![]() ![]() Melee suddenly look a fair bit better than most other DPS because their balance is built assuming they’re going to have to take a break from hitting the boss every now and then, and they rarely actually have to take that break. So what has changed?Įncounter Design Influences Job Design and BalanceĪ big part of the current dilemma facing the game is that boss design has become far more accommodating of melee play, with most common group strategies allowing for full (or virtually full) uptime. In the end, performance bands tightly together and things look great. ![]() Melee could hit harder per ability and per hit because they wouldn’t always hit, casters get big nukes at the cost of needing to manage cast times around mechanics, and physical ranged DPS do less per hit because they can always hit the boss unless that target is completely un-attackable. In the past, this model made a lot of sense, because it kept things relatively balanced under ideal play. Have some sort of damage buff for the raid? It’ll cost you raw personal DPS. Caster jobs with a raise spell to bring back KO’d party members? That’ll cost you a bit of DPS performance. Within each role type, there is a DPS tiering based on the utility brought to the raid. Casters do a smidge less for the luxury of increased uptime at range, and physical ranged DPS do the least damage because they have no cast times and full mobility, so being forced out of melee means they can still hit the boss with their full rotation. ![]() Melee DPS do the most damage by design because they are built to have downtime in fights, where a mechanical interaction or boss phase forces melee to be unable to attack the boss. FFXIV’s job balancing rules are built around the idea that boss fights in 8-player content (the balancing target for job performance) are not full uptime encounters for melee players. This title sounds doom and gloom, so let me first say that “fundamentally broken” doesn’t mean unplayable or all that bad. The Design and Balance Paradigm Of FFXIV Is Fundamentally Broken That is a hell of an accomplishment, given that sometimes Blizzard can’t even go six hours without retuning a boss fight! Their response to player struggles with the tier reveal an interesting window into how the game is balanced and also, perhaps, a potential flaw. The team is normally so on-top of their balance targets that they haven’t had to retune a live boss since Heavensward. It speaks well to Square Enix’s track record with high-end raid tuning that the patch 6.21 boss nerf to Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage) was the first raid nerf in the game in six years. On the bad side, Abyssos has exposed some tuning issues with the current state of the game’s balance, but it has also been an interesting look into how MMO communities discuss the balance of their games. Coming off the success of Dragonsong Reprise, high-end raiders have been eating well this expansion in FFXIV. It has interesting and engaging boss mechanics from first to last fight, stretches the performance requirements of players in a positive way mostly, and is a fun tier to progress through by virtue of strong music. On the good side – Abyssos Savage is being very well received as an interesting raid tier to play. FFXIV is having something of a banner raid tier at the moment, for reasons both bad and good. ![]()
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