Final Fantasy XIV

Yoshi-P already said back in the live letter that they're redoing how the damage calculations work, so we shouldn't read too much into any potency values we see on new abilities. Kinda funny how everyone immediately ignores that rather explicit warning.

That said, from the leaks it seems like all the healer dps rotations are being pared down to "1 nuke, 1 dot, 1 aoe, and 1 damage cd" which, if true, would be rather disappointing. It's an especially big change for Scholars, who'd be losing like half a dozen tools.

Edited by Clarste on May 27th 2019 at 4:08:29 AM

Balance is just another word for homogeneity at the end of the day.

Now that the healers are mostly the same there can't be one markedly weaker than the other two.

It is homogenized, yes, but I also feel it's a Necessary Evil for a multiplayer game. The moment people find out a character or set up is better than the rest, that's all people will go to and use. Remember, MCH and AST were undesired for raids when those jobs were new because the majority felt that they were too weak. Likewise, people believed SAM was useless in raids due to no utilities.

I also heard stories of how several jobs in Final Fantasy XI were basically treated as a joke class because of how useless they were thanks to how the balancing worked in that game. That's something I'd never want to see happen here.

Complexity is entirely separate from balance though. It's not at all hard for, say, Scholars to have 2 dots but deal the same amount of total damage. The complexity of a rotation is purely an aesthetic choice. This is in contrast to things like tools for healing, which is also something they seem to be homogenizing.

That said, if one class has to do way more work to get the same output as another class, I suppose people might complain about that too.

Edited by Clarste on May 27th 2019 at 5:47:05 AM

It's also probably why people that want a more complex healer job move towards SCH or AST because many find WHM too simple. I think the devs are making everything more simple across the board so that players aren't fumbling between several skills at once and can just focus on doing the fight well.

The problem with that plan is that the people who wanted more complexity (and drifted to SCH or AST) would suddenly find that none of the healing jobs appeal to them. And, well, that seems like a problem to me.

Edited by Clarste on May 27th 2019 at 6:11:02 AM

The devs wouldn't be doing these simplifications for no reason. They have access to all the player data and how people play their jobs.

I doubt the devs have actual real-time usage data for all the abilities of each class, though. They might, but that seems like it would be a huge amount of data to upload, store, and process.

Personally, I like having more tools to work with rather than fewer. The problem then becomes if useless spells like Sleep are counted among a class's overall power level, disregarding how people actually use CC (they don't) and how useful it is in the game (it's not).

I'm just gonna chime in to defend my Sleep.

It's incredibly useful for keeping my squishy butt preserved while traipsing through the overworld, at least before you learn how to fly.

That is all.

But seriously though, it'd be nice if anything after level 50 could be reliably CC'd outside of Holy.

Edited by IrishZombie on May 27th 2019 at 11:30:10 AM

I mean, at this point I just keep it on my hotbars to keep from facing the reality of how few spells I actually have that are useful.

In seriousness, though, I think CC in this game suffers greatly from the dungeon meta, which is squarely in the later-WoW school of 'pull everything, facetank hard, heal hard, AOE burn'. Certain mobs might be higher priority for burning, but a mob that is CC'd is a mob that isn't taking damage and might be outside the tank's aggro combo. There's also nothing that needs to be CC'd even in Expert dungeons. Summoner mobs like the ninja in Doma Castle or the summoners in Amdapor Keep can be killed before their cast finishes by a party that's paying attention, or if not, an interrupt will suffice. So it ends up being a vicious cycle: mobs resist CC and dungeon setups don't reward CC, so people don't use CC, so devs don't make dungeon setups that reward CC.

Well BLM has Sleep and such but really a lot of the game is designed to fight or be able to skip via line of sight or sound.

Giving more classes good non-combat CC would really make a lot of the game too easy and would make Eureka a lot easier than they probably want.

In other news, I am noticing Alphinaud uses Broil III in the Benchmark, so he can probably be a healer for Trust, wondering if he will be able to be caster as a Summoner as well.

Alphinaud had Ruin III in Stormblood, but his Physick was like a Scholar's. I think he just does whatever he wants.

I've often noticed that stuff is almost impossible to interrupt in FFXIV. Because of the length of global cooldowns, and interrupts/silences being on the same cooldown, it's virtually impossible to prevent an enemy from finishing a cast unless it's really, really long.

The half-second or so grace period for casts also doesn't help. For some spells, even if you can get an interrupt or interrupt-adjacent spell off (like Fluid Aura, which interrupts by virtue of forcing knockback), if you don't react almost immediately that spell is going off anyway.

He is not either class, he is more a Hero Arcanist that uses a bit of both of each class's key spells but still with various forms of Carbuncle.

Likely he will probably stay that way as both are a bit complex for AI and Urianger has been the one stated to be doing the class change to AST. Lore wise any of either would have some issues.

Would have loved to see a WHM in the plot just to see the WHM character to see the actual damage the Light can do, tempted to main WHM just to see if we see any Light Is Not Good responses.

Edited by Memers on May 28th 2019 at 8:12:58 AM

Don't hold your breath on that.

We likely won't get anything special for it, just the same way that WHM can't heal any plot injuries or deaths - the storyline has to function a certain way, and some classes' capabilities or lore connections may interfere with that.

You do some healing in Stormblood after Krile yells at you.

functionally Alphinaud has been closer to Summoner then Scholar since he used Ruin 3 and Starstorm, this is the first time he has actually used a Scholar exclusive.

I wonder if he will make a pixie buddy to pad out his heqling duties or something.

Lore wise, he cant. He would need to find a Nym soul crystal, same for Summoner and it being an Allagan Soul Crystal. Its why he is still using Carbuncle but innovating it.

Of course the Nym / Allagan practices could be alive and well in the new world and potentially re-proliferate the classes in the setting.

Edited by Memers on May 28th 2019 at 5:09:33 AM

This is about time to shake things up since everyone else sans Alisaie is going to be having a new job crystal about now anyway.

Embargo lifted, here's what I learned so far.

• Holy is nerfed, now has 140 potency but AOE falloff is no longer present. Now does flat damage to targets.
• Aero III is gone.
• Since this also affects other healers, Legarsee, Eye for Eye, and Cleric Stance are now gone.

^Aw man, what?! Why?!

Also, the Taisho outfit controversy. That's an ugly, ugly situation.

Basically all 3 healers are as bland as SB White Mage was in the name of balance.

We've got a lot of great jobs to play otherwise at least.

Well, it was certainly nice having more than one button to press on my Scholar while it lasted.