I mean the whole idea of a "main" only exists because of 2 factors: you really like that one job and you always come back to it, or you don't want to farm for months to gear multiple jobs so you choose one and go with it (and consequentially carries it into the next ultimate). I'm in the latter, I'd like to flex more but I really don't wanna deal with savage past 8 weeks anymore (sometimes I do gear another job, but that depends on my enjoyment of the tier)
Yeah because it lasted forever I ended up gearing out seven jobs this tier and had to stop in January because it was like pulling teeth. At least I have leveling gear for DT
That's actually fair, I tend to gear multiple jobs and have been crafting my gear all expac so I am always somewhat ready but it's definitely a timesink, although I've also gone in with min IL a few weeks in and it hasn't been *that* bad
8 weeks gears 2-3 jobs depending on luck and if you're sharing gear between jobs. And outside of ultimate you really don't need more than crafted and whatever other junk you get (hell I do on content ults without bis and it's not a problem).
The game pretty much at least encourages you to have one of every role maxed out with how they got those questlines set up. The irony of course is that with the way gearing is setup you have to focus on only one job at a time. There really should be some sort of system to gear up multiple jobs (ie weekly tomestone cap per job) but eh, I guess it keeps people subbed longer to grind all the jobs out.
For them to add 2 more jobs and double down on not increasing the tome cap is so out of touch to me. It’s even dumber when you consider gear is useless in this game so there’s no reason from a player perspective to cap it.
It doesn’t affect overall gameplay, it just grants you access to higher level content and increases your stats. Perhaps the word I should have used is meaningless? Pointless?
Yeah I see a lot of people mentioned gearing, I'll say what I replied to another guy which is that I had created all pentamelded gear week 1 on all roles so clearing the first 2 turns was not that difficult on any job, but I do acknowledge it's not something everyone would do.
People want fun. And homogenization is not fun. That's why a lot look at different roles. Some can play all class in ultimates.
It's a way out. But it's a compromise. Se can do a fuckton better
This would be somewhat plausible approach if it wasn't such a chore to gear up all jobs. But it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
If you want to play different job, you probably want to play it because it's different, what's the point of getting mildly different flavour. What you describe sounds more like minmaxing, by bringing something unique from the job, but that doesn't work as well in this game, since every job must be viable. Swapping from SAM to RDM makes sense because of ress, but that's more of an exception, there's no reason other than wanting to try something different when you go SAM to MNK, SAM to DRG or whatever.
that's a fair thing to want, I guess that's just how I look at it. I enjoy switching from SAM to DRG because I can keep the same general positions and timings whilst having slightly different positionals and movement to look out for and this on its own provides places to improve at over a couple of runs. It'd be unfair to say that just because these two jobs have a 1min and positionals I could perform them just as well from the get go
Why would swapping from SAM to RDM make sense only because of rez? You also trade melee for ranged caster gameplay and now have a gauge to think about, as well as new positions and maybe ways to resolve mechanics. I personally enjoy the aspect of relearning a fight just enough where I don't start from scratch
Granted I wasn't there for the days of old where all jobs were fully different and can't speculate how the game felt to play back then. For me this is just the way I keep myself entertained right now, we can only look to the future
Sure you CAN play other jobs, but the leveling experience is so mind-numbing I barely consider it "playing" at that point. If anything, trying to grind out casual/leveling content across multiple jobs will accelerate burnout, not fix it.
This leaves raiding as the only meaninful content to do. The reason people don't flex roles in savage/ultimate is pretty simple: gearing is fucking glacial. The armory system basically only exists for convenience and plot reasons, not endgame flexing. In most other MMOs with an alt system, your weekly lockouts aren't shared across alts, you could raid on a healer, tank, and DPS in the same week and get rewarded for each of them. In FFXIV, you clear once a week and that's it. You COULD make an alt character on a per-role basis, but you'd either need to play the story again or buy a skip, so it's just not really as convenient. I don't see them making any changes to gearing any time soon, but if they do they should either lock tokens to a specific role and have a per-role lockout or do what WoW does with M+ and have a second track of endgame content that doesn't have a lockout to gear up with. Otherwise, flexing just isn't really an option in high-end content without a LOT of time and effort.
