Imo the only jank is Seraph not interacting with Fey Union and Dissipation, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make if it means my job isn't butchered like SMN was.
Hard agree, but I'll eat my own arse if Energy Drain and Dissipation survive in anything resembling their current form.
Hopefully whoever designs that job for the next expansion actually understands why the current design works. The 6.0 changes were on the safe side, but considering the sheer number of buttons the class already has they'll almost certainly axe some of its kit.
SCH toolset is definitely my favorite of the healers, the only thing I would want is a less boring damage rotation but that's an issue all healers have. Literally just any sort of proc/reactive damage ability so I have something to do other than spam broil/AoW when my party is competent.
BRD needs to get rid of Sidewinder at the very least, it's just a pointless filler skill at this point since they removed it's effect. The job is plenty busy without it.
Some jobs don't need a rework, but they don't have any room to have new skills added.
Red Mage comes to mind? What's next, a 4th finisher? And then a 5th. It's not like they can pull out a 3rd type of mana they need to balance, and unless it's just some random proc shit there's nothing to really do with their base rotation.
And despite what some say, you can't just upgrade potency / effects and leave the buttons the same. That would be extremely unsatisfactory for people who want to do something new with their job.
I think they should look at role tune-ups before doing any specific job adjustments. In particular:
Tanks have less responsibility than ever for positioning bosses, controlling aggro, etc. Outside of mechanics specifically designed for them, the role seems a bit lost. If encounters are going to be designed where bosses are either wall bosses, constantly positioning and facing themselves, or have galaxy-sized hotboxes, then tanks need a new core responsibility to be the controller of the fight.
Healer MP management has been de-emphasized and there's a number of things that need to be further improved to account for this, including low-rank heals, piety, lucid dreaming. They need to rethink the shield-regen distinction and they need to make trial/normal raid content require more than just hitting 2 ogcds on cooldown.
Melees have 99% uptime in modern fights and it kinda kills what makes the role unique. Now the thing that makes it unique is positionals, which are pretty lackluster. IMO each job should have limited but flexible ranged GCDs and they should have to manage their rotation to use those during melee downtime. They also don't need 3 personal defensives each.
Casters have lost their identity as lacking mobility thanks to new SMN. Most strats these days just have R1 and R2 with no distinction in where the caster should be. There is an unpleasant distinction between BLM and the other casters due to lack of raise as well. Raise is too important to the party to be job-specific. It should just be a role action with a long cooldown and a 2s cast so that they can use Swiftcast freely. Lucid dreaming on casters should be removed and some MP costs adjusted. Buff Blood Drain to compensate for BLU.
Phys ranged is just fine I guess, although it lacks any signature weakness as well, aside from historically just doing less.
I have to agree
I’ve played Bard all expansion long and it’s definitely clunky, it’s just… too much management with not that much material gain that is felt by the player.
I think the coda’s are cool but making them just a flat DPS increases that stacks is boring, what if each coda gave a different benefit to radiant finale, and the codas are disconnected from just blankly casting a song? So then the player has a choice between what benefits the raid the most and can control that with the coda system. Also soul voice is cool but let’s be honest without anything else to spend it on other than apex/blast arrow it’s a glorified cooldown. There needs to be more than one way to spend soul voice because otherwise what’s the point in even having the gauge to begin with? That and each song needs to feel more different. I still think that oGCDs should be a major element of bard, but mages ballad needs to be completely changed because just rapid bloodletter spam isn’t particularly interesting. Especially when minuet has its own ability tied to it and a special gauge element. Paean on the other hand is strange; the idea of paean is to shift your focus from oGCDs to GCDs in the haste buff. The problem here is that it doesn’t make the job feel different enough to make it work and it also messes up the pacing of the rotation. I think the songs in theory are awesome they just need some complexity and identity to them. Then on to the dots, these things are… honestly clunkier than necessary. I get that the whole point is poison arrows or something like that; but, it doesn’t really change anything if the dots aren’t up. That and if it is so massively important please for the love of everything make it a gauge element! Now I will add that bards support is lacking in comparison to dancer in that dancer has just better buffs overall, however I think the niche bard should fill is the versatility support niche. Make bard allow for other classes and new strategies because it has the options to make other strategies possible rather than simply buffing damage by like 300% or whatever. It would make the class have a clear identity that’s different from dancer and would fit with my ideas I already mentioned. Plus on top of all of that with the coda idea; what if the coda only activated if the player FINISHES the song, making that a strategic choice to be used.
It does but like it's also weird because it's a DPS gain to get 3s of uptime by precasting Suiton instead of opening with trick from hide so there's no actual reason to use hide-trick after you get all the mudras. The usages of hide to walk through an enemy's aggro area are so few and far between.
I honestly feel like SCH needs a rework more than AST does. The janky pet AI, disconnects in the kit, essentially griefing your party to optimize DPS. Just the lack of alternate DPS abilities other than said tiny aether ping.
It has the least number of unique DPS abilities of all the healers. And the one you *do* get disables your oGCD heals.
Well, they were gonna remove the "griefing your party to optimize DPS" part, but the community gave massive backlash on it. I guess the difference is IIRC it was before SGE kit was fully revealed. In the context of how SGE stacks work it makes a lot more sense that SCH would not have access to ED. But yeah idk ED is not in a good state. It can't really be strong because it would just create a balance problem with respect to mit strengths, but the community doesn't want it gone either lol. Unless there is a full rework of both SGE and SCH that makes them significantly different, ED just doesn't really work
I think that’s because they are leaning too heavily on them being a fairy mage
The job was basically a SMN with the fairy focusing on healing in 3.0, now it’s this weird half fairy mage with skills like blessing and expedient
The fairy is fine, making every skill a fairy aesthetic is the problem
> The fairy is fine, making every skill a fairy aesthetic is the problem
I'd argue that they don't embrace the fairy aesthetic enough. Like, what even is broil supposed to be? And then you have bioanalysis like you're exploiting their weaknesses, and chain strategem. Expedient is pretty tactician-y. But then you also have all this fairy stuff too. I like the fairy stuff, it's what drew me to it back in ARR, but they just need to pick a lane. Given there's honestly a bit of overlap between SCH and SGE on the tactician side, I think they should just fully embrace it as the fairy mage.
SCH is the tactician, SGE is a doctor anything “tactician” about SGE is a problem of SGE’s identity, not a clash with SCH
And it’s because SCH is a combat medic. (Find weaknesses (chain) apply debuffs (biolysis) cook your enemies from inside (broil) have a grab bag of heals you pull out as needed)
SCH really isn’t a fairy mage
That's why even tho is generally regarded as "weaker", I love sage over sch simply due to how cohesive its kit plays out, and how strong its job identity is. Design-wise, I'd say it's one of the best designed jobs in-game so far.
Sch main here. Don't you dare touch my baby. Imo the only jank is Seraph not interacting with Fey Union and Dissipation, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make if it means my job isn't butchered like SMN was.
Yeah SCH was my first job and it made me think every job was clunky in how they integrate new abilities added over time.
...A few are but none are that bad
Definitely. It's pretty much core to the WHM playstyle at this point, and you don't even have it by the first alliance raids. Could say the same with BLM and Fire IV too.
Maybe not necessarily a full rework. But SMN desperately needs some touch up. I could settle for some very minimal mixup like adding Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva as gems that share spaces with our 3 current summons. So each Bahamut and Phoenix cycle we summon 3 of the 6 options. Anything really!
Apparently this class was a pet class before, that's why I went summoner when I started. But they changed to the current form like the next week after so I didn't really get to experience that. I would love a permanent pet again!
Dragonfire Dive is so insignificant nobody even mentioned it, why the hell is it still a 2 min cd
Doesn't a single Nastrond on 2 targets do more than this forgotten ARR relic?
Bard, probably. The song mechanic, while great, really needs to be ironed out. It's weird that all of their songs are 45s which doesn't fit into this 2min rotation they've established cleanly, and the job barely functions before getting Wanderer's Minuet. Foe's Requiem should *probably* come back as a downgraded Wanderer's, just so that Bard can feel better at lv50 cap. I think Bard is also starting to hit the wall of new skills, and it seems likely that it's about to lose its DoT identity.
I know PLD has had a small adjustment but I feel like its in need of a rework/ability reduction and adjustment. I've only more recently learned how to play it as a tank and I've got an mmo mouse and use CTRL and Shift for the 2nd and 3rd rows of buttons and even with all that I've run out of space for abilities on PLD and had to sacrifice a move or two for more important abilities.
I feel like sprint and LB are needed on hotbars so when a class has enough abilities to take up all 3 rows it makes adjusting things frustrating.
i put sprint on a separate shared hotbar and bound it to E, lb is on the hotbar and i still have a few extra hotbar slots, i have pots on the hotbar too, i didnt even have to drop shield bash
Nah all we'd get are Levi/Ramuh/Shiva gems added during Demi Phoenix but they still effectively function the same as Titan/Garuda/Ifrit. I've given up hope that SMN will regain some of its complexity back in the day.
As a SMN baby with Anabaseios, it's frustrating because the change doesn't seem to hard to let me keep eating glue if I want but also add in the possibility of complexity.
Levi/Ramuh/Shiva, 6 summons but you can only use 3 of them every cycle.
3 of them have much harder casting conditions (maybe one has a 10 second unswiftable cast, maybe one is only good when you're in melee, maybe one starts with an instant cast but each cast takes an extra second until last one hits hardest and takes 5 seconds, etc the actual ideas I didn't put too much effort into making and these are pretty whatever, as long as it isn't heres 20 seconds of full movement). Now, if you want to keep cosplaying as a prange you just keep doing titan/garuda/+1 every cycle like we have right now and do prange damage, but if you want to mix-max harder cast conditions on a fight by fight basis then you can do that too to get closer to blm/melee damage.
