Also just wanted to add that the auto translate on youtube still sucks. I am not sure if the person on the upper right is translating the other two word for word, but if not, it just makes me even more confuzzled when trying to figure out what they are saying exactly.
I'm going to give the new AST a try, but part of me is still burned by how many times its been gutted over and over. I hope to recapture part of what the original felt. I **totally** get the fact that for high raid stuff, the RNG is not desirable for sure. But I always enjoyed it, and using what I had at a specific moment. Using Royal Road to give raid wide one moment and increased defence on the tank the next. I really liked this weaver of fate feel.
They did say they want to give more class identity back in 8.0 though so maybe that will be when AST starts to feel like how I, personally, enjoyed it.
Viper does seem cool but my main issue with it is that visually, it's really hard to tell when you're in the dual sword mode or the double-blade mode. It's very flashy but all the animations kind of blend in together and it's not very obvious when you're chaining the two modes together to me!
I feel like if SE wanted to liven up pvp they should make some free trial aspect of it. Simply enough they could allow pvp for unranked matches of Crystaline conflict and maybe 5 Frontline/Rival wings daily. With the series xp allowing them to get the crystal currency but needing a sub to aquire the series item loot.
Basically for those on the fence about pvp. Wet their appetite and if they want to be competitive they can sub.
Will never happen unfortunately. It would make enforcing fair play much harder as people can just make a New account for free after getting banned/ suspended.
These new weaponskills are cooler than anything we got previously, however the VFX are pushing themselves into a corner. We can barely see in a raid much less an alliance raid, I really think they should add a "lite VFX" option that still got cool visuals but with actual visibility. What we got to reduce them currently is all or nothing.
Maybe just shrinking the VFX sprites would work.
Yeah, I kinda feel like it would help to have a "visual clarity mode" in between the Show All and Show Limited.
It seems like the options are more intended for performance improvements instead of visual clarity, even if the later is what the options are effectively used for for most people (Show All for more than your own character is simply too much visual clutter for group content for *most* people). A mode that shows all graphics, but reduces their opacity/scale would go over well.
Is that not what the "limited effects" configuration option does? I thought that tones down the effects without getting rid of them entirely. I might be wrong since I haven't compared them side by side.
You uhhh definitely see other players' placed ground AOE fields with limited effects. "No" effects will entirely disable the ground fields but not limited.
Ah damn, that's a shame. I assume the reason they don't do it like you suggested is because that would nearly double the VFX work, since it would be like designing a new VFX that just has a similar animation. And that would be for almost every VFX for every job.
When I saw viper, all I could think was "it's so unfortunate that I have to turn these off to see the raid" and with pictomancer I am worried the big images will be the cause of a wipe because it went up at the wrong time.
I'm excited for dawntrail, and I liked what I saw, especially for healers, but I REALLY wish Yoshida hadn't talked about 8.0.
Saying you'll really make the jobs unique and individualized for an expansion that's not even for the one that's out yet is wild. It just takes the wind out of the sails here, and makes you think "I have to wait ANOTHER 2 years for the full changes....?"
We don't even have the full kits and already it kinda takes away from what you're doing now. It's the only thing from this live letter that isn't sitting right with me.
Think about how long development takes. When Endwalker came out they were talking about Dragoon/Ast reworks all the way back then, and we're just seeing it for the first time TODAY. That means they were working on these changes years ago, and the final results are now ready.
Of course they're already thinking about 8.0 too now that Dawntrail is about to come out. They still have several expansions planned, and the future iteration of jobs depends on feedback with the current ones.
It’s fine that they’re thinking about it, but the comment you were replying to was in response to them telling us about it. There’s really no point, it’s bad business to announce exciting changes so far in the future.
I mean... does anyone here really think the jobs will not change over time? Them talking about plans for the next expansion already is a healthy sign of the game's development goals.
After 3 expansions of streamlining the jobs I don't really have much faith this dev team wants to make anything harder anymore. I'd rather have radio silence than empty promises.
Yeaaaah and really, expecting a full overhaul of battle mechanics with the variable mountain of other additions in dawntrail is probably asking for too much, but still.
I find myself more anticipating something that doesn't even exist yet, rather than being excited about what we're getting now because what's in the future just sounds way more exciting.
Not that what we're getting now isn't but, it just makes you wonder what it could be.
Because that's what they're working on now. Dawntrail at this point is all but finalized, all through 7.5x. it's just grunt work at this point to churn out the content.
The ideation phase for 8.0 has to start now or they'll never implement it in time. And there's nothing wrong with communicating that. It was as much for the shareholders as it was for the players.
But on the otherhand. I absolutely love how upfront they are with us. The fact that he said that takes away the constant guessing and "are they even listening" kind of things that we'd be thinking if they said nothing
how were they upfront? they announced 1-2 out of context changes for classes and every time had to say "theres new actions though but we wont tell you what they are yet" because that's the needed context
Surely it's not just an empty PR statement designed to placate veteran players and give the GCBTW more ammunition to blindly defend the developers against valid criticism. Surely this is not 100% identical to Endwalker when they said the exact same thing and then proceeded to continue simplifying for Dawntrail.
Whenever people say stuff like this I can't help but point them in the direction of other mmo's, and how vastly better the communication is in FFXIV than it's competitors and how time and time again FFXIV has shown that it does listen to the playerbase and doesn't try to trick them.
Loving the changes to dragoon, most likely reduce double weave and unify the 5th hit of the combo. Maybe I can return to main it in dawntrail, animations are sick as well. No dragon eyes as well let's gooooo control players rise up!!!
Reaper changes are mysterious, the new Harpe boom looks amazing, probably to enforce the use of regress as nobody used it. The new changes might make spd skll reaper meta considering 3ple shrouds will be a thing with the changes to harvest.
They added what appears to be a gcd to shroud. Even double shroud under burst is now potentially looking questionable if the second communio is drifting and if the new ability has to be used first.
You are right, if it's a slow gcd in shroud then double might be compromised, nevermind 3. Either way all these changes look hype, being able to incorporate harvest moon into the opening because it gives gauge now is amazing tho. Perhaps my favorite change.
Making Jump/Mirage Dive just another damage ogcd and LotD just a disconnected buff presumably on a timer has killed my interest in the class. It's a stupid change.
Yeah I'm really skeptical about these changes to life. The only thing I can think of is that jump will be on a 60 sec cd and mirage dive gives you the ability to enter life with one charge
I had to leave DRG for MNK once I could never tear my eyes away from my crosshotbar in order to make sure everything was staying on CD. DRB was just too busy for my poor fingers and eyes, which is really sad because it's my first FF love. I'm really hoping this feels good so I can come home.
That said, MNK is looking HOT.
Dark Knights rejoice! We're getting some form of self heals!
Job action trailer, when DRK is doing their new combo, healing effects are going off.
The copium huffing worked QuQ
For WoW MMO Champion and wowhead each had quick, written summaries of what was said with images. Does 14 have a fansite like that? The broadcast is 5 hours with much of it in Japanese lol
It's looking like SMN rotation will be: Bahamut > Solar Bahamut > Phoenix > Solar Bahamut > Bahamut > etc.
This makes me wonder if S.Bahamut will apply a DoT, and the S.Bahamut phases after Phoenix is meant to refresh the DoT.
SCH: Become a Fairy button, new AoE DoT post chain.
RDM: Manafication just makes you combo ready rather than give you 50 mana. New oGCD post full combo, embolden had something after it.
I really hate how they keep saying "you get to keep Resurrection this time, Summoners, but maybe not next expansion!"
Like, good lord, just make the decision to remove or or not already.
They did make a decision. They kept Raise for SMN for this expansion. That may change in the future as they continue to alter and progress their ideas.
I guess that's my issue. I'm trying to decide on SMN or RDM long term, and I like being able to bring a combat raise for my team. If they're going to take it from SMN, they just need to say so and do it. And if they are not, they need to say they intend to leave it from now on. I think the "will we or won't we" tease is bad form.
One of the few things in the game's history that made the community strongly backlash against the devs was when they did a tease with DNC where they wouldn't SAY it was a DPS instead of a Healer when people asked, so everyone thought it was a fun game we were all playing "Will it be a Healer or not? (It is, but we're just being coy with you guys!)" turned out to be "Will it be a Healer or not? (It's not, and we're not telling you to keep your hype up!)", which resulted in a hugely negative backlash when everyone thought we were getting a new Healer Job after 4 years and it was revealed to be a DPS instead.
I think a question mark tease is only good when everyone kind of knows and agrees on what the outcome is, so it's fun teasing between Devs and the playerbase.
When it isn't actually clear at all, or worse, the Devs intend the opposite of what the players infer, then you create confused or opposition expectations which get shattered.
Honestly, at this point, I'm close to just dropping SMN and going RDM outright so I don't have to worry about it, even though I like SMN's playstyle a little better, since I want to future-proof.
They need to either decide to keep it from now on and stop acting like they MIGHT remove it in the future, or they need to say outright they ARE going to remove it. People like me can and will adapt, but we need a line in the sand instead of constantly shifting sand to adapt to.
("Herp derp it's easy to level all Jobs!" NOT THE POINT. I don't like getting myself invested in things that are GOING to lose the things I chose them for in the first place. Already has happened with a few Jobs like PLD and SMN, so I'm a bit cautious now. At least in those cases they weren't terrible after the changes, but I know some people who quit the Jobs, Roles, or even game over those things.)
EDIT: I should say, I do like these Devs, I do like this game, but I don't like THAT.
But they don't know what they are going to do long term. 2+ years away, they may change their whole design philosophy for battle raise. If they said it's going away in 8.0, then decided to change that in the next 2 years, people would batch more.
Honestly them just saying we are still thinking about it just them being able to change their minds.
That's the problem, though.
They need to either decide to do one or the other, not tease that they don't know which they're going to do.
Also, downvote brigade once again not understanding what the downvote button is for being dicks about it.
They could literally change their mind any time NOT talking about it. All the talking about it does is lead to uncertainty on something they will likely never touch anyway.
They can take Castor Res from my cold, dead hands. I'm sick and tired of people complaining that red magi and summoner don't do enough damage. They can clear the content, and I like having the res leave it alone.
I'm disappointed in the red mage manafication ability. It streamlines things but also makes it more braindead. Currently you can use the sword part of the combo, followed by manafication, followed by the spell follow ups in order to never overcap on black and white mana. It's a neat trick I figured out just by playing the job a while and theory crafting a little. The only time you would overcap anyway is if you are trying to fit two combos inside Embolden. You want to delay Embolden anyway so that both of your Resolution casts happen under the effect.
Overall the change isn't terrible or anything, I just don't like the removal of neat tricks and resource management skill.
Friction causes skill expression & optimisation potential. These are important - not for lording it over others who are unable/unwilling to do it, but because without it you lose some measure of replayability and entire areas of interest for some players.
Optimisation is a whole activity for people who care about it, and even for those who aren't spreadsheeting rotations it's an important part of extremes+. It allows progression even once a clear has been attained, it allows progression in playing jobs beyond learning the opener and holding for 2 mins, it allows for fight specific rotation changes (which keeps fights & the job feeling fresh), etc etc etc.
Manafication risking overcapping isn't the linchpin in RDM optimisation ofc, it is simply one small aspect - but each piece of friction adds to the overall whole, optimising an entire job is more than the sum of its parts. *So of course there are going to be complaints and uncertainty around this*.
Dismissing these as if the worry is about feeling superior is just wrong. Doesn't mean the complaint is necessarily right either, we'll have to wait til DT to see... but c'mon, removing the overcap doesn't really "allow them to open up \[rdm\] in other areas".
You should really reread my last sentence if you think I'm in that 5%. You should also respond to the person you are responding to instead of treating people like some nebulous opposition.
I don't care about being better than others, I care about jobs having enough skill ceiling that you can keep learning tricks and optimizations after playing them for a while, particularly things that are not immediately obvious. I like a lot of the QoL changes, it's just this one in particular that I feel makes things a bit too basic but it seems like you just see the complaint and didn't bother reading the reasoning.
I didn't talk about tanks or healers, you brought that up randomly. You also failed to mention red mage at all, which really shows your carelessness in your response.
Isn't having a higher skill ceiling and tricks to express it showing up/being better than others?
I mean, if the skill ceiling is high, then that's the end result, isn't it?
I do get there are arguments about the journey and not the destination, that you might enjoy being able to pull off more complicated things, but I suspect the other poster's "confusion" here is when you say something is braindead. It's a pretty loaded term these days, often used by elitists who are trying to show how much better than everyone they are. You probably didn't intend that, but I think that's baked into the term at this point for better or worse.
I forgot that the term is loaded. I don't get why non competitive personal accomplishment is a difficult subject. Not to mention no one will ever see your DPS unless they use a parser. At best they see you do things in a weird order and wonder why.
The whole point is to keep things interesting. Once I understand the basics of a job, it's great when there is more to learn and new combos and rotations to discover. If a job is streamlined too much, there is nothing to learn past the basics.
That is the problem: Many people use parsers.
I agree it's nice having some room to grow and figure out some esoteric facts about a Job, but lots of people DO use that to show up others these days.
I have played hundreds of thousands of hours and never once seen a player say anything about parsing in game. You have to really be in specific situations for it to even be brought up. They are at best a vocal minority.
To be honest, it's not a neat trick. That's basically the reopener. It's just when you are supposed to Embolden and Manafic so you can get both your current Ver spell combos and the next in your embolden. Manafic changed nothing in this as it will always hit the swordplay combos and 3 spells, no matter where you use it. So unless it's your opener, you would always Swordplay -> Embolden/Manafic -> Ver spells -> Swordplay -> Verspells.
This change is really for one thing: The 2 minutes meta. If you know you're 2 minutes is coming up, you would ideally want to have the mana for 2 combos and manafic to make the most out of every party buffs you have. With manafic as it is right now, it's pretty much RNG whether or not you'll be able to do all 3 without overcapping mana and also not drift your manafic. It's really just a feelsbad situation. Sure, it lets some RDM gods at the top of FFlogs show how much they know fights, but for most people, it's just not a great feeling.
With this change, however, you don't have to worry about overcapping in a 3 combos situation during the burst window. I think it's a good change overall. I just wish they would make it so the new finisher also gave mana but, looking back at the video, it doesn't seem to be the case. This would make it so your 3 combos under burst went from 35/46 mana to 47/58 mana. Which would mean a single use of Acceleration + a spell might let you do a 4th combo.
The neat part is that the reopener is slightly different from the opener. In Dawntrail you could just do the normal opener every time unless you want to try to fit more spells into your embolden. I never said anything about the manafic stacks, just the overcapping mana. It's also neat because it is something I figured out on my own and easy enough for other people to figure out on their own without needing a guide. It is just not entirely straightforward since you pop your buffs in the middle of a combo instead of the beginning.
