[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Advent]

Capped on tomes. All that's left for me is to wait until next week to do it again.

[Reforge]

Had our first run-in with Eden savage 1 today.
Phew that's quite an AoE heal fest. Got him down to around 50% before his laser orgy roasted us.

so for those lasers you need to bait them outwards notice the direction they will rotate w/ the arrows around the spheres and have 1 person bait each laser set (4 orbs require 4 unique people baiting them) the rest of the raid stands in the middle away from them, and you all dps down the meteors on the corners

[Baconeggcheese]

Hello Folks.

So as plenty of Warcraft players i picked up FF Online, and after 1st shock-contact with jrpg vibe, im slowly getting into it (or rather learning to ignore all bunny ears, small hamster ppl, funny sounding names like Limsa Lominsa or Fufulupa xD etc ), got question about class. I picked up pugilist since i heard they are one of the faster classes gameplay-wise in FF, but can i only play them as a DPS ? Or some later "class-morph" will grant me ability to go Healer/Tank ?

Jobs are basically specs as opposed to classes. So they won't change beyond some of the starting ones starting out with a certain name like pugilist and then eventually becoming a 2nd name at 30 like monk even though its just a natural progression of the same job.

Also fair warning, Monk is excruciating to level because of needing to build and maintain greased lightning all the time so it feels slow most of the time while leveling. Its also not really all that fast even once you get it leveled. People are gonna tell you that the jobs become faster than wow once you have your OGCD's and that's blatantly false. Games still slower, you just have bursts of it having high APM due to the nature of the OGCD's.

[KrayZ33]

Jobs are basically specs as opposed to classes. So they won't change beyond some of the starting ones starting out with a certain name like pugilist and then eventually becoming a 2nd name at 30 like monk even though its just a natural progression of the same job.

Also fair warning, Monk is excruciating to level because of needing to build and maintain greased lightning all the time so it feels slow most of the time while leveling. Its also not really all that fast even once you get it leveled. People are gonna tell you that the jobs become faster than wow once you have your OGCD's and that's blatantly false. Games still slower, you just have bursts of it having high APM due to the nature of the OGCD's.

Depends on what class you play.

WoW has slower classes that were already in FFXIV territory before BFA came out. With the removal of certain oGCDs which were turned into GCDs, even more classes were where Bards and Monks are(were) at (in Stormblood).

The difference being that Monks and Bard need to utilize twice as many keybinds.

[Katchii]

Jobs are basically specs as opposed to classes. So they won't change beyond some of the starting ones starting out with a certain name like pugilist and then eventually becoming a 2nd name at 30 like monk even though its just a natural progression of the same job.

Also fair warning, Monk is excruciating to level because of needing to build and maintain greased lightning all the time so it feels slow most of the time while leveling. Its also not really all that fast even once you get it leveled. People are gonna tell you that the jobs become faster than wow once you have your OGCD's and that's blatantly false. Games still slower, you just have bursts of it having high APM due to the nature of the OGCD's.

Monk is actually in a really good spot now since the update, changing stances with that change stance skill now refreshes Greased Lightning stacks, so it's not nearly as awful as it used to be.

As to the oGCD thing and FFXIV being faster than WoW, you're correct. The GCD in FFXIV will always be ~2.5 seconds as opposed to WoW's ~1-1.5, however there are several classes in FFXIV that feel more active that those in WoW because of their oGCD use, certain skills do have lower GCDs and just how many abilities you use regularly. The jobs may not actually BE faster, but they sure feel that way sometimes.

[Baconeggcheese]

Monk is actually in a really good spot now since the update, changing stances with that change stance skill now refreshes Greased Lightning stacks, so it's not nearly as awful as it used to be.

Definitely got some good changes, but I think the job is just... dated? I think the fantasy is great and obvious numbers wise its performing well but the mechanics could use a lot of love.

I keep saying to people that I feel like its a job that has a lot of opportunities for feels bad moments but pretty much no opportunities for feels good moments.

As to the oGCD thing and FFXIV being faster than WoW, you're correct. The GCD in FFXIV will always be ~2.5 seconds as opposed to WoW's ~1-1.5, however there are several classes in FFXIV that feel more active that those in WoW because of their oGCD use, certain skills do have lower GCDs and just how many abilities you use regularly. The jobs may not actually BE faster, but they sure feel that way sometimes.

Yeah feel really depends on the job. Like the GCD feels a lot more natural on a caster than it does on a melee. And then you have jobs like machinist where you always feel like you have something to do so you don't notice it.