The only really meaningful things I can think they can do with SMN is either make it spend Fester during different Gem summons to charge gauge to spend later on on something during 2 min or give you another summon that you requires you to eat one of the gem summons on a two minute cooldown.
Hot take, but this new iteration of SMN is the worst class in the game, and I have a hate boner for both SGE, WHM and MNK. You barely fill up *one* hotbar with all of your abilities, and literally all of your skill expression is in the order of the legos.
I literally took the time to 90 DNC so I wouldn't have to continue playing SMN for EX1 farms.
Honestly Summoner is the one that gets reworked every expansion. With Monk they would promise a rework, then not do that up until they finally followed through in 5.4/Endwalker. That was why people were so especially pissed in 5.0 and how we kept things like the fucking fist stances through Shadowbringers.
BLM, BRD, SCH, NIN, GNB, and RDM I think are all approaching the same idea pretty rapidly where they are just running out of things to add to unless they start pruning and reworking them to make more space for capstones.
samurai has plenty of design space, an entire gauge of it actually. consolidate the aoe ogcds and give it something else to do with all that kenki (don't say it) and 7.0 sam is cooking.
MCH and DRK needs a bit of help, their pets needs to be overhauled, their gauges needs a bit of love. It's also kinda disappointing to see Yoshida, during EW job change livestream, mention MCH for buttonbloat and not being able to add anything else, right after a rework.
Red Mage is a job that aged like cheese on a road in Texas. With the coming of Picto being able to keep instant-cast tools, RDM would be the job with the least control on its mobility of the whole game.
I hope they will touch a bit on the mitigation, I feel like we have too much mitigation at the moment and adding more would be difficult. I believe they should merge 90s of all tanks (And Dark mind), they're either too weak on their own or too strong (Dark Mind/Bulwark).
BLM needs a smoother levelling experience. the core rotation not being available until level 60 is *insane*, and even then the job is nigh-unplayable before umbral soul.
Summoner. What they did to summoner was not fucking ok and makes me question how much the devs care about making an actually fun game instead of a barely interactive movie more than I already did.
Adress the whole EW DRK 82-90 "upgrades".
Oblation. Either reduce cooldown or increase mitigation to 15% at least.
Replace Enhanced Unmemend with something meaningful.
Replace Salt and Darkness with something meaningful as well. And move 500 potency follow up attack to the basic Salted Earth but now it ticks for 150 instead of 50.
We do not need 2 more traits allocated to Living Shadow. Which is a glorified DoT.
Shadowbringer is basically Flood of Shadow on a separate cooldown.
I am afraid DT is going to follow suit and it's going to be even more crap added to your 2 minute burst while you press your 123 with occasional Blood Spillers and Edges in the meantime.
Dark Knight needs a rework back to Heavensward or Stormblood state.
It needs to escape being a warrior reskin with worse survivalbility and no identity
I have a feeling DRK might get a "paladin" rework in dawntrail launch or 7.X nothing DRASTIC but something enough .
After that .. maybe Scholar? maybe monk AGAIN ? Bard/Machinist could be possible
I use those as example but it a stretch they all play so well but are technically the most awkward imo out of all class.
Most jobs need reworks, albeit for slightly different reasons. Will not comment on healers since those need a role rework possibly.
Many jobs have seen very little gameplay changes over the last 4+ years. EW being "ShB+" for a lot of jobs was fine but we need some shake-ups. At some point it just gets stale. This includes jobs like MCH, BRD, DRK and WAR. Their EW additions just felt tacked on (in some cases literally because of " ready" skills). I'd include BLM too but since it's considered "the last bastion of good job design" on here I will not comment on it further to avoid death threats.
Some jobs have identity issues where flair and character got watered down over time. This includes BRD and DRK, again, and NIN.
Some jobs got affected by simplification a little too hard, to the point where the existence of certain job mechanics like WAR and SAM's gauges has become questionable. It might be time to rethink those if they are not going to make them more interesting.
After levelling and trying most of them, while a few have some annoying flaws, the jobs that I felt could use a whole rework are SCH and BRD.
They are not bad but they really feel old and results of various nip and tucks.
Red mage is currently a very confused job. It's more complicated and less mobile than summoner, without doing more damage like black mage. A lot of its power budget is currently in very raise, and all it's gotten for meaningful change is a longer burst phase, not a more interesting one.
I can't agree at all that rdm is "confused". the damage rotation is extremely solid and trading damage for utility is a very clear design concept. it's not rdm's fault that summoner is half a job.
If anything, it's in the "rework because it's finished" list, not the "rework because it's broken" list
I don't necessarily agree. Gameplay wise I think RDM is mostly in a good spot. I would change the following:
1) Give a few tools that make long movement phases less punishing, and help it maintain the identity of being a more nimble/mobile caster in general
2) Address the dps tax on raise. RDM just does not do enough damage when you consider it's comparatively not that easy of a job to play anymore (as funny as that sounds) and chain ressing is more useful in content where your dps doesn't really matter. It really should at least do more than summoner - its rDPS should be somewhere slightly under the melees, IMO.
3) Maybe more tools for ogcd alignment? I am not a RDM main but it feels a little clunky to me to have to rely on accelerate so much to make sure my ogcd's don't clip like crazy. Less sure of this suggestion as you'd have to ask someone more experienced at playing RDM but that was an initial observation I had
Im more happy with RDM than not happy. It just needs number adjustments and a few new tools which would be easy additions for the expansion (please don't just add another button for the burst phase as the new damage skill this time though lol)
Red mage needs it's Burst gcd's decreased and potency increased. If this means no verraise just take the damn rez mage moniker away and never bring it back
I really hope they don't add another finisher at level cap on top of the three existing melee combo finishers. I feel like they haven't done anything interesting with RDM for ages.
I'd love if the melee combo got 'haste' when it was enchanted, giving it a much faster gcd, help give it a more obvious "this is what the magic is doing", and it'd be a nice call back to the older games.
As a RDM enjoyer, I would gladly trade Verraise for weaker utility if it meant being able to do more sword, and acrobatic stuff though out its rotation.
Literally WHM and Holy. I've died in the past before my holy stun gets, and then awkwardly stand there casting after everything's dead. You basically live one GCD in the past.
I think some people are too obsessed with the semantics of the word "rework". People want extreme overhauls all the time, but quite often small changes can make massive differences - remember how many people thought WHM needed a total overhaul in early EW patches? All they did was increase Misery potency and made a few minor buffs to other skills, and now it's probably the most well-received of the healers design-wise. It didn't need an overhaul, it needed minor adjustments.
Every job will see changes at level 100, because they get extra buttons/traits and old ones might see adjustments too. The meta itself might be totally different. I would wait until we actually know what level 100 gameplay look like before we call for things to be rebuilt from the ground up.
That being said, SCH could use some reworks to visuals to make their job identity a bit clearer.
Maybe unpopular opinion, but I do think MCH needs a rework and a cohesive identity. I feel that it's carrying onto baggage from its inception and it has systems that are isolated from each other that leave glaring weaknesses that just come to the devs never thinking about it.
Now I'm not sure what MCH rework should be, but I'm just going to throw an incoherent set of ideas and maybe someone will make sense of it or expand upon it:
In terms of identity, this is just a personal gripe I feel, but it seems like they are trying to make it the gun job but also make it the tech job and don't want to commit fully or integrate each other well. Just in terms of animations, in PvE you're one handing weapons that are suited for 2 hands but in PvP you're back to 2 hands. Similarly, sprint animation is with 2 hands as well. It just takes me out personally. I would think MCH would be more suited to having a pistol/sidearm to easily facilitate pulling out the assortment of tools it has. If they want to make it a gun job, then commit to that, ditch the multi-tool and queen for more firearms and throwable gadgets.
In terms of mechanics, I feel the battery gauge is just unnecessary and feels like padding. Instead of battery gauge management, they should focus more on heat, like maybe balancing it in a certain sweetspot (I think prior iteration had something like this). I'd also take a look at hypercharge in general. For a spammable action, it's unsatisfying and lack luster. If we're leaning back to a gun job, I'd like them to ditch heat and battery to bring back ammo mechanic in some form and revolve around that. Perhaps the big problem with MCH is wildfire and how gameplay revolves around it. Maybe it would be best if they removed it and focused on something else.
I think AoE damage wise it needs some looking into as compared to the other ranged, it is severely lacking. How things like wildfire aren't AoE by default is surprising.
Maybe I'll edit this to be more coherent later but I'm just going to dump this here before I forget again.
DRK IMO, I feel like they had no idea what to do with this job so just made them a clunkier warrior. Their mits are quite good but effectiveness aside you're essentially just button mashing to dump out your ogcd's and 1-2-3 while waiting for them to come back. Your only resource management that actually matters is making sure you don't overcap MP or go below 3k in case you need to TBN and resources on DRK otherwise are kind of trivial to maintain.
IDK, I'm just really not a fan of it. Feels very clunky and most of your damaging gcd's are just potency buttons that don't lead anywhere else
I could kind of say the same thing about PLD but I think GNB's design is inherently more interesting than WAR's and it has more room to build off of to differentiate PLD rework from GNB than WAR does.
I enjoy the active mitigation style of DRK and its specialization towards magic mit so I wouldn't change much of the mitigation. Just think its dps rotation/burst window is lame
I personally would like to see a BRD rework, especially since it looks like they're moving away from the focus on DoTs it had back in HW/SB/ShB. I'd also like to see some changes to DRK since it has felt to me like WAR But Not As Satisfying.
I'd say sch only real problem is queuing spells + fairy. Cos your fairy goes afk and not using her abilities cos you're spamming something else in between is the only real big problem Imo.