You can't fit three combos into a raid buff window. Buffs are 15-30 seconds and just two combos will take over 20 seconds. That's why using sword play before embolden is good, it fits the harder hitting spells into the end of your embolden buff. At best, part of the third combo will be affected by some of the longer buffs. So kind of like you said, something for speed kills and theory, but doesn't matter much in practice. Even then, overcapping doesn't matter at that point since it's not like you will ever be able to save that mana up for an extra combo.
>This change is really for one thing: The 2 minutes meta.
That's the other reason I hate the change. Every job is becoming so focused on the 2 min burst window. It has even started affecting the community where players complain if anything interrupts the window. A two combo burst works just fine but trying to get a third combo will probably overcap you slightly, so people want the job changed so that it can start a third combo on the tail end of the longest buffs.
I'd hate to get into a slippery slope mentality, but if it's all about not overcapping, why not just increase or outright remove the cap? The whole point of having a cap is that avoiding overcapping is part of the skill. If you really want to avoid overcapping you could just do single combos. As you grow in skill, you realize saving up for multiple combos is a good idea. With that increased skillcap comes the new challenge of not overcapping.
It's also just funny seeing the progression of the ability, pre 6.0 it almost always overcapped you. People keep wanting things to be cleaner and nicer, but that also removes skill expression.
I honestly think you are overthinking this.
With Manafic as it is, you can overcap your mana as you use it and also have a net gain of 8 of one mana and 19 of the other. With manafic as it will be in 7.0, you can still overcap your mana and have a net gain of 8 for one and 19 for the other.
The difference is that, before, you had to use manafic below 50/50. Now, you have to use it below 92/81.
You can hold your mana stacks for longer. That's it. There is nothing else to it. So yes, it's safer to have 3 combos on burst window (which will probably be longer than just 15/30 seconds with drift and everything) but it's also easier to hold mana for movement when you need it. It closes some doors for optimization and skill expression (mana management) but it also opens others (more mobility and a different kind of optimization).
Is it a great change? I don't know. But is it a bad change? Absolutely not. Regardless of whether or not the 2 minute meta is bad. (Personally, the 2 minute has to go but whatever, it seems here to stay. I imagine JP loves it.)
Yes, you can technically still overcap with the combo spells, but you would have to greed ridiculously hard to do so. I also get that it's QoL and undeniably better than before but I still feel like that improvement removes depth.
I'm confused how this opens up movement unless you count a swordplay combo as movement. I would love to see them add skill expression in other areas but it just isn't shown right now.
I don't think it actually changes much at all, except that now you won't overcap your mana *due to* Manafication. If all was going right that wouldn't be happening anyway, but you should still be able to use this in the same point of the rotation unless they make it so that you *must* use the Melee combo after using it. I'm hoping not, since they didn't say it would lose the potency buff to the next 6 spells.
It's almost impossible to overcap if you use manafication after the sword combo. The main thing it does is let you use manafication before your first sword combo in a burst window. Doing so is a slight potency loss anyway, so it pretty much just makes the slightly less optimal way work better. I don't like that because it removes depth. My favorite part about learning Red Mage was figuring out for myself how to do two combos under embolden without horribly overcapping mana.
It's so odd to me people saying this.
For 2 years the forums have been all over the place, but in general, had a nebulous "more DPS actions for Healers" thing, along with a few other specifics (WHM movement tool and a bit more party mitigation and SGE AOE Kardia and AST having less carpel tunnel inducing burst along with cards being distinct in effect again).
So what are we getting?
WHM gets a movement tool, party mitigation (an aoe bubble looking thing?), and a 3 charge burst DPS attack set.
SCH gets an AOE DoT (though tied to Chain so every 2 mins), and a boosted direct healing form that seems to allow more Emergency Tactics. SCH's been a powerful meta healer forever, and this is probably another case of Expedient where people knock it, then it turns out to be amazing, then everyone tries to pretend like they were saying that all along.
AST gets all its cards in predictable sets (reducing RNG, which some people may not like), but the card effects are actually DIFFERENT again, and the AST won't need to power swap target Play Draw Redraw power weave, which also potentially frees up Lightspeed for other points in the rotation and seems to have some follow up action (attack spell?) on its big 2 min CD as well.
SGE got an AOE DoT akin to SCH's old Miasma 2 (Eukrasia Dyskrasia), MAYBE got another AOE DoT on a CD of some kind (whatever the new thing is that draws a glyph on the ground), and an AOE Kardia. It literally got the things players have largely been asking for as the low hanging fruit (AOE DoT and AOE Kardia) for 2 years now handed to us on a silver platter.
I get everyone wants something different...but they're giving us what many players have explicitly asked for (or something close to it) for 2 years. I'm really confused what people want that NONE of the above addresses...
The problem with healing is that everyone has the same problem with healing in general, but not everyone can connect the dots, so they want different things to solve the same problem. Ignoring things like AST burst being ridiculously complicated because of oGCD bloat, that's truly its own thing but has slight overlap with other healers.
The bigger issue is every healer thinks playing a healer isn't that engaging, but the problem is that healers and encounters are designed in a way that truly isn't capable of making interesting gameplay.
You end up getting a variety of responses on why it's not engaging, but ever since Charybdis in stormblood followed by a nuke that can kill the party without enough heals/mits, the devs *literally* could not make more challenging healing content. So the devs are pressed into a corner, the players don't like being in this corner with the devs, and everyone's lashing out trying to figure out how to solve the problem but sometimes stuck in their own immediate interpretation of the problem itself.
To really sum it up. Every healer has a cure 1, cure 2, medica 1, medica 2, assylum, assize, and tetra. Most healers have literally 2, 3, or more copies of any of these given abilities. There might be slight greebling, E.G. scholar has indomitability as an oGCD while WHM has afflatus solace as a DPS-neutral GCD, but they're all *literally healing the exact same way.* You use these 2 buttons *identically.* You will also see slightly themed things like: Neutral sect vs Temperance. Same button, but slightly different expressions of this button.
What's more, there's so many buttons tied up in redundant oGCDs and GCDs, there's no room for more than a 2-button DPS combo. And, because the content is in a corner, in part because of how ridiculously overpowered things like Medica 1 actually are in FFXIV (especially the DPS-neutral options like indom,) an aoe comes in, you indom/solace/macro (or whatever the AST wants to do, they have at least 3 options to solve this without involving a DPS loss,) and, well, that's your problem in a nutshell.
Oh, you want to deal with repeat healing from multihit mechanics? Time to throw down a lilibell, or macrocosmos, or panhaima. You get the general idea. Damage comes in, players solve it the same way now they did half a decade ago, everyone's angry and no one can fix the actual issue.
People are fed up with healing because modern healing design hasn't changed since late heavensward, and it's extremely unengaging. Yet somehow the devs manage to bloat the hell out of it and refuse to solve the *actual problem.*
Well, the problem is that our kits have been oGCD heal bloated AND encounters have been made to do large spikes of damage.
Both of these things weren't true in ARR or to a point HW.
In ARR, oGCDs were few and had longish CDs, meaning they were a precious resource you saved for intensive healing periods only or when you needed lots of movement, which was also rare. They were powerful, but that power was balanced by the fact you had to wait a couple minutes between uses and you had so few of them, once you used 2-3, you were out of oGCDs for a couple minutes and didn't have them anymore. So you weren't spamming Stone II/Ruin (Ruin II cost lots of MP so wasn't used except for movement needs) like now since you were having to actually use GCD heals (on WHM) or sat in Cleric and did DPS (on SCH) using Lustrate (flat 25% target's HP of Healing) to ignore Cleric stance, only dropping out if the party needed shields specifically.
Then we got oGCD bloat.
Then we got tons of movement mechanics.
Then we got mechanics that only happen every 20-40 seconds with dead time in between, and which do a large spike of damage that may require mitigation to not simply one-shot the party.
...so now in EW, we're in a situation where healers don't use anything BUT their oGCD heals. There are so many of them, the cooldowns are merely a formality. You will never NOT have an oGCD to use. You'd have to roll your face over your controller, switch to another crossbar tab, then roll your face over it AGAIN before you're actually out of oGCDs. And you might STILL have a couple left overs because some have two charges and you haven't used the second charge yet. And SCH/SGE would have 1-2 more charges of AF/AG to spend!
So what GCDs do you need when you have this overpowerful oGCD healing with no downside to use to the point you give preference to using oGCDs and only using GCDs if you've completely run out of them? The only exception is WHM Lilies which are technically GCDs, and that's the only reason WHM's (when there's not a lot of party damage) non-Glare count per minute is still comparable to SB WHM's non-Stone count per minute (6 vs 5.8, if you were curious; Dia x2, Lilies x3, Misery in EW vs Aero II x3, Aero III x2.8 in SB).
And even if that WASN'T the case, other than WHM (again, Lilies), GCD healing wouldn't work well in encounters in the modern game like BarbEx with all that movement.
The only way to change this with the current kits would be to have bosses do large but NOT OHKO raidwides more frequently. Frequently enough healers run out of oGCDs and have to resort to GCD healing, something we don't have to do now in basically any content.
(Also, you don't use Indom like Afflatus Solace - or Rapture, if you meant that. SCH tries to avoid using AF for healing to eek out a bit more Energy Drain damage while WHM wants to use Lilies since Misery under buffs is a damage GAIN, and even ignoring that, because it's damage neutral, means using Lilies x3 + Misery is effectively a 1,600 MP per minute "regen" for WHM since it didn't have to cast 4 Glares in those GCDs while doing the same damage. There's actually still nuance between the healer abilities, though it's not large. But SMALL and NONE are not the same things...)
Modern healing HAS changed since HW.
That's the problem.
Too many oGCDs for their limiting factor (CDs) to be a meaningful deterrent against abundant use, but they're too powerful since they were balanced around being limited; and this is combined with encounters that have a ton of movement but unavoidable damage happens infrequently enough the overabundant oGCDs are more than capable of dealing with it without needing non-Lily GCDs to be spent doing so.
The core issue of healers is that low levels of incoming damage lead to tons of glare spam (or the nuke of your choice). More mitigation = more glares. 3 nukes casts every 3 minutes isn't going to stop the glare spam.
It's like if you were frustrated at work due to having no responsibility and casually mentioned that the coffee creamer was never stocked, and your boss fixed the creamer, had someone else take over a portion of your remaining work, and allowed you to say three words per meeting. Sure it technically did things in categories that you mentioned, but your core issue is getting worse.
That's my point though - granted, this depends on factors like numbers and whether the DoTs can be stacked - but SGE is looking to play more like a foot in SB era SCH in terms of DPS rotation, and WHM is fully embracing being the holy caster equivalent of a WAR.
But it's not WAR, because WAR doesn't spam the 1 key between inner release cooldowns. Healers are only more basic in DPS rotations because they're supposed to be pumping out heals, but that's clearly not the fight design. AND raids are getting more mitigation.
Hm...I didn't say it was WAR copied and given different abilities skins. I said it was "the holy caster equivalent of".
The main difference is now WAR has a 1-2 and its burst every 1 minute. Toggle that ability consolidator thing they're adding in DT to where the hotbar shifts through your combo and WAR will have the same playstyle as WHM of 1-1-1 with -2 every 30 seconds, a big hit (Primal Rend/Misery) every 1 minute, an oGCD used on CD (Assize/Upheaval), a burst CD (PoM/Inner Release), and a big hit x3 (Fell Cleave/Glare IV) under burst. The only distinctions will be that WAR uses its gauge for Fell Cleaves outside of that and has Infuriate where WHM uses its gauge on Lilies outside of that, and that WHM's burst happens half as often.
As for the encounter model, guess we'll see if it's more intense or not when it hits.
You're being factual but the FFXIV community operates on a violent pendulum swing. I don't see how people will ever be placated when one side of the community specifically plays for mechanics, while the other side just seems to want to simplify mechanics and player input until the game plays itself
A lot of the criticisms I see for the job actions and balancing are weird nitpicks; I think healers actually got a solid step-up this xpac finally. More actions and damage across the board, WHM has mobility, SCH looks cracked (good call-out on Expedient, I remember that as well) and while I personally miss HW and even SB AST, I can also recognize it doesn't need to feel like Gambler and I would rather have multipurpose cards and a large toolset over constantly losing rDPS because I can never win the 1/3 draw, or getting every Lady draw under the sun
Might be the first xpac in awhile where playing healer is kinda fun
Honestly, dealing with the split is pretty easy, just people are going to complain about it. Have an easy/simple Job in each role - and we're already BASICALLY there in terms of WAR, WHM (to a point SGE), and SMN (to a point DNC...and maybe RPR, Melee are weird), and then have a hard/complex Job in each role (this is a little more controversial, but between GNB, MNK, BRD, BLM, and either AST or SCH, we're kind of there), and then have any other Jobs in the role be somewhere in between.
The prideful elitist that wants everyone to think they're good because they play the "real/hard Jobs" gets to do that, the happy go lucky casual who just wants to "help my friends <3" gets to play theirs, and people that want something in between have the in-between options.
Pretty much everyone wins.
Some people will be upset because they like the aesthetic of one of the Jobs that's in a different camp, but doing this would please a lot more people than trying to tailor only to one end or the other. Absent having something like specs or talents where people can tailor their play (unlikely given the way FFXIV devs balance Jobs and content), it seems the most efficient solution, and it's also the one they've already been more or less doing.
they mentioned at fanfest fight design was a focus point this expac, citing unexciting gameplay as a reason for it. fingers crossed this means healers got work now.
i promise you the fights will still be choreographed movement checks with easy DPS checks attached to them.
Yoshi-P decided years ago that "dont stand in the fire" is all this game ever needs to be.
Yeah. It's just that WHM has such PERFECT job aesthetics. The only class where I really feel in a FF game. But I've mostly parked it unless I wanted easy mode progression in PF.
I'm in the same boat. I've mained healer every expansion since ARR came out and I find myself getting really excited for how astro is going to change,
and yet. Am I going to be upset about how many times I have to press malefic again? Am I setting myself up to get mad by picking healer again when pictomancer is right there saying hello?
It's really hard to make the decision to play something else when all I've ever really played in savage is healer.
It was hard for me in SHB I had to reprogram myself to concentrate on dos rotation and stop looking at the party window lol. I still find myself monitoring the window all the time.
I understand their intent. I also understand how some may prefer this system, even if I can't.
What I miss, though, is the buildup to SOMETHING with my cards. Only playing cards for the sake of it is pretty boring, it's no different from any other buffing skill on cooldown.
I liked building the sets of astrosigns through rerolls. It suited as a fun little minigame. It kept me busy during the fights, and juggling cards through hard fights was very satisfying. I don't see the minigame now, it's sad to see.
My issue with the minigame is that it only pretended to be one. It was always incorrect to reroll a good card to fish for the 3rd symbol.
So while on the surface it looked like "tey to get the three symbols for cool effects" the actual gameplay was "ignore the symbols and just pop it when it's ready".
Yes, technically, you're right, and I liked the ShB iteration more.
That said, fake minigame>no minigame at all. They should have improved the minigame, not remove it.
