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synaesthetic · **01-09-2014, 09:48 PM**

I'm speaking strictly concerning damage-dealers. Tanks are a completely different role, so it's not the same, but they have their own hierarchy (PLD is the safer mitigation tank while WAR is the riskier damage-sponge tank). It's a risk vs. reward kind of thing. Those classes that have to work the hardest to get their damage should be rewarded by being able to top the charts, while those that have it easier should not be able to match their riskier fellows.

Reason for this is if you have a class that can easily and safely do just as much damage as a class that requires a lot of skill, then your endgame min-maxers are going to automatically prefer the safer, easier class.

We already see this on a per-fight basis; I've seen countless Garuda EX ads on the Party Finder asking for only ranged DPS, because the fight is easier with ranged DPS, even if the melee damage dealers actually do more damage over the course of the fight.

This was also a problem in 1.0, where you'd have massive class stacking of dragoons on certain fights and black mages on others.

You can either make sure that all classes are equal in both risk of being squashed and the level of damage they can put out, or you can reward high-risk combat classes with higher overall damage. The former runs the risk of homogeneity, making any damage-dealer feel like any other damage dealer, while the latter can support drastically different playstyles.

For instance, I prefer ranged damage dealers in basically every game I play. If I play melee, I will play a tank. I don't have the twitch reflexes to play something like monk or dragoon very effectively (I'm terrible at real-time strategy games). If all the classes had the same general level of twitch, high-risk gameplay, I would not be very satisfied. Conversely, if all the damage classes had the same more deliberate gameplay that ranged classes have, many of my friends who adore melee jobs would likewise be rather disappointed.

(01-09-2014, 09:40 PM)Soahl Wrote: Bards already get that, actually. Most just ignore it by going into settings and clicking the "face target when firing" toggle. I specifically had to turn that setting off when I was running Titan because the auto-facing would change my dodging direction and get me killed more often than not. The only reason that works for Bards over anyone else is because all of their attacks are "Instant Cast" with range, so it's kind of the perfect storm there. I'd get into my opinion on Bards, but I don't want to derail the thread anymore than I already have.

The "face target" thing becomes completely a non-issue if you use Legacy camera controls. I never have to worry about which direction I'm facing because W is always "away from camera" and S is always "towards camera."

I can't stand games that force me into "tank controls" where the movement keys are centered on your character. ><

Gharen · **01-09-2014, 10:10 PM**

(01-09-2014, 09:02 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: The damage hierarchy ideally should be MNK > DRG > BLM > SMN > BRD. Monks are the riskiest, bards are the safest. It's not quite there yet, but it's getting there. I'm sure we'll see further adjustment in 2.2.

Your logic flawed here and/or your information is wrong. There is Zero difference between "risk" for Monks and Dragoons as they both have attacks that put them on the flanks and rear of the enemy. The primary difference is that monk Combos require specific positioning for each attack in a combo string to get it's full effect where as as a DRG I have positioning requirements to start my combos. And I can be where ever I please to finish them.

As far as risk? (i.e. receiving damage) There's no difference unless the person playing that class is a moron snuggling up to the tank trying to be a hero.

synaesthetic · **01-10-2014, 02:11 AM**

Dragoons have higher defensive attributes than monks, they have more powerful defensive cooldowns and also they have more ways to avoid damage than monks do. Granted, there's no real functional difference whether the mob takes five seconds to flatten you vs six seconds to flatten you...

I already said it's not exactly where it needs to be. Dragoons should have their defensive abilities increased. They should be able to take more hits than monks and obviously so.

They shouldn't be all the same because that's boring (not to mention impossible to balance across all encounters exactly). Why bother having different classes if every class does exactly the same thing?

LiadansWhisper · **01-10-2014, 02:30 AM**

(01-10-2014, 02:11 AM)synaesthetic Wrote: Â Why bother having different classes if every class does exactly the same thing?

Because classes do the same thing (i.e. DPS, Healing, or Tanking) in different ways.

If a fight heavily favors ranged over melee - or even melee over ranged - that is a failure in encounter design. Â It is not a legitimate reason to buff one class to do far more DPS than other classes.

And forcing a player into an asinine playstyle in order to milk the max damage from their spec isn't good class design - it's just annoying.

There is a middle ground. Â Other MMOs have found it. Â But I've legitimately never seen an MMO tune around "risk" a player takes by playing their class the way it's meant to be played. Â If that's what's going on in FFXIV, then I'm really disappointed, because that, quite frankly, is terrible class design. Â They should fix their encounters to be equally challenging to both ranged and melee, not try to paper over it with buffs to one class that's taxed more heavily in encounters designed to be harder for just that particular class/role.