But that's not jobs in general, and I don't feel like monk is one of those jobs. I was sold on all that monk being one of the faster jobs stuff and was waiting for that moment to come only for it to never happen even after I unlocked all the OGCD's, and then they removed some of them with SHB.

The jobs can feel good, I just want to give people a more... honest? analysis than what I got where people were trying to tell me that the combat gets higher APM and more complex than WoW which was just outright false. I don't get why people always feel the need to convince people of that.. almost as if they need to convince themselves of it.

[KrayZ33]

The jobs can feel good, I just want to give people a more... honest? analysis than what I got where people were trying to tell me that the combat gets higher APM and more complex than WoW which was just outright false. I don't get why people always feel the need to convince people of that.. almost as if they need to convince themselves of it.

I prefer WoWs combat (as it's responsive to the click/push and the servers aren't shite), but I too think FFXIV combat is way more complex and involved than WoWs.

And when I have the same amount of APM on 14 keys in FFXIV compared to WoWs ~8 (long cooldowns already included) I also think it is faster (especially since positionals are a thing)

roughly half of specs in WoW are sub 50 APM (some of them in the low 40s), especially early on in an expansion. The faster FFXIV jobs are at sub 50/middle 40 but with more cooldowns, more skills and stricter execution.

It's not even remotely outright false. It's measurable.

[Remilia]

As to the oGCD thing and FFXIV being faster than WoW, you're correct. The GCD in FFXIV will always be ~2.5 seconds as opposed to WoW's ~1-1.5, however there are several classes in FFXIV that feel more active that those in WoW because of their oGCD use, certain skills do have lower GCDs and just how many abilities you use regularly. The jobs may not actually BE faster, but they sure feel that way sometimes.

Are there any core abilities in WoW that are off GCD? Not talking about cooldowns that's main purpose is to just buff you.
As a caster it doesn't really feel that different, granted I stopped at around Cata.

Playing as a SMN it is effectively a 1.5s GCD in terms of action done anyways.
Assuming a 60 second time period you'd have used 2 aetherflow builder, 4 aetherflow spenders, 4 pet abilities (assuming no charges are up), one trance, 1-2 tri-disasters (2 minute period there should be a required hard dot casts), potentially one summon bahamut, a death flare provided bahamut, and 2 bahamut/phoenix enkindles. Excluding 2m+ cooldowns (to be fair it's only 2), and bane. Adds up to 15-17 oGCD in a 60s time period. 60s period no spell speed is 24 GCD casts. Total is 39-41 actions so about 1.5s GCD if you wish to count it that way. Summoner may be a bit weird considering you have 5 GCD skills and 14 off GCD skills.

I do not really know other jobs outside the healing ones, DNC and SMN. Too lazy to bother poking around them.

DNC needs an ability where all you do is dance for the duration of the ability (say 15s). All random (not 4 separate like technical) and you should only see 2 or 3 on the bar. Say you get 250-300 potency per correct step and then damage released at the end of it.

[Baconeggcheese]

@Krazyz33 I find FF14's jobs to have that sort of shallow complexity you see in some games. Its a lot like mop / wod demonology warlock's "hard to learn easy to master" where its difficult for people to pick up because there's a lot of moving parts but once you learn it its fairly straightforward to execute.

I definitely prefer the more "easy to learn hard to master" approach where people can get fooled into thinking something is simple, but there's more depth / agency there to play with than designs with very scripted rotations like FF14.

Like you mention the number of buttons but to me a lot of it is bloat for bloats sake. You could easily turn many of these buttons into a single rotating button like in guildwars 2 since you have these combos that go down set paths with very little if any variation. There's not really any agency there, and from a design perspective you could easily cut it down to make it more intuitive.

Its a lot like how PoE's skill tree is this massive thing with a ton of nodes but there's a lot of redundancies in it and you could make it a fraction of the size with the exact same functionality but it wouldn't be as visually impressive.

[Wrecktangle]

I prefer WoWs combat (as it's responsive to the click/push and the servers aren't shite), but I too think FFXIV combat is way more complex and involved than WoWs.

And when I have the same amount of APM on 14 keys in FFXIV compared to WoWs ~8 (long cooldowns already included) I also think it is faster (especially since positionals are a thing)

roughly half of specs in WoW are sub 50 APM (some of them in the low 40s), especially early on in an expansion. The faster FFXIV jobs are at sub 50/middle 40 but with more cooldowns, more skills and stricter execution.