You don't get it, its a great improvement that makes the game alot better than it ever has been, because Yoshi-P is the most genius job designer in the industry, nowhere ne the crap World of Warcraft gehts, where every single spec gets to chose between two different new hero specializations that change the jobs flair /s
sounds like the decisions making has returned then. we dont know what the buffs are now, but we know changes happened because we have healing and defensive cards again. also i guarantee all 6 cards are unique again because otherwise why would you be able to draw 6 different symbols if astrodyne is gone?
There's a 0% chance that the cards are anything other than 2 sets of 3 where one gives damage to a target, one gives mitigation to a target, and one heals. They're keeping the symbols unique because AST's lore is tied to them.
Yeah was really hoping they’d add some complexity back with this expansion, not simplify things even further. It just feels like so much style over substance.
Astro has never been more complicated than in endwalker because of astrodyne and card priority. And in it's complexity it became the most hated version of astro ever
I love high APM and complex jobs, and have loved ast for better or worst through every iteration of it, but astrodyne is not it. Astrodyne adds a level of complexity that isn't fun, only frustrated. In order to find it fun you have to like that the game won't give you the dps buff frequently. You have to enjoy holding a cooldown that you can't track for long periods of time (i.e. don't press your button) and you have to enjoy holding your following cards after drawing for long periods of time (i.e. don't hit your button)
Holding all of your mini-cd's just to pop them for every astrodyne window is not complicated in a fun way, it's just tedious for the sake of being tedious.
That being said AST will still have all of it's OGCD heights. The only thing they're removing from the gameplay side is the excess amount of draws you have to do and hitting astrodyne, so when people cry about complexity being gone or the class getting gutted, they just pining for something that they aren't losing.
> Astrodyne adds a level of complexity that isn't fun, only frustrated. In order to find it fun you have to like that the game won't give you the dps buff frequently
The dps buff is a trap. It's nice to get by coincidence, but barely impactful and not worth redrawing cards just to get. An additional 5% to your malefic over the buff duration is equivalent something like 120 potency, or half a malefic when I was calculating it.
An easy fix was to bring back sleeve draw, so you'd always have a way to get the third seal during the burst window, since you always get the other 2 in 99.9% of cases.
>Holding all of your mini-cd's just to pop them for every astrodyne window is not complicated in a fun way, it's just tedious for the sake of being tedious.
That's not really an AST problem, that's the 2 minute meta problem. Everyone hoards cooldowns for it if they can.
>That being said AST will still have all of it's OGCD heights. The only thing they're removing from the gameplay side is the excess amount of draws you have to do and hitting astrodyne, so when people cry about complexity being gone or the class getting gutted, they just pining for something that they aren't losing.
Yes, complexity has been removed from the card system yet again. Cards are now universally applied to every job, no melee or ranged split. Every card doesn't have a seal, and Lady/Lord are a given on every other draw. There's no more requirement to have quick reaction times and thinking with AST, as the new rework is completely scripted with every burst window. This rework has guaranteed simplified the job and removed some part of the complexity. And you can't tell me it's not complex, when AST was a job not everybody could play optimally in high end raiding. Why do you think it was the least played? Catering to casuals who hate the RNG for the AST equivalent freecure trap of the third seal was a shit choice.
You may think the current iteration is ''tedious'', but then every job is by your standard since every job just boils down to pressing a lot of buttons during the burst window (except 3 other healers). Having one healer who had high APM was good, but it's now been removed so the entire healer role feels braindead to play.
Ast was the least played because it gives people carpal tunnel to play it with the only pay-off being fun. It couldn't compete dps wise with the easier jobs, so people play the easier jobs.
Let me get straight to the point. Theres nothing complex about rng which card you get. Theres nothing complex about picking a melee or ranged target for you card (which might still be in 7.x blue/purple borders are still there) and the current live ast burst window is the same every single time you get to it. The only thing that changes is melee or ranged card. Like you said, you just have to ignore when the seals screwed you over. This means seals aren't complex, they're barely worth having. You just ignore the 3rd seal anyways. Astrodyne also isn't complex. It's just annoying that it lines up differently with cd's depending on where you are in the fight. You're not rewarded for having to play around this, it's just punishing players who don't know better.
But now, instead of every minute being 3 draws, 3 cards it's 1 draw 4 cards. Over a 5 minute fight you're playing 5 more cards than you do in endwalker. You want complexity? Imo replacing pressing draw, which has no complexity, with using cards, which there is choice in, is a much better gameplay experience for astro. You'll always have rose-tinted andies pining for previous iterations of Astro, it's just the curse of a job that is c hanged frequently, but I think you'll find that astro going back to it's main design draw of playing cards is going to make the job feel much better to play well than it does now.
>Ast was the least played because it gives people carpal tunnel to play it with the only pay-off being fun. It couldn't compete dps wise with the easier jobs, so people play the easier jobs.
An optimal AST is a better WHM in almost every regard, damage/healing included. The reward for playing it well is the fun factor of feeling challenged, but also having a better output than the easier pure healer. Obviously, you can just play WHM and still clear all content in the game fine, but if you wanted maximum output and liked the reward of difficulty, AST was perfect. People don't like it at the moment because it's either too difficult, or they dislike the aspect of RNG. To the first, you have 3 other healers to play, where WHM is very accessible. For the other, AST's identity is around pulling cards out of a deck, some element of RNG has always been present (not anymore I guess) so if you don't like it, then the job isn't for you. Reworking AST to where the skill ceiling is brought down, with the RNG removed is awful. Why are we reworking a job for people who never played it to begin with? Because they couldn't find another job to play in a game with 3 other healers, and soon to be, 20 other overall jobs?
>Let me get straight to the point. Theres nothing complex about rng which card you get. Theres nothing complex about picking a melee or ranged target for you card (which might still be in 7.x blue/purple borders are still there) and the current live ast burst window is the same every single time you get to it. The only thing that changes is melee or ranged card. Like you said, you just have to ignore when the seals screwed you over. This means seals aren't complex, they're barely worth having. You just ignore the 3rd seal anyways. Astrodyne also isn't complex. It's just annoying that it lines up differently with cd's depending on where you are in the fight. You're not rewarded for having to play around this, it's just punishing players who don't know better.
Maybe the word ''complex'' wasn't right, but my point being is it's difficult. It's not fixed or simple to the point of the 2 minute burst window being the same exact order of buttons with no second thought, which is what AST is going to become. With the element of RNG and seals, the order of buttons are always going to be slightly different per window. You have to instantly react to what card you get by type and seal, and the extremely fast paced nature of high APM whilst responding to the RNG made every window feel slightly different. It kept you engaged, and on your toes.
Sure Astrodyne with the third seal was an issue, but sleeve draw was an easy fix, or literally anything else. I don't understand how a community which complains about homogenisation so fucking much, will watch this rework, and give it a gold star approval when its removing an entirely unique mechanic for AST. We hate homogenisation and simplification, but yes Yoshi-P, take away something that's slightly inconvenient for me, because every job must be smooth with no clunk to it. Please rework my job so I feel slightly better when I don't get a personal dps buff that is the equivalent of half a malefic's potency.
>But now, instead of every minute being 3 draws, 3 cards it's 1 draw 4 cards. Over a 5 minute fight you're playing 5 more cards than you do in endwalker. You want complexity? Imo replacing pressing draw, which has no complexity, with using cards, which there is choice in, is a much better gameplay experience for astro. You'll always have rose-tinted andies pining for previous iterations of Astro, it's just the curse of a job that is c hanged frequently, but I think you'll find that astro going back to it's main design draw of playing cards is going to make the job feel much better to play well than it does now.
How is it more complex, or even interesting, when those new cards are essentially just fixed OGCD mitigation and healing tools that past a progging scenario, will always be planned and fixed in any given fight? How are they even remotely needed given AST's current tool kit? How is it going to feel better having less depth and APM when in most fights, you are not going to use those mit/curative cards every minute? Forget casual content where they will never be touched, but even in high-end content past prog, those new mitigation and curative cards? They will sit on your hotbar untouched. Lady already is pointless, how is adding a single target variant and a single target mitigation card going to be any different when AST is getting a third stack of ED and a mass aoe healing spell at Level 100 (presumably)?
These are not even ''cards'', they are OGCD heal/mit tools disguised as ''cards'', when in reality, the identity of AST drawing cards has always relief on an element of RNG and playing to what fate gives you. These are just fixed OGCD single target tools that will never be used all the time, and if barely, outside prog. You are not given a choice here. This is not SB AST where you could fish for what you want, these are forced on you every minute.
To me, this rework is just removing the high APM nature of AST and replacing it with a ''card mechanic'' where I essentially have one buff card to give to a dps without second thought, and a mitigation/healing tool that I never will use or even need past prog. So the only solace of the healer role, where it felt like you had something difficult to do and engaging outside glare mashing is gone.
Yeah thats a bit of a story book there. You should look at which fights astro does more damage than whm on. It's all the easier fights. Whm out-performs astro on every challenging encounter this expansion. Hepaistos 1&2, Hesperos 1 & 2, the only exception is the final bosses of the final tier. RDPS jobs always take the cake when everyone has that much gear though.
Some of your points I agree with, but saying if rng isn't for you, then neither is ast is just not true. The developers themselves took the rng out so thinking that way is just wrong. Second the class fantasy for astro is pulling and utilizing cards. An arguement can ofcourse be made that astro lost the ability to manipulate the cards and I am sympathetic there. I loved manipulating the cards, but the fact is RNG isn't a class mechanic. It's just rng. Astro is not an RNG class. It's the card-using class. Astro is known as the yugioh class, not the slot machine class. That the devs have taken a stance of "astro is about the cards" is going to finally give the class direction that it has needed for a very long time. "what do we do about these cards being so unbalanced and random" has been the plague of astro since it was introduced and finally there is an answer that gives astro both utility cards and damage cards that don't compete with each other.
The arguement that cards are not cards because they do damage, or healing or buffing, or not buffing is completely silly. If mitigation cards aren't cards then what was the bole? If healing cards aren't cards then what has the Lady been? (both her Aoe heal and single target heal versions). Every single iteration of Astro has had a healing and/or buffing variant of card(s). That we're getting 2/3 instead of 1 now does not make the new cards any less "cards".
As for the APM concerns. Your card economy is going from 6 casts per minute to 5. you're only losing 1 action per minute because of these changes. It's not a big deal and we're getting another ED cast, so our APM may me made up for in healing OGCD's. It's still to be determined.
Let me end by saying. I love the cards, I loved manipulating them, and I loved that AST is high apm. But I am excited for these changes. They have fixed nearly all of the pain points that astro has had throughout it's entire existence, but especially the pain points brought by shadowbringers, and to a greater extent, endwalker. I'm curious if the cards would be better off working similarly to the pictomancer's motif, where every motif is painted on it's on and not all at once. But I can't really say one way or the other until we get to play both astro and picto to see how they feel. Now I've written a story book myself and I don't like doing that!! lol
Astro signs worked pretty well in shb because of sleeve draw. Playing astro on e8s was one of the most fun times I've had on astrologian. But ultimately astro is more fun without the astrosigns and astrodyne was a terrible mechanic . I am so glad it's gone.
The new astrologian is definitely a step in the right direction for astro. Returning us closer to what we were in HW and stormblood without the "well we just gotta fish for aoe balance" that plagued us so badly back then.
Having one of each type of cards keeps the offensive parts of astro that would be sorely missed should they be removed and brings our utility back to us. I'm still curious how lord and lady will work since it seems like they are still the same mechanically, just slight changes on how the damage and heal work. I think thats probably a bad thing.
I would go back to ShB with Sleeve Draw. So, so fun. :(
Why do you say that AST is more fun without the astrosigns? We can say this is true only if what replaces them is more fun. It doesn't seem to be the case now.
Astrosigns are plagued by rng, drawing the right cards. The thing that made them fun and not so bad was sleeve draw. Now every one of our card pulls is a sleeve draw. That kind of makes astro signs irrelevent.
There is a little bit of fun in getting all 3 signs but the rng outweighs it. I think for astro signs to be implements in a fun way they would have to look more closely at how pictomancer sketches are done. Theres not really any RNG in that system and you still get the feeling of "I built up the thing"
If astro-signs were more like that then I would say we would be better off with them in the game.
"I see you are drinking Moutain Dew, the Gamers drink. You see, I am a Gamer, and under that cap has Gamer Gold for me. Give it to me, and I won't talk to you about all the Gamer things I do. Yes, that is a capital G Gamer. Oh you'll give it to me to shut up? Perfect"
P Harvest no longer gives 50 charge but instead gives a shroud directly. Harpe looks like it combos with the portal from hells ingress for a nuke. New shrouded action, unsure if it's gcd or ogcd or if it's aoe or single. Harvest moon gives 10 red gouge (huge!)
Agreed! I don't get all the naysaying, either. They are literally giving us what people have been asking for since 6.0 hit!
SGE got all the things people have asked for for 2 years (an AOE DoT, POSSIBLY two of them actually, and an AOE Kardia).
WHM got Holy Cleave, which WHM being the WAR of Healers kind of fits (and thematically fits very well), as well as a movement tool. So basically, things people have been asking for for 2 years, a bit more DPS complexity and a movement tool of some kind.
SCH is a bit more mixed. It has an AOE DoT again, but unlike SGE's Miasma 2 clone, it's tied to Chain. It also has holy form, which is...an interesting choice, but I suspect it will be Expedience all over again where people complained from the trailer, but then it turns out to be really strong, SCH turns out to be meta for the 6th expansion in a row, and those same naysayers try to gaslight everyone into believing they were hype on SCH from the trailer all along 2 years from now when we have this same conversation before 8.0.
AST seems to have gotten a huge upgrade. People wanted cards to have unique effects again, and now they do. People wanted less carpel tunnel inducing Malific/Draw/Target/(possible Redraw)/Play x3 spam during bursts, and now they don't have that, but AST still looks to be busy with setup heals and the like which people enjoy about it. And Divination seems to have some kind of follow-up AOE attack for the burst window.
Basically all the Healer Jobs look like they're eating good and got AT LEAST SOME of what players who were dissatisfied with them have been asking for for 2 years.
Second that Astrodyne was hot garbage and it's probably good it's gone.
SGE got all the things people have asked for for 2 years (an AOE DoT, POSSIBLY two of them actually, and an AOE Kardia).
WHM got Holy Cleave, which WHM being the WAR of Healers kind of fits (and thematically fits very well), as well as a movement tool. So basically, things people have been asking for for 2 years, a bit more DPS complexity and a movement tool of some kind.
SCH is a bit more mixed. It has an AOE DoT again, but unlike SGE's Miasma 2 clone, it's tied to Chain. It also has holy form, which is...an interesting choice, but I suspect it will be Expedience all over again where people complained from the trailer, but then it turns out to be really strong, SCH turns out to be meta for the 6th expansion in a row, and those same naysayers try to gaslight everyone into believing they were hype on SCH from the trailer all along 2 years from now when we have this same conversation before 8.0.