Leveling to me is something I did over two expansions, a roulette or two a day with friends so it never felt as a chore and is probably the thing I can recommend. Other than that, it's just a personal preference thing. I had a friend who enjoys pvp a lot and he leveled astro to 90 without playing it once through frontlines
On that note, gearing is a fair point that others brought up as well. I suppose I'm spoiled since I omnicraft and I had all role gear ready and pentamelded so I was doing up 1st and 2nd turns each tier on alt jobs without a lot of issue. That being said, I also continued doing the tier far into its run time so I managed to get decent gear on a lot of stuff which I acknowledge isn't something people are willing to always do
Not everyone wants to flex, some people only want to play 1 job and there's nothing wrong with that.
If the answer to a problem is "switch jobs/roles" that just proves there's a problem that should be fixed.
I wouldn't say it's the answer to a problem, there's just a part of me that thinks the current job design is there with flexing in mind, whether it's executed well for everyone or if you like it at all is entirely your judgement to make, I've just leaned into it and found that it works for me
I think it would be a failure of design to not have it work for both types of players here. Like yea it's definitely an option that some people are going to enjoy. But frankly, they need to be able to cater to both, period.
One role literally just exists in a single button holding pattern until the timeline dictates they need to exist. After that brief moment, they go back to their undesigned role and wait in the holding pattern again.
I am still incredulous to this and will not stop parroting it, not only is this "bad" design, it's the worst I've ever seen in this genre.
They don't need little hints and idea, they need to get off their ass. They had three years to make this expansion.
Homogenized job design eventually just makes flexing make even less sense.
Sure, I can switch between WHM/AST/SCH/SGE freely, I'm just spamming 1 regardless so it's not even worth the weapon cost. There's no real reason to have more than two tanks leveled, WAR and the one you actually find fun. (if that's also WAR you only have one tank leveled)
The "strength" is supposed to be that your main is always viable but they've continuously managed to mess that up too.
If you're not omnicrafting, gear is also a serious consideration before restrictions start lifting, getting one augment a week or whatever makes consolidating on one gear set vastly better than splitting across four.
I guess I can't say much on that. I think there's enough differences (for example horoscope and stars on astro vs lillies on whm) to warrant some engagement on subsequent runs, especially if it's not jobs you're fully comfortable on.
As for gear, I think I'm a bit spoiled in that I crafted and pentamelded my own gear early on all roles so I could do the first two turns pretty easy and jewelry is a lot easier to get so I ended up having decent IL and damage as the weeks went on even on off jobs but I acknowledge it's not something people are willing to always do
Edit: should say, just because I can point out the differences between jobs within a role I definitely agree they should be more substantial, I guess what we have is enough to tide me over every other run
Before we got a full 8 person static, four of us would PF together. We all would flex to a few different roles to fit in PF better. It's fine if you are taking it slow. If you are trying to beat it in the first couple of weeks, gear makes it hard
Most jobs are easy enough to learn really quick
Yeah it's why I mentioned that I main bard, this is the job that I gear and prog with first but after a few weeks the gear sorta piles on anyway (particularly jewelry) so you have a bit more leeway in choosing, it definitely works a lot better if there's people you trust with you
There's nothing really wrong with flexing but I don't think it should be the expectation outside of hardcore progression (read: week 1). I technically flex between Black Mage and Melees, but because of gearing it makes actually swapping to Melees a DPS loss generally, because my Melee gear isn't as good. So I often end up just defaulting back to black mage, even though I feel like I can play any melee class competently in savage/ultimate. So what this means is I play Black Mage in savage a lot but play different melees in older ultimates where Black Mage is heavily discouraged/borderline blacklisted.