It's not even remotely outright false. It's measurable.

You're right that's it's measurable:

FF14:


WoW:


This is the top speed kill, which would have the highest CPM's achievable compared against a top performing mythic guild in WoW as close to a fight as I can get (the ones with closer kill times, have built in haste buffs).

The fastest jobs in FF14 are generally on par with some of the slower classes in WoW. This is a fact.

Secondly, while WoW may have much fewer buttons, the gameplay is deep (at least on my Ret Paladin, I know I know). I have a lot of optimizations to make:

1) Don't cap Holy Power
2) Spend procs so you don't waste them being overwritten by new procs
3) Have to spend Holy Power ever 4s to maintain 15% damage buff
4) Don't let CS sit on 2 charges
5) Use abilities in an appropriate priority so you don't get stuck with nothing to do/deal less damage (not sure how many classes have this issue, but it's a Ret one since it's a priority based cooldown class with no filler attack)
6) Priority changes during DPS cooldown with addition of an extra attack

That's just the baseline stuff. This changes depending on which talents you select, which azerite traits, trinkets, and Necklace powers you use. For instance, due to my traits, during my DPS cooldown, I have to prioritize spending Holy Power over a more fluid rotation because I have an extra generator and button forcing more clashes. Not only that, but the increased crit chance I get from it, props up my other azerite trait that deals DoT on a specific ability crit, but that ability can proc back to back, but I have to delay it so if it crits it doesn't overwrite my Dot (all while trying to not overcap resources/let abilities sit idle). For reference I sit at about 45 CPM on my Ret (50 if I use Crusade).

WoW has plenty of issues, but depth really isn't one of them IMO, especially if you're trying to optimize. I'd have to argue that it follows an easy to play, hard to master paradigm.

FF14 on the other hand is very binary. Not a bad thing, but combined with the slower speed can feel like a drag IMO. Much like a higher floor, but lower ceiling when compared to WoW.

We could argue all day which is ideal, but personally I think WoW needs more buttons (2-3 more at least for Ret). I think FF14 needs less buttons, but more synergy (ability X affects Y, which makes Z do A. Shit like that. I also think it needs to DRASTICALLY improve cooldowns. For instance Requiescat now gives instant casts and access to a new ability. That's fun design IMO. Fight or Flight is binary, passive, and otherwise superfluous. I also tend to believe that FF14 does casters better and WoW does Melee better. That's just my opinion though.

[Remilia]

@Krazyz33 I find FF14's jobs to have that sort of shallow complexity you see in some games. Its a lot like mop / wod demonology warlock's "hard to learn easy to master" where its difficult for people to pick up because there's a lot of moving parts but once you learn it its fairly straightforward to execute.

I definitely prefer the more "easy to learn hard to master" approach where people can get fooled into thinking something is simple, but there's more depth / agency there to play with than designs with very scripted rotations like FF14.

Like you mention the number of buttons but to me a lot of it is bloat for bloats sake. You could easily turn many of these buttons into a single rotating button like in guildwars 2 since you have these combos that go down set paths with very little if any variation. There's not really any agency there, and from a design perspective you could easily cut it down to make it more intuitive.

Its a lot like how PoE's skill tree is this massive thing with a ton of nodes but there's a lot of redundancies in it and you could make it a fraction of the size with the exact same functionality but it wouldn't be as visually impressive.

Kind of depends on job I imagine. DNC is pretty simple for example where as SMN's become a bit more complex (again speaking what I know).

SMN's ability aren't really bloated when you see how it flows.
Aetherflow builder leads to aetherflow spender, these are more universally used and don't really require much thought outside of dots should be on them.
Pet abilities lead to Ruinja stacks and can be put together with Tri-disaster with ruination for example. Misusing it will lead to DPS loss.
Trance Phoenix and Bahamut leads to it's own thing so you're not really having more buttons at once. During Trance Phoenix for example you should not really need to use more than 4 buttons due to how it works.
SMN is very compartmentalized due to a separate phase of Regular and Summon. So you never at any point should have to keyboard or controller dance.

More complexity ends up being how you want to use your mobility and where/how you want to save up your charges. For example saving up a Ruinja charge or two for movement or burst phase. Could delay Bahamut trance if more movement is needed but damage difference may not really be worth it to. If a burst phase is really needed or to murderize an add or whatever, you could effectively have 4+2 stacks of Ruinja without hurting your overall DPS, 4+4 Ruinja stacks would harm DPS a bit though. Please note people, if you see someone that is saving but consistently expending an amount of Ruinja charge, they're not shit.
Potentially skipping your Bahamut trance duration by just popping death flare to just go straight to Summon Bahamut is viable if you don't need the instant cast. There's no more damage bonus for the Bahamut trance so it's no like you need to care about the duration anymore.