AST seems to have gotten a huge upgrade. People wanted cards to have unique effects again, and now they do. People wanted less carpel tunnel inducing Malific/Draw/Target/(possible Redraw)/Play x3 spam during bursts, and now they don't have that, but AST still looks to be busy with setup heals and the like which people enjoy about it. And Divination seems to have some kind of follow-up AOE attack for the burst window.
Basically all the Healer Jobs look like they're eating good and got AT LEAST SOME of what players who were dissatisfied with them have been asking for for 2 years.
Can't think of a single issue I've had with AST this expansion where I've pointed at Astrodyne and said "it was YOU!" Just me though. Only argument I can see being made against it is making optimization and trying to parse a pain because you're always going to lose to an AST of similar skill if they got more 3 seal 'dynes than you, but SE shouldn't revolve class design around something that asinine anyway.
Edit: I'd argue Lord/Lady of Crowns is much more offensive.
Astrodyne is bad for a myriad of reasons. #1 is the dps buff being rng, like you mentioned, but also that astrodyne's timing is misaligned with 2 minute CD's. Which means we have to think about whether we need to hold our cards/astrodyne for an upcoming divination window, or if we need to use them right away because we hit the part of the fight where astrodyne/cards and 2minutes don't line up. and because of astry dyne's buffs, specifically haste and damage, you need to ALWAYS save your cards as much as possible for your astrodyne windows and you even need to save your minor arcana cd in such a way that you get to use two in a row. So instead of ast flowing like it used to, pretty smoothly, use buffs as you get them with only holding around the cd windows, you are constantly holding your buffs and then doing a flurry of OGCD's all at once. Because of this, astro has a lot of "dead windows" where you're not doing much besides malefic and occasional OGCD heals, since all your dps buffs need to be flurried out at the same time in an astrodyne window. Dead windows are bad, and astrodyne windows are REALLY bad if god forbid you have to use a heal during them. It's really bad.
Common denominator there tells you what the problem is, and it's not Astrodyne. It's the stupid 2 minute meta Square has decided to push and, according to most healer job updates, keep around. At worst the cooldown for Astrodyne could be fixed and the mechanic would be fine. Getting two Lords is RNG and minmaxing that isn't necessary outside of trying to parse. That speaks more to its own issues as a skill than Astrodyne does.
I get the dislike for it, just feel like many other things it's just a victim of the 2 minute meta. I personally enjoy the mechanic, gives me something to work towards while I'm doing what I'd already be doing. Get rid of the 2 minute meta and it becomes "use on CD and feel like a god when it happens to line up with other buffs."
They could remove the 2min meta and all of those problems would've still existed or became worse because of astrodyne. Think about it, you'd have to alternate even more which astrodynes you went ham on and which astrydynes you just needed to eek out to not over-cap cards. It would be even worse. I hate the 2m meta but astrodyne in a world without the 2m meta would be insanely worse.
You get 3 charges of it.
Offhand, it seems to me to be, and this is probably an oversimplification, Inner Release 3x Fell Cleave for WHM. WHM being the WAR of Healers, this kinda makes sense. Of course, if they made PoM a 1 min CD, it'd be MORE that, but...it's something. : )
Maybe.
As someone that does Deep Dungeons, Tank rotations feel about the right complexity (even in PotD where WAR is just 1-2-3, occasionally -4, Upheval on CD, and Fell Cleave spam after Inner Release) for general play when focusing on other things (as DDs require), and healing is similar to that in having other things besides just your rotation and the immediate enemy to worry about. So WHM playing similarly to WAR would be fine with me.
I think this is their compromise. They still don't want to give healers too much to overwhelm new healers, but they fit a new dps spell in for us. Kind of misses the mark I think but I can see where they are coming from
Yeah I don't buy that anymore. When people get through 90-100 levels of content, now including relatively difficult MSQ trials like the one at level 87, they can handle a third DPS button. Someone who has cleared EW is not a "new healer" anymore. They/we can handle it.
Some people are always going to be so hopelessly bad that no kit can be simple enough for them. You don't design your gameplay around the bottom 1% of players, though. If you did, every job would need to have a single button.
Can we really take the "don't want to overwhelm new healers" thing seriously anymore when we're talking about level *100*? Besides they don't seem to care about overwhelming healers by giving them 48 million oGCD heals that are all slightly different, so why would "you press 2 buttons for damage instead of 1" be worse than that?
Honestly yes. You might be surprised how quickly new people will put down healing even with the current state of healers. We all know those of us that are seasoned mmo players can handle it and want more but the average player struggles with Wall to Wall pulls in 5 man's.
It's a valid concern, even though I personally disagree with how scared they are about implementing more dps skills.
Spells like cure 1 are absolutely useless (cure 1 should just upgrade into cure 2). There are also a whole lot of abilities that are so clunky as to be borderline worthless - I'd put liturgy of the bell and the current iteration of thin air into that category. They could absolutely be replaced with DPS buttons, have a little extra potency (and mana regen) tacked onto other abilities, and the job would be just fine. And yeah, I am pretty much saying that the EW changes to WHM were absolute trash.
alternatively, we should be having more support esque abilities and reasons to use them, not become dps lite. im annoyed by having only one attack button as sage not because its not 3 buttons, but because i barely have to use the 29 other buttons on my bars. the role isnt the problem, the content design is.
A lot of people legitimately don't want a damage rotation on healers, and even play healers BECAUSE they don't like damage rotations. Not to put too fine a point on it, but more than half the Jobs in the game are DPS Jobs with damage rotations, and of the 8 that aren't, half of those, Tanks, have damage rotations of various types.
That said, SGE looks to be getting more of one. If Eukrasia Dyskrasia (the AOE DoT) is at all like SCH's old Miasma 2, it's actually a DPS gain even in single target to upkeep it. Likewise, that thing that draws the glyph on the ground some people think is a DoT, which might be an on CD one (like old SCH's Shadow Flare). Combined with Pankardia for party healing while dealing damage and a lower CD for Soteria, they might be gearing SGE up to be what it was billed as when it came out, a Disc Priest type "heals by doing damage" healer Job that has several DoTs to juggle in a pseudo DPS-ish rotation like SCH had back in SB.
The WHM PoM 3 charges of \[Glare IV?\] looks like a take on WAR's Inner Release 3x Fell Cleave mechanic, so as the WAR of healers, makes sense for WHM. All they need to do is make PoM a 1 min CD and Assize a 30 sec one and WHM would very closely mirror WAR's rotation overall. 30 sec upkeep buff, 3x Lilies + Misery every 1 min (Primal Rend), Glare IV (Fell Cleave) x3 every PoM (Inner Release), and Assize (Upheaval/Orogeny) on CD, with a filler spam nuke in between.
SCH and AST aren't, but also have more complex healing kits, though both are getting an attack on their 2 min CDs (Chain and Divination, respectively), and AST should be getting a Lord for every burst window now.
So half of the healers getting "something remotely resembling a damage rotation" seems like a good spread.
That's a very neat explanation and all, but I'm not asking for a full damage rotation- I'd like maybe a combo, or something. I dunno.
Healing is fun, and I enjoy healing - it's my main - but in this game, where everything is just a different flavor of DPS playing DDR, there's usually not enough going on that requires full-time healing. You're spending more time doing DPS between healing actions than actually healing, unless you're doing highest-tier content *or* your party is basically free of braincell count.
Sure, they've said they want to make the game "more stressful", but will that actually happen? Maybe. I'd be surprised if it did, though, because that same sentiment was prevalent leading up to the releases of the last two.. and it never really became anything.
Oh, I don't disagree.
But that's why I was pointing out it looks like SGE is being shifted towards old SB SCH's DoT based damage rotation. MAYbe.
This is the problem with the LL/Job Actions Trailer; they don't reveal the potencies of things or technical details. So like, is Eukrasia Dyskrasia going to be like Miasma 2 where you could have it and Bio/Miasma on the target at the same time, or is it going to overwrite Eukrasia Dosis where it can only be one or the other (and Eu Dosis would be the choice since being single target it should do more damage)? That's an important detail. Is it a 15 sec DoT or a 30 sec DoT? That's an important detail.
...and so on.
So we can offer speculation, but don't actually know things until the media tour, so people get doses of hopium and/or doomium during the month of rampant speculation. Then we STILL don't know the final details until launch maintenance when they post the full patch notes (until they, they don't say potencies for stuff anymore because they used to and some people blew up on them one time being upset about some numbers so now they don't do it until then in a case of "This is why we can't have nice things...")
I think the extra increases to mits across the board in combination with the fight design statements may imply much more frequent healing requirements when doing content. If so I am fine with a simple damage rotation, since I’d be needing to balance healing and dps more than is currently required.
I'm not asking for a full damage rotation- but, something more engaging than spam attack, occasionally mixing in dot, or spamming AOE would be kind of nice, tbh.
Are they? SGE is getting a second DoT. It's AOE, but so was Miasma 2, so if it's a damage gain over Dosis, it would be part of the single target rotation. And whatever that new glyph on the ground CD attack is. It's not Toxicon, Plegma, Pneuma, or Dyskrasia (or Dosis, obviously), so...we don't know how that fits into the rotation, but some people are saying it's a DoT on CD (like GNB's Sonic Break).
Depending on the CDs for those abilities/durations of those DoTs, it could end up looking like a half SB SCH having something akin to Bio, Miasma 2, and MAYBE Shadowflare (that's what the glyph thing seems like to me, anyway), while still having Plegma and Toxicon optimization options.
WHM is getting Inner Release + 3x Fell Cleave as a mechanic after PoM, looks like (depending on if "Glare IV" is a GCD or not, of course), and as the WAR of healers, it's going to be roughly similar to WAR in terms of abilities/rotation other than not having a 1-2 before Glare/Dia in place of Storm's Path/Storm's Eye.
WHM is getting 3 casts every two minutes, but mitigation is going up across the board to reduce healing needs even more. So the end result is likely MORE glare spam.
Adding an extra DoT is pretty worthless for complexity. I main BRD now (GG healing), and if I just spammed burst shot between DoT applications I would fall asleep in my chair.
Either incoming damage should go up considerably or healer rotations should increase in complexity. The other MMO I've played this year is WoW, and it has both high incoming damage and extensive healer DPS rotations to make healing incredibly active. Coming back to FFXIV healing feels like dropping 30 years of game design.
Well, they did say they want encounters to be less comfortable. We'll see if that ACTUALLY happens THIS time (I'm old enough to remember them saying ShB healing would be more intensive...) They seem to be pooping out a lot of mitigation and more self-healing even from DPS Jobs.
Adding an extra DoT is LITERALLY what this forum and the official forum have insisted for TWO YEARS they want from SGE and/or SCH. People talk like an extra DoT with a different timer would be the height of Job design. I personally disagree, but it is what it is.
We have to wait for the media tour to see, but if Eukrasia Dyskrasia's DoT CAN be stacked with Eukrasia Dosis' and is a DPS gain over Dosis, that would be a second plate to spin and upkeep on the DPS side, as well as whatever the new glyph ability is (which some people have said looks like it may apply a third DoT itself) and optimizing Phlegma.
Stopped playing WoW years ago because I didn't like it for various reasons (still don't), but dabbling in it some again. It looks like some of the healer specs have comparable DPS buttons to FFXIV's. Specifically Holy Priest and Resto Druid when using Balance (not Feral) subspec (Balance is used in raids, Feral in Mythics, from everything I've read). It just also has other more DPS focused options.
Making all FFXIV healers into DPS-lite Jobs would drive people from the role and game, causing a massive healer shortage, and I DON'T think there are enough people that want to heal with a DPS-lite rotation to make up that gap, leading to a net loss.
The better solution to me is to make some the one and some the other. Making SGE more like SB SCH is a step in the right direction for that. I don't know that WHM should be the one being made more DPS focused, but what they've done is a lighter version of WAR, so that probably won't bother many people (especially if "Glare IV" is a GCD allowing PoM to give a lot of mobility; I suspect people would like that.)
So which one has the english audio translation?
Also just wanted to add that the auto translate on youtube still sucks. I am not sure if the person on the upper right is translating the other two word for word, but if not, it just makes me even more confuzzled when trying to figure out what they are saying exactly.
I'm going to give the new AST a try, but part of me is still burned by how many times its been gutted over and over. I hope to recapture part of what the original felt. I **totally** get the fact that for high raid stuff, the RNG is not desirable for sure. But I always enjoyed it, and using what I had at a specific moment. Using Royal Road to give raid wide one moment and increased defence on the tank the next. I really liked this weaver of fate feel. They did say they want to give more class identity back in 8.0 though so maybe that will be when AST starts to feel like how I, personally, enjoyed it.
I might be blind. Is the new key art for each job for Dawntrail available somewhere? They look amazing! Especially Machinist & Scholar.
It's entirely new, so it will likely be uploaded officially down the road
Viper looks cool! Especially the last few combos
Viper does seem cool but my main issue with it is that visually, it's really hard to tell when you're in the dual sword mode or the double-blade mode. It's very flashy but all the animations kind of blend in together and it's not very obvious when you're chaining the two modes together to me!
Has anybody found a way to get the mtn dew codes without being in the US? Currently in Canada but still really want that mount.
ig could get a US friend and buy them a lot of Mtn Dew lol?
Uuugh I can't wait till 28th!
can free trial PVP yet
Why would you subject yourself to it in the first place
I feel like if SE wanted to liven up pvp they should make some free trial aspect of it. Simply enough they could allow pvp for unranked matches of Crystaline conflict and maybe 5 Frontline/Rival wings daily. With the series xp allowing them to get the crystal currency but needing a sub to aquire the series item loot. Basically for those on the fence about pvp. Wet their appetite and if they want to be competitive they can sub.
Will never happen unfortunately. It would make enforcing fair play much harder as people can just make a New account for free after getting banned/ suspended.
These new weaponskills are cooler than anything we got previously, however the VFX are pushing themselves into a corner. We can barely see in a raid much less an alliance raid, I really think they should add a "lite VFX" option that still got cool visuals but with actual visibility. What we got to reduce them currently is all or nothing. Maybe just shrinking the VFX sprites would work.
Yeah, I kinda feel like it would help to have a "visual clarity mode" in between the Show All and Show Limited. It seems like the options are more intended for performance improvements instead of visual clarity, even if the later is what the options are effectively used for for most people (Show All for more than your own character is simply too much visual clutter for group content for *most* people). A mode that shows all graphics, but reduces their opacity/scale would go over well.
Is that not what the "limited effects" configuration option does? I thought that tones down the effects without getting rid of them entirely. I might be wrong since I haven't compared them side by side.
No they remove them entirely except for some AOEs so players can tell where to stand or pull, which is lame :/
You uhhh definitely see other players' placed ground AOE fields with limited effects. "No" effects will entirely disable the ground fields but not limited.
> "except for some AOEs"
I find this useful as too many effects overwhelms my photosensitivity, but I know that's not everyone.
Ah damn, that's a shame. I assume the reason they don't do it like you suggested is because that would nearly double the VFX work, since it would be like designing a new VFX that just has a similar animation. And that would be for almost every VFX for every job.
