[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[StrawberryZebra]

People don't have to pretend that FFXIV game system/mechanics are *that* limiting, they are surely not. They are just "slower". That's all.

I wouldn't be so sure. We've never seen them flex their design muscles the way other MMO's have. I suspect it's due to the engine - It seems to really struggle with movement based mechanics. The server tick rate doesn't help much here either.

It's why FF14 has piled the majority of their games complexity on their Job design. Because they can give you two different bars, a bunch of timers and resources to track on top of 18 different cooldowns.

It covers up the fact that, mechanically, the content they're offering is very basic. The only variable being which Job you're playing at the time.

Do you know why I've stuck with a Paladin in WoW for my entire time playing the game? Because of all the bullshit you can get away with. BoP completely trivialises boss mechanics, Freedom too in the right situations. In the right context, those are incrediably useful. That would never work in Ff14 because the mechanics simply don't allow it to.

[Granyala]

Do you know why I've stuck with a Paladin in WoW for my entire time playing the game? Because of all the bullshit you can get away with.

I always liked that about Shadow Priest. Ever since we got Dispersion back in Wrath you could cheese so many things that made co-raiders keel over.

[StrawberryZebra]

I always liked that about Shadow Priest. Ever since we got Dispersion back in Wrath you could cheese so many things that made co-raiders keel over.

I've been Bullshitting my way through M+ for the whole of BFA. Blessing of Freedom completely trivialises Aqu'sirr in Shrine of the Storm. Blessing of Protection is the ultimate insurance policy for Rezan, Mogdul Razdunk, 3 of the 4 bosses in Tol'dagor.... Blessing of Spellwarding likewise lets party members just outright ignore mechanics to keep DPSing.

In terms of Affixes, Necrotic, Bursting and Grievious can be removed almost on demand. From the Paladin and Party members.

It's an environment that gives everyone a chance to shine though. Death Knights have a super easy time dealing with Sanguine, Druids can laugh off Raging like it's nothing and Stampeding Roar is absolutely amazing for fights that require fast movement.

Why I bring this up though isn't to specifically discuss those mechanics. Only to highlight that these classes have specific answers to problems that are unavailable to other classes. That utility makes them more valuable some of the time, while still ensuring that they've all got a base line level of performance. There are dangerous debuff and fatal damage that you can outright ignore which offer players a chance to shine. They can open up new stratergies that, without them, would be impossible.

Mechanically speaking, FF14 has nothing at all comparable. Their encounter mechanics tend to boil down to Stacking, Spreading, Avoiding AoE, Looking away and Tankbusters. Has FF14 ever had a council style boss fight, I've certainly never seen one if there has been? The Moogle King might come close, but that's less of an excersise in controlling a fight and more one in focusing DPS on the right targets.

It seems as though there are some limitations that are preventing breaking away from that rigid design. They might be technical ones, the game Engine doesn't handle movement well as I mentioned, but being built on the original FF14 1.0 seems to have left it with some design debt that the Dev team look to be doing their best with, but seem to restrict a lot of the more interesting ideas.

They could also be simply intentional choices. The game is into it's 4th expansion now and, honestly, the encounter mechanics have gotten more elaborate in terms of their telegraph shapes, but haven't really expanded in the same way other MMO's have. I'd expect that trying to do an encounter like Mythic Skitra would be an absolute nightmare on a PS4.

Whatever the reason, there's simply very little room left to expand Jobs into in terms of niches to be filled. Given how, at present, there are very few uses for utility skills, and skills that allow you to bypass mechanics or adopt a new stratergy don't exist in FF14 all that remains is damage. It's why DPS are DPS, Tanks are DPS and Healers are DPS. Utility outside of extra damage is almost never required and barely exists in Job toolkits.

Threat is a none-issue for tanks. Healing throughput is a complete none issue for healers. Resources don't matter. Utility skills don't matter. Damage is the only thing that has any mechanical incentives behind it.

If that's an intentional choice, then every job should have mechanically interesting and unique DPS. If it's not an intentional choice and a limitation of the games functionality, then that's something that needs to be addressed before the gameplay issues can be looked into. Depending on the level of legacy design debt, it could even require a complete rebuild from the ground up to fix some of the issues that would prevent encounter design from branching out into new areas and ideas.

