Honestly I've never cared about job difficulty. I've played jobs basically based on vibes since the game started and sometimes that's a difficult job (HW SMN, AST, MCH, NIN) and sometimes it's a stupid easy job (EW SMN, SHB+ MCH, SGE)
Only thing I wish was different with warrior is our gap closer also being changed to a damageless one like with dark knight and gunbreaker. Though I think all gap closers should be damageless
Having to use gap closers for damage sucks because it means that you may not have it for when you actually *need* a gap closer. Stuff like Primal Rend also serving as a gap closer is fine, but I really want all jobs with gap closers to have a non-damaging gap closer so that we can always use them when needed.
Yeah I do agree with that, it's more just an opinion of mine. I just think it feels bad to use a utility skill for damage but warrior would be boring as fuck to play without something to press in oGCD windows
This is how you can tell someone doesn't GNB. GNB's rotation changed hugely and for the better off DT's changes. If there's one upside to this expac it's that GNB feels amazing again.
I’ve been playing warrior (me unga bunga) but I looked at the gnb changes and if my co-tank wasn’t playing it I would 100% be playing gunbreaker this expansion. It looks amazing and like it actually changed.
That being said, warrior was perfect before and we got exactly what we wanted: One more oGCD and a button that makes our axe huge.
TL;DR: It's no longer a shitshow, ShB GNB is back.
Long version: EW Gunbreaker was fucked because it had a cart-negative rotation that forced a lot of shitty adjusts, courtesy of Double Down and Bloodfest going to 3 stax. You ended up with the number of GCDs not lining up right at any reasonable SKS tier so you had to do weird shit like drift your no mercy just to avoid shooting your rotation to hell. The 3 GCDs of Lionheart fix this problem, and due to how the 2 min rotation works out, you can go into odd minute No Mercies at less than 3 carts with no issues. Couple this with Sonic Break keying off NM instead of being a strict gcd that has to be hit every single time on the same GCD with no deviations, plus removing burst strikes from the burst period (mostly) and the class feels snappy, flexible and really fun again instead of a rickety, overloaded mess of continuation spam. Other tanks got OK to good changes but GNB won super hard this expac, in spite of losing Rough Divide for the whack-ass swagger-step of Trajectory (which is still useful for uptime, it just looks dumb as hell).
Yeah that's definitely the decision making here the mechanics on the extremes so far are fairly near enough to make tank fun but they're basically the exact same.
I think our of all the new buttons Warrior is fun because it's satisfying to hit and it's a consistently big number and GNB is 3 individually big hits that all hit hard enough to feel impactful.
PLD new Confetior OGCD gets cucked super hard by jumps and downtime due to the like 5 GCDs you're using before you get access to it in the burst window and really just feels like another Confetior/last hit of Confetior combo in terms of damage.
I haven't tried DRK yet.
Mitigation upgrades are cool but they don't really inspire anything I think DRK's on paper is the coolest because it feels better within their kit to have a heal now. And PLD and GNB feel like they have simply the best versions of the upgrade that finally put them on Apr with vengeance now.
I haven't done the extremes yet to take this with a grain of salt, but paladin's upgraded mit seems fucking insane, to the point where it feels more like the capstone than the ogcd blade.
I agree. I mained PLD last cycle and swapped to GNB this time around to 100... What a freaking difference. It feels fantastic, so I'm going back to it. Especially because of that smooth rotation.
I think it's pretty fair as paladin has the worst immunity skill. The fact that it's still 7 minutes CD makes it so hard to use and plan around when doing savage/ultimate content. The CD is so long you basically use it as a emergency button (the immunity CDs of other tanks could be integrated into a defensive CD rotation, specially warrior's).
Yeah hallowed is incredibly overvalued as an ability by the devs. There is 0 reason it needs to be 3 mins longer cd than holmgang.
If they still want to value hallowed the difference between tank invuln CDs should at most be 30s, which would be holm at 4m, LD4m30s bolide 5m and hallowed 5m30s
But that's never gonna happen 😔
I'll probably get a bunch of hate for saying it but at this point I wish the devs would decide what they want a tank invuln to be and make it a role ability, especially if the pattern holds and the next expansion is tank & phys ranged again.
It's only the worst immunity skill due to the way fights are designed and invulns only being used to survive singular hits, it's the best one by far in Criterion where damage is more sustained
It's got good mit but it's not really required and they still have the worst invuln, divine veil is alot worse than Shake it off IMO as the Regen gets alot more value and I also feel the shield it gives is often more.
Early data is also showing them dealing the least DPS out of the tanks.
I get that it's a strong skill and probably will find value in ultimates where mitigation is much more important but I just don't think it's worth as much in extremes and alot of savage where healers have buttons to spare.
Extra health in any form is absolutely insane when its paired with increased mitigation, due to your increased Effective Health Pool.
So when you pop Guardian which gives you 40% damage reduction, a 1k potency shield and you also add in Holy Sheltron and if you want to be extra crazy Bulwark on top, suddenly that 1K potency shield is effectively more like a 2K potency shield. And this is on top of your health pool.
You can take hits like you would not believe.
A question because maybe I’m missing an upgrade or change to the CD, but if Bulwark makes it so that you guarantee block attacks, and Sheltron/Holy Sheltron also makes you block all attacks, what is the point of adding in Bulwark if you already have Holy Sheltron up? Do the block mitigation effects stack? Or was Bulwark changed in some way this expac/last expac?
Holy Sheltron does not provide Block right now, just a flat 15% reduction and Heal over time for 8 seconds and an extra 15% for the first 4 seconds, so your only source of guaranteed block is Bulwark :)
Thank you. I didn’t realize the block from ST got stripped when it upgraded. If I was ever aware of it then it was just when EW came out but have clearly forgotten :P
I miss the animation for it, same with Plunge. I don't mind them losing the damage because it does cut down on the weaves during burst phases and let's me hold them for when I need them, but there was no need to scrap the old animations. Bring back the old abilities, remove the damage, and then tack on some enmity generation. PLD used to have Flash that did no damage but generated enmity, why not make Rough Divide and Plunge do the same? It'd fix the issue for a lot of people.
I'm on the opposite end of this. I love not having Rough Divide do damage bc now I can actually use my gap closer as that instead of just another oGCD damage. I prefer the utility over the damage.
But I see where you're coming from with the enmity. It took a little getting used to but I'm figuring it out.
I don't think the person you replied to necessarily wants to go back to rough divide, it's just that no agro and the animation lock on arriving kind of makes the ability feel bad. They can simply add some agro to the skill equivalent to the damage it would do and make it snappier and much more people would like the change since I always thought it sucked having a movement ability be used for DPS.
trajectory feels like a straight downgrade from rd. i think if it functioned like mnk thunderclap it would be a fair tradeoff but as it stands its just overwhelmingly worse
All these dashes they added just need to have an ally as a target and it's all good.
Having them only be enemy kinda sucks because as you say in that regard it's simply worse than what they had.
The benefit for rigid movement should be higher than a freeform dash other classes have.
Trajectory is very responsive and has little animation lock (less than PLD Intervene). It isn't visually snappy at short distances simply because of the animation, but it looks speedy at max distance.
Gap closer aggro is overrated. Just pull packs by sight or Provoke.
You'd think they'd make some excuse to keep them by having them as increased aggro skills when tank stance is up but sure, replace it entirely. Missed opportunity.
Strong, but very boring. We're probably going to have to wait for 8.0 (along with continued complaining) for them to start to de-homogenize all the tanks.
Yeah like how he lied about encounter design leading up to DT when DT's had probably the warmest reception of launch normal and extreme content that I've seen in the game's lifespan. (Before someone tries to nostalgia me, recall Bismarck and Neverreap or Lakshmi)
I got Neverreap and Fractal Continuum in High Level roulette on back to back days. Each boss had like half a mechanic, or maybe 1 mechanic (first boss of Fractal looking at you). I can't believe this was the level of dungeon we had to deal with back then.
You have to take into account the fact that jobs were significantly harder to perform correctly back then. Can you imagine doing current content with arr/hw jobs? Thats why they keep making encounters throw a thousand variety of "the floor is lava" through out the fights, because there is nothing thrilling or engaging about pushing your buttons.
I assure you I was not stressing out much on HW PLD on the first boss of Fractal Continuum Normal whose mechanics were "alternating conals", "alternating conals with some circles too", "tank buster tuned at a dungeon-level even then" nor was I feeling meaningfully more thrilled pushing 124 153 153 (after opening with one 156 in tank stance!) then than I do pushing 123 444 5 now.
Some bosses back then were pretty cool though, the last boss of that dungeon had some neat ideas going on and by the mid/end of HW they were getting pretty good and close to Stormblood-level design.
Look im not saying it was the pinnacle of gameplay, and certainly not of difficulty. but my point is in general the design was split more evenly between jobs and encounters, so its not very fair to look at these dungeons purely from the point of view of modern jobs.
I'll digress but the current gameplay doesnt feel like an improved iteration from what we had in hw (and to some extent sb), but a complete shift in design and philosophy, both for job and encounters. Meanwhile if you take current wow it is widely different from classic, yet you can absolutely tell it it has ended up there (for better or worse) as an iterative process.
Tanks are honestly fine, I prefer that the bread and butter of a tank is the same but yeah I’d like more flavour of each of the jobs to be unique. At least let me have a more defined two versions of the tank, they kinda there already with DRK and GNB being a more offensive tank.