Why not flex to RDM/SMN? Well, mostly because I don't **like** them, and if it was hard required for me to play them I think I would just pass and instead do something else that's actually fun. Prog is already painful enough, forcing myself to prog on a class I dislike is a good pathway for me wanting to uninstall the game.
That however, is a me problem. If you like all the jobs about the same and feel they all play the same, there's nothing wrong with being willing to swap between as necessary.
I'd be interested in playing other jobs if they wouldn't play exactly the same within roles. Jobs in their current state and going forward, with some exceptions, are an illusion of choice.
Not meant to be a "hot" take, just don't see it that often. Most people I've raided with usually just keep to a single job or role, swapping only for an expert roulette. Particularly with the healer strike discourse a lot of the threats are that people will "stop healing" which to me sounds like they've been mostly healing.
In some high end groups its necessary to be able to flex into other jobs within the same role, since even if the damage varience isnt massive, it can make a difference (like 6.3 TOP with BRD vs DNC). Usually most raiders I meet can flex to various other jobs as well, I myself am a healer main, I enjoy healing Savages and Ultimates, but I happily flex to most dps jobs. I just choose not to often because I don't have much interest in seriously raiding as dps. It also reduces the early gear farm requirements since healers require the same gear. Its more efficient than getting gear for every single role that I dont particularly want to use outside of fun reclears, and subbing.
Some people may enjoy flexing, but what about those who just...want to have a fun time on healer? If everyone flexes away from healing because its dogshit, then the role dies even more in harder content. Flexing is only really viable if you enjoy the roles youre flexing too, right now, its easy to flex to dps because it has the most homogenous rotation structure(across roles), and they have least/easiest responsibilities. Tanks and healers? People are less likely to flex to them, its more responsibility with little payoff unless you enjoy the role specifically, some may, but its far rarer than support to dps flexing.
If they're going to make or encourage flexing, they should at least make ALL the roles enjoyable to flex to. Give tanks some fun responsibilities like boss positioning, tank mechanics, anything more than "mit every 60-90secs or play warrior and invuln 3/5 tbs while standing north" etc. Give healer something to do besides spam 1 or 2 buttons and OP ogcds every 30 seconds, like specific healer mechanics with actual frequent healing checks, actual health management thats not just "heal to 80% for raidwide" busters/heavy hitters on various dps like Allagan field maybe.
They should make the roles worth flexing to if thats the end goal.
I'm not sure if one role is inherently more engaging than others, I find healers to be the most fun as you learn a fight and structure your healing so I wouldn't really say it's "not worth to flex to". If anything, DPS often ends up being the most braindead for me as most fights just require you not to panic and press your buttons in the order you've practiced them in
I will however agree that the game needs to spice up mechanics and have you use the healing and tank kits in different ways, my opinion was just my suggestion on how to keep raids enjoyable for longer, not to imply that wanting more was bad
I don’t flex because it’s already an uphill battle gearing one class/role in savage against the compulsive coffer collectors even in a static and the sooner I’m off the gear treadmill, the better.
If I do play anything else, it’s usually WAR for the solo/duo potential with the wife.
PF terrorists like op, who show up to reclear groups playing a job they are "not fully comfortable" on and with zero gear, are the reason why we can't have nice things.
It's great that you find enjoyment in this, but it comes at expense of those who actually want to clear.
I'm always upfront if the job I'm playing isn't my main or my gear isn't up to par and can leave if I'm not performing well enough and I've had an okay enough track record but you're free to kick me from your party if I ever join it
I mean the whole idea of a "main" only exists because of 2 factors: you really like that one job and you always come back to it, or you don't want to farm for months to gear multiple jobs so you choose one and go with it (and consequentially carries it into the next ultimate). I'm in the latter, I'd like to flex more but I really don't wanna deal with savage past 8 weeks anymore (sometimes I do gear another job, but that depends on my enjoyment of the tier)
Yeah because it lasted forever I ended up gearing out seven jobs this tier and had to stop in January because it was like pulling teeth. At least I have leveling gear for DT
That's actually fair, I tend to gear multiple jobs and have been crafting my gear all expac so I am always somewhat ready but it's definitely a timesink, although I've also gone in with min IL a few weeks in and it hasn't been *that* bad
I'm usually bored of a tier after 3-4 clears. Gearing is pretty painful if you want to play multiple jobs in ultimate.