It's a huge contrast to say DNC though which is really easy of just push all the shiny buttons. I tend to run in circles around people while playing DNC cause... reasons.

Overall I wouldn't say these are complex games to begin with though. Non action combat games to me tend to lose the risk reward kind of thing or situational/enemy awareness and learning how to take advantage of it with your class. Then for certain classes end up being whack-a-mole.

[Granyala]

so for those lasers you need to bait them outwards notice the direction they will rotate w/ the arrows around the spheres and have 1 person bait each laser set (4 orbs require 4 unique people baiting them) the rest of the raid stands in the middle away from them, and you all dps down the meteors on the corners

Yup, we figured as much but it was late and we were tired. Thanks for the input though.

[Merie]

As a WoW refugee that came in at Stormblood I could definitely feel the pain of shifting from a tankadin with a couple tank cooldowns to being a tankadin with over a dozen tank cooldowns. And, yet, strangely a simplistic 2 or 3 button primary rotation 90% of the time that reminded me of what playing a Paladin was like in vanilla. I had about four times as many tank cooldowns than primary rotation abilities. But boy those tank cooldowns, they were so obscure and situational and my fingers were dying trying to hit them all on demand in all the situations they were relevant compared to WoW. Shadowbringers made things better by consolidating some of the crap, but it's still too much IMO.

And don't even get me started on my Samurai. I have to halt what I'm doing to use a button just before I get hit and keep an eye on when the buff lights up so I can use some other feeble ability that hits like a noodle. And I have to weave all of this into my rotation and buff upkeep while running and gunning on the boss. Am I the only one that dislikes these mechanics?

[Granyala]

Naah you're not.
All DPS are needlessly convoluted and I don't like to play any of them.

[Wrecktangle]

Cleared E1S got an 85th, not too bad. Got the belt. Got E2S to 50% in a few pulls. Might try and pug it since we're done raiding for the week.

[Katchii]

Definitely got some good changes, but I think the job is just... dated? I think the fantasy is great and obvious numbers wise its performing well but the mechanics could use a lot of love.

I keep saying to people that I feel like its a job that has a lot of opportunities for feels bad moments but pretty much no opportunities for feels good moments.

That's a good way to put it. Doing the job right is expected, but takes a fair bit of effort due to all of the positional skills and having to move around, but as you said that can easily lead to a lot of "feels bad" moments because of situations where you're literally unable to get in position or even hit the mob because you're melee and apparently things have to be standing still fo you to be able to touch them.

Yeah feel really depends on the job. Like the GCD feels a lot more natural on a caster than it does on a melee. And then you have jobs like machinist where you always feel like you have something to do so you don't notice it.

But that's not jobs in general, and I don't feel like monk is one of those jobs. I was sold on all that monk being one of the faster jobs stuff and was waiting for that moment to come only for it to never happen even after I unlocked all the OGCD's, and then they removed some of them with SHB.

I've always thought Monk to be one of the faster feeling jobs, because it's combo system really picks up sooner than other jobs and you're always moving around. It's not just about the APM, but about what you're doing in combat and Monk is definitely more active in combat than a lot of other jobs, and IMO certainly more active than many jobs in WoW. Mashing buttons doesn't translate to "active" to me especially when you're mashing the same button most of the time like you are in WoW in many (I'd argue most but I don't have that much experience with anything besides Warlock, Warrior, Druid and Demon hunter in BfA).

I think that's why some jobs in FFXIV just feel better and more active than some jobs in WoW, not because they actually have more APM, but because you're using more abilities (not getting higher APM, just literally using more abilities/ hitting more buttons) while doing the dance of positionals and dodging AoE's and such.

The jobs can feel good, I just want to give people a more... honest? analysis than what I got where people were trying to tell me that the combat gets higher APM and more complex than WoW which was just outright false. I don't get why people always feel the need to convince people of that.. almost as if they need to convince themselves of it.

Fair point. WoW does get more APM, but as I said above, higher APM doesn't necessarily directly translate to feeling more active. Part of my issue with WoW currently is that all of the classes I've played feel the same because of how few abilities each have and how similar the abilities are; single target spam attack/ resource builder, procced attack with long cooldown/cast time, AoE attack that requires resources, higher potency attack with a cooldown that costs resources, and that's the core kit of most classes in WoW, obviously with some slight variation (Warrior Whirlwind with no resource requirement or cooldown, Affliction Warlock, healers in general, etc...). Which means that when you assign the same "kind" of attack to the same keybind they all feel and play the same.