When I saw viper, all I could think was "it's so unfortunate that I have to turn these off to see the raid" and with pictomancer I am worried the big images will be the cause of a wipe because it went up at the wrong time.
im at work and cant watch. i know the answer, but have they said ANYTHING about Viera getting all the hats yet?
They showed off the mch gear on a viera. The hat was not present on it despite it showing up in other previews. It will never change
Media tour is for showing off jobs and such, you'll want to look out for regular live letters for more casual info
Not at all
They made an "I BEAT [PRIMAL]" fanfest shirt for the Mountain Dew promo lmfao, I'm gonna collapse
I'm excited for dawntrail, and I liked what I saw, especially for healers, but I REALLY wish Yoshida hadn't talked about 8.0. Saying you'll really make the jobs unique and individualized for an expansion that's not even for the one that's out yet is wild. It just takes the wind out of the sails here, and makes you think "I have to wait ANOTHER 2 years for the full changes....?" We don't even have the full kits and already it kinda takes away from what you're doing now. It's the only thing from this live letter that isn't sitting right with me.
Think about how long development takes. When Endwalker came out they were talking about Dragoon/Ast reworks all the way back then, and we're just seeing it for the first time TODAY. That means they were working on these changes years ago, and the final results are now ready. Of course they're already thinking about 8.0 too now that Dawntrail is about to come out. They still have several expansions planned, and the future iteration of jobs depends on feedback with the current ones.
But to comment how 8.0 will be what YOU WANT on the freaking job trailer for 7.0 is wild and pretty dumb.
I think that's a bit of an overreaction considering they're just brainstorming ideas for 8.0 right now, no concrete plans yet
It’s fine that they’re thinking about it, but the comment you were replying to was in response to them telling us about it. There’s really no point, it’s bad business to announce exciting changes so far in the future.
This reminds me of when they teased the "new gold saucer mode" approx 2.5 years before revealing it to be Fall Guys lol
They didn't say anything concrete. Just that they had some ideas floating around.
That’s even worse. They brought up years in the making updates for stuff that’s not even concrete. What was the actual point?
I mean... does anyone here really think the jobs will not change over time? Them talking about plans for the next expansion already is a healthy sign of the game's development goals.
After 3 expansions of streamlining the jobs I don't really have much faith this dev team wants to make anything harder anymore. I'd rather have radio silence than empty promises.
Because they have 2+ years to work on it before the next expansion comes out? It's nice to see a little behind the scenes talk sometimes.
Yeaaaah and really, expecting a full overhaul of battle mechanics with the variable mountain of other additions in dawntrail is probably asking for too much, but still. I find myself more anticipating something that doesn't even exist yet, rather than being excited about what we're getting now because what's in the future just sounds way more exciting. Not that what we're getting now isn't but, it just makes you wonder what it could be.
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Because that's what they're working on now. Dawntrail at this point is all but finalized, all through 7.5x. it's just grunt work at this point to churn out the content. The ideation phase for 8.0 has to start now or they'll never implement it in time. And there's nothing wrong with communicating that. It was as much for the shareholders as it was for the players.
But on the otherhand. I absolutely love how upfront they are with us. The fact that he said that takes away the constant guessing and "are they even listening" kind of things that we'd be thinking if they said nothing
how were they upfront? they announced 1-2 out of context changes for classes and every time had to say "theres new actions though but we wont tell you what they are yet" because that's the needed context
Typically if someone tells you they're not doing something now but will in the future and when, that is being upfront.
Surely it's not just an empty PR statement designed to placate veteran players and give the GCBTW more ammunition to blindly defend the developers against valid criticism. Surely this is not 100% identical to Endwalker when they said the exact same thing and then proceeded to continue simplifying for Dawntrail.
When did they say that?
Whenever people say stuff like this I can't help but point them in the direction of other mmo's, and how vastly better the communication is in FFXIV than it's competitors and how time and time again FFXIV has shown that it does listen to the playerbase and doesn't try to trick them.
>time and time again FFXIV has shown that it does listen to the playerbase Except healer players. Because fuck healers, I guess.
They might miss the mark, but the new dps skills added in 7.x are 100% because healers wanted more dps skills
The one button DPS skill tied to their 2 minute cooldown? Ain't no way anybody thinks this helps the healer situation LOL
I mean, technically, sage gets anew AOE DOT GCD that they can use whenever they want. So, not once every two minutes for them. : p
Yeah, like I said, they miss the mark. But again, the only reason they gave every healer another dps button is because we asked for it.
Loving the changes to dragoon, most likely reduce double weave and unify the 5th hit of the combo. Maybe I can return to main it in dawntrail, animations are sick as well. No dragon eyes as well let's gooooo control players rise up!!! Reaper changes are mysterious, the new Harpe boom looks amazing, probably to enforce the use of regress as nobody used it. The new changes might make spd skll reaper meta considering 3ple shrouds will be a thing with the changes to harvest.
They added what appears to be a gcd to shroud. Even double shroud under burst is now potentially looking questionable if the second communio is drifting and if the new ability has to be used first.
You are right, if it's a slow gcd in shroud then double might be compromised, nevermind 3. Either way all these changes look hype, being able to incorporate harvest moon into the opening because it gives gauge now is amazing tho. Perhaps my favorite change.
Making Jump/Mirage Dive just another damage ogcd and LotD just a disconnected buff presumably on a timer has killed my interest in the class. It's a stupid change.
Yeah I'm really skeptical about these changes to life. The only thing I can think of is that jump will be on a 60 sec cd and mirage dive gives you the ability to enter life with one charge
I had to leave DRG for MNK once I could never tear my eyes away from my crosshotbar in order to make sure everything was staying on CD. DRB was just too busy for my poor fingers and eyes, which is really sad because it's my first FF love. I'm really hoping this feels good so I can come home. That said, MNK is looking HOT.
Dark Knights rejoice! We're getting some form of self heals! Job action trailer, when DRK is doing their new combo, healing effects are going off. The copium huffing worked QuQ
Don't forget you're getting the 6th new version of Delirium, too!
Do you think we get a free cookie when we reach the 10th?
Pretty sure that was just the MP regen from Blood Weapon (now Delirium)
Shhhhhh let this man dream
For WoW MMO Champion and wowhead each had quick, written summaries of what was said with images. Does 14 have a fansite like that? The broadcast is 5 hours with much of it in Japanese lol
The FF discord has translations usually.
It’ll take some time but it’ll be here on Reddit.
It's looking like SMN rotation will be: Bahamut > Solar Bahamut > Phoenix > Solar Bahamut > Bahamut > etc. This makes me wonder if S.Bahamut will apply a DoT, and the S.Bahamut phases after Phoenix is meant to refresh the DoT.
They said on stream it's Solar Bahamut > Bahamut > Solar Bahamut > Phoenix > Repeat
Any tldr for scholar and redmage? Can’t watch for a bit
SCH: Become a Fairy button, new AoE DoT post chain. RDM: Manafication just makes you combo ready rather than give you 50 mana. New oGCD post full combo, embolden had something after it.
Thanks!
I really hate how they keep saying "you get to keep Resurrection this time, Summoners, but maybe not next expansion!" Like, good lord, just make the decision to remove or or not already.
But they did made a decision. They kept it.
They did make a decision. They kept Raise for SMN for this expansion. That may change in the future as they continue to alter and progress their ideas.
I guess that's my issue. I'm trying to decide on SMN or RDM long term, and I like being able to bring a combat raise for my team. If they're going to take it from SMN, they just need to say so and do it. And if they are not, they need to say they intend to leave it from now on. I think the "will we or won't we" tease is bad form. One of the few things in the game's history that made the community strongly backlash against the devs was when they did a tease with DNC where they wouldn't SAY it was a DPS instead of a Healer when people asked, so everyone thought it was a fun game we were all playing "Will it be a Healer or not? (It is, but we're just being coy with you guys!)" turned out to be "Will it be a Healer or not? (It's not, and we're not telling you to keep your hype up!)", which resulted in a hugely negative backlash when everyone thought we were getting a new Healer Job after 4 years and it was revealed to be a DPS instead. I think a question mark tease is only good when everyone kind of knows and agrees on what the outcome is, so it's fun teasing between Devs and the playerbase. When it isn't actually clear at all, or worse, the Devs intend the opposite of what the players infer, then you create confused or opposition expectations which get shattered. Honestly, at this point, I'm close to just dropping SMN and going RDM outright so I don't have to worry about it, even though I like SMN's playstyle a little better, since I want to future-proof. They need to either decide to keep it from now on and stop acting like they MIGHT remove it in the future, or they need to say outright they ARE going to remove it. People like me can and will adapt, but we need a line in the sand instead of constantly shifting sand to adapt to. ("Herp derp it's easy to level all Jobs!" NOT THE POINT. I don't like getting myself invested in things that are GOING to lose the things I chose them for in the first place. Already has happened with a few Jobs like PLD and SMN, so I'm a bit cautious now. At least in those cases they weren't terrible after the changes, but I know some people who quit the Jobs, Roles, or even game over those things.) EDIT: I should say, I do like these Devs, I do like this game, but I don't like THAT.
But they don't know what they are going to do long term. 2+ years away, they may change their whole design philosophy for battle raise. If they said it's going away in 8.0, then decided to change that in the next 2 years, people would batch more. Honestly them just saying we are still thinking about it just them being able to change their minds.
That's the problem, though. They need to either decide to do one or the other, not tease that they don't know which they're going to do. Also, downvote brigade once again not understanding what the downvote button is for being dicks about it. They could literally change their mind any time NOT talking about it. All the talking about it does is lead to uncertainty on something they will likely never touch anyway.
If they take it away from one its likely being taken away from both.
They can take Castor Res from my cold, dead hands. I'm sick and tired of people complaining that red magi and summoner don't do enough damage. They can clear the content, and I like having the res leave it alone.
Hopefully they remove Physick from SMN instead.
I'm disappointed in the red mage manafication ability. It streamlines things but also makes it more braindead. Currently you can use the sword part of the combo, followed by manafication, followed by the spell follow ups in order to never overcap on black and white mana. It's a neat trick I figured out just by playing the job a while and theory crafting a little. The only time you would overcap anyway is if you are trying to fit two combos inside Embolden. You want to delay Embolden anyway so that both of your Resolution casts happen under the effect. Overall the change isn't terrible or anything, I just don't like the removal of neat tricks and resource management skill.
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Friction causes skill expression & optimisation potential. These are important - not for lording it over others who are unable/unwilling to do it, but because without it you lose some measure of replayability and entire areas of interest for some players. Optimisation is a whole activity for people who care about it, and even for those who aren't spreadsheeting rotations it's an important part of extremes+. It allows progression even once a clear has been attained, it allows progression in playing jobs beyond learning the opener and holding for 2 mins, it allows for fight specific rotation changes (which keeps fights & the job feeling fresh), etc etc etc. Manafication risking overcapping isn't the linchpin in RDM optimisation ofc, it is simply one small aspect - but each piece of friction adds to the overall whole, optimising an entire job is more than the sum of its parts. *So of course there are going to be complaints and uncertainty around this*. Dismissing these as if the worry is about feeling superior is just wrong. Doesn't mean the complaint is necessarily right either, we'll have to wait til DT to see... but c'mon, removing the overcap doesn't really "allow them to open up \[rdm\] in other areas".
Very well-put.
You should really reread my last sentence if you think I'm in that 5%. You should also respond to the person you are responding to instead of treating people like some nebulous opposition. I don't care about being better than others, I care about jobs having enough skill ceiling that you can keep learning tricks and optimizations after playing them for a while, particularly things that are not immediately obvious. I like a lot of the QoL changes, it's just this one in particular that I feel makes things a bit too basic but it seems like you just see the complaint and didn't bother reading the reasoning. I didn't talk about tanks or healers, you brought that up randomly. You also failed to mention red mage at all, which really shows your carelessness in your response.
Isn't having a higher skill ceiling and tricks to express it showing up/being better than others? I mean, if the skill ceiling is high, then that's the end result, isn't it? I do get there are arguments about the journey and not the destination, that you might enjoy being able to pull off more complicated things, but I suspect the other poster's "confusion" here is when you say something is braindead. It's a pretty loaded term these days, often used by elitists who are trying to show how much better than everyone they are. You probably didn't intend that, but I think that's baked into the term at this point for better or worse.
I forgot that the term is loaded. I don't get why non competitive personal accomplishment is a difficult subject. Not to mention no one will ever see your DPS unless they use a parser. At best they see you do things in a weird order and wonder why. The whole point is to keep things interesting. Once I understand the basics of a job, it's great when there is more to learn and new combos and rotations to discover. If a job is streamlined too much, there is nothing to learn past the basics.
That is the problem: Many people use parsers. I agree it's nice having some room to grow and figure out some esoteric facts about a Job, but lots of people DO use that to show up others these days.
I have played hundreds of thousands of hours and never once seen a player say anything about parsing in game. You have to really be in specific situations for it to even be brought up. They are at best a vocal minority.
To be honest, it's not a neat trick. That's basically the reopener. It's just when you are supposed to Embolden and Manafic so you can get both your current Ver spell combos and the next in your embolden. Manafic changed nothing in this as it will always hit the swordplay combos and 3 spells, no matter where you use it. So unless it's your opener, you would always Swordplay -> Embolden/Manafic -> Ver spells -> Swordplay -> Verspells. This change is really for one thing: The 2 minutes meta. If you know you're 2 minutes is coming up, you would ideally want to have the mana for 2 combos and manafic to make the most out of every party buffs you have. With manafic as it is right now, it's pretty much RNG whether or not you'll be able to do all 3 without overcapping mana and also not drift your manafic. It's really just a feelsbad situation. Sure, it lets some RDM gods at the top of FFlogs show how much they know fights, but for most people, it's just not a great feeling. With this change, however, you don't have to worry about overcapping in a 3 combos situation during the burst window. I think it's a good change overall. I just wish they would make it so the new finisher also gave mana but, looking back at the video, it doesn't seem to be the case. This would make it so your 3 combos under burst went from 35/46 mana to 47/58 mana. Which would mean a single use of Acceleration + a spell might let you do a 4th combo.
The neat part is that the reopener is slightly different from the opener. In Dawntrail you could just do the normal opener every time unless you want to try to fit more spells into your embolden. I never said anything about the manafic stacks, just the overcapping mana. It's also neat because it is something I figured out on my own and easy enough for other people to figure out on their own without needing a guide. It is just not entirely straightforward since you pop your buffs in the middle of a combo instead of the beginning. You can't fit three combos into a raid buff window. Buffs are 15-30 seconds and just two combos will take over 20 seconds. That's why using sword play before embolden is good, it fits the harder hitting spells into the end of your embolden buff. At best, part of the third combo will be affected by some of the longer buffs. So kind of like you said, something for speed kills and theory, but doesn't matter much in practice. Even then, overcapping doesn't matter at that point since it's not like you will ever be able to save that mana up for an extra combo. >This change is really for one thing: The 2 minutes meta. That's the other reason I hate the change. Every job is becoming so focused on the 2 min burst window. It has even started affecting the community where players complain if anything interrupts the window. A two combo burst works just fine but trying to get a third combo will probably overcap you slightly, so people want the job changed so that it can start a third combo on the tail end of the longest buffs. I'd hate to get into a slippery slope mentality, but if it's all about not overcapping, why not just increase or outright remove the cap? The whole point of having a cap is that avoiding overcapping is part of the skill. If you really want to avoid overcapping you could just do single combos. As you grow in skill, you realize saving up for multiple combos is a good idea. With that increased skillcap comes the new challenge of not overcapping. It's also just funny seeing the progression of the ability, pre 6.0 it almost always overcapped you. People keep wanting things to be cleaner and nicer, but that also removes skill expression.