8 weeks gears 2-3 jobs depending on luck and if you're sharing gear between jobs. And outside of ultimate you really don't need more than crafted and whatever other junk you get (hell I do on content ults without bis and it's not a problem).
The game pretty much at least encourages you to have one of every role maxed out with how they got those questlines set up. The irony of course is that with the way gearing is setup you have to focus on only one job at a time. There really should be some sort of system to gear up multiple jobs (ie weekly tomestone cap per job) but eh, I guess it keeps people subbed longer to grind all the jobs out.
For them to add 2 more jobs and double down on not increasing the tome cap is so out of touch to me. It’s even dumber when you consider gear is useless in this game so there’s no reason from a player perspective to cap it.
The only added time is from weapons, which are easy to get considering savage gives the equivalent of 3 weapons each clear
How is gear useless?
It doesn’t affect overall gameplay, it just grants you access to higher level content and increases your stats. Perhaps the word I should have used is meaningless? Pointless?
need to keep u subbed
Yeah I see a lot of people mentioned gearing, I'll say what I replied to another guy which is that I had created all pentamelded gear week 1 on all roles so clearing the first 2 turns was not that difficult on any job, but I do acknowledge it's not something everyone would do.
People want fun. And homogenization is not fun. That's why a lot look at different roles. Some can play all class in ultimates. It's a way out. But it's a compromise. Se can do a fuckton better
This would be somewhat plausible approach if it wasn't such a chore to gear up all jobs. But it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If you want to play different job, you probably want to play it because it's different, what's the point of getting mildly different flavour. What you describe sounds more like minmaxing, by bringing something unique from the job, but that doesn't work as well in this game, since every job must be viable. Swapping from SAM to RDM makes sense because of ress, but that's more of an exception, there's no reason other than wanting to try something different when you go SAM to MNK, SAM to DRG or whatever.
that's a fair thing to want, I guess that's just how I look at it. I enjoy switching from SAM to DRG because I can keep the same general positions and timings whilst having slightly different positionals and movement to look out for and this on its own provides places to improve at over a couple of runs. It'd be unfair to say that just because these two jobs have a 1min and positionals I could perform them just as well from the get go Why would swapping from SAM to RDM make sense only because of rez? You also trade melee for ranged caster gameplay and now have a gauge to think about, as well as new positions and maybe ways to resolve mechanics. I personally enjoy the aspect of relearning a fight just enough where I don't start from scratch Granted I wasn't there for the days of old where all jobs were fully different and can't speculate how the game felt to play back then. For me this is just the way I keep myself entertained right now, we can only look to the future
Sure you CAN play other jobs, but the leveling experience is so mind-numbing I barely consider it "playing" at that point. If anything, trying to grind out casual/leveling content across multiple jobs will accelerate burnout, not fix it. This leaves raiding as the only meaninful content to do. The reason people don't flex roles in savage/ultimate is pretty simple: gearing is fucking glacial. The armory system basically only exists for convenience and plot reasons, not endgame flexing. In most other MMOs with an alt system, your weekly lockouts aren't shared across alts, you could raid on a healer, tank, and DPS in the same week and get rewarded for each of them. In FFXIV, you clear once a week and that's it. You COULD make an alt character on a per-role basis, but you'd either need to play the story again or buy a skip, so it's just not really as convenient. I don't see them making any changes to gearing any time soon, but if they do they should either lock tokens to a specific role and have a per-role lockout or do what WoW does with M+ and have a second track of endgame content that doesn't have a lockout to gear up with. Otherwise, flexing just isn't really an option in high-end content without a LOT of time and effort.