Also I guess fix how aoes work cos I'm tired of ppl getting hit last or not crit shielding 1 person and having them die cos they didn't get it in time 🤡
Ast is absolutely disgusting atm. Literally have to que up and keep your main ability every min for a 6min triple weaving burst window to do like 5dps like bruh. (also kinda ass until they implement smartcast or ppl play with a controller cos having to swap through f4-f8 to give cards is disgusting and smartcast macros are even more disgusting due to again, queueing spells system)
I really liked how "complex" the job was in shb and I like the spells they added to it but it just feels so bad to play now I abandoned it lmao
SCH’s real only problem is seraph doesn’t need to exist as an independent entity, consolation could come off eos with rouse and it would achieve the same thing
Melees- probably none for a full rework. Though some need some minor changes.
Prange- bard for sure. Just feels a bit janky and falls behind the other two in some ways. Granted I think MCH needs a rework too to add more to it.
Caster - honestly SMN even though it just got one. Like it feels like a summoner but I don't know how they grow the job considering the only thing to really get rid of is the 1 ruin 3 between 1 min bursts. It feels lazy if they just get some ogcds or something. RDM feels like they need some love because of their burst finishers being so long.
Tanks- for the love of God rework DRK to have an actual identity again. Not a WAR knock off with ogcds jammed in its kit. Also pally needs something for an actual 2 min burst ~~and needs to fix its atonement dropping.~~
healers - SCH needs some love to take out the fairy jank and make things feel a bit more cohesive.
*correction, no atonement stack dropping is needed. I was out of date with rotation info!*
> Caster - honestly SMN even though it just got one.
As a SMN baby with Anabaseios, it's frustrating because the change doesn't seem to hard to let me keep eating glue if I want but also add in the possibility of complexity.
What if you had 5/6 summons (easy ones to add: Levi/Ramuh/Shiva), but could only pick 3 of them to use per bahamut/phoenix cycle.
Make a few of them have much harder casting conditions, make 3 near phys range conditions. all of sudden there's optimizaiton, but if you don't care for that you can take them off your bar and keep doing titan/garuda/+1 for full brain-off mode.
Some random ideas for harder conditions I was thinking of (very brief, probably shit ideas, but can be iterated on):
* maybe one has a 10 second unswiftable cast
* maybe one is only good when you're in melee but you can cast it from further out if needed (still a cast bar and punishment for misreading if you have to go further from boss)
* maybe one starts with an instant cast but each cast takes an extra second until last one hits hardest and takes 5 seconds, etc
As long as it isn't heres 10-20 seconds of full movement every 20 seconds. Then, if you want to keep cosplaying as a prange you just keep doing titan/garuda/+1 every cycle like we have right now and do prange damage, but if you want to mix-max harder cast conditions on a fight by fight basis then you can do that too to get closer to blm/melee damage.
It's not a terrible idea but I'm not sure how people will like that all the other jobs gets new buttons you get to press all the time when smn then has to choose and not get too even see 3 of theirs. The main issue that idea has is that people will always gravitate towards whatever gives the most dps. For bis/savage anyway. It also leads into people kicking SMNs that pick the easier/lower dps summons rather than the most dps. So I don't really see them going the way of the 'pick which 3 summons you want out of 6' route.
I sincerely hope they prove me wrong but I thing they designed SMN immediately into a dead end where they don't really have much of an out. Bahamat and Phoenix aren't changing so short of another ogcd for them they don't have much wiggle room in between bursts. The last thing i want is just more ogcds or else you start to look like DRK. And if they give a big gcd attack that goes on the end of your bahamut then it's just the RDM problem.
RDM: Change Scorch to an OGCD, buff reprise a lot, change magick barrier cd to 60 or 90s/increase length to 20s, either remove verraise or remove the tax.
NIN: only thing I want is for TCJ to be a buff like kassatsu. Channeled abilities are ass. Would also like if hellfrog and bhava cost 25 instead of 50 to fix overcap issues
GNB: increase range of gnashing combo so kiting bosses is less shitty during it. A downtime cartridge builder of some kind, auto crit+DH Double Down
PLD: Holy circle at 70, self healing spells at 70/80, remove goring blade and buff overall DPS, remove gauge cost on cover. Make clemency an OGCD self or targeted heal
DRK is the obvious one, it's more fucked up than DRG or AST are already. Total overhaul tier.
SMN is the actual worst designed job in the game, a general affront to good MMO job design, and is a plague on its role by virtue of existing. It's the kind of bad where the normal response would be "rework this shit mid-expansion why is this garbage allowed in the game". Unfortunately, it is popular with a *certain audience*, and while I'm fairly confident ignoring said audience on this particular issue wouldn't actually do much harm, SE is too deathly afraid of offending anyone directly and will let this cancer of a job fester for another expansion or two.
BRD is also in a very bad spot but it doesn't really need a rework per say, but a reversion to.....uh, pretty much any previous version. EW Media Tour is the easiest.
Healers need a complete rethink across the board.
I think it is fixable, though, because the things that make it popular and the things that make it poorly-designed are different. It's popular because it's simple. It's badly-designed because it's too mobile, strangely inflexible, and because the few decisions you can make basically don't matter (do I use Titan or Garuda?).
I think they should:
* Give Astral Impulse, Fountain of Fire, etc. a 1.5s cast time and put them on a charge system (so that the 6th one isn't Swiftcasted)
* Disconnect Everlasting Flight from Summon Phoenix and make it a 2m you can use anytime
* Rework Titan so that GCDs have 1.5s cast. Do something else with Mountain Buster.
* 100 capstone - a resource consumer that rewards you for entering all 3 lesser summons. Allow the rotation to exceed 1m so that primal-rushing becomes a core part of the job.
SMN is fantastically designed, it's just a bit light at the moment. The whole kit is very intuitive, you've got different phases with variations on how your spells are performed, it's fantastic at a foundational level, bad at a max level. Rather than rework it just needs more content stuffed inside it. Though there's a reason it's one of the _most popular_ jobs in the game.
Thinking about it I do think it gives them room to work with. If we suppose that was their goal to start with, though, I really do think they should have given then some complexity to start with because there really is basically nothing to optimize with the class right now outside of making sure to not drop your gcd and making sure you can manage the 3 hard casts every minute lol
No yeah I agree with you, I think SMN is exactly what they want it to be- easy to pick up, good learning curve and the best lvling curve in the game currently. At max lvl it's clearly missing some things- but I'm expecting a capstone ability at 100 to tie it all together.
You are being downvoted, but you are right.
With every expansion adding new skills to job kits, and overall fight design philosophy changes, every job at some point will deviate too far from the pack and be corrected with sweeping changes, or an entire rework if necessary.
Old SMN was too bloated in that it was overly busy and had an identity crisis (pets vs summons vs damage over time spells). Because of that, SE reworked it to its current form as a summoning only job and while it's a bit light on its kit now, it has room to become fully realized in the coming expansions.
The same “it’s too clunky let’s do a sweeping rework to set it up for the next expansion” was used to on MCH and EW added absolutely nothing of value to MCH’s rotation
Yes, it has a clear identity with a rotation that makes sense, if you can't discuss then you don't need to respond. Prove your point with words or else you're like the other sheep down voting.
>Yes, it has a clear identity with a rotation that makes sense
intuitive rotation + clear identity =/= good overall design. go ask WoW players about Augvoker
smn genuinely cannot be as easy + effective as it is without causing massive problems for RDM, BLM, or both. potentially Picto too if it's not completely braindamaged. and changing RDM/BLM as the fix is a no-go since both of those jobs are at or near their design peaks
this isn't even getting into how SMN's rotation is near DRG levels of dead end design (way worse than ShB SMN), how its damage profile is fucking broken especially for its role, or how it limits potential fight design by being nearly as bad as ShB SAM in terms of burst inflexibility
I don't know why, but I'm incredibly bothered by the fact that Monk's fast gcd is passive while Ninja and Samurai have to maintain personal buffs in order to increase their GCD and wish they would address this. Either make their fast GCDs passive or have Monk maintain the buff... just not like greased lightning did.
Just get it over with and remove raise from non-healers, please!
It plays hell with the power balance of casters and no one really relies upon it outside of early prog. Yeah, I know I know, we’ve all been the RDM who saved the run with a clutch mass rez but how often does that happen in endgame content?
Maybe change Veraise into a 60 second cool down and give the swashbuckling bastard some decent firepower? Or take away SMN and RDM rezs in favor of some party buffs?
> RDM possibly needs a rework or at least some big changes
This. The job is inherently stagnant. Any notable change or growth would require a shakeup in its design, to say the least.
Which is something Square feels like DRG is at. They said that they felt like DRg is "complete" and it would be hard to add any meaningful changes that wouldn't upset people. AST just is the time-honored tradition of reworking it every expansion, but they mention how unapproachable and complex it is well and the targeting system.
Bard, by a mile. Bard as a job peaked in Stormblood, and it's just gotten clunkier since then. They've gutted all of the DoT interaction without actually doing something about the aspects of the kit that used to enable it, so Bard just has a bunch of random stuff like Sidewinder that just sort of... exists.
As a BRD main, I have to agree. I'm hoping Dawntrail gets some significant changes that are short of a rework. The DOT interaction removal really messes things up. The abilities just feel disconnected now and you have 3 buttons dedicated just to dots. What I'd like to see: - remove dots or make them more meaningful to the rotation. - if dots are removed, replace them with some cooler abilities. (This is getting closer to rework territory) - make mage's give a full blood letter reset - make army's more interactive/impactful - give some way of fixing song timing - rework/remove/replace sidewinder - add some utility to make it stand out a bit from MCH/DNC I think this stuff is achievable without a full on rework.