[KrayZ33]

Do you know why I've stuck with a Paladin in WoW for my entire time playing the game? Because of all the bullshit you can get away with. BoP completely trivialises boss mechanics, Freedom too in the right situations. In the right context, those are incrediably useful. That would never work in Ff14 because the mechanics simply don't allow it to.

I don't understand how you can say that.
I really don't. Because stuff like immunities already remove certain boss abilities in about every encounter.

I really don't see the connection.
It's also weird to imply FFXIV can't handle or struggles with movement based mechanics, when about 80% of them are movement based. It does it well enough to work. Stuff like chain lightning, which requires player specific movement and checks distances, works too, it's just "slower" than what you'd see in WoW. In WoW you'd have 1 second, in FFXIV you have 3 seconds. But the game in general is overall slower too, healing is a lot "slower" in FFXIV, even if you are using all your possible GCDs for healing.

Same thing with DOTs. A boss using DOTs would deal damage every 3 seconds. In WoW, that can range from 0,25s-1s.
The fact remains however that DOTs wouldn't be a problem to implement, healers would sacrifice their DPS spell to cast a single target cure to get the 2 players affected by DOTs back up again.
As always, "mechanic stacking" will determine how busy a healer is in the end.
At the moment however, most of the time, whenever it's about stacking mechanics, players will either leave these mechanics with 100% (because they have to do everything right or die) or have 30s worth of time until the next mechanic will hit them. Obviously there are some exceptions. Such as E7S right after the first "Away with thee" but after that.... free reign for another 30s or so before the boss actually does something that deals damage again.

[Granyala]

Their encounter mechanics tend to boil down to Stacking, Spreading, Avoiding AoE, Looking away and Tankbusters. Has FF14 ever had a council style boss fight, I've certainly never seen one if there has been?

Not that I'm aware of, Adds are usually short lived SMN would go apeshit if they ever did.
I agree that the actual mechanics are always pretty simple.
Can you imagine sth as crazy in terms of Organization as Ji-Kun HC with all the nest planning in FF-XIV? Granted, that one was a one off in WoW as well.

Then again, their design complexity is also massively hampered by raids only having 8 people and 2 healers. Hell they can't even bank on every class being there, hence they can't put in mechanics e.g. only a Dark Knight is able to deal with properly. Blizzard does not have that restriction in Mythic, which is why they axed 10m HC in the first place. You also can't really split the raid into individually tasked groups like you can in WoW.

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It's also weird to imply FFXIV can't handle or struggles with movement based mechanics, when about 80% of them are movement based.

Yeah and how often does the server grill you anyway despite you standing safe on your screen?
Way too often. And no: it's not my internet or my system, I never had these problems in WoW and I raided for 8.5 years, at times with <5 FPS.

I give FF-XIV one thing though: compared to WoW their telegraphs are way more precise by design. I can stand 1 pixel next to the yellow area with my dress waving into it and be sure not to get hit. I would not try that in WoW (unless thy changed it).

[KrayZ33]

Yeah and how often does the server grill you anyway despite you standing safe on your screen?
Way too often. And no: it's not my internet or my system, I never had these problems in WoW and I raided for 8.5 years, at times with <5 FPS.

I give FF-XIV one thing though: compared to WoW their telegraphs are way more precise by design. I can stand 1 pixel next to the yellow area with my dress waving into it and be sure not to get hit. I would not try that in WoW (unless thy changed it).

If you want me to be honest - 0 times.
I'm raiding every week and have no such problems.
I have "lags" and connection issues though, which makes it look like my combos don't update (but they always do, it's confusing though). But the mechanics themselves always work the same.
Garuda/Ifrit is the perfect example, the shit I do there always works. Such as only moving after the cast is done when the Copy-Ifrits charge the players.

Pretty sure all/most of that is client-sided anyway.

Ifrit will charge you up to the point where you currently stand when he "hits" you, which means you can start sprinting away from him *after* the cast is basically done because there is a small animation delay that allows you to get enough range between you and him.

I see more of a problem when it comes to seeing where exactly other players are currently positioned. But all of that is irrelevant to what I'm saying. You don't need a top notch netcode to implement mechanics that would force healers to work more.