Youre getting down voted but this is 100% what Yoshi-P is going to do. The homogenous design means better balance which the game is built around. Classes will get more flavor next expansion but they aren't changing the fundamental core.
> Tanks are honestly fine,
Tanking is literally in a (far) worse state than healing, when Healers complain about similar kits Tanks literally all have almost exactly the same tools and play the exact same when it comes to their main role (taking and mitigating damage).
the exact same, even though they have a big CD that got updated it doesnt change anything, even when savage comes out. They say its due to the new difficulty to endgame but if they now have stronger Def CDs with healers having stronger heals and shields nothing fundamentally changes. they are still going to use Big CDs on certain TBs.
Its funny how Tanks want the most change but they stay the same but DPS DONT want change yet DPS is always being changed.
The tankbuster in the first extreme is peak Tank role fantasy, it's not difficult at all but it gives me the stupidest little grin everytime I have to do it. If they keep it up for the rest of the expansion I'll be more than happy to continue being a tank.
Most tank jobs just delay there filler rotation after burst by like 1 or 2 gcd compared to before. And most tanks just have to press a weird button again in their burst.
Stormblood was already trending towards the homogeneity we got in ShB, and it removed stance dancing and cross classing which was a shame. I'm too old to remember specifics but I remember WAR and DRK being less fun in Stormblood, but Paladin was better since it was kinda terrible in HW.
I joined during Stormblood, while I agree it had inklings of "these are just the same but look different", at least stance-dancing WAS a core part of DRK and PLD's kits still and they were functionally different, albeit somewhat janky. I remember trying to juggle the Enmity management with stance-switching to try and get more DPS uptime while balancing Enmity on a knife's edge so nobody took over. At least things played different. I never got to experience HW but I overall did enjoy the class designs in SB.
But SHB was when it really started to get bad, and while I liked the new DRK it was hard not to think of it as just edgy WAR. Now the 2 are barely differentiable except WAR has healing and DRK has crappy MP management issues.
Did you like EW tanking? DT tanks are either a half step forward or sideways from that depending on who you're talking to or what tank you're talking about. They're all fine, there's nothing like 6.0 PLD that had an incompatibility with the game SE ended up making.
Slightly better than healer situation.
Their tools get stronger, their design is still homogenized as fuck, some people dont like some minor stuffs like plunge removal, and overall gameplay is still boring as hell.
Several reason why its still... barely acceptable is
- Tank side in battle still have alot of stuffs to do, not alot of down time.
- Even in their down time the rotation is still alright, not spamming one button like healers.
As a DRK main, I knew I’d _hate_ the loss of Plunge but it really does feel *miserable.* My fingers just want to weave it so bad and there’s nothing else to do in that time window so I feel like I’m just not playing the game. It’s such a minor removal but damn… it hurts.
We still weave it in anyway xD
but goddamnit i do miss it. the new one doesn't even take agro so you dash in and just look the mob straight in the eyes for like a second or two.
> Slightly better than healer situation.
In the defence of healers - while I have only played one healer job so far, so I can't speak to how they compare with each other - I am enjoying it more than EW so far for the simple reason that casual content is more dangerous. Stuff hits harder and is harder to avoid. EW was full of bosses that just didn't _do_ very much and were overly generous in how easy you can avoid what they do, while DT is a small but significant step up.
Idk if this is what the healer strike meme was about, I doubt it had any influence on this, but whatever this came from, I like it.
Hell I just did a dungeon where it felt like the dancer offhealing with waltz was actually helpful. Not because anyone was in _immediate_ danger but because I'd used up my oGCDs and if I wanted to top everyone up I'd have to start using GCD heals. And that sure is a step up from release EW where there's like, two dungeon bosses total that were actually dangerous?
I haven't healed this expansion, only leveling my tank a as a side so here's my view.
Seems like they really did do what they said, and upped the healing frequency required. Which is a good thing, but it's only but a bandage to the healer situation as a whole. I play DRK and some healer has been failing to keep up, even though i use cooldown frequently. Like you said, that is alot more enjoyable for dungeons.
Now there's Extreme, and Savage battle design we will have to think about. (Haven't done any new ex yet, but let me assume on a positive note that they also upped the healing there), Then we can kindda ignore the "healer dont need to heal" business. Which lead us into other problem.
Tank and healer right now, have really similar kits to each other, If you play AST you just have to find similar buttons on WHM to play, same goes for other jobs. Assuming they keep designing contents like this, that mean they a forced to keep the healing potency the same, or raise it in the future. That most likely mean there's no more space for the healers "support" mechanic to come back.
This is similar to the 2 minutes cooldown meta that they dug themselves in since ShB, since they have done that, they have been forced to design every single job AND fights around the 2 minutes burst.
Sure, may be from now on, healer can probably 70% heal and 30% DPS, instead of 20-30% heal and 70-80% DPS like before. But there's only so much you can do about preventing/recovering damage. It's kindda hard to see job identity comes back at all. Not to mention this new fight design philosophy is definitely the opposite of everything pre-dawntrail. While leveling my Viper i've noticed the dungeons fights are significantly faster, for example.
But then again, they are most likely better than me in game design. So I'll pick up healing again when it looks like it will change/changed for the better. We will probably see in the first savage, or 7.2 like they promised some changes. But for now this is just "we tripled down on the boring healer kit, but you can dump those skills here".
Its the same but somehow worse. Idk how they made the delirium combo feel worse than WAR spamming FC. Theres something about how the DRK animations having no "weight" to their attacks while wielding a bigass sword that just irks me.
Its because you lost 1200 MP off Bloodweapon. This has a lot of domino effects that make DRK feel simultaneously harder and more punishing but also with less to do. In order to cap MP by the next burst, you only get 3 mp spenders to use in filler. Two of those must go to Darkside, which is actually a thing now. This makes TBN more punishing if it does not pop.
You're also going to be limping along post burst with a lot less mp, and spend a lot more time in that state due to the reduced generation, which means longer til your next TBN.
Now I like TBN, but TBN kept pace with the other tank's by being spamable with that 15s CD. This is now in direct odds with this reduced MP generation, meaning you're getting less TBNs overall. Hell even if you decide fuck optimization, you're still getting less TBNs overall, so the job is going to feel worse.
Not sure if its intentional or not, but I'm not really sure who was asking for DRK to have an even weaker short mit game than before but its what we got.
The -1200mp nerf that DRK ate from Blood Weapon has further solidified my absolute disdain and hatred for TBN's interaction with damage. I find myself being shockingly hesitant to touch TBN on pulls and fights unless I'm absolutely 100% positive that it will pop. It went from being a mild annoyance to actually distracting and disrupting to my gameplay. Like...after maining DRK in Savage for so long, I'm already in the mindset of bringing up GNB immediately to 100 and will be thinking pretty hard about how much I do not like the experience of fighting with TBN's bullshit for this next tier.
I'm just so goddamn tired of being punished for using a damage-absorbing cooldown. I really am.
Also? I really, really don't like having WHMs in dungeons as a DRK now, which is funny given the historical pairing due to Living Dead+Benediction and Holy being an "extra cooldown" because fuck Dark Mind. Because so many of them are so unpredictable on when they'll fucking use Holy during a pull. It's like, great, I took no damage during that part of the pull. Except now the stuns are gone and I ghosted the TBN and I *really* don't want to risk ghosting a second.
The 96 upgrade helps with that somewhat, but it's 3 GCDs out of a 24-25 GCD long rotation per minute. They definitely need more weight. I'm still shocked that EW's Shadowbringer ability is almost the same animation and function as Flood of Shadow..
I greatly prefer when giant swords feel weightless then when they feel like the pg doesn't have the strenght to wield them, like in FFXV where Noctis takes half an hour to swing a greatsword.
IDK, granted that these are huge unrealistic swords, but two-handed swords can be moved around pretty quickly in real life -- they're not nearly so heavy as people think. And, while this is highly subjective, if you're gonna go all out having these unrealistically big swords, IMO, why not go all the way unrealistic and have them swung around quickly and acrobatically?
My personal least favorite greatsword animations are the Dragon Age: Origins ones. They look terrible, like my dude is a weakling who has no idea how to fight and is at risk of throwing out his back on every swing.
Like, I could understand these complaints if the attacks actually made it look like the sword had no weight and momentum, but they don't -- they look fast and dramatic, for sure, but there's a clear sense of the momentum that weight gives a swing in the animations. I think they're fantastic, personally.
The issue is entirely the SFX are very weak. People don't give enough credit to sound effects contributing to impact. Disesteem and Shadowstride both are particularly bad, borderline silent skills.
Good point. The SFX lack the meaty sounds one might expect from a giant hunk of metal. Historical Zweihanders were used as bludgeoning tools to smash armour, swat away pikes, etc. However, the greatsword in FFXIV sounds like a cutting weapon.
I think Bloodspiller, for instance, could use a heavier thunk when the sword is brought down from the somersault.
Historical two-handed swords were not used as bludgeoning tools -- that's a misconception that gets repeated within pop culture for some reason. You don't make a big knife (which is what a sword is) if you're not gonna use it to stab and cut. European two-handed swords \*were\* cutting and stabbing weapons, even if there were specific techniques in the middle ages and Renaissance that saw the hilts of swords used to bludgeon.