Ildur · **01-10-2014, 03:50 PM**

Each player has different tastes; what is asinine for some isn't for others. Specially when the 'asinine playstyle' is what differentiates that class. If a player doesn't like it, he has other 7 classes that will hopefully do what he wants to do in a way he actually enjoys. Or...well, other four classes because we are talking about damage dealing.

Quote:But I've legitimately never seen an MMO tune around "risk" a player takes by playing their class the way it's meant to be played.

I think TERA did that. It was hilarious, but in that game archers did more damage the closer they were to the target (something I hear happens in ARR's PvP). You could then play safely, staying away from your target, only having to worry about lunges and long range skills, kitting and basically being safe. Or you could get into the enemy's face and deal full damage while also having to worry about dodging the melee attacks and everything else.

If I recall correctly, mostly everyone went the safe route.

Hiro · **01-10-2014, 04:16 PM**

This really looks like a standard MMO issue and only really gets fixed (sometimes) once games and developing teams for the games grow. Especially with regard to Ranged versus Melee and how to handle the two.

A lot of what was issues in 1.0 that are appearing now are strictly because this game isn't a brand new product, it's a revamp, and it means we're getting a lot of recycled material and mechanics rather than a product tailored groundÂ up. It also means that the game needs to balance out itself appropriately for predicted changes with future updates. This comes with both new content (classes, zones, "raids") in PvE as well as class changes, upgrades, trends, and additions.Â

What this means for us at this juncture is that we're going to have to deal with accepting that we're sifting through the old stuff, it also means that they're not going to "shock" the entirety of the community with vastly new mechanics and changes in one single go. Most of these changes tend to be subtle and specifically adjusted for the player base and what they'd label the average gamer. Release set a precedence for many things, especially dungeon/content mechanics, its also ingrained a definite "power level" in our minds as players as well. For the sake of balance I can almost guarantee that the developers are looking at approaching any future changes and re-balancing from a safe and careful vantage point. Rather than implement something with a high set bar that could severely tilt the games balance they'd rather ease into it. Even if changes are good, or beneficial, or fair, major differences tend to create resentment and generally look bad.

From the recent changes, the melee damage buff was proof enough that the issue is known and they are willing to do something about it. We can only hope that "Maelstrom" demonstrates that they are going to be able to provide the game with balanced ground up mechanics.

LiadansWhisper · **01-10-2014, 04:27 PM**

(01-10-2014, 03:50 PM)Ildur Wrote: Each player has different tastes; what is asinine for some isn't for others. Specially when the 'asinine playstyle' is what differentiates that class. If a player doesn't like it, he has other 7 classes that will hopefully do what he wants to do in a way he actually enjoys. Or...well, other four classes because we are talking about damage dealing.

Either I was just really unclear, or you're not understanding what I'm saying. Â I'm not saying that some players won't like a playstyle. Â I, for instance, really don't like Melee. Â I'm not very good at it, and I don't have the twitchy reaction time in most games (not this one, since everything is telegraphed before it happens, but most games) to really be effective at it. Â I prefer ranged - well, I really prefer healing, and I guess I'm being silly since I have played Melee healers doing a DPS rotation on a mob/boss and been fine at it.

But that's not what I'm talking about. Â The suggestion was made that the Melee playstyle is harder because they have to "do more" to get the full DPS out of their classes. Â I maintain that class design that requires players to jump through hoops to stay even with other classes is bad design. Â Every class should have about the same skill floor, and about the same skill cap.

A good example of bad design is the way Feral Kitty Druids were treated for years in WoW. Â You basically had two types of Feral Kitties - the type that were completely worthless (because they couldn't master the ridiculously complicated playstyle necessary to put out good DPS), and amazing godlike players. Â Were the godlike players amazing and wonderful? Â Hell yes! Â Did you want one in your raid? Â Absolutely! Â But the fact was, finding one of those players was like looking for a bloody unicorn, and the majority Â of players were never able to reach that level. Â Which meant that their DPS wasn't just mediocre - it was terrible.

But eventually Blizzard figured out that this was bad design, and they overhauled the spec to leave players at about the same skill floor as every other class, and with the same skill cap as every other class. Â Does this mean that Feral Druids play like every other class? Â No. Â No they do not. Â What it means is that players don't have to jump through ridiculous hoops to generate the same DPS as an equivalent class. Â This is good class design.

And yes, I find it asinine when devs expect players to do ridiculous things to break even with other classes, regardless of whether there is some amorphous "great reward" at the end.