[Granyala]

If you want me to be honest - 0 times.
I'm raiding every week and have no such problems.
I have "lags" and connection issues though, which makes it look like my combos don't update (but they always do, it's confusing though). But the mechanics themselves always work the same.

Lucky you then.
I can't count the times in which I did everything right on my screen and still died.
Or when a team member stood right next to me in the safe zone yet suddenly died to the mechanic.
Omega's Starboard / Larboard mechanic is a prime example that comes to mind, so is Leviathan 2.0 diagonal cleave.

It was pretty frustrating at times.

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But all of that is irrelevant to what I'm saying. You don't need a top notch netcode to implement mechanics that would force healers to work more.

Absolutely but it should be clear by now, that this is not what they want for their design.

[StrawberryZebra]

It's also weird to imply FFXIV can't handle or struggles with movement based mechanics, when about 80% of them are movement based.

Have you ever played a Tank? It's super easy to notice the janky movements and slow positioning updating when you're trying to pick up mobs or reposition them. Mobs will slide from one position to another, will take several seconds to register that they've been hit and should be following the tank, not the healer and even get strange pathing issues around LoS. It's not a case of animations being out of sync with the effects - That's an entirely different issue all together.

It's also very obvious if you've ever played a Melee and tried to hit a moving target. Your skill will start to trigger as if you're in range, then even though the distance between yourself and the mob remains the same, fail for being out of range.

Even if you've never played a tank or melee, how have you not noticed how janky movement skills are over AoE? If the AoE is narrow enough, or your dash fast enough, you can dart across them completely unscathed if you time it well with the server ticks. Those skills are not a continuous line of movement, but instead a dotted line where the server registers your position on each point, but not the space in between.

It's probably most easilly seen with AoE's that apply a Debuff to you. You can stand in them for several seconds between server ticks before you get the debuff applied. I'm glad you brought up E7, because the colision with the Bird Clouds is also a very obvious example to point to. You can pass through the animation and take the hit a second or two later, likewise you can also be hit a second or two before the animation physically hits you.

You can even see it in cutscenes. When characters are walking off screen, it's blatently obvious that they all turn one by one, and all set off walking one by one. I don't think that's an artistic decision, it seems to be an engine limitation.

I mean could point out examples all day, but hopefully you get the point. The game updates player positions server side on a tick by tick basis, and that leads to all kinds of janky gameplay issues.

I agree that the actual mechanics are always pretty simple.

Yes indeed. Its why the job design is overloaded and bloaty. It's that way to distract you from the fact that the bosses themselves are basic, you just didn't notice that you were stood in the fire because you were tunnel visioning on your Ninjutsu instead.

Which is another problem entirely. It can sometimes seem like you're fighting the UI more than the boss. I went ahead and added some homebrew mods to my UI and, honestly, I just sailed right through Eden's Verse Savage without any serious problems. I mean, Scholar is one of the easiest Jobs in the game, but when you can keep track of everything important all in one place, all you've got to focus on is boss mechanics.

[Hyral]

If you want me to be honest - 0 times.

You are lying. And I can't believe these people are still humoring your denial. The simplest way to exemplify server ticks are completely busted in this game is how slidecasting is such a prevalent thing. You'll try to pretend it's just latency but I wish it was. I wish I could slidecast in other games, specially in WoW, hell I keep trying out of habit since I picked up FF but no such thing.

Stop pretending this problem doesn't exist, you are not doing the game any favours by covering your eyes and ears about it.

[KrayZ33]

You guys must have weird connection issues.
I honestly have no idea what you guys are talking about when it comes to my client.

I do know that player position isn't updated regulary. Not relevant to the discussion, not relevant when it comes to boss mechanics either though.
You are constantly saying as if FFXIV can't handle that shit when we see each thing working on bosses individually. They just have to increase the pressure by stacking healing/damage mechanics instead of stacking instant wipe mechanics.
A good example would be E8S, when Shiva drops the 4 stars alongside the pushback and the flares. Instead of having the group do something, have individuals do something. Everytime group mechanics happen, healers "cheese" it with AoE heals.

You see the player dying next to you because the damage is transfered to you with the animation, the calculation hower always depends on how the skill works.

