Letter from the Producer LIVE XXXVI Set for May 22!

[Spider-Dan]

I wouldn't recommend balancing around the trashcan average DF player.

Serious question: why wouldn't SE balance around average players? That doesn't mean you ignore the top end, but it certainly makes sense to focus on the majority of players.

[Lucavi]

I would hope you're wrong this time, because what i've seen so far really seems to be trying to kill anything but very strictly adhering to the trinity and the "x should only x" memes harder than any other role. Shit sucks, man. They could have implemented the much needed buffs to PLD, and adjusted DRK and WAR without yet another DPS nerf and a number of other changes that just serve to seemingly restrict the role into "turtle up."

Time will tell, as it always does. I'm gonna give this newly proactive SE a few shots, though.

[Edelweiss]

Serious question: why wouldn't SE balance around average players? That doesn't mean you ignore the top end, but it certainly makes sense to focus on the majority of players.

Because the end result of that balancing undertaken by Yoshida and company appears to be enforcing the reductionist interpretation of the trinity that the Official Forums and considerable proportion of Reddit subscribe to: tanks should tank, DPS should DPS, healers should heal. The top end of tanks and healers are going to be casualties, though the healer changes seem less damning than the tank ones.

I'm rather skeptical that we're going to enter a new age of big dick tank buster damage that needs to be mitigated and the resulting need for healing to match. It seems more like they're possibly overcompensating in terms of defensive and healing abilities, for the deplorable skill level of your average DF cretin (the people who think Venegance/Sentinel/Shadowskin are a panic button, etc.). Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised and get big damage tank busters all over the place, but we're still also probably getting to min-max within an ever shrinking slice of the group DPS pie.

[Alkar]

How are they forcing healers to just heal when they're making it easier to DPS in the first place? Heck we don't even know the modifiers and formulas they'll be using, where's the "nerf" proof here? I'm not arguing that there won't be one but I see a lot of speculation and no evidence.
Sure, Cleric Stance is completely different now but without knowing the details of each spell's damage formula how can we possibly say that healers will just be healing or tanks won't be dishing out damage?
Or are we arguing about the new mechanics focusing on each job's main role here? Given the information we have half of the traits will be completely different and we don't even know what other skills they've changed or removed yet :/
Maybe it's just me but I see a lot of "jumping to conclusions" here.

[Lucavi]

After Twintania shitting on Wars for more health than they were capable of getting through the holy trinity, I'm still over big dick tank busters. You do you, though.

@Alkar: Speculation has never stopped humanity from complaining and hallucinating that the sky is falling.

[solracht]

It looks like the aggressive, DPS-focused, minimalist surviving of busters is gone. So if you enjoyed this style of play, like I did, the future is not looking great for the role. It frankly seems like we're heading strongly towards a reductionist interpretation of the role: tanks should tank (not deal significant damage).

How is it gone? The playstyle will exist as long as bosses continue to deal insignificant damage outside of tank busters, stance mitigation is weaker than/comparable to on demand mitigation, and we have enough CDs to cover every tankbuster in a fight.

A tank damage nerf means playing a tank will feel less rewarding, and while obviously it's going to affect aggressive tanks more, it doesn't mean it's going to kill the playstyle, especially when it looks like they're adding new mechanics to ensure the gap between turtling and playing aggressively remains significant:
-PLD gets another self dmg buff (Requiescat) which only works if your MP is above 80%
-DRK's new resource bar seems to be used on damage skills, and it can only be refilled with Blood Weapon, which can only be used outside of Grit

It's a little too early to say tanks will only be good as "punching bags". I'd start worrying when they talk about actual playstyle and most importantly about raid/boss design changes - those two would have an actual effect on the state of tanking. The STR/jewelry announcement just means we won't be as close to the actual DPS classes, it doesn't mean we'll suddenly start afking in tank stances the entire fight.