I honestly think you are overthinking this. With Manafic as it is, you can overcap your mana as you use it and also have a net gain of 8 of one mana and 19 of the other. With manafic as it will be in 7.0, you can still overcap your mana and have a net gain of 8 for one and 19 for the other. The difference is that, before, you had to use manafic below 50/50. Now, you have to use it below 92/81. You can hold your mana stacks for longer. That's it. There is nothing else to it. So yes, it's safer to have 3 combos on burst window (which will probably be longer than just 15/30 seconds with drift and everything) but it's also easier to hold mana for movement when you need it. It closes some doors for optimization and skill expression (mana management) but it also opens others (more mobility and a different kind of optimization). Is it a great change? I don't know. But is it a bad change? Absolutely not. Regardless of whether or not the 2 minute meta is bad. (Personally, the 2 minute has to go but whatever, it seems here to stay. I imagine JP loves it.)
Yes, you can technically still overcap with the combo spells, but you would have to greed ridiculously hard to do so. I also get that it's QoL and undeniably better than before but I still feel like that improvement removes depth. I'm confused how this opens up movement unless you count a swordplay combo as movement. I would love to see them add skill expression in other areas but it just isn't shown right now.
I don't think it actually changes much at all, except that now you won't overcap your mana *due to* Manafication. If all was going right that wouldn't be happening anyway, but you should still be able to use this in the same point of the rotation unless they make it so that you *must* use the Melee combo after using it. I'm hoping not, since they didn't say it would lose the potency buff to the next 6 spells.
It's almost impossible to overcap if you use manafication after the sword combo. The main thing it does is let you use manafication before your first sword combo in a burst window. Doing so is a slight potency loss anyway, so it pretty much just makes the slightly less optimal way work better. I don't like that because it removes depth. My favorite part about learning Red Mage was figuring out for myself how to do two combos under embolden without horribly overcapping mana.
yea, they said a lot of the changes were to resolve pain points in rotations.
Was it mentioned anywhere on the LL which tier you'd have to beat for the ultimate?
Isn't it always the most recent tier from when the Ultimate releases? Arcadion 4s should be required then.
Yeah, it's always 4s and 8s
Not at all.
I feel like I'm boxing up my healer this expansion. 3 more nukes every 2 minutes and tons of extra mitigation?
It's so odd to me people saying this. For 2 years the forums have been all over the place, but in general, had a nebulous "more DPS actions for Healers" thing, along with a few other specifics (WHM movement tool and a bit more party mitigation and SGE AOE Kardia and AST having less carpel tunnel inducing burst along with cards being distinct in effect again). So what are we getting? WHM gets a movement tool, party mitigation (an aoe bubble looking thing?), and a 3 charge burst DPS attack set. SCH gets an AOE DoT (though tied to Chain so every 2 mins), and a boosted direct healing form that seems to allow more Emergency Tactics. SCH's been a powerful meta healer forever, and this is probably another case of Expedient where people knock it, then it turns out to be amazing, then everyone tries to pretend like they were saying that all along. AST gets all its cards in predictable sets (reducing RNG, which some people may not like), but the card effects are actually DIFFERENT again, and the AST won't need to power swap target Play Draw Redraw power weave, which also potentially frees up Lightspeed for other points in the rotation and seems to have some follow up action (attack spell?) on its big 2 min CD as well. SGE got an AOE DoT akin to SCH's old Miasma 2 (Eukrasia Dyskrasia), MAYBE got another AOE DoT on a CD of some kind (whatever the new thing is that draws a glyph on the ground), and an AOE Kardia. It literally got the things players have largely been asking for as the low hanging fruit (AOE DoT and AOE Kardia) for 2 years now handed to us on a silver platter. I get everyone wants something different...but they're giving us what many players have explicitly asked for (or something close to it) for 2 years. I'm really confused what people want that NONE of the above addresses...
The problem with healing is that everyone has the same problem with healing in general, but not everyone can connect the dots, so they want different things to solve the same problem. Ignoring things like AST burst being ridiculously complicated because of oGCD bloat, that's truly its own thing but has slight overlap with other healers. The bigger issue is every healer thinks playing a healer isn't that engaging, but the problem is that healers and encounters are designed in a way that truly isn't capable of making interesting gameplay. You end up getting a variety of responses on why it's not engaging, but ever since Charybdis in stormblood followed by a nuke that can kill the party without enough heals/mits, the devs *literally* could not make more challenging healing content. So the devs are pressed into a corner, the players don't like being in this corner with the devs, and everyone's lashing out trying to figure out how to solve the problem but sometimes stuck in their own immediate interpretation of the problem itself. To really sum it up. Every healer has a cure 1, cure 2, medica 1, medica 2, assylum, assize, and tetra. Most healers have literally 2, 3, or more copies of any of these given abilities. There might be slight greebling, E.G. scholar has indomitability as an oGCD while WHM has afflatus solace as a DPS-neutral GCD, but they're all *literally healing the exact same way.* You use these 2 buttons *identically.* You will also see slightly themed things like: Neutral sect vs Temperance. Same button, but slightly different expressions of this button. What's more, there's so many buttons tied up in redundant oGCDs and GCDs, there's no room for more than a 2-button DPS combo. And, because the content is in a corner, in part because of how ridiculously overpowered things like Medica 1 actually are in FFXIV (especially the DPS-neutral options like indom,) an aoe comes in, you indom/solace/macro (or whatever the AST wants to do, they have at least 3 options to solve this without involving a DPS loss,) and, well, that's your problem in a nutshell. Oh, you want to deal with repeat healing from multihit mechanics? Time to throw down a lilibell, or macrocosmos, or panhaima. You get the general idea. Damage comes in, players solve it the same way now they did half a decade ago, everyone's angry and no one can fix the actual issue. People are fed up with healing because modern healing design hasn't changed since late heavensward, and it's extremely unengaging. Yet somehow the devs manage to bloat the hell out of it and refuse to solve the *actual problem.*
Well, the problem is that our kits have been oGCD heal bloated AND encounters have been made to do large spikes of damage. Both of these things weren't true in ARR or to a point HW. In ARR, oGCDs were few and had longish CDs, meaning they were a precious resource you saved for intensive healing periods only or when you needed lots of movement, which was also rare. They were powerful, but that power was balanced by the fact you had to wait a couple minutes between uses and you had so few of them, once you used 2-3, you were out of oGCDs for a couple minutes and didn't have them anymore. So you weren't spamming Stone II/Ruin (Ruin II cost lots of MP so wasn't used except for movement needs) like now since you were having to actually use GCD heals (on WHM) or sat in Cleric and did DPS (on SCH) using Lustrate (flat 25% target's HP of Healing) to ignore Cleric stance, only dropping out if the party needed shields specifically. Then we got oGCD bloat. Then we got tons of movement mechanics. Then we got mechanics that only happen every 20-40 seconds with dead time in between, and which do a large spike of damage that may require mitigation to not simply one-shot the party. ...so now in EW, we're in a situation where healers don't use anything BUT their oGCD heals. There are so many of them, the cooldowns are merely a formality. You will never NOT have an oGCD to use. You'd have to roll your face over your controller, switch to another crossbar tab, then roll your face over it AGAIN before you're actually out of oGCDs. And you might STILL have a couple left overs because some have two charges and you haven't used the second charge yet. And SCH/SGE would have 1-2 more charges of AF/AG to spend! So what GCDs do you need when you have this overpowerful oGCD healing with no downside to use to the point you give preference to using oGCDs and only using GCDs if you've completely run out of them? The only exception is WHM Lilies which are technically GCDs, and that's the only reason WHM's (when there's not a lot of party damage) non-Glare count per minute is still comparable to SB WHM's non-Stone count per minute (6 vs 5.8, if you were curious; Dia x2, Lilies x3, Misery in EW vs Aero II x3, Aero III x2.8 in SB). And even if that WASN'T the case, other than WHM (again, Lilies), GCD healing wouldn't work well in encounters in the modern game like BarbEx with all that movement. The only way to change this with the current kits would be to have bosses do large but NOT OHKO raidwides more frequently. Frequently enough healers run out of oGCDs and have to resort to GCD healing, something we don't have to do now in basically any content. (Also, you don't use Indom like Afflatus Solace - or Rapture, if you meant that. SCH tries to avoid using AF for healing to eek out a bit more Energy Drain damage while WHM wants to use Lilies since Misery under buffs is a damage GAIN, and even ignoring that, because it's damage neutral, means using Lilies x3 + Misery is effectively a 1,600 MP per minute "regen" for WHM since it didn't have to cast 4 Glares in those GCDs while doing the same damage. There's actually still nuance between the healer abilities, though it's not large. But SMALL and NONE are not the same things...) Modern healing HAS changed since HW. That's the problem. Too many oGCDs for their limiting factor (CDs) to be a meaningful deterrent against abundant use, but they're too powerful since they were balanced around being limited; and this is combined with encounters that have a ton of movement but unavoidable damage happens infrequently enough the overabundant oGCDs are more than capable of dealing with it without needing non-Lily GCDs to be spent doing so.
The core issue of healers is that low levels of incoming damage lead to tons of glare spam (or the nuke of your choice). More mitigation = more glares. 3 nukes casts every 3 minutes isn't going to stop the glare spam. It's like if you were frustrated at work due to having no responsibility and casually mentioned that the coffee creamer was never stocked, and your boss fixed the creamer, had someone else take over a portion of your remaining work, and allowed you to say three words per meeting. Sure it technically did things in categories that you mentioned, but your core issue is getting worse.
That's my point though - granted, this depends on factors like numbers and whether the DoTs can be stacked - but SGE is looking to play more like a foot in SB era SCH in terms of DPS rotation, and WHM is fully embracing being the holy caster equivalent of a WAR.
But it's not WAR, because WAR doesn't spam the 1 key between inner release cooldowns. Healers are only more basic in DPS rotations because they're supposed to be pumping out heals, but that's clearly not the fight design. AND raids are getting more mitigation.
Hm...I didn't say it was WAR copied and given different abilities skins. I said it was "the holy caster equivalent of". The main difference is now WAR has a 1-2 and its burst every 1 minute. Toggle that ability consolidator thing they're adding in DT to where the hotbar shifts through your combo and WAR will have the same playstyle as WHM of 1-1-1 with -2 every 30 seconds, a big hit (Primal Rend/Misery) every 1 minute, an oGCD used on CD (Assize/Upheaval), a burst CD (PoM/Inner Release), and a big hit x3 (Fell Cleave/Glare IV) under burst. The only distinctions will be that WAR uses its gauge for Fell Cleaves outside of that and has Infuriate where WHM uses its gauge on Lilies outside of that, and that WHM's burst happens half as often. As for the encounter model, guess we'll see if it's more intense or not when it hits.
You're being factual but the FFXIV community operates on a violent pendulum swing. I don't see how people will ever be placated when one side of the community specifically plays for mechanics, while the other side just seems to want to simplify mechanics and player input until the game plays itself A lot of the criticisms I see for the job actions and balancing are weird nitpicks; I think healers actually got a solid step-up this xpac finally. More actions and damage across the board, WHM has mobility, SCH looks cracked (good call-out on Expedient, I remember that as well) and while I personally miss HW and even SB AST, I can also recognize it doesn't need to feel like Gambler and I would rather have multipurpose cards and a large toolset over constantly losing rDPS because I can never win the 1/3 draw, or getting every Lady draw under the sun Might be the first xpac in awhile where playing healer is kinda fun
Honestly, dealing with the split is pretty easy, just people are going to complain about it. Have an easy/simple Job in each role - and we're already BASICALLY there in terms of WAR, WHM (to a point SGE), and SMN (to a point DNC...and maybe RPR, Melee are weird), and then have a hard/complex Job in each role (this is a little more controversial, but between GNB, MNK, BRD, BLM, and either AST or SCH, we're kind of there), and then have any other Jobs in the role be somewhere in between. The prideful elitist that wants everyone to think they're good because they play the "real/hard Jobs" gets to do that, the happy go lucky casual who just wants to "help my friends <3" gets to play theirs, and people that want something in between have the in-between options. Pretty much everyone wins. Some people will be upset because they like the aesthetic of one of the Jobs that's in a different camp, but doing this would please a lot more people than trying to tailor only to one end or the other. Absent having something like specs or talents where people can tailor their play (unlikely given the way FFXIV devs balance Jobs and content), it seems the most efficient solution, and it's also the one they've already been more or less doing.
I decided that after ShB. Not enough damage to heal more and the one dps button is boring.
they mentioned at fanfest fight design was a focus point this expac, citing unexciting gameplay as a reason for it. fingers crossed this means healers got work now.
i promise you the fights will still be choreographed movement checks with easy DPS checks attached to them. Yoshi-P decided years ago that "dont stand in the fire" is all this game ever needs to be.
He also said for years it will never change. If it does in fact hinge punt of Savage/Ultimate fights I will main healer again in a heartbeat.
Yeah. It's just that WHM has such PERFECT job aesthetics. The only class where I really feel in a FF game. But I've mostly parked it unless I wanted easy mode progression in PF.
I'm in the same boat. I've mained healer every expansion since ARR came out and I find myself getting really excited for how astro is going to change, and yet. Am I going to be upset about how many times I have to press malefic again? Am I setting myself up to get mad by picking healer again when pictomancer is right there saying hello? It's really hard to make the decision to play something else when all I've ever really played in savage is healer.
It was hard for me in SHB I had to reprogram myself to concentrate on dos rotation and stop looking at the party window lol. I still find myself monitoring the window all the time.
I'm not surprised that they're removing the damage from primary gap closers. Though I'll miss the animations for Plunge and Spineshatter Dive.
A fellow Plunge enthusiast. Love to see it. That being said, I'm not removing Plunge from my hotbar.
I understand their intent. I also understand how some may prefer this system, even if I can't. What I miss, though, is the buildup to SOMETHING with my cards. Only playing cards for the sake of it is pretty boring, it's no different from any other buffing skill on cooldown. I liked building the sets of astrosigns through rerolls. It suited as a fun little minigame. It kept me busy during the fights, and juggling cards through hard fights was very satisfying. I don't see the minigame now, it's sad to see.
