~•~•~•~•~ DPS ~•~•~•~•~ MONK DRAGOON NINJA
Feint and Addle’s durations increased to 15 seconds and Second Wind’s cure potency increased
Uh, ok, neat.
Troubador, Tactician and Shield Samba’s efficiency increased to 15%
Rangers still being the kings of mitigations/party utility I see…
I have little to no idea what the new gauge does, and I can only speculate on its functioning, but what I can tell is that they removed Disciplined and Leading Fist buffs and Demolish’s DOT, in exchange for a different way to combo (“next action will have increased Potency”). Knowing this, I’m rather curious to actually see the rotational changes to the Job.
These changes aside, we also got two new additions: Chackra overflow when under Brotherhood so to avoid uncontrollable overcap, and Six-Sided Star follow-up which seems to be a long overdue ranged attack!
There are indeed a bunch of changes, which don’t affect the feel or the gameplay that much, fortunately: first, they implemented a new Weaponskill that replaces the fifth combo piece, and has no positional requirement, effectively reducing positionals from 50% of the rotation to 33%. This is a more than welcome news since these many positionals were a godsdamn meme with some fights like P11S, UCoB, UWU and similar.
Second, it seems possible to enter Life of the Dragon immediately and that it lasts 20 seconds instead of 30, but I didn’t see Mirage Dive interacting with the gauge, so I’m kinda confused on what they’re cooking. Sure, it boosts the opener quite a bit, but that aside, no clue on what the actual, final changes over it are.
Third, they removed Spineshatter Dive. It’s a bit sad to see the Ability go, but it means less stuff to weave in burst, to which I say: «Thank gods.». We have 14+ oGCDs to use in them right now, which is utterly deranged. Total animation lock will also become 4 seconds instead of 5.4, so it cuts some memes.
Finally, we also get a new unknown skill that looks cool as hell.
All in all, DRG’s “rework” is lit and I’m pretty excited to try it out!
NIN actually got a small rework itself: Huton buff is no more (it now is a Trait), and its Ninjutsu is an AoE that grants Hidden. Instead of Huton’s gauge, we got a new, “kunai” one, that is apparently charged by the Weaponskills that previously interacted with Huton (Armor Crush, Hurajin, Phantom Kamaitachi and Hakke Mujinatsu) and spent by Aeolian Edge. Maybe there’s more to it, but this is all I know and could understand so far. It’ll also get an AoE Mug and Trick Attack (thank f*cking gods), and there are a couple power/follow-ups around.
With all these premises, I can’t help but be very curious to try NIN out after the changes: I never liked the Job, but maybe now the breeze of change is blowing?
SAMURAI
Just power/follow-ups and Tsubame-Gaeshi locked behind Meikyo Shisui. Nothing changed, except you can’t Gaeshi freely.
Overall, not too interested in these changes.
REAPER
As mentioned in the previous part, the skills that gave gauge now don’t anymore and instead allow the execution of their bonuses for free: Plentiful Harvest is one of those, granting Enshroud without giving nor spending Shroud Gauge. I’m not a huge fan of this new mechanic, as I foresee meme-y overloaded phases of bursts back-to-back, but it’s good to have this change since it helps with rotation and flexibility a bit. Let’s see how it’ll turn out.
Power-ups of Gibbet and Gallows, too, perchance? Also a new Action for Enshroud Harvest Moon granting 10 Soul Gauge (very welcome addition) and some sort of ranged AoE attack that seems an upgrade to Harpe? I’m very curious about the latter.
Overall, Reaper didn’t change much, if at all. I’m a bit disappointed to see nothing of impact being implemented, but it is what it is.
VIPER
When VPR was announced, I was a bit excited for the Job because both dual swords and polearm blades kinda strike my tastes (I suppose I have Phantasy Star to thank for that), but overall I wasn’t looking forward to it. After the Live Letter, I can safely say I’m extremely hyped for it and I badly want to try it out: it looks similar to RPR in terms of resources, DRG in terms of combos, and RDM in terms of ranged/melee rate (obviously on reverse).