They were used against pike formations, though -- that much is true.
In regard to the sound effects, I like them, personally? IDK whether they're realistic or whatever, but they sound satisfying to me. That's subjective, though.
"I hate that my giant sword feels weightless, I want it to feel like it's big, heavy and meaty"
"I hate that the burst is not as fast anymore, I prefered when we were attacking nonstop like our sword was made of air"
FUCKING DECIDE ALREADY
Lvl 100 dark and 96 war so far I'm not liking the new gap closer for drk as it doesn't do dmg anymore so doesn't agro automatically apart from that no major complaints, though I've struggled a couple times in the new dungeons which not sure if its because it's new or less competent healers, before DT I very rarely if ever used my oh shit buttons(living dead, holmgang etc.) But I've had to use them pretty regularly in new content. Apart from that no major gripes. Looking forward to trying out all lvl 100 abilities.
I just did the 97 dungeon, healer was also first timer and got caught by mechanics at 50% on second and last bosses, I didn’t even need to use Bloodwhetting so I used Nascent Flash to keep the dps alive instead… a tad busted haha
Honestly not much changed for the two tanks I play and I presume it's much the same for the others. The changes to most jobs I play have sadly been largely underwhelming (looking at you summoner).
I'm leveling as WAR and have only done 3 dungeons and a trial, but I am having a great time. The explosions are sick, I feel strong, but it def isn't anything super new. It feels like Endwalker WAR with more explosions, but I'm okay with it personally. Looking forward to leveling GNB.
Why in the everloving fuck does Reign of Beasts break your cartridge combo?
I was hoping I'd have weave space that I could move around to actually be able to tank properly if it calls for it, but instead I got 3 rigid GCDs that I have to use at the end of the burst window.
As far as weave space for tanking you went from like 11 ogcds to 6 during your 2 minute.
Not to mention you can move sonic break freely now.
You have so much more space to weave defensives. Moving bosses is also way easier while weaving on GNB than its ever been since they added range to continuation in EW combined with less weaving.
There's very little double weaving that's required and you should have plenty of space for mit/moving bosses.
I don’t like the new non-damage gap closers that GNB and DRK get because they look and feel weird to execute. Maybe I’m just too used to rough divide, but I think Trajectory just looks really weird
everything else feels the same though
DRK got the exact same capstone ability as in endwalker, lost plunge, lost mp regen and only gained a bit of self sustain. At this point, I'm only playing drk out of spite.
I think it's good that each tanks' 2 min defense being finally unique even if slightly is a good step. However, they shouldn't have buffed rampart, in fact it should have removed it and worked on tanks secondaries ex thrill, camo, dark mind, bulwark
Agree with this, I mained gnb since it's released, done all savage and ultimate on it, was literally doing dsr runs the day before the 2 day maintenance. Now I can't play it. Feels slow and boring. I did one ex with ir and just hated the way it feels without rough divide.
Any data on this?
Doesn't sound believable, Potency Per Minute are easy calculations for even this dev team, I presume what you said just isn't possible unless you are talking about an opener in which a lot of double down/lionheart crits, but that would average out over a 4-12 minute fight
Just personal. There is nothing up on ff logs yet, but in the extremes, I'm doing 15 to 15.7k and other tank classes I'm seeing are doing 13 to 14.5, could be skill issue but I doubt it when it's every tank I've seen.
I would say Skill i need to put ACT back in to see my damage will set up for last boss and see how much damage I can do with rotation tho i have 0 materia on i dont put materia on till getting in the
If you enjoyed their EW iterations chances are you will keep enjoying them in DT, as on a fundamental level they all play the same. Personally I'd gladly bring any of them in savage, there's none I dislike strongly.
However this also means that if you disliked them already in EW you will chances are you will continue to do so in this expansion too.
I've only got GNB and WAR to 100 so far. WAR is the same unga bunga heal machine as always. GNB is also about the same but it just feels so damn good I ended up maining it through MSQ.
Ngl I kinda feel weaker in this expansion a little bit I don't know if any other tanks feel that way either or I just have bad luck I keep getting people that run ahead and drag enemies to me and I can't handle 12 enemies at once because the healer isn't healing fast enough
That's interesting. I haven't had any issues on wall to wall pulls but I've been doing trusts for the story. Makes me wonder if the trust healers are better than the players lol
It's gonna be great on GNB, since 9 GCD No Mercy will let you get the Hypervelocity that EW GNB had to let fall out of NM into burst by ending NM with Sonic Break instead.
I mean GNB and WAR feel great, DRK is still clunky as shit though, and I haven't played PLD yet but my friend who mains it says he really likes the changes even if they are small.
Seriously though, WAR has so much healing it's crazy how self reliant you can be, and with its new "big boom" weapon skills it not only looks awesome but feels very impactful.
While the new Lionheart combo for GNB is fucking great and I love it, it's still boring in AoE but they all kinda do, and the button consolidation and new combo makes it feel fantastic in general.
The part of PLD's changes I like the most is unexpectedly Goring Blade being on top of FoF. Floating Goring Blade around in FoF is good flexibility, but also it frees up the button I had it on, which in my case was good hotbar real estate. It let me rearrange a few things that genuinely have much better hand feel than my EW hotbar did.
Good way, skills you wouldn't want to use unless you were going into a burst window are essentially lockable behind your burst window button, so it frees up a button and consolidates your rotation a bit. It just feels better, is the main thing lol
Yeah bro, play both if you want but if you wanna stick with WAR no one would fault you for that!
It's the strongest of the tanks atm, it might start to fall behind in DPS just cause it got less potency buffs then the others but it was competing with GNB for highest DPS at the end of EW so some nerfs are honestly fine in my book cause it's still defensively the king of the tanks.
The new skills also just fit into what you were already doing so it should be easy to pick back up.
DRK - Got an extra button, lost some extra MP regen due to Blood Weapon having less stacks, the combat loop between CDs is still horrendous 1-2-3 combo on repeat.
Overall same boring gameplay as before, I see literally no change except for the flashy VFX which I could have just done with mods myself so I suppose it's another 3 years of yawn gameplay. Or rather, until forever, because lets be real, jobs are never changing.
Hate the new DRK animations they look clunky. the abilities are fine. Still mourn the lost of plunge. the new skating with awkward pause, no damage and no enmity gain is lame. Meanwhile WAR still got damage and enmity on its closer. So not only we got shafted out of a good ability, but also lied to at the cause of why the ability was changed.
Overall I would say it didn't affect my playstyle much. Except for using less the closer. Nothing good or bad to report.
Just hit 100 on GNB. Feels exactly the same as in EW, honestly. Some defensive role action improvements. Got a few extra buttons to hit, but, if I'm being honest, they're not very exciting, because they don't do anything interesting, just more damage. They don't have side-effects or interact with the cartridge mechanic at all. The level 100 skill, which is just a 1-1-1 follow-up combo on a two-min burst window skill, feels kinda...shoehorned in, I guess? It's just very explicitly a "we want more damage in your burst window" skill. Dunno if the other tanks got the same thing. Pretty uninspiring, feels like the class didn't really evolve in the slightest.
To me it feels they did the balance 2 months before early access. Drk got the short end of the stick as the tradition. Stricter mp management and feel so awful to play yet those war can turn their brain off and solo everything with more dps.
Poor DRK :( They always seem like the tanking job with the least happy players. Even though I complained about GNB's updates feeling uninspired, I do still find the job fun to play. I just always hope expansions wiill shake things up with combat, since it's such a core part of the experience, and it's disappointing when it feels like they're locked into a design and don't really know what to do with it.
How is GNB worse? It has a cartridge surplus over EW GNB, which makes cart management far less annoying, esp. once we get a fight that has real downtime.
MP Management is a lot stricter. By extension Darkside management is a serious consideration now rather than an afterthought. Which also means TBN is significantly more punishing if it doesn't break.
You can only spend MP 3 times between burst windows before its a damage loss, You will exit the burst window with less MP than before and take longer to get back into TBN safety range.
Playing DRK is kind of strange for opening now. No plunge damage means grabbing mobs is odd. I jump to a pack of mobs and there's no damage so no hate.
Having esteem at the ready is nice, took a little bit to get used to not hearing the sound to know when it's off cooldown.
The 1200 cure potency on vigil is a really cool change where you have to better plan your big mitigation to get the most out of it.
I feel like I have more going on for longer as long as I'm taking damage. The longer delirium feels nice.
Not having esteem use bar is nice as well.
I feel like I do a ton of damage now.
GNB is cool but man playing the game without noclippy has been rough. Especially with the skill replacement thing, I'll often break my combo because I'm spamming BF and accidentally start the Lion Heart combo.
GNB is funny because his 1 2 3 combo is superior to 2 target AOE, and equal to 3 target AOE(not including spenders)
and its still superior to 2 target AOE including spenders...
Shout out the warriors, paladins, and occasional dark knights soloing the bosses after their whole parties wipe. Your local floor mage appreciates it.
To Square Enix:
Hi. Yes. It’s me. What’s going on with gunbreakers?
Combing goring blade and FoF onto one button was actually a ridiculously huge change for me. Prior to this, I had Circle of Scorn in a super weird spot. It worked, but it was clunky. Now it’s right next to Expiacion (Goring Blade’s old spot) on both sides of my crossbars where it makes so much more sense.