As a result, FFXIV just feels better because I'm using a lot of different abilities rather than the same abilities more often.

Are there any core abilities in WoW that are off GCD? Not talking about cooldowns that's main purpose is to just buff you.
As a caster it doesn't really feel that different, granted I stopped at around Cata.

Not that I know of, no. Most abilities, even buffing cooldowns, are on the GCD.

And yeah, casters in most MMO's all feel similar because they're not really bound by the GCD, they're bound by the cast time which all seem have a 1.5-2.5 second core ability casting time. That casting time just happens to coincide with FFXIV GCD.

Playing as a SMN it is effectively a 1.5s GCD in terms of action done anyways.
Assuming a 60 second time period you'd have used 2 aetherflow builder, 4 aetherflow spenders, 4 pet abilities (assuming no charges are up), one trance, 1-2 tri-disasters (2 minute period there should be a required hard dot casts), potentially one summon bahamut, a death flare provided bahamut, and 2 bahamut/phoenix enkindles. Excluding 2m+ cooldowns (to be fair it's only 2), and bane. Adds up to 15-17 oGCD in a 60s time period. 60s period no spell speed is 24 GCD casts. Total is 39-41 actions so about 1.5s GCD if you wish to count it that way. Summoner may be a bit weird considering you have 5 GCD skills and 14 off GCD skills.

I do not really know other jobs outside the healing ones, DNC and SMN. Too lazy to bother poking around them.

Nope, you're right. Most jobs feel this way, because they're all constrained by a ~2.5 second GCD/cast time but have oGCD abilities you weave in between. Some jobs just do more oGCD weaving than others.

DNC needs an ability where all you do is dance for the duration of the ability (say 15s). All random (not 4 separate like technical) and you should only see 2 or 3 on the bar. Say you get 250-300 potency per correct step and then damage released at the end of it.

While this does sound good, in practice I'm not sure it would deliver. While dancing you can't attack, so for something like this to be worth using it would have to be a ridiculously potent attack. Top performing Dancers were parsing ~9k in EX fights before 5.05, that means for a dancing session that lasted 15 seconds with no other attacks or abilities going out it would need to consistently hit for around 125-135k at it's base potency to compete with just doing your base vanilla rotation. Also, with a window that long, it would be really easy to waste it if the end of landed during a transition phase or right when the mob was dying. That would feel terrible.

- - - Updated - - -

Naah you're not.
All DPS are needlessly convoluted and I don't like to play any of them.

Most. There are some that are very straight forward.

Dragoon is really simplified to what it used to be, Red Mage has always been very straight forward, Machinist is in a really nice spot right now and Dancer is really simple IMO.

They've all gotten better overall in Shadowbringers with the removal of those weird one off abilities that you only used to maintain a buff, but other than those four though, yeah I agree, DPS jobs are pretty convoluted.

That's part of why I like them though, because you're always doing something and having to focus on what you're doing to perform well.

Fuck Black Mage though. Love the idea, love the aesthetic and love the big numbers, but I just can't enjoy a turret based DPS class in a game that makes you move so damn much.

[Sharby]

Honestly, despite having a lower APM I would still say DPS'ing in FF is harder simply because its a lot more unforgiving, and as a result it feels more satisfying to pull off correctly. I played WoW for every Xpac and was never interested in a DPS till Legion, but in FF I actually main dps from the get-go because it feels so good (at max level ofc, the leveling process is terrible.)

I only have experience with two dps specs in WoW so I'll talk about those; I do not claim to have any knowledge on most of the DPS specs, but I played Frost Mage and Balance Druid from mid-way in Legion all the way up until 8.15 which is when I unsubbed, which granted these two specs are on the lower end for dps skill floors but even still, if I accidentally overcapped on Astral Power or used an Ice Lance without a FoF proc the dps loss was negligible. The dots were super easy to manage and my cooldowns were very basic and forgettable, even in more challenging content it still wasn't too difficult to be proficient. Which isn't really a bad thing because to make up for it the raid/dungeon team makes the fights super difficult. And not only this but the difficulty also comes in hitting stat/gear benchmarks as well.