BARD
Well I’ll be, it only took them 10 years to remove targeting from songs and 7 to make Pitch Perfect an AoE…
That aside, just power/follow-ups, it seems.
Pretty much a dead Job.
MACHINIST
A follow-up of Chainsaw that generates Battery to facilitate opener, 2 charges of Drill/Bioblaster, power-ups of burst phase, maybe a combo Weaponskill to Scattergun… That’s it. Yeah.
Dead Job.
DANCER
DNC really didn’t need much more than its current installation. What did they give us? Yeah, more stuff to use in bursts. Sounds familiar? *rolls eyes to GNB*
Seriously, are you kidding me? The combo timer already runs out now (let alone fitting everything in Technical Step), next we’ll be throwing stuff out of the window? Literal overflow. At this point, I believe they took the “it’s a braindead Job with nothing to do” description of Shadowbringers and constantly tried to make up for that.
There seems to be a new Esprit Gauge spender action, yet another action as a follow-up for Flourish (like it didn’t proc too much stuff already eh?) and a new way to put up Standard Finish without recurring to steps, likely to help recovering from death and pre-pull, alongside helping noobs managing downtimes.
All in all, although the new stuff looks pretty cool, it upsets me to no end.
BLACK MAGE
As soon as I saw a third stack of Polyglot, I went “I don’t like where this is going”, also knowing Swiftcast’s cooldown will be 40 seconds for casters too. Then I noticed the new gauge filling up when shooting Fire IVs under Ley Lines, and got curious. Then I’ve seen Ley Lines getting moved and I lost it (as in I stopped the video and started laughing for a minute straight).
Casters and healers are getting obsolete rather quickly, I must say, just like positionals. With all the changes and additions they did over the course of the years, it’s pretty clear by now. The future fights promise to be a hell of a constant marathon with strict timings, large distances to cover, heavy mitigation/healing checks and heavy emphasis on bursts, even more than now in Endwalker. I’m not a huge fan of this direction, since it seems like PUGs will be punished more and more, promoting (almost forcing) organized play and static groups (something I’m really not up to anymore of recent), but we’ll see.
Back on BLM, Manafont will be a complete refresh (full MP restoration and refresh of AF/UI timer) which is huge of a change, then there’s the gauge I mentioned (which I only partially understood how works) that, when full, releases a new fire action, and finally, while Enochian is active, BLM won’t passively regain MP even if in Umbral Ice, and it’ll instead gain them only when using blizzard spells! This last point alone is massive of a change that kills a whole plugin plus half the non-standard, cursed rotations of the Job, and the new gauge likely promotes standard one, as some speculated.
I am looking forward to try out the new BLM!
SUMMONER
There was huge hopium (and copium) surrounding this clown of a Job, for Dawntrail: “they probably made it so as a baseline so that they can add and change stuff easily in the future”. What we got was a Bahamut reskin and a Searing Light follow-up.
This Job got murdered in 6.0, 7.0 will just bury it. 11/10 clownery points.
RED MAGE
Either yet another follow-up melee combo Spell, or yet another oGCD to keep track of for the dualcast windows, so either a meme or an annoyance.
RDM also will get its AoE melee combo’s cost reduced to 50/50 instead of 60/60 that is now (which is annoying as hell), and will have its own branched-out animations, both for melee and follow-up Spells (maybe it’ll also work a bit differently than now?)!
While I’m in love with the new animations, I have the feel RDM’s gameplay is stagnating since a long time (maybe it never actually changed ever since its birth?), which colors it in a grayish area for me. I wouldn’t say it’s dead as of now, far from it, but I hope the trend of “let’s stretch the melee combo even more!” doesn’t go on any longer and they instead give the rotation a bit of a twist to make it more interesting than just alternative white and black while keeping an eye on oGCDs, and then unload as you see fit.
PICTOMANCER
Leaving the animations that seem to be a direct port from Kingdom Hearts, which cringed me, this Job is rather interesting: it has flexibility and support, and I’m curious to test the canvas.
And that’s all from me and my thoughts on the LL!
I might’ve forgotten to mention or overlooked some stuff around, also due to message’s length, but I think I overall exposed all the important points.