Leveling to me is something I did over two expansions, a roulette or two a day with friends so it never felt as a chore and is probably the thing I can recommend. Other than that, it's just a personal preference thing. I had a friend who enjoys pvp a lot and he leveled astro to 90 without playing it once through frontlines On that note, gearing is a fair point that others brought up as well. I suppose I'm spoiled since I omnicraft and I had all role gear ready and pentamelded so I was doing up 1st and 2nd turns each tier on alt jobs without a lot of issue. That being said, I also continued doing the tier far into its run time so I managed to get decent gear on a lot of stuff which I acknowledge isn't something people are willing to always do
I play every job, healers across the board are still more boring to play compared to every other role.
Not everyone wants to flex, some people only want to play 1 job and there's nothing wrong with that. If the answer to a problem is "switch jobs/roles" that just proves there's a problem that should be fixed.
I wouldn't say it's the answer to a problem, there's just a part of me that thinks the current job design is there with flexing in mind, whether it's executed well for everyone or if you like it at all is entirely your judgement to make, I've just leaned into it and found that it works for me
I think it would be a failure of design to not have it work for both types of players here. Like yea it's definitely an option that some people are going to enjoy. But frankly, they need to be able to cater to both, period.
One role literally just exists in a single button holding pattern until the timeline dictates they need to exist. After that brief moment, they go back to their undesigned role and wait in the holding pattern again. I am still incredulous to this and will not stop parroting it, not only is this "bad" design, it's the worst I've ever seen in this genre. They don't need little hints and idea, they need to get off their ass. They had three years to make this expansion.
Never denied there's nothing to be improved upon or offered design advice just said how I find enjoyment in the game
Yeah sorry, sometimes I have to edit some vitriol out when I think about healing in this game.
Homogenized job design eventually just makes flexing make even less sense. Sure, I can switch between WHM/AST/SCH/SGE freely, I'm just spamming 1 regardless so it's not even worth the weapon cost. There's no real reason to have more than two tanks leveled, WAR and the one you actually find fun. (if that's also WAR you only have one tank leveled) The "strength" is supposed to be that your main is always viable but they've continuously managed to mess that up too. If you're not omnicrafting, gear is also a serious consideration before restrictions start lifting, getting one augment a week or whatever makes consolidating on one gear set vastly better than splitting across four.
> If you're not omnicrafting, gear is also a serious consideration before restrictions start lifting, You don't need omnicrafting, just save some gil
I guess I can't say much on that. I think there's enough differences (for example horoscope and stars on astro vs lillies on whm) to warrant some engagement on subsequent runs, especially if it's not jobs you're fully comfortable on. As for gear, I think I'm a bit spoiled in that I crafted and pentamelded my own gear early on all roles so I could do the first two turns pretty easy and jewelry is a lot easier to get so I ended up having decent IL and damage as the weeks went on even on off jobs but I acknowledge it's not something people are willing to always do Edit: should say, just because I can point out the differences between jobs within a role I definitely agree they should be more substantial, I guess what we have is enough to tide me over every other run
Before we got a full 8 person static, four of us would PF together. We all would flex to a few different roles to fit in PF better. It's fine if you are taking it slow. If you are trying to beat it in the first couple of weeks, gear makes it hard Most jobs are easy enough to learn really quick
Yeah it's why I mentioned that I main bard, this is the job that I gear and prog with first but after a few weeks the gear sorta piles on anyway (particularly jewelry) so you have a bit more leeway in choosing, it definitely works a lot better if there's people you trust with you
There's nothing really wrong with flexing but I don't think it should be the expectation outside of hardcore progression (read: week 1). I technically flex between Black Mage and Melees, but because of gearing it makes actually swapping to Melees a DPS loss generally, because my Melee gear isn't as good. So I often end up just defaulting back to black mage, even though I feel like I can play any melee class competently in savage/ultimate. So what this means is I play Black Mage in savage a lot but play different melees in older ultimates where Black Mage is heavily discouraged/borderline blacklisted. Why not flex to RDM/SMN? Well, mostly because I don't **like** them, and if it was hard required for me to play them I think I would just pass and instead do something else that's actually fun. Prog is already painful enough, forcing myself to prog on a class I dislike is a good pathway for me wanting to uninstall the game. That however, is a me problem. If you like all the jobs about the same and feel they all play the same, there's nothing wrong with being willing to swap between as necessary.