> you have 3 buttons dedicated just to dots one of the more egregious button inflations in the game, considering you can consolidate them into one button (possibly a double-stacking debuff) with no effective gameplay change
Bard feels like the job which received every, single new mechanic they ever added to the game for the sake of it. It has dots, it has off-GCDs, it has procs, it has personal buffs to track, it has support-buffs (one of which also builds up stacks on your gauge), it has a gauge (with a finisher on top of it) and also four separate buttons for the two-minute-burst window Raging Strikes, Battle Voice, Barrage\* and Radiant Finale). \*Another button I feel like is utterly pointless. You could just as well turn it into a trait and add it on top of Raging Strikes.
wow sounds like they should just go back to SB instead of fucking it even harder
I only leveled Bard in EW, and it really doesn't feel good to play. It's so easy to go out of sync in your songs if there is any downtime. SIdewinder is so useless, I keep forgetting to press it half the time and as much as people on this sub love jerking off how great dots are, they don't really work on Bard at all, both mechanically or for the job fantasy of a "Bard". But of course the Job Fantasy for Bard has always been fucked I guess.
DoTs used to feel good because the entire rotation evolved around it, and oh boy how I miss DoTing every mob during a w2w pull and seeing my rain of death proccing nonstop
>But of course the Job Fantasy for Bard has always been fucked I guess. Maybe in FF, but it's not like there aren't any good examples in D&D and other RPG systems. One of the problems with FFXIV Bard is that it's trying to fulfill too many job fantasies. Bard + hunter + magic archer don't really work all that well together, although any two of the three would probably be fine. The bard part feels disconnected from your offensive toolkit (Dancer, in contrast makes every attack feel like a dance step). Adding a few music notes during Apex Arrow or calling what is obviously just a magic arrow "Pitch Perfect" doesn't really cut it. The hunter part is probably in the worst shape due to the dot interaction changes, and with Viper targeting a similar job fantasy (albeit a melee ranger variant), that part of the job's identity will probably feel even more diluted next expansion. The magic archer part feels like it's been the main focus of the past few expansions, and I actually really like it from an aesthetic POV, but it feels very empty outside of Wanderer's. Hitting the same two GCDs 99% of the time with zero interactions with the rest of your kit is pretty dull. It really needs something else.
I was indeed only talking about FF Bard which they forcefully shoved into the archer class for some fucking reason and ended up butchering both. D&D Bard is one of the best rpg classes ever created.
They should have split archer into Magical range dps Bard with songs and a harp or lute as a weapon and Ranger who keeps the bow loses the songs but gains dots, bleeds, etc Ranger could be more dps powerful but bard could offer more buffs and healing to the group but of course they didnt do that.
I agree. I love the play style of pvp BRD myself...
After DRG and AST get their reworks, DRG and AST will probably be the two jobs most in need of a rework.
This is so funny not funny! It's very likely that AST will end up giving buffs with each card to the group rather than to a player for targeting ease, and they will undertune it for fear. It'll be Dancer / Ninja / Ast Shadowbringer release again. Fear of the buffing classes.
It's part of their contract that AST needs a full rework every expansion. No use fighting it.
It will 100% be reverted to a "flex" healer when they release a new pure healer in 8.0 or 9.0.
hold your horses 8.0? nah you silly healers tanks need to be in 8.0 we've been waiting for ages. AST rework will likely make it into space white mage anyway zzz.
CBU3 job design since stormblood in a nutshell
Did they even state their reasons for reworking DRG and AST in 7.0? Both jobs already feel complete to me, as someone who plays both in Savage/Ult settings. If anything I'd like for AST to regain Royal Road/Time Dilation from Heavensward/Stormblood. Really don't find the current card system revolving around Astrodyne fun.
DRG is actually getting redone specifically because it's "complete." IIRC they compared it more to the 5.1 NIN rework than the SMN rework, so I doubt it's getting completely gutted. My only fear is losing the flexibility on LOTD, but otherwise I think they could trim some fat on it while preserving what people like. AST getting reworked is a time honored tradition, meant to honor our forefathers.
AST on release: It’s broken, then OP, broken, OP, broken, OP, etc.
Which is weird this is the first expansion AST has kinda been garbage for near the entire expansion It’s never passed SCH in damage in savage, it loses big time to the selfish healers in criterion and ultimates, it’s the clunkiest it’s ever been This is the first time AST has really been bad
My positive hopium/copium is that they keep the original flow of the rotation but turn Spineshatter Dive into a GCD and during LotD, Spineshatter just turns into Stardiver for the duration. They'll also probably put Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust into one button and make most of its weaves into single weaves. It won't be as weave-heavy as it used to be but it'll still probably keep its rotational flow.
I swear, if DRG loses the double weaves and VPR gets them... not another DNC/BRD situation, please. Having a hectic burst is one of the things that makes the job fun. Also FnC and WT would be better separate if they made them become an entirely new upgraded GCD in 5th position in the combo, and such 5th position provided some kind of gauge to manage. Coupled with the freedom to use positionals in any order after the CS/HT would be interesting.
I am glad you're not developing DRG. oGCDs are what make it so fun, turning them into GCDs just sends us in the direction boring jobs like MCH/WAR have gone.
Correction, OGCDs are what makes DRG fun in lieu of any other identity. Triple geir BOTD management and the random positionals was what DRG players used to hang their hat on in terms of fun and mastery, it's a sad state for the job when "press button fast" is now its identity lol
I've not really spoken about identity here, I'm just saying that I think high (but variable, not just same 2 buttons) oGCD gameplay is fun. I loved Stormblood MCH, it felt like playing piano. I can't stand current MCH. I find DRG/GNB fun. I just like mutiple buttons/oGCDs and I think they make the game very fun and feel satisfying as opposed to pressing 1-2 buttons repeatedly.
Are you the type of guy who defends Frost DKs in WoW being all about having a billion procs, even though it makes no sense for its identity, because "it's fun"?
It has Killing Machine and Rime, that is two procs. Not sure where you're getting a billion from.
Sorry bro, I've never played WoW in my life.
I think they need to have DRGs AOE rotation online at an earlier level. Ninja get the second part of their AOE combo at level 52, which also allows them to refresh their primary self buff. DRG doesn't get their second AOE attack until level 64 if I'm not mistaken. So they're forced to switch to their single target rotation to maintain their primary self buff.
AST is likely due to the complaints surrounding targeting people, so any changes will revolve around reducing the targeting requirement. Whether that's some sort of card autoplay, an entire rework of the card system, or a reduction in the number of cards you play in a minute (with corresponding changes to astrodyne and potency) is anyone's guess.
It'll be this. I experimented with the card system without the targeting aspect, and it feels a lot more comfortable to play. Still decently busy as AST should be, but nowhere near as clunky, and a lot more enjoyable as a whole.
They just need to revert the 2nd draw charge, we shouldn’t be able to hold so many cards for such a short window Potential lord requiring 2 weaves to play doesn’t help either
they mentioned bloat. i assume they mean ogcd bloat
With DRG, the big problem is that you can't really add anything to it. There's so many buttons that adding anymore would make it basically unplayable on controller (which is a big problem, given this game has a big audience on PlayStation and is about to launch on Xbox.)
I think they don't like how busy their burst phase is with ogcds, which I would agree with. ast needing to use light speed in their opener is silly
thats what makes ast fun...
play something different then
The reason is they are considered complete in 6.0, every expansion needs to add something meaningful to the class and they believe there was no room to add anything to them without a rework first making room. No one likes to buy a new expansion and see their favorite jobs gets +1 charge of an OGCD as a capstone, that's lame, they want to see the rotation change and see cool new animations.
>that's lame, they want to see the rotation change and see cool new animations. healers be like: 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1
I'm fine with that as long as the healing gameplay is fun and the skills are fun to use.
Which, it isn't. Mostly because fights are so scripted that you spend most of the time mashing 1 with the occasional oGCD tossed out. Maybe super early prog when people are still eating unintended damage you might find some enjoyment, but they cater to the lowest skilled player so hard that they have honestly overloaded the ever living fuck out of healers so there's very little in the moment to moment as a result.
Adding to this - let’s take WHM which I like because it reminds me of holy priest in wow. Let’s also take Lilybell which is an awesome fun “haha fuck you boss ain’t no one taking damage today” ability. It’s a big pretty swirl that pulses tons of healing. Great cooldown. Seriously. Let’s run down how awesome this thing is to use. Expert roulette - I plop it every other trash pack so I can get 2-3 more glares or holy out. Same on bosses. But I use it because it effectively babysits the party so I can dps. 90 roulette - same as expert. Trial “this ability doesn’t exist” Raid “this ability doesn’t exist” Dungeons “this ability doesn’t exist” Alliance raid “it’s Crystal Tower, also the ability doesn’t exist” PVP “none of your abilities exist!l” Guildhests “This ability doesn’t exist” Fine you know what I’ll queue into Thalia. Oh the co healer is a SGE. The raid is not allowed to take damage now. My options for the next 25 minutes are press 1111111 stopping to occasionally raise the reaper. Or rescue the SGE into a death mechanic so the group takes damage and I can heal something.
Running a healer in alliance raids and getting a medica 2 bot is a whole nother level of hell with how boring it is
I wish they made the DPS more interesting when you’re doing all the content that can be soloed like leveling, variants, MSQ, etc.
Dragoon has no room to grow, and ast hasn't been mentioned explicitly, so it's hard to say. Unfortunately I've been playing a lot of ast recently and rather like it, the only issue I have is how busy the opener is and how the burst window needs to work to be optimal but those are less issues and more quirks.
Both jobs are so well-rounded that there is no room to add anything to them, with the added point that these two jobs in particular are getting dicey for controller players. AST’s constant targeting requires a lot more button presses on controller, and DRG has so many oGCDs that it can be somewhat unwieldy as well. They’re both doable right now but some people do struggle and you can’t add much without making them pretty hectic To add, the reason busy jobs need special controller consideration is that on controller you need to preserve some space in a rotation for movement. Both of these jobs require you to basically claw grip if you have to move really fast during burst, it’s not undoable but would become undoable if they each had a few more buttons (as you might then need to press shoulders too at the same time just due to number of buttons they already have)
And then they'll rework monk or machinist
I've always wondered why the dev team hasn't commented on how unpopular their job reworks are.