Quote:I think TERA did that. It was hilarious, but in that game archers did more damage the closer they were to the target (something I hear happens in ARR's PvP). You could then play safely, staying away from your target, only having to worry about lunges and long range skills, kitting and basically being safe. Or you could get into the enemy's face and deal full damage while also having to worry about dodging the melee attacks and everything else.

If I recall correctly, mostly everyone went the safe route.

Okay, but did TERA even have raiding? Â Like, from everything I've read and heard, TERA's PvE was mediocre at best and they didn't have any serious raiding to speak of. Â FFXIV is attempting to have a legitimate endgame, and they are building this around the Holy Trinity model, similar to EQ, WoW, Rift, SWTOR, etc. Â And from everything I've seen in Coils, I don't see the huge risk that Melee take by being, well...Melee.

Maybe from Ballast. Â Maybe.

Gharen · **01-10-2014, 08:04 PM**

Regarding the OP, In the end it boils down to the player, nothing more, nothing less. Utility or not you've been given a box of tools, how do you use them? Do you strive to learn and to be better with what you have? Or do you act like so many of the childish <Insert colorful metaphor here> we see in the duty finder that think they are the greatest gift to whatever class they are playing?

Unfortunately, there are so many people that fall into the latter it gives the rest a bad name and the only way for us as players to counter that short of shouting for the devs to buff this or that is to simply know your box of tools inside and out and always be flexible enough to learn something new.

synaesthetic · **01-11-2014, 09:00 PM**

Maybe I'm just so damn good at dodging and most of the melee I've played with sucks at it? Because short of a few people that I know who are really damn good at monk and dragoon, I see lots of monks and dragoons getting flattened.

Seems pretty unlikely, because I'm almost certain that if I stopped playing black mage and started playing monk or dragoon, I'd be right there with those people getting flattened.

On a training dummy, melee should absolutely do more raw DPS than ranged. In an actual encounter, they should be almost exactly the same if all played well and correctly, because melee, despite having higher DPS, will have far lower uptimeÂ than ranged. That's the "risk" I'm talking about. If your average uptime is lower on actual encounters then your average snapshot DPS should be higherÂ to compensate. The end result is that everyone does around the same when you take an average across the entire fight (unless the encounter requires some damage dealers to intentionally lower their DPS to deal with mechanics, such as monks using Arm of the Destroyer to keep mini-ADS from using High Voltage).

Uptime can be shortened by being forced to dodge, or by being flattened by an angry monster and then having to be raised and deal with reduced attributes for 90 seconds.

This is why a raw DPS hierarchy needs to exist. It has to. When you're doing theorycrafting on a training dummy and ranged is beating melee, what do you think is going to happen in a real raid encounter?

The hierarchy is based on risk of loss of uptime, whether that loss comes from being squashed by a mob or by avoiding an attack. As a result, the DPS hierarchy should be a scale from "highest DPS, lowest uptime %" to "lowest DPS, highest uptime %."

So we should see MNK > DRG > BLM > SMN > BRD on training dummies. I think Square is heading in that direction. These latest changes got us a lot closer, by nerfing bard and summoner, both of whom were doing more damage than they should for their uptime, and by buffing monk and dragoon, who were doing less damage than they should for their uptime.

LiadansWhisper · **01-12-2014, 05:33 AM**

(01-11-2014, 09:00 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: Maybe I'm just so damn good at dodging and most of the melee I've played with sucks at it? Because short of a few people that I know who are really damn good at monk and dragoon, I see lots of monks and dragoons getting flattened.

There are a lot of unskilled players in this game. Â There are also a lot of lazy players in this game. Â Simply because you see a lot of people getting themselves killed doesn't mean they were a) playing appropriately or b) unfairly hampered because of their role within a raid.

Quote:Seems pretty unlikely, because I'm almost certain that if I stopped playing black mage and started playing monk or dragoon, I'd be right there with those people getting flattened.

As in anything else, it takes practice and raid awareness. Â If you can dodge as a Black Mage, you can dodge as a Dragoon.

Quote:On a training dummy, melee should absolutely do more raw DPS than ranged. In an actual encounter, they should be almost exactly the same if all played well and correctly, because melee, despite having higher DPS, will have far lower uptimeÂ than ranged.

This is not true. Â In most fights, Melee should have as high if not higher uptime than Ranged simply because they never have to stop. Â Ranged (with the exception of Bard) are constrained by the fact that when they move, they cannot cast anything other than instant spells. Â Melee can continue mashing away at buttons as they move, and the mark of a competent melee player is that they keep DPSing away even while dodging (something that ranged should also be doing as much as possible, I might add).