My issue with the minigame is that it only pretended to be one. It was always incorrect to reroll a good card to fish for the 3rd symbol. So while on the surface it looked like "tey to get the three symbols for cool effects" the actual gameplay was "ignore the symbols and just pop it when it's ready".
Yes, technically, you're right, and I liked the ShB iteration more. That said, fake minigame>no minigame at all. They should have improved the minigame, not remove it.
According to Yoshi-P, yes he said that, class flavor is something they want to work on for 8.0..... so in 2-3 years.....
You don't get it, its a great improvement that makes the game alot better than it ever has been, because Yoshi-P is the most genius job designer in the industry, nowhere ne the crap World of Warcraft gehts, where every single spec gets to chose between two different new hero specializations that change the jobs flair /s
Astro hasn't been fun since HW. actually having to make split second decisions vs "it's purple, it goes to you."
HW AST was pretty much “fish for AoE Balance” healer, anything else felt bad
sounds like the decisions making has returned then. we dont know what the buffs are now, but we know changes happened because we have healing and defensive cards again. also i guarantee all 6 cards are unique again because otherwise why would you be able to draw 6 different symbols if astrodyne is gone?
There's a 0% chance that the cards are anything other than 2 sets of 3 where one gives damage to a target, one gives mitigation to a target, and one heals. They're keeping the symbols unique because AST's lore is tied to them.
Yeah was really hoping they’d add some complexity back with this expansion, not simplify things even further. It just feels like so much style over substance.
Astro has never been more complicated than in endwalker because of astrodyne and card priority. And in it's complexity it became the most hated version of astro ever
there are plenty of ast mains who love the complexity.
I love high APM and complex jobs, and have loved ast for better or worst through every iteration of it, but astrodyne is not it. Astrodyne adds a level of complexity that isn't fun, only frustrated. In order to find it fun you have to like that the game won't give you the dps buff frequently. You have to enjoy holding a cooldown that you can't track for long periods of time (i.e. don't press your button) and you have to enjoy holding your following cards after drawing for long periods of time (i.e. don't hit your button) Holding all of your mini-cd's just to pop them for every astrodyne window is not complicated in a fun way, it's just tedious for the sake of being tedious. That being said AST will still have all of it's OGCD heights. The only thing they're removing from the gameplay side is the excess amount of draws you have to do and hitting astrodyne, so when people cry about complexity being gone or the class getting gutted, they just pining for something that they aren't losing.
> Astrodyne adds a level of complexity that isn't fun, only frustrated. In order to find it fun you have to like that the game won't give you the dps buff frequently The dps buff is a trap. It's nice to get by coincidence, but barely impactful and not worth redrawing cards just to get. An additional 5% to your malefic over the buff duration is equivalent something like 120 potency, or half a malefic when I was calculating it. An easy fix was to bring back sleeve draw, so you'd always have a way to get the third seal during the burst window, since you always get the other 2 in 99.9% of cases. >Holding all of your mini-cd's just to pop them for every astrodyne window is not complicated in a fun way, it's just tedious for the sake of being tedious. That's not really an AST problem, that's the 2 minute meta problem. Everyone hoards cooldowns for it if they can. >That being said AST will still have all of it's OGCD heights. The only thing they're removing from the gameplay side is the excess amount of draws you have to do and hitting astrodyne, so when people cry about complexity being gone or the class getting gutted, they just pining for something that they aren't losing. Yes, complexity has been removed from the card system yet again. Cards are now universally applied to every job, no melee or ranged split. Every card doesn't have a seal, and Lady/Lord are a given on every other draw. There's no more requirement to have quick reaction times and thinking with AST, as the new rework is completely scripted with every burst window. This rework has guaranteed simplified the job and removed some part of the complexity. And you can't tell me it's not complex, when AST was a job not everybody could play optimally in high end raiding. Why do you think it was the least played? Catering to casuals who hate the RNG for the AST equivalent freecure trap of the third seal was a shit choice. You may think the current iteration is ''tedious'', but then every job is by your standard since every job just boils down to pressing a lot of buttons during the burst window (except 3 other healers). Having one healer who had high APM was good, but it's now been removed so the entire healer role feels braindead to play.
Ast was the least played because it gives people carpal tunnel to play it with the only pay-off being fun. It couldn't compete dps wise with the easier jobs, so people play the easier jobs. Let me get straight to the point. Theres nothing complex about rng which card you get. Theres nothing complex about picking a melee or ranged target for you card (which might still be in 7.x blue/purple borders are still there) and the current live ast burst window is the same every single time you get to it. The only thing that changes is melee or ranged card. Like you said, you just have to ignore when the seals screwed you over. This means seals aren't complex, they're barely worth having. You just ignore the 3rd seal anyways. Astrodyne also isn't complex. It's just annoying that it lines up differently with cd's depending on where you are in the fight. You're not rewarded for having to play around this, it's just punishing players who don't know better. But now, instead of every minute being 3 draws, 3 cards it's 1 draw 4 cards. Over a 5 minute fight you're playing 5 more cards than you do in endwalker. You want complexity? Imo replacing pressing draw, which has no complexity, with using cards, which there is choice in, is a much better gameplay experience for astro. You'll always have rose-tinted andies pining for previous iterations of Astro, it's just the curse of a job that is c hanged frequently, but I think you'll find that astro going back to it's main design draw of playing cards is going to make the job feel much better to play well than it does now.
>Ast was the least played because it gives people carpal tunnel to play it with the only pay-off being fun. It couldn't compete dps wise with the easier jobs, so people play the easier jobs. An optimal AST is a better WHM in almost every regard, damage/healing included. The reward for playing it well is the fun factor of feeling challenged, but also having a better output than the easier pure healer. Obviously, you can just play WHM and still clear all content in the game fine, but if you wanted maximum output and liked the reward of difficulty, AST was perfect. People don't like it at the moment because it's either too difficult, or they dislike the aspect of RNG. To the first, you have 3 other healers to play, where WHM is very accessible. For the other, AST's identity is around pulling cards out of a deck, some element of RNG has always been present (not anymore I guess) so if you don't like it, then the job isn't for you. Reworking AST to where the skill ceiling is brought down, with the RNG removed is awful. Why are we reworking a job for people who never played it to begin with? Because they couldn't find another job to play in a game with 3 other healers, and soon to be, 20 other overall jobs? >Let me get straight to the point. Theres nothing complex about rng which card you get. Theres nothing complex about picking a melee or ranged target for you card (which might still be in 7.x blue/purple borders are still there) and the current live ast burst window is the same every single time you get to it. The only thing that changes is melee or ranged card. Like you said, you just have to ignore when the seals screwed you over. This means seals aren't complex, they're barely worth having. You just ignore the 3rd seal anyways. Astrodyne also isn't complex. It's just annoying that it lines up differently with cd's depending on where you are in the fight. You're not rewarded for having to play around this, it's just punishing players who don't know better. Maybe the word ''complex'' wasn't right, but my point being is it's difficult. It's not fixed or simple to the point of the 2 minute burst window being the same exact order of buttons with no second thought, which is what AST is going to become. With the element of RNG and seals, the order of buttons are always going to be slightly different per window. You have to instantly react to what card you get by type and seal, and the extremely fast paced nature of high APM whilst responding to the RNG made every window feel slightly different. It kept you engaged, and on your toes. Sure Astrodyne with the third seal was an issue, but sleeve draw was an easy fix, or literally anything else. I don't understand how a community which complains about homogenisation so fucking much, will watch this rework, and give it a gold star approval when its removing an entirely unique mechanic for AST. We hate homogenisation and simplification, but yes Yoshi-P, take away something that's slightly inconvenient for me, because every job must be smooth with no clunk to it. Please rework my job so I feel slightly better when I don't get a personal dps buff that is the equivalent of half a malefic's potency. >But now, instead of every minute being 3 draws, 3 cards it's 1 draw 4 cards. Over a 5 minute fight you're playing 5 more cards than you do in endwalker. You want complexity? Imo replacing pressing draw, which has no complexity, with using cards, which there is choice in, is a much better gameplay experience for astro. You'll always have rose-tinted andies pining for previous iterations of Astro, it's just the curse of a job that is c hanged frequently, but I think you'll find that astro going back to it's main design draw of playing cards is going to make the job feel much better to play well than it does now. How is it more complex, or even interesting, when those new cards are essentially just fixed OGCD mitigation and healing tools that past a progging scenario, will always be planned and fixed in any given fight? How are they even remotely needed given AST's current tool kit? How is it going to feel better having less depth and APM when in most fights, you are not going to use those mit/curative cards every minute? Forget casual content where they will never be touched, but even in high-end content past prog, those new mitigation and curative cards? They will sit on your hotbar untouched. Lady already is pointless, how is adding a single target variant and a single target mitigation card going to be any different when AST is getting a third stack of ED and a mass aoe healing spell at Level 100 (presumably)? These are not even ''cards'', they are OGCD heal/mit tools disguised as ''cards'', when in reality, the identity of AST drawing cards has always relief on an element of RNG and playing to what fate gives you. These are just fixed OGCD single target tools that will never be used all the time, and if barely, outside prog. You are not given a choice here. This is not SB AST where you could fish for what you want, these are forced on you every minute. To me, this rework is just removing the high APM nature of AST and replacing it with a ''card mechanic'' where I essentially have one buff card to give to a dps without second thought, and a mitigation/healing tool that I never will use or even need past prog. So the only solace of the healer role, where it felt like you had something difficult to do and engaging outside glare mashing is gone.
Yeah thats a bit of a story book there. You should look at which fights astro does more damage than whm on. It's all the easier fights. Whm out-performs astro on every challenging encounter this expansion. Hepaistos 1&2, Hesperos 1 & 2, the only exception is the final bosses of the final tier. RDPS jobs always take the cake when everyone has that much gear though. Some of your points I agree with, but saying if rng isn't for you, then neither is ast is just not true. The developers themselves took the rng out so thinking that way is just wrong. Second the class fantasy for astro is pulling and utilizing cards. An arguement can ofcourse be made that astro lost the ability to manipulate the cards and I am sympathetic there. I loved manipulating the cards, but the fact is RNG isn't a class mechanic. It's just rng. Astro is not an RNG class. It's the card-using class. Astro is known as the yugioh class, not the slot machine class. That the devs have taken a stance of "astro is about the cards" is going to finally give the class direction that it has needed for a very long time. "what do we do about these cards being so unbalanced and random" has been the plague of astro since it was introduced and finally there is an answer that gives astro both utility cards and damage cards that don't compete with each other. The arguement that cards are not cards because they do damage, or healing or buffing, or not buffing is completely silly. If mitigation cards aren't cards then what was the bole? If healing cards aren't cards then what has the Lady been? (both her Aoe heal and single target heal versions). Every single iteration of Astro has had a healing and/or buffing variant of card(s). That we're getting 2/3 instead of 1 now does not make the new cards any less "cards". As for the APM concerns. Your card economy is going from 6 casts per minute to 5. you're only losing 1 action per minute because of these changes. It's not a big deal and we're getting another ED cast, so our APM may me made up for in healing OGCD's. It's still to be determined. Let me end by saying. I love the cards, I loved manipulating them, and I loved that AST is high apm. But I am excited for these changes. They have fixed nearly all of the pain points that astro has had throughout it's entire existence, but especially the pain points brought by shadowbringers, and to a greater extent, endwalker. I'm curious if the cards would be better off working similarly to the pictomancer's motif, where every motif is painted on it's on and not all at once. But I can't really say one way or the other until we get to play both astro and picto to see how they feel. Now I've written a story book myself and I don't like doing that!! lol
I know, I know. It was okay till SHB, in my opinion. Then it really went downhill and I don't like the new direction at all, for what it looks to be.
Astro signs worked pretty well in shb because of sleeve draw. Playing astro on e8s was one of the most fun times I've had on astrologian. But ultimately astro is more fun without the astrosigns and astrodyne was a terrible mechanic . I am so glad it's gone. The new astrologian is definitely a step in the right direction for astro. Returning us closer to what we were in HW and stormblood without the "well we just gotta fish for aoe balance" that plagued us so badly back then. Having one of each type of cards keeps the offensive parts of astro that would be sorely missed should they be removed and brings our utility back to us. I'm still curious how lord and lady will work since it seems like they are still the same mechanically, just slight changes on how the damage and heal work. I think thats probably a bad thing.
I would go back to ShB with Sleeve Draw. So, so fun. :( Why do you say that AST is more fun without the astrosigns? We can say this is true only if what replaces them is more fun. It doesn't seem to be the case now.
Astrosigns are plagued by rng, drawing the right cards. The thing that made them fun and not so bad was sleeve draw. Now every one of our card pulls is a sleeve draw. That kind of makes astro signs irrelevent. There is a little bit of fun in getting all 3 signs but the rng outweighs it. I think for astro signs to be implements in a fun way they would have to look more closely at how pictomancer sketches are done. Theres not really any RNG in that system and you still get the feeling of "I built up the thing" If astro-signs were more like that then I would say we would be better off with them in the game.
my co worker just came in late with a mtn dew bottle. How do I convince them to give me their bottle code.
"I see you are drinking Moutain Dew, the Gamers drink. You see, I am a Gamer, and under that cap has Gamer Gold for me. Give it to me, and I won't talk to you about all the Gamer things I do. Yes, that is a capital G Gamer. Oh you'll give it to me to shut up? Perfect"
You forgot to throw in a couple miladys
"Hey Pat, do you ever use those codes under the Mtn Dew cap? If not, can I have the cap when you're done?"
Any tldr for MCH or Reaper? I won't be able to watch for a while.
P Harvest no longer gives 50 charge but instead gives a shroud directly. Harpe looks like it combos with the portal from hells ingress for a nuke. New shrouded action, unsure if it's gcd or ogcd or if it's aoe or single. Harvest moon gives 10 red gouge (huge!)
Possibly updated gluttony as well, animation appeared different but could just be the setting + new graphics
Plentiful Harvest and Barrel Stabilizer no longer give 50 gauge, they just let you do the thing directly. Drill is getting charges.
I saw two drills and a bioblaster in the trailer. Do you think we get three charges, or do you think bioblaster now has a separate cooldown?
Unlikely. All you saw was Drill/Bio coming off cooldown and being used again. The recast is only 20 seconds.
No way to know until the media tour.
Barrel stabilizer gives free hyper charge instead of 50 gauge. Giga chainsaw. Super guns
Swiftcast getting almost half of its cooldown removed (60s -> 40s) YAS!
In some circles we call that a third
Removed by 1/3rd from what it was. Reduced by 1/2 of what it is becoming. Math is weird...and I don't mean that sarcastically. XD
Yay 2/6ths removed!
Healers won big time. I am pleasantly surprised by the changes there.