Now let's look at FF14, where I've decided to main Bard and Dragoon. Just on the surface:

Bard:
-Has snapshotting
-OGCD's out the ass and procs that give you even more
-Virtually no self-healing or invuln (something that a lot of WoW dps do have.)
-Strict ability orders

Dragoon:
-Positionals
-Animation-locks
-Five-part weapon combos
-Ogcd's and strict timers
-Very impactful cd's

On my Bard, if I snapshot incorrectly, its a big dps loss, if I swap songs too early or use the wrong song, its a big dps loss. If I munch procs/cds like Barrage, depending on when this happens especially if its during a CD/Buff window it can be a pretty big dps loss as well, popping Battle Voice at a bad time can be pretty disastrous too depending on the fight. Dragoon is pretty similar with the added fact that I have to be mindful of the bosses ability windows because unlike WoW I have no boss timers and if I use a gapcloser too early that's a lot of uptime that I can potentially miss because of a mechanic like Titania's growth runes. Dragon Sight also requires me to know at all times who is the best DPS to put it on and requires both me and the target to be somewhat coordinated to get full usage out of it.

In the long run do I think the gap between the two games is massive difficulty/quality-wise? Not really and all the things I mentioned above aren't too brainwracking once you get used to it, but after playing both extensively I can def say FF has more difficult combat than WoW does and thus more rewarding gameplay. And WoW has more fluid gameplay, but as a result feels less rewarding. Though in the end it all comes down to preference.

There is more they can do in WoW to make the specs feel better but at the same time I wouldn't want them to try and make it more like FF's gameplay because I think it would make WoW worse. Positional's for example were incredibly clunky in WoW and got removed for a reason, the one's in FF aren't too much different design wise but feel good to use because the entire game and job was designed with them in mind, I wouldn't want them to ever return in WoW but I don't want them to get removed from FF.

As a WoW refugee that came in at Stormblood I could definitely feel the pain of shifting from a tankadin with a couple tank cooldowns to being a tankadin with over a dozen tank cooldowns. And, yet, strangely a simplistic 2 or 3 button primary rotation 90% of the time that reminded me of what playing a Paladin was like in vanilla. I had about four times as many tank cooldowns than primary rotation abilities. But boy those tank cooldowns, they were so obscure and situational and my fingers were dying trying to hit them all on demand in all the situations they were relevant compared to WoW. Shadowbringers made things better by consolidating some of the crap, but it's still too much IMO.

And don't even get me started on my Samurai. I have to halt what I'm doing to use a button just before I get hit and keep an eye on when the buff lights up so I can use some other feeble ability that hits like a noodle. And I have to weave all of this into my rotation and buff upkeep while running and gunning on the boss. Am I the only one that dislikes these mechanics?

You are correct that there is A LOT to keep track of, however I just made my DPS meter have timers and call out audio queues for things like snapshotting or refreshing dots and raid CD's and its made a massive difference to the point where I'd consider myself proficient with the jobs I play, I would def suggest checking something like that out.

Though I disagree hard about the tank ability bloat, I think it is at a perfect number at the moment because all the CD's are more or less unique, clearcut, and impactful. I very much think FF's tank design is better because it isn't just playing a mitigation mini-game and more-so fight knowledge which is how it should be in my opinion. I've had way more fun playing my DRK than I ever did playing my BRM though I wish FF had more 4-man content like WoW does, my aoe abilities never get used outside of expert roulettes.

[Onikaroshi]

I don't really think anything has ability bloat honestly, I can comfortably play all jobs on controller and many have buttons I put in multiple places.

[Lex Icon]

there is bloat for sure. but lots of people seems to like it. personally i don't need 5-6 wet noodle aoe abilities when 1-2 could do the same thing.

[Katchii]

I don't really think anything has ability bloat honestly, I can comfortably play all jobs on controller and many have buttons I put in multiple places.

Your ability to play it with the number of buttons you have available doesn't mean it's not bloated.

Not exactly a 1-to-1 comparison, but knowing how to make a machine work despite having broken parts doesn't mean the machine doesn't have broken parts and that it shouldn't be fixed.

The question is whether the jobs NEED that many buttons/ abilities in order to do the job. And the answer is no, if WoW can be used as an example. Both games have DPS jobs (obviously), but many of the ones in WoW have maybe 5 core abilities with some extra ones for flavor, so lets say 10 (which is a big exaggeration for most jobs).

That's about half as many abilities as most jobs in FFXIV.

That said, I think WoW has too few, and FFXIV has too many, but FFXIV is getting closer to what I would consider the ideal than WoW is.