For example, in Ramuh when he does his first skill, you recieve damage with the animation, it's also calculated at that time and not when the cast has finished.
Different beast alltogether when we talk about the big AoE that requires you to have a debuff up, or when you have to /move a few inches, which again works different from the same ability that will force you to stack/stay away from others

Never encountered anything weird with E7S. I'm pretty sure that the bird-animation is completely irrelevant to the damage you recieve. It's not like during the endboss of the Alliance raid where you can dodge them, you are either in or out of the line they dash through at the point in time they start dashing/damage is being calculated.

ou are lying. And I can't believe these people are still humoring your denial. The simplest way to exemplify server ticks are completely busted in this game is how slidecasting is such a prevalent thing. You'll try to pretend it's just latency but I wish it was. I wish I could slidecast in other games, specially in WoW, hell I keep trying out of habit since I picked up FF but no such thing.

Stop pretending this problem doesn't exist, you are not doing the game any favours by covering your eyes and ears about it.

I'm not pretending anything. I know exactly when I'll fail a mechanic and when I'm not - at least when I'm not having any ping issues, which are easy to spot 3 GCDs in.
No such thing as "I was outside already " when everything is working like normal and the ability has a clear cut pizza piece.
Mechanics themselves work pixel perfect.
I can dash into Ifrits/Garudas fireballs with 100% accuracy, I can dash into his charge with 100% accuracy if I know that the tank dashed in 0,5s earlier (I don't have to see it, I just have to *know* he does it on his client) and runs through the boss. etc. etc.

And what I'm saying is something completely different though. Not sure how often I have to repeat myself. That's not the reason why boss mechanics are "simple" or rather, designed the way they are. I already explained that a majority of boss abilities depend on player movement. It's just silly (actually, even dumb) to blame the tick-rate for that, when player movement and positioning is probably the thing affected the most from that.

You guys are basically telling me "XY can't be done because of server tick rate" yet every FFXIV boss does XY almost exclusively. And the worst thing is, I'm not even talking about XY, so it isn't even affected by server tick rates... or rather, in a completely different manner.
DOTs tick on a global timer, how is that a problem? You can design DOTs around that? You can even design their potency to be potent but not overwhelimg alongside other mechanics, that's where a global tick timer is actually useful, you know *exactly* at what point damage will come in when you design the encounters. Healers can always cheese in a DPS spell here and there, all you have to do is to change mechanics in such a way so that the DPS spell becomes a Healing spell.
Not every single one of them, but at least a good bunch.

As long as abilities remain one shots unless you outmaneuver them, things won't change.
It will always end up being AoE heals + Tank heals. Even worse, if you have trouble with the server tick rate, one shotting players who couldn't reach the safe zone "fast enough" due to it, is the worst possible choice of design.

Tell me exactly why Ramuh's abilities, chain lighting and thunderstorm, wouldn't work if you put them on a more regular basis instead of a mechanic you do once every 2 minutes.
Can you not dodge the AoE circles of Thunderstorm in this game? You can
Can you not do proper positioning to force the next debuff onto a specific player? You can.
Could you not possibly do Thunderstorm and Chain Lighnting at the same time? Why not? You could even throw the add phase alongside it, all you have to do is to design the damage correctly, so that chainlighnting and thunderstorm and add-buster won't hit at the same time.

[Talrath]

Someone pointed out that my character looks like Snoop Dogg. He doesn't but I ran with it anyway. The punchline was about me taking two Black Mages (Read: Ho's) to the FC house to get Wet.

I suppose you could call that perverted, depending on your sensibilites. I figured that people both old enough to know old school Snoop would be old enough to deal with that kind of content. I mean, I get that Wet wasn't Snoop Doggs biggest hit, but I'd already done Gin and Juice and Drop it like it's Hot. Not a lot of other places to really take that one *shrug*..

Tbh, to me its not a guild kick worthy. But like other people here are saying, some players in Ff14 can be very fragile and start to cry very easy.

[Granyala]

Mobs will slide from one position to another, will take several seconds to register that they've been hit and should be following the tank, not the healer

It's always hilarious when I hit the add, get the red blob in the enemy list, yet the add continues to the healer.
Then it stands there, arms raised as if wanting to hit him just to go "nope, gonna hit the other one" and then comes to me.