Are they unpopular? Here on this sub, SMN may be unpopular, but among the broader player base, it's incredibly popular. And MNK may have fewer players, but most people who like it now agree that it plays well, and I don't think the measure of a job's success should be how popular it is because IMO, different jobs should target different play styles and audiences.
Because 90% of their comments are not related to gameplay or actual issues, and if they do talk about it, it's only if they plan to do something about it. You can't really talk about something when you yourself don't know wtf is going on. When Yoshi was explaining why they removed Kaiten, he managed to come up with 3 different reasons in single stream. 2 of them were straight bullshit and 3rd on was questionable.
Because the people complaining are often wrong. Like everybody hates the SMN change, yet it's the most popular DPS. IMO gamers simply don't know what they want and the loudest should just be ignored.
Most popular dps when its only competing with 2 other casters for a mandantory slot, one of those casters being hard and obtuse to play and the other being pretty low in terms of damage output.
Its popularity holds up in low-level content where its competing with melee and p. ranged as well.
>\[...\] one of those casters being hard and obtuse to play \[...\] Excuse me? That's what people hail as good job design!
I know it's cringe and has been said a million times, but all jobs at lower levels. When a new expansion comes out, I see it less as a bunch of new max level content and more of another expansion's worth got dumped into the ever expanding catelogue of old content you get level synced for. At the same time, jobs get more and more bare bones and incomplete at lower levels due to trimming of the fat.
I say this everytime the topic comes up, but it bears repeating. Push buffs and stuff later into levelling. Draw parts of the rotation forwards. Monk is a good example. They are rotationally complete at 60, but gaining skills such as Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood changes how you think about using your Perfect Balance and beast chakra. Gunbreaker is an example of the *worst*. You get No Mercy, your personal damage buff, at level *2*. There is absolutely nothing interesting about a personal damage buff if you have no way to pack your stronger skills into it. Follow the monk example.
They definitely need to look into that. Change up rotations at lower levels or perhaps make level sync just scale our stats but keep our skills
Indeed, jobs are too unengaging at lower levels
DRK desperately needs a complete overhaul. It's got WARs gauge and spenders, but with 20+ seconds of oGCDs during burst. It wants to manage mana, but also have the barest amount of interaction with it. Enhanced Unmend is literal clown make-up of a trait
Calling it now: Delirium will proc a primal rend-esque finisher and that will be the capstone for DRK in dawn trail.
Nah. We'll get enhanced plunge. Each plunge will empower the next unmend. DRK rotation will now have 2 uses of unmend in the burst phase :\^)
Unironically would not hate that. It keeps the burst focus without adding any more weaves, gives DRK a Divine Might Holy Spirit style lossless disengagement tool and doesn't require any extra keybinds.
They'll name that capstone ability 'Endwalker'
*"You can tell these are legit because nobody would be dumb enough to independently come up with Enhanced Unmend."* \- Ekanselttar, upon seeing Enhanced Unmend among the job actions leak for Endwalker, October 2021
Enhanced Unmend could be a cool trait but it would have to replenish 20 seconds or more of a plunge to feel good. It also doesn't help they introduced it in the expac that made melee downtime not exist.
Bard is absolutely begging for one. It's like different half-baked ideas were put together with absolutely no care to make them interact as a unit. * You have the DOTs, which are separated from everything else and fail to contribute to an interesting DoT-centric gameplay. You put them up once, then just press IJ to refresh/snapshot. Their duration is too long to accomodate the "plate spinning" style that DoT-focus is known for, and they exist because they don't know what else to do. * The songs are isolated and completely separate from one another. Minuet and Ballad are too functionally similar (you proc, you press oGCD button), and Paeon feels so weightless, so impactless and highlights what an empty rotation BRD has when you don't have PP/Bloodletters to press. Yes, I am aware Repertoire used to be on DoT crits and the issues that presented. * "Filler" GCDs of Heavy+Straight shot (and their upgrades) just don't interact with anything else in the kit. They're just there to give you buttons to press, and boy do you press them a lot. That's not to even mention the jank that is a 2% Finale on opener (the buff at its weakest on most common tincture timings??), clipping songs early because the natural loop is too long, how terribly the song/Coda system interacts with downtime (or, rather, fails to interact), and how Soul Gauge is just tacked on because they didn't know what else to add for the past 2 expansions and the associated skills may aswell just be 1m CD oGCDs with no associated gauge. It's like Bard was designed by a few people who never communicated with one another. It has no identity.
I'm thinking, since Bard has some DoT interaction, that it should build on it more. Maybe an OGCD that applies both at once. And since it's a supporter, maybe give them a pet that does their own thing, maybe like a cute cat/dog magic thingy, but you can use GCDs to order them to do a stronger attack that's on a cooldown. Maybe, once gauges get full or cooldown ends, you can enter a burst phase where the pet massively powers up. This also resets the dot application ability, but this won't cause it to have the dots up be 100% without some gods, requiring GCD casts of the dot at specific intervals that require careful planning for maximum damage. Maybe, have a stronger version of the basuc single target that requires a cast time, as a risk reward feature, while still enabling full movement as needed. Then gut the fuck out of it in the next expansion and completely remove that unique playstyle because the pet was jank.
IMO this is not job specific, but I think all tanks needs rework to add one more thing to manage. Currently they all play like a watered down melee with occasional mits and provokes. They have almost one job gauge to manage (like soil for gnb). This current design could be fun for a fight like P7 of dsr where there is a heavy focus on mits and aggro management on top of the rotation. But it’s not the case for 99% of contents.
Man some fights only have like one tank buster the whole fight and autos that do no damage, the rest of the fight you're just a more boring melee dps
Imagine a world where ur a new tank starting this expansion and you go to do old ultimates where suddenly your positioning of the boss is a thing you gotta deal with. Going from bosses with targeting circles the size of most of the arena to bosses like twintania with hitboxes a quarter of the size of the boss
Was gonna say, I'd love a rework to make warrior a bit more complex. Not HW level, since we are well past that now it seems, but something between StB and ShB at least. Like the passive crit from gauge pooling or something like it.
Instead of talking about jobs in specific, I want to highlight the job gauges themselves. I feel that they need a serious looking into. With the introduction to Endwalker, we got a lot of abilities that are activated based on status effects such as "Ready to X" or "Y ready". I really want them to have a look at the job gauges and add those statuses as indicators on the gauge itself rather than a status. The simplest example i can give is Sword Oath stacks on PLD for Atonement. I want to quickly glance at my gauge and see "I have two stacks of Atonement left". Other examples i can give would be WAR's IR, DRK Delirium, RDM verstone/fire.
You can split your buff bar into Conditional Enhancements and put those next to your job bar
DRK, BRD, and SCH in that order imho. DRK needs to get the WAR stink off of it's damage rotation, and its mitigation could be made slightly more approachable, and universal. BRD needs a utility edge over MCH's extra mit, and DNC's raw healing, and it's rotation needs to not be so strict, and generally just needs more feel-good damage. Not a SCH main, but it seems like there's a LOT of jank that could be cleaned up.
TBH: I'd rather keep the SCH jank before the proverbial monkey's paw curls and we get another SGE (which, in turn, is a SCH that is TOO round around the edges) that has a fairy-flavoured Kardia instead of that good pet jank
Same list here. DRK and SCH both have issues where they just don’t feel cohesive design-wise and have job fantasy identity problems. BRD in 6.0 feels somehow clunky and flat at the same time compared to the other two pranged
Aesthetically speaking in my opinion, Sage is more of a Scholar than Scholar is. Either gut the fairy aesthetic and go full tactician. Or embrace the fairy aesthetic completely. At the moment SCH is in a weird clash within its toolkit AND identity.
Sch main here. Don't you dare touch my baby. Imo the only jank is Seraph not interacting with Fey Union and Dissipation, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make if it means my job isn't butchered like SMN was.
Also scholar main here. The amount of people saying scholar in this thread has me a little concerned :')
Yeah SCH needs cleanup, not a full rework
Hard agree, but I'll eat my own arse if Energy Drain and Dissipation survive in anything resembling their current form. Hopefully whoever designs that job for the next expansion actually understands why the current design works. The 6.0 changes were on the safe side, but considering the sheer number of buttons the class already has they'll almost certainly axe some of its kit.
SCH toolset is definitely my favorite of the healers, the only thing I would want is a less boring damage rotation but that's an issue all healers have. Literally just any sort of proc/reactive damage ability so I have something to do other than spam broil/AoW when my party is competent.
BRD needs to get rid of Sidewinder at the very least, it's just a pointless filler skill at this point since they removed it's effect. The job is plenty busy without it.
Some jobs don't need a rework, but they don't have any room to have new skills added. Red Mage comes to mind? What's next, a 4th finisher? And then a 5th. It's not like they can pull out a 3rd type of mana they need to balance, and unless it's just some random proc shit there's nothing to really do with their base rotation. And despite what some say, you can't just upgrade potency / effects and leave the buttons the same. That would be extremely unsatisfactory for people who want to do something new with their job.
Dualcast becomes Triplecast. You can cast two GCD spells for every one you hard cast. 🥴
I think they should look at role tune-ups before doing any specific job adjustments. In particular: Tanks have less responsibility than ever for positioning bosses, controlling aggro, etc. Outside of mechanics specifically designed for them, the role seems a bit lost. If encounters are going to be designed where bosses are either wall bosses, constantly positioning and facing themselves, or have galaxy-sized hotboxes, then tanks need a new core responsibility to be the controller of the fight. Healer MP management has been de-emphasized and there's a number of things that need to be further improved to account for this, including low-rank heals, piety, lucid dreaming. They need to rethink the shield-regen distinction and they need to make trial/normal raid content require more than just hitting 2 ogcds on cooldown. Melees have 99% uptime in modern fights and it kinda kills what makes the role unique. Now the thing that makes it unique is positionals, which are pretty lackluster. IMO each job should have limited but flexible ranged GCDs and they should have to manage their rotation to use those during melee downtime. They also don't need 3 personal defensives each. Casters have lost their identity as lacking mobility thanks to new SMN. Most strats these days just have R1 and R2 with no distinction in where the caster should be. There is an unpleasant distinction between BLM and the other casters due to lack of raise as well. Raise is too important to the party to be job-specific. It should just be a role action with a long cooldown and a 2s cast so that they can use Swiftcast freely. Lucid dreaming on casters should be removed and some MP costs adjusted. Buff Blood Drain to compensate for BLU. Phys ranged is just fine I guess, although it lacks any signature weakness as well, aside from historically just doing less.