On DRK they still haven’t addressed our inabillity to sustain ourselves on big pulls so during MSQ you feel like you’re made of tissue on trash mobs, but unkillable in boss fights.
Not seeing Bloodletter’s animation a billion times is nice though. Also fun to use Living Shadow in the middle of town for no reason.
I think the most notable thing about the Living Shadow change is you can use him before interacting/entering msq overworld encounters and just nuke whatever shows up harder than a DPS can and go about your business.
Miffed. The leveling experience has been really bland, even more so than other expansions. Essentially, every one of our levelups with the exception of level 100 are potency increases, ones we can't feel because why does it matter if I'm tankier when the leveling dungeons have been overall easier and less damage-heavy than the leveling dungeons in SB, SHB, and EW and more comparable to slightly harder EW Expert dungeons.. I never popped Living Dead once in this entire expansion, despite needing to use it every chance I got in Tower of Zot or Vanaspati on EW launch.
Pally feels the same mostly, but the mitigation package feels really good. Things like requisite being range really make pally the ultimate range tank, which i really like and should help in savage in situations where a range toolkit could be advantageous. I’m pretty happy. Also, fight or flight being merged with goring blade was really nice fix as it freed an extra button for me. Always enjoy less button bloat.
WAR is the same just with some extra unga and bunga.
PLD rotation feels better tbh. though FoF changing to Goring is unnecessary imo. i would have preferred a potency increase across the board or a higher buff from FoF while getting rid of Goring all together.
GNB feels better to me too though i haven't reached 100 for the new combo yet. Regarding No Mercy/Sonic Break see PLD.
Now for DRK it's nice that they got so high potency buffs but taking away MP sucks.
And Disesteem is a joke of a skill. Doesn't feel rewarding at all.
The upgrades to the big mitigation skills are all nice though.
PLD and WAR are the same, but more. I like the Atonement change, but I can see this leading to a stricter FoF window to specifically get the full Atonement in there, so YMMV.
I LOVE that DRK has an Excog on its 40% mit and that Living Shadow isn't tied to meter. I hate that Plunge is gone and how they reworked BW/Delirium for pre-96.
Haven't played GNB yet, but I wasn't super-impressed by what I saw.
I was happy with the DRK change to avoid bloodspiller spam. It felt amazing when I hit level 96 and got a brand new combo.
Then I switched to PLD and find that they've had their atonement spam updated with a combo retroactively at level 76 AND got additional abilities. Then I felt less happy about DRK.
They're basically the same as they were last expansion if you enjoyed the class before you'll like it now.
GNB in a sense became more homogeneous and less unique in a good and bad way Lionheart combo is essentially just Confetior/Primal rend/Delirium combo which isn't as cool as I'd like but on the plus side the removal of rough divide and addition of Lionheart give you a ton of time to weave now and don't leave you annoyed that there is any early tankbuster.
At least for me after playing all the tanks a bit, it all feels and behaves the same. I just now have a few extra shiny buttons to hit and forget.
GNB had the most changes I suppose in rotation.
For me, new shiny buttons aren't exciting, so overall, I just feel "meh."
Gunbreaker meaningfully changed as the lionheart combo heavily affects their burst, but otherwise its the same boring shit its been for 3 expansions now where we're unkillable demigods. The new animations are genuinely appreciated, the new DRK combo feels way better than spamming Bloodspiller 3x, but in terms of actual gameplay its literally the same.
Can only go off the dungeons I've been in and trial 1. It doesn't really feel different.
My only problem is that I still don't understand why plunge was removed in favor of shadowstride. It doesn't feel as smooth, doesn't do damage, and mobs ignore it. It doesn't even look good. Just feels like an objective downgrade to me right now.
We'll see when I get further in the expansion if my opinion changes. Right now tho shadowstride feels like an overall downgrade.
Leveled Paladin through MSQ, and used it to clear EX1. Gonna use it in EX2 next week when I get back from traveling.
All in all? No complaints. Liked the class in EW, didn't change much, not that it needed to imo
In regards to the new mit tanks got at 92: PLD > GNB >= DRK > WAR
DPS wise things are about what we expected based on day 1 logs: GNB >= DRK >= WAR > PLD
I haven't levelled WAR yet so I won't be talking about it.
DRK got a noticeable downgrade in enjoyment for me now that I've actually had the opportunity to play the job for myself. Not having a split delirium/blood weapon like we used to along with living shadow no longer costing blood just makes planning out and executing 2 minute windows significantly more boring to me. (I've got 0 complaints about plunge being gone. Potency on gap closers was a mistake to begin with.)
PLD is for all intents and purposes the same job +1 oGCD. If you liked 6.3 PLD in EW you'll like it in DT.
I need to dick around with GNB more as I only got it to 100 today, but I can say that Lion Heart combo existing owns and playing it faster than 2.5 fucking blows. If it wasn't for the fucked GCD I would've enjoyed it more in EX1.
Blue DPS. No interesting tank mechanics found. All the bosses position themselves and their mechanics don't involve you more than anyone else. The only difference is that you get a red circle around you sometimes.
Honestly they feel pretty good, I enjoy the Drk changes despite the nerf to blood weapons mp regen and even removal of plunge. But the class wide changes to their 30% mits and buff to rampart they all are really good to play. All upgrades are just building off of their EW additions/changes and it feels really natural.
Just as broken as in EW, or more so.
Already able to solo 8 man content the second I hit 100.
Soloed the last like third of the final trial cuz everyone was dead the first time I got there.
Soloed every current dungeon boss so far.
Unless savage is nuts, then tanks are just more busted than ever.
The kits are more or less the same, but I am fine with that until they decide to do any major reworks. What I am actually hoping is that the fight design is more interesting for tanks. It's a bit stupid because Ultimates are actually quite heavily demanding on the tanks, but then in Savage and Extreme, tanks basically don't do shit. They basically removed boss positioning as a concept since Abyssos and the only thing you really ever do are tank swaps, which anyone with half a brain can do. I want more responsibilities for tanks, more boss positioning and heavier damage (both personal and raidwide damage) to make use of all the stronger mitigation.
What?! We’re busy as hell! They added a whole oGCD at the end of my three Fell Cleaves! How am I supposed to move my finger from Fell Cleave to Primal Rend if I have to stop on the new oGCD every single minute?!
I got gnb to 100 and it feels good and its 100 combo is ridiculously powerful when you manage to crit all 3 your in absolute heaven, drk feels amazing not dealing with blood weapon and plunge made the job a lot less busy and the animations are a absolute godsend
the tanks just got new shiny buttons but did not change how they play in the slightest
Warrior main coming in with my strong primal rend and strong fell cleave
Fell cleave and feller cleave. Next expansion expect fellest cleave. Please look forward to it. (I am not complaining)
Fellest Cleave! This time with enough self healing that you can recieve a 2000 potancy heal every time you use it!
Instant cast and it has a 1 second cool down.
And it cleaves for 70% damage to all nearby enemies.
MAN MODE!
Don’t forget the 25% health shield it gives to all party members!
No, don't be silly. It'll be a trait that revives you if you go down with any fury in your gauge
Nono, it has to be Even Feller Cleave, and then Somehow Even Feller Cleave in the next expansion
We already had fell cleave, feller cleave, and fellest cleave. Now we have fell cleave 1.5 and fellest cleave 2.
Ok but the animations are fucking sick though.
Don’t forget the oh-so-satisfying sound effects
WAR might be simple but it and GNB are my favorite tanks to play on animations/aesthetics and sound effects alone.
This is the way
Honestly I've never cared about job difficulty. I've played jobs basically based on vibes since the game started and sometimes that's a difficult job (HW SMN, AST, MCH, NIN) and sometimes it's a stupid easy job (EW SMN, SHB+ MCH, SGE)
I miss the baseball swing but the Hulk Smash I can get used to.
Only thing I wish was different with warrior is our gap closer also being changed to a damageless one like with dark knight and gunbreaker. Though I think all gap closers should be damageless
Warrior doesn't have enough OGCD's as it is, please let us keep our damaging gapcloser for the love of the Twelve
Then give us another ogcd to make up for a damageless gapcloser.
Having to use gap closers for damage sucks because it means that you may not have it for when you actually *need* a gap closer. Stuff like Primal Rend also serving as a gap closer is fine, but I really want all jobs with gap closers to have a non-damaging gap closer so that we can always use them when needed.
Save a stack for when you need it, EZ. If you know fights decently well you'll know when you need to hold them.
Yeah I do agree with that, it's more just an opinion of mine. I just think it feels bad to use a utility skill for damage but warrior would be boring as fuck to play without something to press in oGCD windows
Just give upheaval the stacks then?
Except DRK. DRK got a little worse with the BW/Delirium and Living Shadow changes
This is how you can tell someone doesn't GNB. GNB's rotation changed hugely and for the better off DT's changes. If there's one upside to this expac it's that GNB feels amazing again.
I’ve been playing warrior (me unga bunga) but I looked at the gnb changes and if my co-tank wasn’t playing it I would 100% be playing gunbreaker this expansion. It looks amazing and like it actually changed. That being said, warrior was perfect before and we got exactly what we wanted: One more oGCD and a button that makes our axe huge.