Quote:That's the "risk" I'm talking about. If your average uptime is lower on actual encounters then your average snapshot DPS should be higherÂ to compensate.

That isn't risk. Â That's compensating for bad play.

Quote:The end result is that everyone does around the same when you take an average across the entire fight (unless the encounter requires some damage dealers to intentionally lower their DPS to deal with mechanics, such as monks using Arm of the Destroyer to keep mini-ADS from using High Voltage).

Except that those players who are actually playing properly are going to be head and shoulders above the ranged because they're actually DPSing correctly.

Quote:Uptime can be shortened by being forced to dodge, or by being flattened by an angry monster and then having to be raised and deal with reduced attributes for 90 seconds.

Moving out of the red lines shouldn't reduce uptime unless it's an AoE in a circle around the boss. Â With that said, Ranged have to dodge, too. Â And Ranged can't keep pew pewing the boss except with instant spells - something I would think a BLM would be very, very aware of, as BLM is shit on any fight with a high degree of movement.

Interestingly enough, Melee are not shit on high movement fights, but I digress.

If a Melee is dying to something, that's poor play on their part if the damage is avoidable. Â If they're dying to unavoidable damage, then their healers need a stern talkign to. Tuning a class around the idea that they're going to be a smear on the floor a certain percentage of the time is, quite frankly, stupid as all hell.

Quote:This is why a raw DPS hierarchy needs to exist. It has to. When you're doing theorycrafting on a training dummy and ranged is beating melee, what do you think is going to happen in a real raid encounter?

A training dummy is never anything like an actual encounter. Â Theorycrafting can't be based around a training dummy (except for basic things like "how much damage does this spell do," "how long is this cast time," "Does Spell Speed lower my cast time at this amount, or at this amount?").

Quote:The hierarchy is based on risk of loss of uptime, whether that loss comes from being squashed by a mob or by avoiding an attack. As a result, the DPS hierarchy should be a scale from "highest DPS, lowest uptime %" to "lowest DPS, highest uptime %."

I've never played in a game where this was the case. Â Again, if the developers are creating multiple encounters where Melee are at a severe disadvantage as compared to ranged, that is encounter design failure. Â This is not a good thing - and you shouldn't tune classes around shitty encounter design.

Quote:So we should see MNK > DRG > BLM > SMN > BRD on training dummies. I think Square is heading in that direction. These latest changes got us a lot closer, by nerfing bard and summoner, both of whom were doing more damage than they should for their uptime, and by buffing monk and dragoon, who were doing less damage than they should for their uptime.

I pray to the gods of gaming that you are incorrect and SE isn't basing their class design on target dummies, because that would be a failure of truly epic proportions.

synaesthetic · **01-12-2014, 07:02 AM**

If every DPS class does the same amount of damage on a stationary target, the theorycrafters and raiders will find the one that is easiest to do the most damage with, and then they will demand that class and that class only. Normalizing raw DPS across all damage dealers will always result in class stacking. The devs are not perfect and nobody has ever designed a fight that is completely fair in how much pressure it places on every possible raid composition.

Class stacking happens. It happened in FFXI, it happened in XIV 1.0, it happened in WoW constantly. It's what created the whole idea of a "Flavor of the Month" class. Hell, it happened in 2.0, when everyone would stack bards and one Dragoon for Disembowel. It happens now, in 2.1; Garuda EX favors ranged stacking while Titan EX favors melee stacking.

There are ways to prevent this, some of which work better than others. The limit break nerf was a pretty heavy-handed way to punish class stacking, but not as heavy handed as Blizzard's constant "balancing" which just forced FotM rerolling. Making sure that certain classes synergize well with each other is a much better way to do that, which is something Squee did do and I'm glad for it.

What I'm trying to say is that if you design your damage dealers to do the same amount of damage, your players will poke and prod and pore over thousands of parser logs until they figure out which one does the most with the least amount of risk and the least amount of player skill, and then they'll only want that one. The stereotypical raider always takes the path of least resistance. The only way to stop this is to make the riskier classes worth more than the less risky ones.

If you don't, you have the FFXI situation where every damage dealer is a SAM.