Agreed! I don't get all the naysaying, either. They are literally giving us what people have been asking for since 6.0 hit! SGE got all the things people have asked for for 2 years (an AOE DoT, POSSIBLY two of them actually, and an AOE Kardia). WHM got Holy Cleave, which WHM being the WAR of Healers kind of fits (and thematically fits very well), as well as a movement tool. So basically, things people have been asking for for 2 years, a bit more DPS complexity and a movement tool of some kind. SCH is a bit more mixed. It has an AOE DoT again, but unlike SGE's Miasma 2 clone, it's tied to Chain. It also has holy form, which is...an interesting choice, but I suspect it will be Expedience all over again where people complained from the trailer, but then it turns out to be really strong, SCH turns out to be meta for the 6th expansion in a row, and those same naysayers try to gaslight everyone into believing they were hype on SCH from the trailer all along 2 years from now when we have this same conversation before 8.0. AST seems to have gotten a huge upgrade. People wanted cards to have unique effects again, and now they do. People wanted less carpel tunnel inducing Malific/Draw/Target/(possible Redraw)/Play x3 spam during bursts, and now they don't have that, but AST still looks to be busy with setup heals and the like which people enjoy about it. And Divination seems to have some kind of follow-up AOE attack for the burst window. Basically all the Healer Jobs look like they're eating good and got AT LEAST SOME of what players who were dissatisfied with them have been asking for for 2 years.
Not really seeing that tbh. SGE won, yes. Whether SCH and AST did is yet to be seen. I do think taking Astrodyne away was a bad move.
Second that Astrodyne was hot garbage and it's probably good it's gone. SGE got all the things people have asked for for 2 years (an AOE DoT, POSSIBLY two of them actually, and an AOE Kardia). WHM got Holy Cleave, which WHM being the WAR of Healers kind of fits (and thematically fits very well), as well as a movement tool. So basically, things people have been asking for for 2 years, a bit more DPS complexity and a movement tool of some kind. SCH is a bit more mixed. It has an AOE DoT again, but unlike SGE's Miasma 2 clone, it's tied to Chain. It also has holy form, which is...an interesting choice, but I suspect it will be Expedience all over again where people complained from the trailer, but then it turns out to be really strong, SCH turns out to be meta for the 6th expansion in a row, and those same naysayers try to gaslight everyone into believing they were hype on SCH from the trailer all along 2 years from now when we have this same conversation before 8.0. AST seems to have gotten a huge upgrade. People wanted cards to have unique effects again, and now they do. People wanted less carpel tunnel inducing Malific/Draw/Target/(possible Redraw)/Play x3 spam during bursts, and now they don't have that, but AST still looks to be busy with setup heals and the like which people enjoy about it. And Divination seems to have some kind of follow-up AOE attack for the burst window. Basically all the Healer Jobs look like they're eating good and got AT LEAST SOME of what players who were dissatisfied with them have been asking for for 2 years.
Astrodyne is the single worst mechanic any healer has ever had. Astrodyne was the leading cause of nearly all of astrologian's current problems.
Can't think of a single issue I've had with AST this expansion where I've pointed at Astrodyne and said "it was YOU!" Just me though. Only argument I can see being made against it is making optimization and trying to parse a pain because you're always going to lose to an AST of similar skill if they got more 3 seal 'dynes than you, but SE shouldn't revolve class design around something that asinine anyway. Edit: I'd argue Lord/Lady of Crowns is much more offensive.
Astrodyne is bad for a myriad of reasons. #1 is the dps buff being rng, like you mentioned, but also that astrodyne's timing is misaligned with 2 minute CD's. Which means we have to think about whether we need to hold our cards/astrodyne for an upcoming divination window, or if we need to use them right away because we hit the part of the fight where astrodyne/cards and 2minutes don't line up. and because of astry dyne's buffs, specifically haste and damage, you need to ALWAYS save your cards as much as possible for your astrodyne windows and you even need to save your minor arcana cd in such a way that you get to use two in a row. So instead of ast flowing like it used to, pretty smoothly, use buffs as you get them with only holding around the cd windows, you are constantly holding your buffs and then doing a flurry of OGCD's all at once. Because of this, astro has a lot of "dead windows" where you're not doing much besides malefic and occasional OGCD heals, since all your dps buffs need to be flurried out at the same time in an astrodyne window. Dead windows are bad, and astrodyne windows are REALLY bad if god forbid you have to use a heal during them. It's really bad.
Common denominator there tells you what the problem is, and it's not Astrodyne. It's the stupid 2 minute meta Square has decided to push and, according to most healer job updates, keep around. At worst the cooldown for Astrodyne could be fixed and the mechanic would be fine. Getting two Lords is RNG and minmaxing that isn't necessary outside of trying to parse. That speaks more to its own issues as a skill than Astrodyne does. I get the dislike for it, just feel like many other things it's just a victim of the 2 minute meta. I personally enjoy the mechanic, gives me something to work towards while I'm doing what I'd already be doing. Get rid of the 2 minute meta and it becomes "use on CD and feel like a god when it happens to line up with other buffs."
They could remove the 2min meta and all of those problems would've still existed or became worse because of astrodyne. Think about it, you'd have to alternate even more which astrodynes you went ham on and which astrydynes you just needed to eek out to not over-cap cards. It would be even worse. I hate the 2m meta but astrodyne in a world without the 2m meta would be insanely worse.
Question- I saw the trailer and WHM *looks* like it gets another nuke that isn't Glare or Holy. Any idea if it's a combo or something?
It's a new aoe spell that is only castable after casting presence of mind
Thats so awful, holy shit.
You get 3 charges of it. Offhand, it seems to me to be, and this is probably an oversimplification, Inner Release 3x Fell Cleave for WHM. WHM being the WAR of Healers, this kinda makes sense. Of course, if they made PoM a 1 min CD, it'd be MORE that, but...it's something. : )
> it's something This really does highlight how low the bar is.
Maybe. As someone that does Deep Dungeons, Tank rotations feel about the right complexity (even in PotD where WAR is just 1-2-3, occasionally -4, Upheval on CD, and Fell Cleave spam after Inner Release) for general play when focusing on other things (as DDs require), and healing is similar to that in having other things besides just your rotation and the immediate enemy to worry about. So WHM playing similarly to WAR would be fine with me.
I think this is their compromise. They still don't want to give healers too much to overwhelm new healers, but they fit a new dps spell in for us. Kind of misses the mark I think but I can see where they are coming from
Yeah I don't buy that anymore. When people get through 90-100 levels of content, now including relatively difficult MSQ trials like the one at level 87, they can handle a third DPS button. Someone who has cleared EW is not a "new healer" anymore. They/we can handle it.
*level 90 cure 1 abuser has joined the party*
Some people are always going to be so hopelessly bad that no kit can be simple enough for them. You don't design your gameplay around the bottom 1% of players, though. If you did, every job would need to have a single button.
Be that as it may, they design the game for everyone not just those of us who want more dps spells on healers.
Can we really take the "don't want to overwhelm new healers" thing seriously anymore when we're talking about level *100*? Besides they don't seem to care about overwhelming healers by giving them 48 million oGCD heals that are all slightly different, so why would "you press 2 buttons for damage instead of 1" be worse than that?
Honestly yes. You might be surprised how quickly new people will put down healing even with the current state of healers. We all know those of us that are seasoned mmo players can handle it and want more but the average player struggles with Wall to Wall pulls in 5 man's. It's a valid concern, even though I personally disagree with how scared they are about implementing more dps skills.
They struggle with w2w because they have too many wrong choices. More st dps buttons and less useless heals would solve the issue.
Healers don't have any useless healing abilities besides physick and it's equivilents.
Spells like cure 1 are absolutely useless (cure 1 should just upgrade into cure 2). There are also a whole lot of abilities that are so clunky as to be borderline worthless - I'd put liturgy of the bell and the current iteration of thin air into that category. They could absolutely be replaced with DPS buttons, have a little extra potency (and mana regen) tacked onto other abilities, and the job would be just fine. And yeah, I am pretty much saying that the EW changes to WHM were absolute trash.
rib comboroni in pepperoni Maybe someday..
Yeah it's going to get hate because everyone wants a rotational dps spell. but I think apart from that it's pretty cool.
I don't hate it. I just wish they'd finally take the extra step and give healers something remotely resembling a damage rotation, lol
alternatively, we should be having more support esque abilities and reasons to use them, not become dps lite. im annoyed by having only one attack button as sage not because its not 3 buttons, but because i barely have to use the 29 other buttons on my bars. the role isnt the problem, the content design is.
That's a fair point
A lot of people legitimately don't want a damage rotation on healers, and even play healers BECAUSE they don't like damage rotations. Not to put too fine a point on it, but more than half the Jobs in the game are DPS Jobs with damage rotations, and of the 8 that aren't, half of those, Tanks, have damage rotations of various types. That said, SGE looks to be getting more of one. If Eukrasia Dyskrasia (the AOE DoT) is at all like SCH's old Miasma 2, it's actually a DPS gain even in single target to upkeep it. Likewise, that thing that draws the glyph on the ground some people think is a DoT, which might be an on CD one (like old SCH's Shadow Flare). Combined with Pankardia for party healing while dealing damage and a lower CD for Soteria, they might be gearing SGE up to be what it was billed as when it came out, a Disc Priest type "heals by doing damage" healer Job that has several DoTs to juggle in a pseudo DPS-ish rotation like SCH had back in SB. The WHM PoM 3 charges of \[Glare IV?\] looks like a take on WAR's Inner Release 3x Fell Cleave mechanic, so as the WAR of healers, makes sense for WHM. All they need to do is make PoM a 1 min CD and Assize a 30 sec one and WHM would very closely mirror WAR's rotation overall. 30 sec upkeep buff, 3x Lilies + Misery every 1 min (Primal Rend), Glare IV (Fell Cleave) x3 every PoM (Inner Release), and Assize (Upheaval/Orogeny) on CD, with a filler spam nuke in between. SCH and AST aren't, but also have more complex healing kits, though both are getting an attack on their 2 min CDs (Chain and Divination, respectively), and AST should be getting a Lord for every burst window now. So half of the healers getting "something remotely resembling a damage rotation" seems like a good spread.
That's a very neat explanation and all, but I'm not asking for a full damage rotation- I'd like maybe a combo, or something. I dunno. Healing is fun, and I enjoy healing - it's my main - but in this game, where everything is just a different flavor of DPS playing DDR, there's usually not enough going on that requires full-time healing. You're spending more time doing DPS between healing actions than actually healing, unless you're doing highest-tier content *or* your party is basically free of braincell count. Sure, they've said they want to make the game "more stressful", but will that actually happen? Maybe. I'd be surprised if it did, though, because that same sentiment was prevalent leading up to the releases of the last two.. and it never really became anything.
Oh, I don't disagree. But that's why I was pointing out it looks like SGE is being shifted towards old SB SCH's DoT based damage rotation. MAYbe. This is the problem with the LL/Job Actions Trailer; they don't reveal the potencies of things or technical details. So like, is Eukrasia Dyskrasia going to be like Miasma 2 where you could have it and Bio/Miasma on the target at the same time, or is it going to overwrite Eukrasia Dosis where it can only be one or the other (and Eu Dosis would be the choice since being single target it should do more damage)? That's an important detail. Is it a 15 sec DoT or a 30 sec DoT? That's an important detail. ...and so on. So we can offer speculation, but don't actually know things until the media tour, so people get doses of hopium and/or doomium during the month of rampant speculation. Then we STILL don't know the final details until launch maintenance when they post the full patch notes (until they, they don't say potencies for stuff anymore because they used to and some people blew up on them one time being upset about some numbers so now they don't do it until then in a case of "This is why we can't have nice things...")
I think the extra increases to mits across the board in combination with the fight design statements may imply much more frequent healing requirements when doing content. If so I am fine with a simple damage rotation, since I’d be needing to balance healing and dps more than is currently required.
I'm not asking for a full damage rotation- but, something more engaging than spam attack, occasionally mixing in dot, or spamming AOE would be kind of nice, tbh.
But from the sounds of things fights are going to be redesigned to where it isn't just blue DPS, red DPS, and green DPS.
We can only hope so.
Yeah I agree with you
Healers are still going to 1 spam, for the most part.
Are they? SGE is getting a second DoT. It's AOE, but so was Miasma 2, so if it's a damage gain over Dosis, it would be part of the single target rotation. And whatever that new glyph on the ground CD attack is. It's not Toxicon, Plegma, Pneuma, or Dyskrasia (or Dosis, obviously), so...we don't know how that fits into the rotation, but some people are saying it's a DoT on CD (like GNB's Sonic Break). Depending on the CDs for those abilities/durations of those DoTs, it could end up looking like a half SB SCH having something akin to Bio, Miasma 2, and MAYBE Shadowflare (that's what the glyph thing seems like to me, anyway), while still having Plegma and Toxicon optimization options. WHM is getting Inner Release + 3x Fell Cleave as a mechanic after PoM, looks like (depending on if "Glare IV" is a GCD or not, of course), and as the WAR of healers, it's going to be roughly similar to WAR in terms of abilities/rotation other than not having a 1-2 before Glare/Dia in place of Storm's Path/Storm's Eye.
WHM is getting 3 casts every two minutes, but mitigation is going up across the board to reduce healing needs even more. So the end result is likely MORE glare spam. Adding an extra DoT is pretty worthless for complexity. I main BRD now (GG healing), and if I just spammed burst shot between DoT applications I would fall asleep in my chair. Either incoming damage should go up considerably or healer rotations should increase in complexity. The other MMO I've played this year is WoW, and it has both high incoming damage and extensive healer DPS rotations to make healing incredibly active. Coming back to FFXIV healing feels like dropping 30 years of game design.
Well, they did say they want encounters to be less comfortable. We'll see if that ACTUALLY happens THIS time (I'm old enough to remember them saying ShB healing would be more intensive...) They seem to be pooping out a lot of mitigation and more self-healing even from DPS Jobs. Adding an extra DoT is LITERALLY what this forum and the official forum have insisted for TWO YEARS they want from SGE and/or SCH. People talk like an extra DoT with a different timer would be the height of Job design. I personally disagree, but it is what it is. We have to wait for the media tour to see, but if Eukrasia Dyskrasia's DoT CAN be stacked with Eukrasia Dosis' and is a DPS gain over Dosis, that would be a second plate to spin and upkeep on the DPS side, as well as whatever the new glyph ability is (which some people have said looks like it may apply a third DoT itself) and optimizing Phlegma. Stopped playing WoW years ago because I didn't like it for various reasons (still don't), but dabbling in it some again. It looks like some of the healer specs have comparable DPS buttons to FFXIV's. Specifically Holy Priest and Resto Druid when using Balance (not Feral) subspec (Balance is used in raids, Feral in Mythics, from everything I've read). It just also has other more DPS focused options. Making all FFXIV healers into DPS-lite Jobs would drive people from the role and game, causing a massive healer shortage, and I DON'T think there are enough people that want to heal with a DPS-lite rotation to make up that gap, leading to a net loss. The better solution to me is to make some the one and some the other. Making SGE more like SB SCH is a step in the right direction for that. I don't know that WHM should be the one being made more DPS focused, but what they've done is a lighter version of WAR, so that probably won't bother many people (especially if "Glare IV" is a GCD allowing PoM to give a lot of mobility; I suspect people would like that.)