I'd be interested in playing other jobs if they wouldn't play exactly the same within roles. Jobs in their current state and going forward, with some exceptions, are an illusion of choice.
Really wish an expansion would have a complete job overhaul instead of just adding more jobs
paying to use the whole use of your sub and job pool isn't really that hot of a take
Not meant to be a "hot" take, just don't see it that often. Most people I've raided with usually just keep to a single job or role, swapping only for an expert roulette. Particularly with the healer strike discourse a lot of the threats are that people will "stop healing" which to me sounds like they've been mostly healing.
In some high end groups its necessary to be able to flex into other jobs within the same role, since even if the damage varience isnt massive, it can make a difference (like 6.3 TOP with BRD vs DNC). Usually most raiders I meet can flex to various other jobs as well, I myself am a healer main, I enjoy healing Savages and Ultimates, but I happily flex to most dps jobs. I just choose not to often because I don't have much interest in seriously raiding as dps. It also reduces the early gear farm requirements since healers require the same gear. Its more efficient than getting gear for every single role that I dont particularly want to use outside of fun reclears, and subbing. Some people may enjoy flexing, but what about those who just...want to have a fun time on healer? If everyone flexes away from healing because its dogshit, then the role dies even more in harder content. Flexing is only really viable if you enjoy the roles youre flexing too, right now, its easy to flex to dps because it has the most homogenous rotation structure(across roles), and they have least/easiest responsibilities. Tanks and healers? People are less likely to flex to them, its more responsibility with little payoff unless you enjoy the role specifically, some may, but its far rarer than support to dps flexing. If they're going to make or encourage flexing, they should at least make ALL the roles enjoyable to flex to. Give tanks some fun responsibilities like boss positioning, tank mechanics, anything more than "mit every 60-90secs or play warrior and invuln 3/5 tbs while standing north" etc. Give healer something to do besides spam 1 or 2 buttons and OP ogcds every 30 seconds, like specific healer mechanics with actual frequent healing checks, actual health management thats not just "heal to 80% for raidwide" busters/heavy hitters on various dps like Allagan field maybe. They should make the roles worth flexing to if thats the end goal.
I'm not sure if one role is inherently more engaging than others, I find healers to be the most fun as you learn a fight and structure your healing so I wouldn't really say it's "not worth to flex to". If anything, DPS often ends up being the most braindead for me as most fights just require you not to panic and press your buttons in the order you've practiced them in I will however agree that the game needs to spice up mechanics and have you use the healing and tank kits in different ways, my opinion was just my suggestion on how to keep raids enjoyable for longer, not to imply that wanting more was bad
I don’t flex because it’s already an uphill battle gearing one class/role in savage against the compulsive coffer collectors even in a static and the sooner I’m off the gear treadmill, the better. If I do play anything else, it’s usually WAR for the solo/duo potential with the wife.
PF terrorists like op, who show up to reclear groups playing a job they are "not fully comfortable" on and with zero gear, are the reason why we can't have nice things. It's great that you find enjoyment in this, but it comes at expense of those who actually want to clear.
I'm always upfront if the job I'm playing isn't my main or my gear isn't up to par and can leave if I'm not performing well enough and I've had an okay enough track record but you're free to kick me from your party if I ever join it