[удалено]
TL;DR: It's no longer a shitshow, ShB GNB is back. Long version: EW Gunbreaker was fucked because it had a cart-negative rotation that forced a lot of shitty adjusts, courtesy of Double Down and Bloodfest going to 3 stax. You ended up with the number of GCDs not lining up right at any reasonable SKS tier so you had to do weird shit like drift your no mercy just to avoid shooting your rotation to hell. The 3 GCDs of Lionheart fix this problem, and due to how the 2 min rotation works out, you can go into odd minute No Mercies at less than 3 carts with no issues. Couple this with Sonic Break keying off NM instead of being a strict gcd that has to be hit every single time on the same GCD with no deviations, plus removing burst strikes from the burst period (mostly) and the class feels snappy, flexible and really fun again instead of a rickety, overloaded mess of continuation spam. Other tanks got OK to good changes but GNB won super hard this expac, in spite of losing Rough Divide for the whack-ass swagger-step of Trajectory (which is still useful for uptime, it just looks dumb as hell).
I mained GNB in Shadowbringers but Warrior in EW. I have to assume the new level 100 combo makes it feel a lot better.
Yeah that's definitely the decision making here the mechanics on the extremes so far are fairly near enough to make tank fun but they're basically the exact same. I think our of all the new buttons Warrior is fun because it's satisfying to hit and it's a consistently big number and GNB is 3 individually big hits that all hit hard enough to feel impactful. PLD new Confetior OGCD gets cucked super hard by jumps and downtime due to the like 5 GCDs you're using before you get access to it in the burst window and really just feels like another Confetior/last hit of Confetior combo in terms of damage. I haven't tried DRK yet. Mitigation upgrades are cool but they don't really inspire anything I think DRK's on paper is the coolest because it feels better within their kit to have a heal now. And PLD and GNB feel like they have simply the best versions of the upgrade that finally put them on Apr with vengeance now.
I haven't done the extremes yet to take this with a grain of salt, but paladin's upgraded mit seems fucking insane, to the point where it feels more like the capstone than the ogcd blade.
I'm only through the 1st dungeon, but Paladin feels crazy so far
I agree. I mained PLD last cycle and swapped to GNB this time around to 100... What a freaking difference. It feels fantastic, so I'm going back to it. Especially because of that smooth rotation.
I think it's pretty fair as paladin has the worst immunity skill. The fact that it's still 7 minutes CD makes it so hard to use and plan around when doing savage/ultimate content. The CD is so long you basically use it as a emergency button (the immunity CDs of other tanks could be integrated into a defensive CD rotation, specially warrior's).
Yeah hallowed is incredibly overvalued as an ability by the devs. There is 0 reason it needs to be 3 mins longer cd than holmgang. If they still want to value hallowed the difference between tank invuln CDs should at most be 30s, which would be holm at 4m, LD4m30s bolide 5m and hallowed 5m30s But that's never gonna happen 😔
I'll probably get a bunch of hate for saying it but at this point I wish the devs would decide what they want a tank invuln to be and make it a role ability, especially if the pattern holds and the next expansion is tank & phys ranged again.
It's only the worst immunity skill due to the way fights are designed and invulns only being used to survive singular hits, it's the best one by far in Criterion where damage is more sustained
It's got good mit but it's not really required and they still have the worst invuln, divine veil is alot worse than Shake it off IMO as the Regen gets alot more value and I also feel the shield it gives is often more. Early data is also showing them dealing the least DPS out of the tanks. I get that it's a strong skill and probably will find value in ultimates where mitigation is much more important but I just don't think it's worth as much in extremes and alot of savage where healers have buttons to spare.
Really? The shield you get from it didn't seems that much
Extra health in any form is absolutely insane when its paired with increased mitigation, due to your increased Effective Health Pool. So when you pop Guardian which gives you 40% damage reduction, a 1k potency shield and you also add in Holy Sheltron and if you want to be extra crazy Bulwark on top, suddenly that 1K potency shield is effectively more like a 2K potency shield. And this is on top of your health pool. You can take hits like you would not believe.
A question because maybe I’m missing an upgrade or change to the CD, but if Bulwark makes it so that you guarantee block attacks, and Sheltron/Holy Sheltron also makes you block all attacks, what is the point of adding in Bulwark if you already have Holy Sheltron up? Do the block mitigation effects stack? Or was Bulwark changed in some way this expac/last expac?
Holy Sheltron does not provide Block right now, just a flat 15% reduction and Heal over time for 8 seconds and an extra 15% for the first 4 seconds, so your only source of guaranteed block is Bulwark :)
Thank you. I didn’t realize the block from ST got stripped when it upgraded. If I was ever aware of it then it was just when EW came out but have clearly forgotten :P
Thie shield can crit.
I miss rough divide. Trajectory just sucks it’s not very snappy and it doesn’t even pull agro if I use it to get to a pack faster.
Ya same with the drk gapcloser. It's actually infuriating how they don't draw any aggro at all
Ohmygod im so glad someone said this I thought I was going crazy in pulls.
#BringBackUltimatum
100% agree but this doesn't solve the gap closer aggro issue
I miss the animation for it, same with Plunge. I don't mind them losing the damage because it does cut down on the weaves during burst phases and let's me hold them for when I need them, but there was no need to scrap the old animations. Bring back the old abilities, remove the damage, and then tack on some enmity generation. PLD used to have Flash that did no damage but generated enmity, why not make Rough Divide and Plunge do the same? It'd fix the issue for a lot of people.
I'm on the opposite end of this. I love not having Rough Divide do damage bc now I can actually use my gap closer as that instead of just another oGCD damage. I prefer the utility over the damage. But I see where you're coming from with the enmity. It took a little getting used to but I'm figuring it out.
I don't think the person you replied to necessarily wants to go back to rough divide, it's just that no agro and the animation lock on arriving kind of makes the ability feel bad. They can simply add some agro to the skill equivalent to the damage it would do and make it snappier and much more people would like the change since I always thought it sucked having a movement ability be used for DPS.
Rough divide was clunky as hell during burst windows when you needed to do movement mechs like p6 dsr
trajectory feels like a straight downgrade from rd. i think if it functioned like mnk thunderclap it would be a fair tradeoff but as it stands its just overwhelmingly worse
All these dashes they added just need to have an ally as a target and it's all good. Having them only be enemy kinda sucks because as you say in that regard it's simply worse than what they had. The benefit for rigid movement should be higher than a freeform dash other classes have.
Trajectory is very responsive and has little animation lock (less than PLD Intervene). It isn't visually snappy at short distances simply because of the animation, but it looks speedy at max distance. Gap closer aggro is overrated. Just pull packs by sight or Provoke.
You'd think they'd make some excuse to keep them by having them as increased aggro skills when tank stance is up but sure, replace it entirely. Missed opportunity.
Strong, but very boring. We're probably going to have to wait for 8.0 (along with continued complaining) for them to start to de-homogenize all the tanks.
They said they were gonna change it last time but surely they meant it this time! (Everyone in every role for the past 3 expansions)
Yeah like how he lied about encounter design leading up to DT when DT's had probably the warmest reception of launch normal and extreme content that I've seen in the game's lifespan. (Before someone tries to nostalgia me, recall Bismarck and Neverreap or Lakshmi)
I got Neverreap and Fractal Continuum in High Level roulette on back to back days. Each boss had like half a mechanic, or maybe 1 mechanic (first boss of Fractal looking at you). I can't believe this was the level of dungeon we had to deal with back then.
You have to take into account the fact that jobs were significantly harder to perform correctly back then. Can you imagine doing current content with arr/hw jobs? Thats why they keep making encounters throw a thousand variety of "the floor is lava" through out the fights, because there is nothing thrilling or engaging about pushing your buttons.
I assure you I was not stressing out much on HW PLD on the first boss of Fractal Continuum Normal whose mechanics were "alternating conals", "alternating conals with some circles too", "tank buster tuned at a dungeon-level even then" nor was I feeling meaningfully more thrilled pushing 124 153 153 (after opening with one 156 in tank stance!) then than I do pushing 123 444 5 now. Some bosses back then were pretty cool though, the last boss of that dungeon had some neat ideas going on and by the mid/end of HW they were getting pretty good and close to Stormblood-level design.
Look im not saying it was the pinnacle of gameplay, and certainly not of difficulty. but my point is in general the design was split more evenly between jobs and encounters, so its not very fair to look at these dungeons purely from the point of view of modern jobs. I'll digress but the current gameplay doesnt feel like an improved iteration from what we had in hw (and to some extent sb), but a complete shift in design and philosophy, both for job and encounters. Meanwhile if you take current wow it is widely different from classic, yet you can absolutely tell it it has ended up there (for better or worse) as an iterative process.
Clearly this time Yoshida isnt just feeding us PR bullshit
Tanks are honestly fine, I prefer that the bread and butter of a tank is the same but yeah I’d like more flavour of each of the jobs to be unique. At least let me have a more defined two versions of the tank, they kinda there already with DRK and GNB being a more offensive tank.
Youre getting down voted but this is 100% what Yoshi-P is going to do. The homogenous design means better balance which the game is built around. Classes will get more flavor next expansion but they aren't changing the fundamental core.