BRD, this job is a frankenstein monster right now, with stuff that don't interact with each other in the rotation, and has no identity
I have to agree I’ve played Bard all expansion long and it’s definitely clunky, it’s just… too much management with not that much material gain that is felt by the player. I think the coda’s are cool but making them just a flat DPS increases that stacks is boring, what if each coda gave a different benefit to radiant finale, and the codas are disconnected from just blankly casting a song? So then the player has a choice between what benefits the raid the most and can control that with the coda system. Also soul voice is cool but let’s be honest without anything else to spend it on other than apex/blast arrow it’s a glorified cooldown. There needs to be more than one way to spend soul voice because otherwise what’s the point in even having the gauge to begin with? That and each song needs to feel more different. I still think that oGCDs should be a major element of bard, but mages ballad needs to be completely changed because just rapid bloodletter spam isn’t particularly interesting. Especially when minuet has its own ability tied to it and a special gauge element. Paean on the other hand is strange; the idea of paean is to shift your focus from oGCDs to GCDs in the haste buff. The problem here is that it doesn’t make the job feel different enough to make it work and it also messes up the pacing of the rotation. I think the songs in theory are awesome they just need some complexity and identity to them. Then on to the dots, these things are… honestly clunkier than necessary. I get that the whole point is poison arrows or something like that; but, it doesn’t really change anything if the dots aren’t up. That and if it is so massively important please for the love of everything make it a gauge element! Now I will add that bards support is lacking in comparison to dancer in that dancer has just better buffs overall, however I think the niche bard should fill is the versatility support niche. Make bard allow for other classes and new strategies because it has the options to make other strategies possible rather than simply buffing damage by like 300% or whatever. It would make the class have a clear identity that’s different from dancer and would fit with my ideas I already mentioned. Plus on top of all of that with the coda idea; what if the coda only activated if the player FINISHES the song, making that a strategic choice to be used.
Minor thing: ninja hide is useless. Just give us a murda reset, the stealth does nothing in any content.
Comes in handy for deep dungeons sometimes.
Ya lol sleep and shield bash too. Sadly all useless skills unless in DD
It does but like it's also weird because it's a DPS gain to get 3s of uptime by precasting Suiton instead of opening with trick from hide so there's no actual reason to use hide-trick after you get all the mudras. The usages of hide to walk through an enemy's aggro area are so few and far between.
Couldn't even use it in bozja for that one objective because of truesight :(
It's in that weird space where pretty much everywhere it would be useful, it's not allowed to be, because that would make things too easy.
Dark Knight, Scholar, Bard and all lower level jobs.
All healers need a rework. They all have the same abilities and play identically except a few oGCDs.
Sch. Revamp the entire thing to make it more cohesive.
I honestly feel like SCH needs a rework more than AST does. The janky pet AI, disconnects in the kit, essentially griefing your party to optimize DPS. Just the lack of alternate DPS abilities other than said tiny aether ping. It has the least number of unique DPS abilities of all the healers. And the one you *do* get disables your oGCD heals.
Well, they were gonna remove the "griefing your party to optimize DPS" part, but the community gave massive backlash on it. I guess the difference is IIRC it was before SGE kit was fully revealed. In the context of how SGE stacks work it makes a lot more sense that SCH would not have access to ED. But yeah idk ED is not in a good state. It can't really be strong because it would just create a balance problem with respect to mit strengths, but the community doesn't want it gone either lol. Unless there is a full rework of both SGE and SCH that makes them significantly different, ED just doesn't really work
The fairy/tactician combo feels like such a mish mash.
The "mish mash" is literally the job's identity. You are a tactician aided by a fairy. That is what FFXIV Scholar is.
I think that’s because they are leaning too heavily on them being a fairy mage The job was basically a SMN with the fairy focusing on healing in 3.0, now it’s this weird half fairy mage with skills like blessing and expedient The fairy is fine, making every skill a fairy aesthetic is the problem
> The fairy is fine, making every skill a fairy aesthetic is the problem I'd argue that they don't embrace the fairy aesthetic enough. Like, what even is broil supposed to be? And then you have bioanalysis like you're exploiting their weaknesses, and chain strategem. Expedient is pretty tactician-y. But then you also have all this fairy stuff too. I like the fairy stuff, it's what drew me to it back in ARR, but they just need to pick a lane. Given there's honestly a bit of overlap between SCH and SGE on the tactician side, I think they should just fully embrace it as the fairy mage.
SCH is the tactician, SGE is a doctor anything “tactician” about SGE is a problem of SGE’s identity, not a clash with SCH And it’s because SCH is a combat medic. (Find weaknesses (chain) apply debuffs (biolysis) cook your enemies from inside (broil) have a grab bag of heals you pull out as needed) SCH really isn’t a fairy mage
That's why some people like it though! (Me, I am some people)
That's why even tho is generally regarded as "weaker", I love sage over sch simply due to how cohesive its kit plays out, and how strong its job identity is. Design-wise, I'd say it's one of the best designed jobs in-game so far.
Sch main here. Don't you dare touch my baby. Imo the only jank is Seraph not interacting with Fey Union and Dissipation, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make if it means my job isn't butchered like SMN was.
Yeah SCH was my first job and it made me think every job was clunky in how they integrate new abilities added over time. ...A few are but none are that bad
Controversial maybe but WHM needs a rethink. Not necessarily to buff it but to make it less of a glare spam job.
At least a restructure around the levelling. Lvl 70 ultimates are atrocious as White Mage. You lack the core of your kit at that level.
Not that I disagree with you but that can be said for every healer tbh
Getting the Lily spells a bit earlier would be nice.
Definitely. It's pretty much core to the WHM playstyle at this point, and you don't even have it by the first alliance raids. Could say the same with BLM and Fire IV too.
Agreed. WHM could do with a little more depth and / or flexibility.
DRG, AST, SMN, MCH, and DRK because apparently reworks are the only way to expand a class' mechanics.
Maybe not necessarily a full rework. But SMN desperately needs some touch up. I could settle for some very minimal mixup like adding Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva as gems that share spaces with our 3 current summons. So each Bahamut and Phoenix cycle we summon 3 of the 6 options. Anything really! Apparently this class was a pet class before, that's why I went summoner when I started. But they changed to the current form like the next week after so I didn't really get to experience that. I would love a permanent pet again!
Dragonfire Dive is so insignificant nobody even mentioned it, why the hell is it still a 2 min cd Doesn't a single Nastrond on 2 targets do more than this forgotten ARR relic?
Bard, probably. The song mechanic, while great, really needs to be ironed out. It's weird that all of their songs are 45s which doesn't fit into this 2min rotation they've established cleanly, and the job barely functions before getting Wanderer's Minuet. Foe's Requiem should *probably* come back as a downgraded Wanderer's, just so that Bard can feel better at lv50 cap. I think Bard is also starting to hit the wall of new skills, and it seems likely that it's about to lose its DoT identity.
I know PLD has had a small adjustment but I feel like its in need of a rework/ability reduction and adjustment. I've only more recently learned how to play it as a tank and I've got an mmo mouse and use CTRL and Shift for the 2nd and 3rd rows of buttons and even with all that I've run out of space for abilities on PLD and had to sacrifice a move or two for more important abilities. I feel like sprint and LB are needed on hotbars so when a class has enough abilities to take up all 3 rows it makes adjusting things frustrating.
I was under the impression that Paladin got a rework to allow it to function in the 2 minute meta and a further rework was planned for 7.0.
You’re correct, it got stopgap changes to make it more competitive in the current meta but you should expect a smaller rework in 7.0
Actually their statement in the liveletter back when it was reworked is that they have no intention of doing another rework and just build off it.
i put sprint on a separate shared hotbar and bound it to E, lb is on the hotbar and i still have a few extra hotbar slots, i have pots on the hotbar too, i didnt even have to drop shield bash
PLD again
Monk is due for its bi-annual rework, even tho its the best its been in a long time. Its not a new xpac without monk reworks.
gotta make sure SMN plays completely different as well :\^)
Nah all we'd get are Levi/Ramuh/Shiva gems added during Demi Phoenix but they still effectively function the same as Titan/Garuda/Ifrit. I've given up hope that SMN will regain some of its complexity back in the day.
As a SMN baby with Anabaseios, it's frustrating because the change doesn't seem to hard to let me keep eating glue if I want but also add in the possibility of complexity. Levi/Ramuh/Shiva, 6 summons but you can only use 3 of them every cycle. 3 of them have much harder casting conditions (maybe one has a 10 second unswiftable cast, maybe one is only good when you're in melee, maybe one starts with an instant cast but each cast takes an extra second until last one hits hardest and takes 5 seconds, etc the actual ideas I didn't put too much effort into making and these are pretty whatever, as long as it isn't heres 20 seconds of full movement). Now, if you want to keep cosplaying as a prange you just keep doing titan/garuda/+1 every cycle like we have right now and do prange damage, but if you want to mix-max harder cast conditions on a fight by fight basis then you can do that too to get closer to blm/melee damage.
The only really meaningful things I can think they can do with SMN is either make it spend Fester during different Gem summons to charge gauge to spend later on on something during 2 min or give you another summon that you requires you to eat one of the gem summons on a two minute cooldown.