[Lucavi]

A tank damage nerf means playing a tank will feel less rewarding, and while obviously it's going to affect aggressive tanks more, it doesn't mean it's going to kill the playstyle, especially when it looks like they're adding new mechanics to ensure the gap between turtling and playing aggressively remains significant:

When people say this, are they just talking about War? Pld is a tank, and I'm pretty sure Pld didn't feel "rewarding" because it was doing optimum DPS at any particular moment (because the DPS was trash, because its a defensive tank). I mean, perhaps Drk, but even then...

I mean shit, there's three tanks in the game. War was the only one that melted faces, and yet I keep hearing this "TANKING WILL FEEL CHEAP WITHOUT WAR BEING ABLE TO SQUEEZE OUT A MONK'S DAMAGE!" rhetoric. I'm wondering if people need to focus their targeting laser to a bit more of a narrow target.

[Twilight Sky]

I worry about that there will be a new era of aggro-pingpong.

[Taruina]

How are they forcing healers to just heal when they're making it easier to DPS in the first place?

Healers who were DPSing regularly and efficiently are nerfed by this because they're losing a flat 10% outgoing DMG buff to all of their spells by the cleric stance change in exchange for a weaker DMG buff every ~90 seconds.

I don't see how the cleric stance change is going to stop a bad healer who currently refuses to DPS because they're a "healer" healer by making it so that they can go back to spamming Cure2 one GCD sooner than you would with the current cleric stance. I am in no way defending cleric stance toggling as "challenging or skillful" because it is and will always be an annoying toggle that can cause frustration for even the best of healers.

Who knows, maybe healer potencies will be jumped an average of 10% from what they currently are to adjust to the change; but knowing SE and their balancing, very fat chance in that happening.

[Destinye]

In the long run I'm still waiting to hear about the content. Since this 'excitement' is exactly like the excitement of HW and we all know how that played out. The changes are flashy, but this go around we're going into a more "easy mode" game compared to HW (and not even really talking about Gordias.) So now that we know the new raids are tuned towards "Creator Difficulty" and a supposed rank above Savage for people who clear Savage, it's still realistically more of the same, nothing really changed. I know the go to for people defending everything yoshi does is "you shouldn't expect major changes" but pretty much every MMO I know of or played has changed formats to an extent after a major patch..ESPECIALLY after 2 expansions. What we're getting is largely something that could have been done for a major update in the 3.x series, especially over time in order to 'ease' players into a new playstyle they want.

So I don't think it's realistically people "complaining for the sake of it" and more people not going to hang onto every word like they did with the HW hype train. Addition of flight was cool..but it served no purpose to the actual gameplay in the end, no dungeons utilized it, no fights utilized it unless you play semantics and say Deathgaze being fought on an "airship" used flight. Just..really nothing new happened with the game. Since we heard 0 about the actual content so far, my complaints are mostly around not pushing players to get better.

SB seems fine for what it is, but like with FFVII:R, people seem to go against their initial thoughts of being cautiously optimistically when it comes to SE, let alone XIV specifically. I guarantee if this was FFXI people would be shaming you for not complaining lol.

[Spider-Dan]

Healers who were DPSing regularly and efficiently are nerfed by this because they're losing a flat 10% outgoing DMG buff to all of their spells by the cleric stance change in exchange for a weaker DMG buff every ~90 seconds.

Once again: I'm not sure how much point there is in gameplanning damage output before we see the rest of the skills. How can we try to calculate healer damage when we already know that Bio1/2, Miasma1/2, Aero1/2/3, Stone1/2/3, Combust 1/2, and Malefic 1/2 are all being reworked?

[Destinye]

Once again: I'm not sure how much point there is in gameplanning damage output before we see the rest of the skills. How can we try to calculate healer damage when we already know that Bio1/2, Miasma1/2, Aero1/2/3, Stone1/2/3, Combust 1/2, and Malefic 1/2 are all being reworked?