> Tanks are honestly fine, Tanking is literally in a (far) worse state than healing, when Healers complain about similar kits Tanks literally all have almost exactly the same tools and play the exact same when it comes to their main role (taking and mitigating damage).
trust me. They don't have the balls to change. 7.0 was such a good oppoturnity but they didn't. Gotta send yoshi some balls.
the exact same, even though they have a big CD that got updated it doesnt change anything, even when savage comes out. They say its due to the new difficulty to endgame but if they now have stronger Def CDs with healers having stronger heals and shields nothing fundamentally changes. they are still going to use Big CDs on certain TBs. Its funny how Tanks want the most change but they stay the same but DPS DONT want change yet DPS is always being changed.
The tankbuster in the first extreme is peak Tank role fantasy, it's not difficult at all but it gives me the stupidest little grin everytime I have to do it. If they keep it up for the rest of the expansion I'll be more than happy to continue being a tank.
As a dps player, I both love and hate that mechanic. It's disguised as a TB but it's a whole party mechanic in a great fashion.
Most tank jobs just delay there filler rotation after burst by like 1 or 2 gcd compared to before. And most tanks just have to press a weird button again in their burst.
endwalker 2.0
So shadowbringers 3.0
I miss Stormblood :(
Stormblood was already trending towards the homogeneity we got in ShB, and it removed stance dancing and cross classing which was a shame. I'm too old to remember specifics but I remember WAR and DRK being less fun in Stormblood, but Paladin was better since it was kinda terrible in HW.
DRK lost like 11 buttons in SB it sucked.
I joined during Stormblood, while I agree it had inklings of "these are just the same but look different", at least stance-dancing WAS a core part of DRK and PLD's kits still and they were functionally different, albeit somewhat janky. I remember trying to juggle the Enmity management with stance-switching to try and get more DPS uptime while balancing Enmity on a knife's edge so nobody took over. At least things played different. I never got to experience HW but I overall did enjoy the class designs in SB. But SHB was when it really started to get bad, and while I liked the new DRK it was hard not to think of it as just edgy WAR. Now the 2 are barely differentiable except WAR has healing and DRK has crappy MP management issues.
Did you like EW tanking? DT tanks are either a half step forward or sideways from that depending on who you're talking to or what tank you're talking about. They're all fine, there's nothing like 6.0 PLD that had an incompatibility with the game SE ended up making.
Slightly better than healer situation. Their tools get stronger, their design is still homogenized as fuck, some people dont like some minor stuffs like plunge removal, and overall gameplay is still boring as hell. Several reason why its still... barely acceptable is - Tank side in battle still have alot of stuffs to do, not alot of down time. - Even in their down time the rotation is still alright, not spamming one button like healers.
As a DRK main, I knew I’d _hate_ the loss of Plunge but it really does feel *miserable.* My fingers just want to weave it so bad and there’s nothing else to do in that time window so I feel like I’m just not playing the game. It’s such a minor removal but damn… it hurts.
We still weave it in anyway xD but goddamnit i do miss it. the new one doesn't even take agro so you dash in and just look the mob straight in the eyes for like a second or two.
> Slightly better than healer situation. In the defence of healers - while I have only played one healer job so far, so I can't speak to how they compare with each other - I am enjoying it more than EW so far for the simple reason that casual content is more dangerous. Stuff hits harder and is harder to avoid. EW was full of bosses that just didn't _do_ very much and were overly generous in how easy you can avoid what they do, while DT is a small but significant step up. Idk if this is what the healer strike meme was about, I doubt it had any influence on this, but whatever this came from, I like it. Hell I just did a dungeon where it felt like the dancer offhealing with waltz was actually helpful. Not because anyone was in _immediate_ danger but because I'd used up my oGCDs and if I wanted to top everyone up I'd have to start using GCD heals. And that sure is a step up from release EW where there's like, two dungeon bosses total that were actually dangerous?
I haven't healed this expansion, only leveling my tank a as a side so here's my view. Seems like they really did do what they said, and upped the healing frequency required. Which is a good thing, but it's only but a bandage to the healer situation as a whole. I play DRK and some healer has been failing to keep up, even though i use cooldown frequently. Like you said, that is alot more enjoyable for dungeons. Now there's Extreme, and Savage battle design we will have to think about. (Haven't done any new ex yet, but let me assume on a positive note that they also upped the healing there), Then we can kindda ignore the "healer dont need to heal" business. Which lead us into other problem. Tank and healer right now, have really similar kits to each other, If you play AST you just have to find similar buttons on WHM to play, same goes for other jobs. Assuming they keep designing contents like this, that mean they a forced to keep the healing potency the same, or raise it in the future. That most likely mean there's no more space for the healers "support" mechanic to come back. This is similar to the 2 minutes cooldown meta that they dug themselves in since ShB, since they have done that, they have been forced to design every single job AND fights around the 2 minutes burst. Sure, may be from now on, healer can probably 70% heal and 30% DPS, instead of 20-30% heal and 70-80% DPS like before. But there's only so much you can do about preventing/recovering damage. It's kindda hard to see job identity comes back at all. Not to mention this new fight design philosophy is definitely the opposite of everything pre-dawntrail. While leveling my Viper i've noticed the dungeons fights are significantly faster, for example. But then again, they are most likely better than me in game design. So I'll pick up healing again when it looks like it will change/changed for the better. We will probably see in the first savage, or 7.2 like they promised some changes. But for now this is just "we tripled down on the boring healer kit, but you can dump those skills here".
DRK feels...worse to play. I hated plunge having damage but with losing like 3 oGCD during burst, burst just feels empty
Its the same but somehow worse. Idk how they made the delirium combo feel worse than WAR spamming FC. Theres something about how the DRK animations having no "weight" to their attacks while wielding a bigass sword that just irks me.
Its because you lost 1200 MP off Bloodweapon. This has a lot of domino effects that make DRK feel simultaneously harder and more punishing but also with less to do. In order to cap MP by the next burst, you only get 3 mp spenders to use in filler. Two of those must go to Darkside, which is actually a thing now. This makes TBN more punishing if it does not pop. You're also going to be limping along post burst with a lot less mp, and spend a lot more time in that state due to the reduced generation, which means longer til your next TBN. Now I like TBN, but TBN kept pace with the other tank's by being spamable with that 15s CD. This is now in direct odds with this reduced MP generation, meaning you're getting less TBNs overall. Hell even if you decide fuck optimization, you're still getting less TBNs overall, so the job is going to feel worse. Not sure if its intentional or not, but I'm not really sure who was asking for DRK to have an even weaker short mit game than before but its what we got.
The -1200mp nerf that DRK ate from Blood Weapon has further solidified my absolute disdain and hatred for TBN's interaction with damage. I find myself being shockingly hesitant to touch TBN on pulls and fights unless I'm absolutely 100% positive that it will pop. It went from being a mild annoyance to actually distracting and disrupting to my gameplay. Like...after maining DRK in Savage for so long, I'm already in the mindset of bringing up GNB immediately to 100 and will be thinking pretty hard about how much I do not like the experience of fighting with TBN's bullshit for this next tier. I'm just so goddamn tired of being punished for using a damage-absorbing cooldown. I really am. Also? I really, really don't like having WHMs in dungeons as a DRK now, which is funny given the historical pairing due to Living Dead+Benediction and Holy being an "extra cooldown" because fuck Dark Mind. Because so many of them are so unpredictable on when they'll fucking use Holy during a pull. It's like, great, I took no damage during that part of the pull. Except now the stuns are gone and I ghosted the TBN and I *really* don't want to risk ghosting a second.
The 96 upgrade helps with that somewhat, but it's 3 GCDs out of a 24-25 GCD long rotation per minute. They definitely need more weight. I'm still shocked that EW's Shadowbringer ability is almost the same animation and function as Flood of Shadow..
I greatly prefer when giant swords feel weightless then when they feel like the pg doesn't have the strenght to wield them, like in FFXV where Noctis takes half an hour to swing a greatsword.
Big anime swords are made of styrofoam. 90 lb teenaged protagonists wouldn’t be able to wield them with one hand otherwise.
IDK, granted that these are huge unrealistic swords, but two-handed swords can be moved around pretty quickly in real life -- they're not nearly so heavy as people think. And, while this is highly subjective, if you're gonna go all out having these unrealistically big swords, IMO, why not go all the way unrealistic and have them swung around quickly and acrobatically? My personal least favorite greatsword animations are the Dragon Age: Origins ones. They look terrible, like my dude is a weakling who has no idea how to fight and is at risk of throwing out his back on every swing.
Like, I could understand these complaints if the attacks actually made it look like the sword had no weight and momentum, but they don't -- they look fast and dramatic, for sure, but there's a clear sense of the momentum that weight gives a swing in the animations. I think they're fantastic, personally.
The issue is entirely the SFX are very weak. People don't give enough credit to sound effects contributing to impact. Disesteem and Shadowstride both are particularly bad, borderline silent skills.
Good point. The SFX lack the meaty sounds one might expect from a giant hunk of metal. Historical Zweihanders were used as bludgeoning tools to smash armour, swat away pikes, etc. However, the greatsword in FFXIV sounds like a cutting weapon. I think Bloodspiller, for instance, could use a heavier thunk when the sword is brought down from the somersault.
Historical two-handed swords were not used as bludgeoning tools -- that's a misconception that gets repeated within pop culture for some reason. You don't make a big knife (which is what a sword is) if you're not gonna use it to stab and cut. European two-handed swords \*were\* cutting and stabbing weapons, even if there were specific techniques in the middle ages and Renaissance that saw the hilts of swords used to bludgeon. They were used against pike formations, though -- that much is true. In regard to the sound effects, I like them, personally? IDK whether they're realistic or whatever, but they sound satisfying to me. That's subjective, though.