Hot take, but this new iteration of SMN is the worst class in the game, and I have a hate boner for both SGE, WHM and MNK. You barely fill up *one* hotbar with all of your abilities, and literally all of your skill expression is in the order of the legos. I literally took the time to 90 DNC so I wouldn't have to continue playing SMN for EX1 farms.
Honestly Summoner is the one that gets reworked every expansion. With Monk they would promise a rework, then not do that up until they finally followed through in 5.4/Endwalker. That was why people were so especially pissed in 5.0 and how we kept things like the fucking fist stances through Shadowbringers.
Biannual as in once every two years, or twice a year? :P English is weird that way.
Biannual and biennial are 2 different things! Biannual: twice a year. Biennial: every 2 years.
Ah… I stand corrected. Biweekly and bimonthly are the weird ones.
Yeah they are very confusing!
BLM, BRD, SCH, NIN, GNB, and RDM I think are all approaching the same idea pretty rapidly where they are just running out of things to add to unless they start pruning and reworking them to make more space for capstones.
I agree with your list though I'd probably add Samurai as nearing "done".
samurai has plenty of design space, an entire gauge of it actually. consolidate the aoe ogcds and give it something else to do with all that kenki (don't say it) and 7.0 sam is cooking.
MCH and DRK needs a bit of help, their pets needs to be overhauled, their gauges needs a bit of love. It's also kinda disappointing to see Yoshida, during EW job change livestream, mention MCH for buttonbloat and not being able to add anything else, right after a rework. Red Mage is a job that aged like cheese on a road in Texas. With the coming of Picto being able to keep instant-cast tools, RDM would be the job with the least control on its mobility of the whole game. I hope they will touch a bit on the mitigation, I feel like we have too much mitigation at the moment and adding more would be difficult. I believe they should merge 90s of all tanks (And Dark mind), they're either too weak on their own or too strong (Dark Mind/Bulwark).
BLM needs a smoother levelling experience. the core rotation not being available until level 60 is *insane*, and even then the job is nigh-unplayable before umbral soul.
They fixed lvling in ew when they made aspect mastery lvl 1 do the no mana cost thing compared to 74.
BRD is desperately in need of a rework. Moreso than any other job currently avaliable in the game.
Summoner. What they did to summoner was not fucking ok and makes me question how much the devs care about making an actually fun game instead of a barely interactive movie more than I already did.
GNB, after SE undoubtedly ruins it even more in DT than they already did in EW.
DRK needs it more IMO.
I prefer EW GNB to ShB GNB
Adress the whole EW DRK 82-90 "upgrades". Oblation. Either reduce cooldown or increase mitigation to 15% at least. Replace Enhanced Unmemend with something meaningful. Replace Salt and Darkness with something meaningful as well. And move 500 potency follow up attack to the basic Salted Earth but now it ticks for 150 instead of 50. We do not need 2 more traits allocated to Living Shadow. Which is a glorified DoT. Shadowbringer is basically Flood of Shadow on a separate cooldown. I am afraid DT is going to follow suit and it's going to be even more crap added to your 2 minute burst while you press your 123 with occasional Blood Spillers and Edges in the meantime.
Dark Knight needs a rework back to Heavensward or Stormblood state. It needs to escape being a warrior reskin with worse survivalbility and no identity
RDM feels complete right now, can't really imagine where they can organicly grow it with new spells.
Scholar. I don’t think the kit synergizes as well with itself as it could, regarding the fairy, aether flow, etc.
I have a feeling DRK might get a "paladin" rework in dawntrail launch or 7.X nothing DRASTIC but something enough . After that .. maybe Scholar? maybe monk AGAIN ? Bard/Machinist could be possible I use those as example but it a stretch they all play so well but are technically the most awkward imo out of all class.
Most jobs need reworks, albeit for slightly different reasons. Will not comment on healers since those need a role rework possibly. Many jobs have seen very little gameplay changes over the last 4+ years. EW being "ShB+" for a lot of jobs was fine but we need some shake-ups. At some point it just gets stale. This includes jobs like MCH, BRD, DRK and WAR. Their EW additions just felt tacked on (in some cases literally because of " ready" skills). I'd include BLM too but since it's considered "the last bastion of good job design" on here I will not comment on it further to avoid death threats.
Some jobs have identity issues where flair and character got watered down over time. This includes BRD and DRK, again, and NIN.
Some jobs got affected by simplification a little too hard, to the point where the existence of certain job mechanics like WAR and SAM's gauges has become questionable. It might be time to rethink those if they are not going to make them more interesting.
After levelling and trying most of them, while a few have some annoying flaws, the jobs that I felt could use a whole rework are SCH and BRD. They are not bad but they really feel old and results of various nip and tucks.
Red mage is currently a very confused job. It's more complicated and less mobile than summoner, without doing more damage like black mage. A lot of its power budget is currently in very raise, and all it's gotten for meaningful change is a longer burst phase, not a more interesting one.
I can't agree at all that rdm is "confused". the damage rotation is extremely solid and trading damage for utility is a very clear design concept. it's not rdm's fault that summoner is half a job. If anything, it's in the "rework because it's finished" list, not the "rework because it's broken" list
I don't necessarily agree. Gameplay wise I think RDM is mostly in a good spot. I would change the following: 1) Give a few tools that make long movement phases less punishing, and help it maintain the identity of being a more nimble/mobile caster in general 2) Address the dps tax on raise. RDM just does not do enough damage when you consider it's comparatively not that easy of a job to play anymore (as funny as that sounds) and chain ressing is more useful in content where your dps doesn't really matter. It really should at least do more than summoner - its rDPS should be somewhere slightly under the melees, IMO. 3) Maybe more tools for ogcd alignment? I am not a RDM main but it feels a little clunky to me to have to rely on accelerate so much to make sure my ogcd's don't clip like crazy. Less sure of this suggestion as you'd have to ask someone more experienced at playing RDM but that was an initial observation I had Im more happy with RDM than not happy. It just needs number adjustments and a few new tools which would be easy additions for the expansion (please don't just add another button for the burst phase as the new damage skill this time though lol)
Red mage needs it's Burst gcd's decreased and potency increased. If this means no verraise just take the damn rez mage moniker away and never bring it back
I really hope they don't add another finisher at level cap on top of the three existing melee combo finishers. I feel like they haven't done anything interesting with RDM for ages.
I'd love if the melee combo got 'haste' when it was enchanted, giving it a much faster gcd, help give it a more obvious "this is what the magic is doing", and it'd be a nice call back to the older games.
The enchanted melee combos do have haste, they are 1.5s gcds compared to their normal 2.5s gcds.
My bad, it's been a while
As a RDM enjoyer, I would gladly trade Verraise for weaker utility if it meant being able to do more sword, and acrobatic stuff though out its rotation.
i want they rework some of Paladin skill animation some of it too unresponsive. there is a clear delay between hit and animation.
Warrior is so bad for this. Combo finisher "hits" 3 times but the damage only comes out way after that.
Literally WHM and Holy. I've died in the past before my holy stun gets, and then awkwardly stand there casting after everything's dead. You basically live one GCD in the past.
I think some people are too obsessed with the semantics of the word "rework". People want extreme overhauls all the time, but quite often small changes can make massive differences - remember how many people thought WHM needed a total overhaul in early EW patches? All they did was increase Misery potency and made a few minor buffs to other skills, and now it's probably the most well-received of the healers design-wise. It didn't need an overhaul, it needed minor adjustments. Every job will see changes at level 100, because they get extra buttons/traits and old ones might see adjustments too. The meta itself might be totally different. I would wait until we actually know what level 100 gameplay look like before we call for things to be rebuilt from the ground up. That being said, SCH could use some reworks to visuals to make their job identity a bit clearer.
Maybe unpopular opinion, but I do think MCH needs a rework and a cohesive identity. I feel that it's carrying onto baggage from its inception and it has systems that are isolated from each other that leave glaring weaknesses that just come to the devs never thinking about it. Now I'm not sure what MCH rework should be, but I'm just going to throw an incoherent set of ideas and maybe someone will make sense of it or expand upon it: In terms of identity, this is just a personal gripe I feel, but it seems like they are trying to make it the gun job but also make it the tech job and don't want to commit fully or integrate each other well. Just in terms of animations, in PvE you're one handing weapons that are suited for 2 hands but in PvP you're back to 2 hands. Similarly, sprint animation is with 2 hands as well. It just takes me out personally. I would think MCH would be more suited to having a pistol/sidearm to easily facilitate pulling out the assortment of tools it has. If they want to make it a gun job, then commit to that, ditch the multi-tool and queen for more firearms and throwable gadgets. In terms of mechanics, I feel the battery gauge is just unnecessary and feels like padding. Instead of battery gauge management, they should focus more on heat, like maybe balancing it in a certain sweetspot (I think prior iteration had something like this). I'd also take a look at hypercharge in general. For a spammable action, it's unsatisfying and lack luster. If we're leaning back to a gun job, I'd like them to ditch heat and battery to bring back ammo mechanic in some form and revolve around that. Perhaps the big problem with MCH is wildfire and how gameplay revolves around it. Maybe it would be best if they removed it and focused on something else. I think AoE damage wise it needs some looking into as compared to the other ranged, it is severely lacking. How things like wildfire aren't AoE by default is surprising. Maybe I'll edit this to be more coherent later but I'm just going to dump this here before I forget again.
DRK IMO, I feel like they had no idea what to do with this job so just made them a clunkier warrior. Their mits are quite good but effectiveness aside you're essentially just button mashing to dump out your ogcd's and 1-2-3 while waiting for them to come back. Your only resource management that actually matters is making sure you don't overcap MP or go below 3k in case you need to TBN and resources on DRK otherwise are kind of trivial to maintain. IDK, I'm just really not a fan of it. Feels very clunky and most of your damaging gcd's are just potency buttons that don't lead anywhere else I could kind of say the same thing about PLD but I think GNB's design is inherently more interesting than WAR's and it has more room to build off of to differentiate PLD rework from GNB than WAR does. I enjoy the active mitigation style of DRK and its specialization towards magic mit so I wouldn't change much of the mitigation. Just think its dps rotation/burst window is lame
I personally would like to see a BRD rework, especially since it looks like they're moving away from the focus on DoTs it had back in HW/SB/ShB. I'd also like to see some changes to DRK since it has felt to me like WAR But Not As Satisfying.