Just because of the change to clerics stance in general you can already get a pretty solid idea. You won't be 100% accurate, but this battle overhaul isn't significant enough that you can't see what's happening. Now if for example Combust 2 suddenly rivals black mages..

[Spider-Dan]

Um, the battle overhaul is incredibly significant. Given the consolidation of tiers, the majority of offensive spells a healer would cast are likely to no longer exist.

Just for starters: SCH will no longer have Aero, and Bio1 and Bio2 are likely to be one spell. So how can you possibly calculate what SCH's rotation potency will be?

[Destinye]

Um, the battle overhaul is incredibly significant. Given the consolidation of tiers, the majority of offensive spells a healer would cast are likely to no longer exist.

Just for starters: SCH will no longer have Aero, and Bio1 and Bio2 are likely to be one spell. So how can you possibly calculate what SCH's rotation potency will be?

By significant, I'm talking about 1.x > 2.x significant, something that drastically changes the gameplay to the point we have to relearn stats and forget about the previous iteration itemization. That's why I'm saying while you won't be 100% accurate, changing CS from an actual stance to a timed buff gives you an idea of how things will go and how people know it's a pretty big cut. Since the only thing we don't have access too (or can talk about due to embargo) are the potency numbers, since the stats are still the same, they didn't throw in anything like "attack magic potency" on gear ontop of your primary stats like 1.0.

That's why I'm leaving everything alone until I see the actual content, because that's what will really show if any of this even matters lol.

[Spider-Dan]

By significant, I'm talking about 1.x > 2.x significant, something that drastically changes the gameplay to the point we have to relearn stats and forget about the previous iteration itemization. That's why I'm saying while you won't be 100% accurate, changing CS from an actual stance to a timed buff gives you an idea of how things will go and how people know it's a pretty big cut. Since the only thing we don't have access too (or can talk about due to embargo) are the potency numbers, since the stats are still the same, they didn't throw in anything like "attack magic potency" on gear ontop of your primary stats like 1.0.

We don't have access to the full list of spells or what they do. And it's ridiculous to claim that we have a "pretty good idea" of how things will go based solely on CS, when the entire rotation is changing.

MCH is losing Raging Strikes, Hawk's Eye, and Blood For Blood. Does this tell us that MCH will be incredibly gimped and reworked to support-only like XI BRD? Of course not, because we don't know what actions MCH has or what potency they are.

[Sho]

You people speak as if these (tank) changes will somehow make the average players like heroes -- bads are gonna bad regardless of changes.

Most of this banter may not matter at all... the entire meta is changing almost, we need to sit on our collective hands til we can play 4.0, lol.

[Alkar]

We don't have access to the full list of spells or what they do. And it's ridiculous to claim that we have a "pretty good idea" of how things will go based solely on CS, when the entire rotation is changing.

MCH is losing Raging Strikes, Hawk's Eye, and Blood For Blood. Does this tell us that MCH will be incredibly gimped and reworked to support-only like XI BRD? Of course not, because we don't know what actions MCH has or what potency they are.

I'm actually shocked for once but I agree with Spider-Dan 100% lol. The Cleric Stance change does not dictate anything when spell damage formula is changing! Potency is another thing entirely on top of the damage formula. We also don't know if healers have access to other personal buffs to increase their damage even more other than Cleric or if other jobs can boost magic damage even more than before like RDM is able to boost physical.
The only thing we do know is that the barriers have been removed and DPSing on a healer will be easier: no more stance dancing and no more accuracy are huge changes for healers, especially in raids.

[Toth]

I always was curious about this: How does Potency actually figure into the damage equation?

[Obsidian]

I don't remember this?

I read it in the translation from reddit, that Parry no longer requires to you be facing an enemy, nor does blocking. Could just be a bad translation I suppose, I can't go back and find it currently as I'm on my phone.

[Dein]

I'm pretty sure Potency is just SE's way of saying %. 100 Potency skills hit as hard as your average auto-attack and such.