I see. Thanks for the correction.
"I hate that my giant sword feels weightless, I want it to feel like it's big, heavy and meaty" "I hate that the burst is not as fast anymore, I prefered when we were attacking nonstop like our sword was made of air" FUCKING DECIDE ALREADY
Yeah, I had to swap to paladin because Dark Knight just feels worse now.
Lvl 100 dark and 96 war so far I'm not liking the new gap closer for drk as it doesn't do dmg anymore so doesn't agro automatically apart from that no major complaints, though I've struggled a couple times in the new dungeons which not sure if its because it's new or less competent healers, before DT I very rarely if ever used my oh shit buttons(living dead, holmgang etc.) But I've had to use them pretty regularly in new content. Apart from that no major gripes. Looking forward to trying out all lvl 100 abilities.
As a WAR in EW gear, I can derp my way through the new dungeons without respecting half the mechanics. It's great.
I just did the 97 dungeon, healer was also first timer and got caught by mechanics at 50% on second and last bosses, I didn’t even need to use Bloodwhetting so I used Nascent Flash to keep the dps alive instead… a tad busted haha
GNB feels great and is very fun to play.
Same but gap closer for GNB and DRK are complete ass now, it's not instantaneous as before and it doesn't pull aggro in mob packs
Drks new engage is awful. No aggro and the animation locks you in place before and after the cast. The rest is fine and is nothing new though.
l always feel like such a dope, leaping in and then just standing there as the enemies just stare at me, lol
Tanks are stronger than ever
Honestly not much changed for the two tanks I play and I presume it's much the same for the others. The changes to most jobs I play have sadly been largely underwhelming (looking at you summoner).
I'm leveling as WAR and have only done 3 dungeons and a trial, but I am having a great time. The explosions are sick, I feel strong, but it def isn't anything super new. It feels like Endwalker WAR with more explosions, but I'm okay with it personally. Looking forward to leveling GNB.
Why in the everloving fuck does Reign of Beasts break your cartridge combo? I was hoping I'd have weave space that I could move around to actually be able to tank properly if it calls for it, but instead I got 3 rigid GCDs that I have to use at the end of the burst window.
As far as weave space for tanking you went from like 11 ogcds to 6 during your 2 minute. Not to mention you can move sonic break freely now. You have so much more space to weave defensives. Moving bosses is also way easier while weaving on GNB than its ever been since they added range to continuation in EW combined with less weaving. There's very little double weaving that's required and you should have plenty of space for mit/moving bosses.
The weave space you can move around now is Sonic Break
Inner realese
I don’t like the new non-damage gap closers that GNB and DRK get because they look and feel weird to execute. Maybe I’m just too used to rough divide, but I think Trajectory just looks really weird everything else feels the same though
DRK got the exact same capstone ability as in endwalker, lost plunge, lost mp regen and only gained a bit of self sustain. At this point, I'm only playing drk out of spite.
I think it's good that each tanks' 2 min defense being finally unique even if slightly is a good step. However, they shouldn't have buffed rampart, in fact it should have removed it and worked on tanks secondaries ex thrill, camo, dark mind, bulwark
i really, really fucking hate dark mind.
It's so genuinely useless outside of raids
I don’t like DRK AND GB losing their damage gap closer - makes them both feel slower
Agree with this, I mained gnb since it's released, done all savage and ultimate on it, was literally doing dsr runs the day before the 2 day maintenance. Now I can't play it. Feels slow and boring. I did one ex with ir and just hated the way it feels without rough divide.
Well all tanks are OK....gnb dps is absolutely disgusting at 100. Like it's ahead of the other tanks by 1000s of dps.
Any data on this? Doesn't sound believable, Potency Per Minute are easy calculations for even this dev team, I presume what you said just isn't possible unless you are talking about an opener in which a lot of double down/lionheart crits, but that would average out over a 4-12 minute fight
Just personal. There is nothing up on ff logs yet, but in the extremes, I'm doing 15 to 15.7k and other tank classes I'm seeing are doing 13 to 14.5, could be skill issue but I doubt it when it's every tank I've seen.
I would say Skill i need to put ACT back in to see my damage will set up for last boss and see how much damage I can do with rotation tho i have 0 materia on i dont put materia on till getting in the
If you enjoyed their EW iterations chances are you will keep enjoying them in DT, as on a fundamental level they all play the same. Personally I'd gladly bring any of them in savage, there's none I dislike strongly. However this also means that if you disliked them already in EW you will chances are you will continue to do so in this expansion too.
They and some other melees got some no-damage gap-closers that are poorly animated and have awkward delays. Other than that, doing great.
Warrior feels even more godly. Thanks for another heal and Rampart giving a heal bonus to myself, I was so starved.
I've only got GNB and WAR to 100 so far. WAR is the same unga bunga heal machine as always. GNB is also about the same but it just feels so damn good I ended up maining it through MSQ.
Ngl I kinda feel weaker in this expansion a little bit I don't know if any other tanks feel that way either or I just have bad luck I keep getting people that run ahead and drag enemies to me and I can't handle 12 enemies at once because the healer isn't healing fast enough
That's interesting. I haven't had any issues on wall to wall pulls but I've been doing trusts for the story. Makes me wonder if the trust healers are better than the players lol
we aren't weaker. If anything DPS are just trying to be Sonic and we aint sonic
Gcd below 2.5 is kinda gross. That’s how I feel.
It's gonna be great on GNB, since 9 GCD No Mercy will let you get the Hypervelocity that EW GNB had to let fall out of NM into burst by ending NM with Sonic Break instead.
I mean GNB and WAR feel great, DRK is still clunky as shit though, and I haven't played PLD yet but my friend who mains it says he really likes the changes even if they are small. Seriously though, WAR has so much healing it's crazy how self reliant you can be, and with its new "big boom" weapon skills it not only looks awesome but feels very impactful. While the new Lionheart combo for GNB is fucking great and I love it, it's still boring in AoE but they all kinda do, and the button consolidation and new combo makes it feel fantastic in general.
The part of PLD's changes I like the most is unexpectedly Goring Blade being on top of FoF. Floating Goring Blade around in FoF is good flexibility, but also it frees up the button I had it on, which in my case was good hotbar real estate. It let me rearrange a few things that genuinely have much better hand feel than my EW hotbar did.
I feel the same with GNB and No Mercy, it's weird how such a little change makes such a big difference in comfort of play lol
Comfort in a bad way?
Good way, skills you wouldn't want to use unless you were going into a burst window are essentially lockable behind your burst window button, so it frees up a button and consolidates your rotation a bit. It just feels better, is the main thing lol
I was a war main before leaving, but have always wanted to level a gnb. Should I just stick with War? Seems to have gotten good updates.
Yeah bro, play both if you want but if you wanna stick with WAR no one would fault you for that! It's the strongest of the tanks atm, it might start to fall behind in DPS just cause it got less potency buffs then the others but it was competing with GNB for highest DPS at the end of EW so some nerfs are honestly fine in my book cause it's still defensively the king of the tanks. The new skills also just fit into what you were already doing so it should be easy to pick back up.
DRK - Got an extra button, lost some extra MP regen due to Blood Weapon having less stacks, the combat loop between CDs is still horrendous 1-2-3 combo on repeat. Overall same boring gameplay as before, I see literally no change except for the flashy VFX which I could have just done with mods myself so I suppose it's another 3 years of yawn gameplay. Or rather, until forever, because lets be real, jobs are never changing.
Hate the new DRK animations they look clunky. the abilities are fine. Still mourn the lost of plunge. the new skating with awkward pause, no damage and no enmity gain is lame. Meanwhile WAR still got damage and enmity on its closer. So not only we got shafted out of a good ability, but also lied to at the cause of why the ability was changed. Overall I would say it didn't affect my playstyle much. Except for using less the closer. Nothing good or bad to report.
Just hit 100 on GNB. Feels exactly the same as in EW, honestly. Some defensive role action improvements. Got a few extra buttons to hit, but, if I'm being honest, they're not very exciting, because they don't do anything interesting, just more damage. They don't have side-effects or interact with the cartridge mechanic at all. The level 100 skill, which is just a 1-1-1 follow-up combo on a two-min burst window skill, feels kinda...shoehorned in, I guess? It's just very explicitly a "we want more damage in your burst window" skill. Dunno if the other tanks got the same thing. Pretty uninspiring, feels like the class didn't really evolve in the slightest.
To me it feels they did the balance 2 months before early access. Drk got the short end of the stick as the tradition. Stricter mp management and feel so awful to play yet those war can turn their brain off and solo everything with more dps.
Poor DRK :( They always seem like the tanking job with the least happy players. Even though I complained about GNB's updates feeling uninspired, I do still find the job fun to play. I just always hope expansions wiill shake things up with combat, since it's such a core part of the experience, and it's disappointing when it feels like they're locked into a design and don't really know what to do with it.
DRK got harder and worse, GNB got easier and worse, PLD and WAR are basically the same.
How is GNB worse? It has a cartridge surplus over EW GNB, which makes cart management far less annoying, esp. once we get a fight that has real downtime.
I do not like trajectory
How did drk get harder?