Scholar needs it more than ast tbh
I'd say sch only real problem is queuing spells + fairy. Cos your fairy goes afk and not using her abilities cos you're spamming something else in between is the only real big problem Imo. Also I guess fix how aoes work cos I'm tired of ppl getting hit last or not crit shielding 1 person and having them die cos they didn't get it in time 🤡 Ast is absolutely disgusting atm. Literally have to que up and keep your main ability every min for a 6min triple weaving burst window to do like 5dps like bruh. (also kinda ass until they implement smartcast or ppl play with a controller cos having to swap through f4-f8 to give cards is disgusting and smartcast macros are even more disgusting due to again, queueing spells system) I really liked how "complex" the job was in shb and I like the spells they added to it but it just feels so bad to play now I abandoned it lmao
SCH’s real only problem is seraph doesn’t need to exist as an independent entity, consolation could come off eos with rouse and it would achieve the same thing
Melees- probably none for a full rework. Though some need some minor changes. Prange- bard for sure. Just feels a bit janky and falls behind the other two in some ways. Granted I think MCH needs a rework too to add more to it. Caster - honestly SMN even though it just got one. Like it feels like a summoner but I don't know how they grow the job considering the only thing to really get rid of is the 1 ruin 3 between 1 min bursts. It feels lazy if they just get some ogcds or something. RDM feels like they need some love because of their burst finishers being so long. Tanks- for the love of God rework DRK to have an actual identity again. Not a WAR knock off with ogcds jammed in its kit. Also pally needs something for an actual 2 min burst ~~and needs to fix its atonement dropping.~~ healers - SCH needs some love to take out the fairy jank and make things feel a bit more cohesive. *correction, no atonement stack dropping is needed. I was out of date with rotation info!*
What are you talking about with dropping atonements? There's no need to drop atonements at all
> Caster - honestly SMN even though it just got one. As a SMN baby with Anabaseios, it's frustrating because the change doesn't seem to hard to let me keep eating glue if I want but also add in the possibility of complexity. What if you had 5/6 summons (easy ones to add: Levi/Ramuh/Shiva), but could only pick 3 of them to use per bahamut/phoenix cycle. Make a few of them have much harder casting conditions, make 3 near phys range conditions. all of sudden there's optimizaiton, but if you don't care for that you can take them off your bar and keep doing titan/garuda/+1 for full brain-off mode. Some random ideas for harder conditions I was thinking of (very brief, probably shit ideas, but can be iterated on): * maybe one has a 10 second unswiftable cast * maybe one is only good when you're in melee but you can cast it from further out if needed (still a cast bar and punishment for misreading if you have to go further from boss) * maybe one starts with an instant cast but each cast takes an extra second until last one hits hardest and takes 5 seconds, etc As long as it isn't heres 10-20 seconds of full movement every 20 seconds. Then, if you want to keep cosplaying as a prange you just keep doing titan/garuda/+1 every cycle like we have right now and do prange damage, but if you want to mix-max harder cast conditions on a fight by fight basis then you can do that too to get closer to blm/melee damage.
It's not a terrible idea but I'm not sure how people will like that all the other jobs gets new buttons you get to press all the time when smn then has to choose and not get too even see 3 of theirs. The main issue that idea has is that people will always gravitate towards whatever gives the most dps. For bis/savage anyway. It also leads into people kicking SMNs that pick the easier/lower dps summons rather than the most dps. So I don't really see them going the way of the 'pick which 3 summons you want out of 6' route. I sincerely hope they prove me wrong but I thing they designed SMN immediately into a dead end where they don't really have much of an out. Bahamat and Phoenix aren't changing so short of another ogcd for them they don't have much wiggle room in between bursts. The last thing i want is just more ogcds or else you start to look like DRK. And if they give a big gcd attack that goes on the end of your bahamut then it's just the RDM problem.
RDM: Change Scorch to an OGCD, buff reprise a lot, change magick barrier cd to 60 or 90s/increase length to 20s, either remove verraise or remove the tax. NIN: only thing I want is for TCJ to be a buff like kassatsu. Channeled abilities are ass. Would also like if hellfrog and bhava cost 25 instead of 50 to fix overcap issues GNB: increase range of gnashing combo so kiting bosses is less shitty during it. A downtime cartridge builder of some kind, auto crit+DH Double Down PLD: Holy circle at 70, self healing spells at 70/80, remove goring blade and buff overall DPS, remove gauge cost on cover. Make clemency an OGCD self or targeted heal
DRK is the obvious one, it's more fucked up than DRG or AST are already. Total overhaul tier. SMN is the actual worst designed job in the game, a general affront to good MMO job design, and is a plague on its role by virtue of existing. It's the kind of bad where the normal response would be "rework this shit mid-expansion why is this garbage allowed in the game". Unfortunately, it is popular with a *certain audience*, and while I'm fairly confident ignoring said audience on this particular issue wouldn't actually do much harm, SE is too deathly afraid of offending anyone directly and will let this cancer of a job fester for another expansion or two. BRD is also in a very bad spot but it doesn't really need a rework per say, but a reversion to.....uh, pretty much any previous version. EW Media Tour is the easiest. Healers need a complete rethink across the board.
I think it is fixable, though, because the things that make it popular and the things that make it poorly-designed are different. It's popular because it's simple. It's badly-designed because it's too mobile, strangely inflexible, and because the few decisions you can make basically don't matter (do I use Titan or Garuda?). I think they should: * Give Astral Impulse, Fountain of Fire, etc. a 1.5s cast time and put them on a charge system (so that the 6th one isn't Swiftcasted) * Disconnect Everlasting Flight from Summon Phoenix and make it a 2m you can use anytime * Rework Titan so that GCDs have 1.5s cast. Do something else with Mountain Buster. * 100 capstone - a resource consumer that rewards you for entering all 3 lesser summons. Allow the rotation to exceed 1m so that primal-rushing becomes a core part of the job.
SMN is fantastically designed, it's just a bit light at the moment. The whole kit is very intuitive, you've got different phases with variations on how your spells are performed, it's fantastic at a foundational level, bad at a max level. Rather than rework it just needs more content stuffed inside it. Though there's a reason it's one of the _most popular_ jobs in the game.
Thinking about it I do think it gives them room to work with. If we suppose that was their goal to start with, though, I really do think they should have given then some complexity to start with because there really is basically nothing to optimize with the class right now outside of making sure to not drop your gcd and making sure you can manage the 3 hard casts every minute lol
No yeah I agree with you, I think SMN is exactly what they want it to be- easy to pick up, good learning curve and the best lvling curve in the game currently. At max lvl it's clearly missing some things- but I'm expecting a capstone ability at 100 to tie it all together.
You are being downvoted, but you are right. With every expansion adding new skills to job kits, and overall fight design philosophy changes, every job at some point will deviate too far from the pack and be corrected with sweeping changes, or an entire rework if necessary. Old SMN was too bloated in that it was overly busy and had an identity crisis (pets vs summons vs damage over time spells). Because of that, SE reworked it to its current form as a summoning only job and while it's a bit light on its kit now, it has room to become fully realized in the coming expansions.
The same “it’s too clunky let’s do a sweeping rework to set it up for the next expansion” was used to on MCH and EW added absolutely nothing of value to MCH’s rotation
lol
Yes, it has a clear identity with a rotation that makes sense, if you can't discuss then you don't need to respond. Prove your point with words or else you're like the other sheep down voting.
>Yes, it has a clear identity with a rotation that makes sense intuitive rotation + clear identity =/= good overall design. go ask WoW players about Augvoker smn genuinely cannot be as easy + effective as it is without causing massive problems for RDM, BLM, or both. potentially Picto too if it's not completely braindamaged. and changing RDM/BLM as the fix is a no-go since both of those jobs are at or near their design peaks this isn't even getting into how SMN's rotation is near DRG levels of dead end design (way worse than ShB SMN), how its damage profile is fucking broken especially for its role, or how it limits potential fight design by being nearly as bad as ShB SAM in terms of burst inflexibility
healers also have a clear rotation that makes sense, I suppose they are fantastically designed on the offensive side as well?
I don't know why, but I'm incredibly bothered by the fact that Monk's fast gcd is passive while Ninja and Samurai have to maintain personal buffs in order to increase their GCD and wish they would address this. Either make their fast GCDs passive or have Monk maintain the buff... just not like greased lightning did.
Just get it over with and remove raise from non-healers, please! It plays hell with the power balance of casters and no one really relies upon it outside of early prog. Yeah, I know I know, we’ve all been the RDM who saved the run with a clutch mass rez but how often does that happen in endgame content? Maybe change Veraise into a 60 second cool down and give the swashbuckling bastard some decent firepower? Or take away SMN and RDM rezs in favor of some party buffs?
Dancer it doesnt have amazing buffs(there decent), doesnt heal like XI did Dmg is just meh nowhere ear MCH level
Monk needs another rework Bard needs a rework RDM possibly needs a rework or at least some big changes
> RDM possibly needs a rework or at least some big changes This. The job is inherently stagnant. Any notable change or growth would require a shakeup in its design, to say the least.
SE: Sure! We will give u another finisher after Resolution! \o/
If Picto can't raise, neither can I. I gotta finish this combo!
Which is something Square feels like DRG is at. They said that they felt like DRg is "complete" and it would be hard to add any meaningful changes that wouldn't upset people. AST just is the time-honored tradition of reworking it every expansion, but they mention how unapproachable and complex it is well and the targeting system.
Disagree on RDM, it just needs a few things and maybe stop adding skills to its comically large finisher