Aleister · **01-13-2014, 01:35 AM**

Heated debate going on here. :surprised:

Anstarra · **01-13-2014, 01:51 AM**

(01-13-2014, 01:35 AM)Aleister Wrote: Heated debate going on here. :surprised:

Indeed! Much as I remain uncertain as to the overall balance of Melee versus Ranged in this game, ESPECIALLY in PVP where we need specific abilities, as Melee, to SOMETIMES counter an ability that everyone but us can abuse, I'm rather reassured by the number of posts claiming that, especially in Coil, Dragoons are desired. Maybe the situation is not hopeless. Which isn't to say that it's QUITE fair, but I'm certainly not about to quit playing Dragoon.

LiadansWhisper · **01-13-2014, 01:58 AM**

(01-13-2014, 01:51 AM)Anstarra Wrote:
(01-13-2014, 01:35 AM)Aleister Wrote: Heated debate going on here. :surprised:

Indeed! Much as I remain uncertain as to the overall balance of Melee versus Ranged in this game, ESPECIALLY in PVP where we need specific abilities, as Melee, to SOMETIMES counter an ability that everyone but us can abuse, I'm rather reassured by the number of posts claiming that, especially in Coil, Dragoons are desired. Maybe the situation is not hopeless. Which isn't to say that it's QUITE fair, but I'm certainly not about to quit playing Dragoon.

I can't speak much towards PvP, as I don't engage in it, but what I do remember of leveling Lancer and Pugilist (for Archer) left me with the feeling that Melee would be boned by PvP. Â Primarily because there's something really strange with the hitbox - it's buggy and extremely small, relative to other games I've played. Â So I could see that with Sprint, that's an issue, especially since it comes off CD faster than your counter skill does.

On the other hand, Melee can do a lot to interrupt a caster simply by being close to them (and while healers do have some "get away from me" spells, they do have CDs).

No Longer Exists · **01-13-2014, 12:07 PM**

I'm not going to get into the rhetoric about DPS classes sucking, just going to go from experience and what I call the "Clockwork Pain" rotation. Lancer/Dragoon was my first class to 50 on Lukas and even though I chose to fiddle with other things after nearly complete darklight gear and no relic weapon (Darklight drop instead), I have a rotation I'm happy with and have yet to hear much complaint about. Course, I don't tend to go out of my way to mess with the extremes because I feel that PuGs suck, but when I roulette and do occasionally try to topple Titan HM with a PuG, I'm never saddened by my damage output.

Also, Lukas has no PUG/MNK abilities. Just 30 levels of Marauder. Here goes.

Single Target - Standard

Starting on left or right side, Heavy Thrust - (First Combo) True Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, Full Thrust - Fracture - Phlebotomize - Heavy Thrust - >Move to back< - Impulse Drive, Disembowel, Chaos Thrust.

Single Target - Boss

Starting on left or right side, Blood for Blood, Heavy Thrust - (First Combo) True Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, Full Thrust >Move around to the other side or through at your discretion< - Fracture - Phlebotomize - Heavy Thrust - >Move to back< - Impulse Drive, Disembowel, Chaos Thrust. - >Return to starting side<Â
Blood for Blood ends either at Disembowel or Chaos Thrust depending on how quick you are on keystrokes, however the heavy thrust buff is still running. Continue combo like normal, adjust for Blood for Blood when its CD is finished.Â

Mobs of 4 or higher: Target side: Blood for Blood, Heavy Thrust - Ring of Thorns - Dragonfire Drop (If available), Re-target middle of mob, Doomspike x3 - Repeat as needed.Â

Mobs of 3 or less: Standard Single Target Rotation.Â

As for PVP and running around: Do the jump abilities not work? I'll be poking into PVP soon, but reading the comments made me ask the question.

Really, the issue with melee and dodging is based on equipment and coordination. If your comp is laggy and slow, you're going to suck at melee and be a liability to harder duties and raids. I've got hand-eye coordination though and even I get caught on the edge of an AoE now and then. (And yes, I've been knocked off by the Titan-fist, hung my head in shame, and moved on)

Last two things:

1> Hellooooo, if you're running at someone with a long stick and a knife attached to it while that person is throwing live grenades at your feet, you either move or die. I think the game is realistic in its interpretation of combat (At least as realistic as a fantasy MMO can be, mind you). Of course the goobers in the back firing arrows or throwing their own "grenades" aren't going to get hit or threatened as often, they're BEHIND THE LINE. Is it fair? Nah, but War isn't fair.... *Theatrical squint, lights a cigar with a match struck off his chin-stubble* >.>

2> Elusive Jump doesn't fail for me, maybe it's how quick I am with the "OH SHIT" button it's attached to, I dunno. It IS, however, practically useless because of its cooldown.

-Cheers

Black Hat

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End Game: Are Dragoons Good For Anything?

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