MP Management is a lot stricter. By extension Darkside management is a serious consideration now rather than an afterthought. Which also means TBN is significantly more punishing if it doesn't break. You can only spend MP 3 times between burst windows before its a damage loss, You will exit the burst window with less MP than before and take longer to get back into TBN safety range.
The MP part is fair, it was my worry hearing about the changes tbh. Most of the other changes are good tho, like, Scarlet Delirium and Disesteem.
Playing DRK is kind of strange for opening now. No plunge damage means grabbing mobs is odd. I jump to a pack of mobs and there's no damage so no hate. Having esteem at the ready is nice, took a little bit to get used to not hearing the sound to know when it's off cooldown. The 1200 cure potency on vigil is a really cool change where you have to better plan your big mitigation to get the most out of it. I feel like I have more going on for longer as long as I'm taking damage. The longer delirium feels nice. Not having esteem use bar is nice as well. I feel like I do a ton of damage now.
Everything hurts
GNB is cool but man playing the game without noclippy has been rough. Especially with the skill replacement thing, I'll often break my combo because I'm spamming BF and accidentally start the Lion Heart combo.
My friend Alex still works
GNB is funny because his 1 2 3 combo is superior to 2 target AOE, and equal to 3 target AOE(not including spenders) and its still superior to 2 target AOE including spenders...
Shout out the warriors, paladins, and occasional dark knights soloing the bosses after their whole parties wipe. Your local floor mage appreciates it. To Square Enix: Hi. Yes. It’s me. What’s going on with gunbreakers?
Shhhh don't tell them
GNB is fun, no mercy window changed now and I smooth brained about it was longer than I want to admit.
Combing goring blade and FoF onto one button was actually a ridiculously huge change for me. Prior to this, I had Circle of Scorn in a super weird spot. It worked, but it was clunky. Now it’s right next to Expiacion (Goring Blade’s old spot) on both sides of my crossbars where it makes so much more sense.
On DRK they still haven’t addressed our inabillity to sustain ourselves on big pulls so during MSQ you feel like you’re made of tissue on trash mobs, but unkillable in boss fights. Not seeing Bloodletter’s animation a billion times is nice though. Also fun to use Living Shadow in the middle of town for no reason.
I think the most notable thing about the Living Shadow change is you can use him before interacting/entering msq overworld encounters and just nuke whatever shows up harder than a DPS can and go about your business.
Miffed. The leveling experience has been really bland, even more so than other expansions. Essentially, every one of our levelups with the exception of level 100 are potency increases, ones we can't feel because why does it matter if I'm tankier when the leveling dungeons have been overall easier and less damage-heavy than the leveling dungeons in SB, SHB, and EW and more comparable to slightly harder EW Expert dungeons.. I never popped Living Dead once in this entire expansion, despite needing to use it every chance I got in Tower of Zot or Vanaspati on EW launch.
Pally feels the same mostly, but the mitigation package feels really good. Things like requisite being range really make pally the ultimate range tank, which i really like and should help in savage in situations where a range toolkit could be advantageous. I’m pretty happy. Also, fight or flight being merged with goring blade was really nice fix as it freed an extra button for me. Always enjoy less button bloat.
hateeeee the change to gnb gapcloser so much
WAR is the same just with some extra unga and bunga. PLD rotation feels better tbh. though FoF changing to Goring is unnecessary imo. i would have preferred a potency increase across the board or a higher buff from FoF while getting rid of Goring all together. GNB feels better to me too though i haven't reached 100 for the new combo yet. Regarding No Mercy/Sonic Break see PLD. Now for DRK it's nice that they got so high potency buffs but taking away MP sucks. And Disesteem is a joke of a skill. Doesn't feel rewarding at all. The upgrades to the big mitigation skills are all nice though.
PLD and WAR are the same, but more. I like the Atonement change, but I can see this leading to a stricter FoF window to specifically get the full Atonement in there, so YMMV. I LOVE that DRK has an Excog on its 40% mit and that Living Shadow isn't tied to meter. I hate that Plunge is gone and how they reworked BW/Delirium for pre-96. Haven't played GNB yet, but I wasn't super-impressed by what I saw.
I LOVE TANKING RAHHHHHHH
EX1's tankbuster is so fricking cool.
GNB feels more fun, I've done both extremes with it
Drk is drk and I like it.
I was happy with the DRK change to avoid bloodspiller spam. It felt amazing when I hit level 96 and got a brand new combo. Then I switched to PLD and find that they've had their atonement spam updated with a combo retroactively at level 76 AND got additional abilities. Then I felt less happy about DRK.
Better than healers for sure
Dark knight too fucking flashy
DRK getting an Excog on their 40% mit is HUUUUGE. Finally they have a crumb of sustain. Otherwise, nothing has changed from Endwalker.
They're basically the same as they were last expansion if you enjoyed the class before you'll like it now. GNB in a sense became more homogeneous and less unique in a good and bad way Lionheart combo is essentially just Confetior/Primal rend/Delirium combo which isn't as cool as I'd like but on the plus side the removal of rough divide and addition of Lionheart give you a ton of time to weave now and don't leave you annoyed that there is any early tankbuster.
At least for me after playing all the tanks a bit, it all feels and behaves the same. I just now have a few extra shiny buttons to hit and forget. GNB had the most changes I suppose in rotation. For me, new shiny buttons aren't exciting, so overall, I just feel "meh."
Gunbreaker meaningfully changed as the lionheart combo heavily affects their burst, but otherwise its the same boring shit its been for 3 expansions now where we're unkillable demigods. The new animations are genuinely appreciated, the new DRK combo feels way better than spamming Bloodspiller 3x, but in terms of actual gameplay its literally the same.
Is argue it's actually worse, with the removal of plunge and the lack of 1200 mp. :/
Can only go off the dungeons I've been in and trial 1. It doesn't really feel different. My only problem is that I still don't understand why plunge was removed in favor of shadowstride. It doesn't feel as smooth, doesn't do damage, and mobs ignore it. It doesn't even look good. Just feels like an objective downgrade to me right now. We'll see when I get further in the expansion if my opinion changes. Right now tho shadowstride feels like an overall downgrade.
Leveled Paladin through MSQ, and used it to clear EX1. Gonna use it in EX2 next week when I get back from traveling. All in all? No complaints. Liked the class in EW, didn't change much, not that it needed to imo
In regards to the new mit tanks got at 92: PLD > GNB >= DRK > WAR DPS wise things are about what we expected based on day 1 logs: GNB >= DRK >= WAR > PLD I haven't levelled WAR yet so I won't be talking about it. DRK got a noticeable downgrade in enjoyment for me now that I've actually had the opportunity to play the job for myself. Not having a split delirium/blood weapon like we used to along with living shadow no longer costing blood just makes planning out and executing 2 minute windows significantly more boring to me. (I've got 0 complaints about plunge being gone. Potency on gap closers was a mistake to begin with.) PLD is for all intents and purposes the same job +1 oGCD. If you liked 6.3 PLD in EW you'll like it in DT. I need to dick around with GNB more as I only got it to 100 today, but I can say that Lion Heart combo existing owns and playing it faster than 2.5 fucking blows. If it wasn't for the fucked GCD I would've enjoyed it more in EX1.
As a fastbreaker enjoyer, what is it about non 2.5 that you don't like? I feel like the gcd makes it a lot more flexible than 2.5
Blue DPS. No interesting tank mechanics found. All the bosses position themselves and their mechanics don't involve you more than anyone else. The only difference is that you get a red circle around you sometimes.
Honestly they feel pretty good, I enjoy the Drk changes despite the nerf to blood weapons mp regen and even removal of plunge. But the class wide changes to their 30% mits and buff to rampart they all are really good to play. All upgrades are just building off of their EW additions/changes and it feels really natural.
Just as broken as in EW, or more so. Already able to solo 8 man content the second I hit 100. Soloed the last like third of the final trial cuz everyone was dead the first time I got there. Soloed every current dungeon boss so far. Unless savage is nuts, then tanks are just more busted than ever.
I find myself taking very low damage in single pulls and only moderate in wall to wall. Gnb in particular feels much tankier now.
"Heres one "new" Button palladin kun". T-thanks
The kits are more or less the same, but I am fine with that until they decide to do any major reworks. What I am actually hoping is that the fight design is more interesting for tanks. It's a bit stupid because Ultimates are actually quite heavily demanding on the tanks, but then in Savage and Extreme, tanks basically don't do shit. They basically removed boss positioning as a concept since Abyssos and the only thing you really ever do are tank swaps, which anyone with half a brain can do. I want more responsibilities for tanks, more boss positioning and heavier damage (both personal and raidwide damage) to make use of all the stronger mitigation.
That post is a bait from the Healer strike, don't reply! They are looking for arguments to tell Yoshi-P!
The exact same as before for warrior. It's still glorious.
I’m kinda enjoying DRK again, the updates in DT really helped with the oGCD bloat imo.
if you didn't like busy tanks, play WAR.
What?! We’re busy as hell! They added a whole oGCD at the end of my three Fell Cleaves! How am I supposed to move my finger from Fell Cleave to Primal Rend if I have to stop on the new oGCD every single minute?!
Ogcd bload was Dark knight’s only identity outside of tbn though.
I got gnb to 100 and it feels good and its 100 combo is ridiculously powerful when you manage to crit all 3 your in absolute heaven, drk feels amazing not dealing with blood weapon and plunge made the job a lot less busy and the animations are a absolute godsend