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You guys must have weird connection issues.
I honestly have no idea what you guys are talking about when it comes to my client.

It's also entirely possible that you are not sensitive to these issues. I have plenty of people in game that are so used to the FF-XIV way that they simply do not notice.
If the problems were on my end, I would have them in other MMOs too. FF-XIV is uniquely bad in this regard, only thing coming close would be AION but the issues there are more due to "animation stun".

I also notice the entire UI being out of date as a healer. Esp when dispelling stacking debuffs or healing people very close to death with benediction. I get the CD, I see the other player in my target alive, I get the heal sound and animation -> player dies and the heal is redirected to me.
You always have to add at least a second of buffer time to make it safely.

Same goes with casts where you have to turn around. I usually have to turn around at 50% cast bar at the latest or the sever will not get it.
I can walz into AoEs as soon as the orange circle is gone and not take any damage while my cat stands visibly in the fire, so it also works the other way around.

Explanation: what you see in your game client is out of date for .5 - 1 second. Depending on server mood.
The actual latency to the server is around 40ms according to windows.

Not to mention that I can start walking when I cast sth as soon as the cast bar is 75%. The cast will go through. Hell with short casts (1s) I actually routinely FAIL to abort the cast my making a step forward. Just like running -> stopping -> casting immediately results in failed casts because the server thinks I am still moving.

[KrayZ33]

Same goes with casts where you have to turn around. I usually have to turn around at 50% cast bar at the latest or the sever will not get it.
I can walz into AoEs as soon as the orange circle is gone and not take any damage while my cat stands visibly in the fire, so it also works the other way around.

Explanation: what you see in your game client is out of date for .5 - 1 second. Depending on server mood.
The actual latency to the server is around 40ms according to windows.

Not to mention that I can start walking when I cast sth as soon as the cast bar is 75%. The cast will go through. Hell with short casts (1s) I actually routinely FAIL to abort the cast my making a step forward. Just like running -> stopping -> casting immediately results in failed casts because the server thinks I am still moving.

As I said, these issues are not why the boss design lacks damage though.
I play SAM, do you honestly think I'm not aware of these issues? Ever tried to Iaijutsu a moving target?
You even have to face a target even though you are *inside* his hitbox.
That doesn't determine whether I get hit by a boss ability or not though. The circle you see dis/appear is of no relevance on some skills, and on some others it is, it's just about knowing when it is and when it is not.

It just means you can't have a mass amount of reactive abilities that require you to heal or dispell in less than 2 seconds.
To put it in the simplest way possible (but it would effective only result in AoE spam), you could make the boss deal raidwide 70% damage AoEs every 8 seconds over the whole fight.
There are more ways to achieve that, different ways. High hitting DOTs (Global timer) on specific players, alongside chip low damage AoEs, or regular movement alongside high hitting singletarget spells, alongside low damage AoEs.

All you have to do is to prepare player HP in such a way that a missing heal chance or two would result in a player's death.
You do that by applying damage on a regular basis, alongside irregular damage spikes.
If medica 2/regen is enough to get you up to 100% before the next hard hitting spell, it's all pointless.
It's also pointless to have healers go "full heal" when every 30 seconds they have to move for like 15 seconds to do mechanics that don't overlap with constant raid damage and at the same time deal effectively 0 damage if done correctly, or instantly wipe the group if done poorly.

[Granyala]

Which is another problem entirely. It can sometimes seem like you're fighting the UI more than the boss. I went ahead and added some homebrew mods to my UI and, honestly, I just sailed right through Eden's Verse Savage without any serious problems. I mean, Scholar is one of the easiest Jobs in the game, but when you can keep track of everything important all in one place, all you've got to focus on is boss mechanics.

Yop, you fight your own class and UI way more than the boss as a DPS player.
Esp since FF-XIV derives it's difficulty from overloading your visual cortex and providing little acoustic feedback to ease the strain.

What I hate most are "stare at the bosses' animation" mechanics, where you have to see whether he scratces his left asscheek or whether he caresses his crotch to figure out what happens next. >.<

[StrawberryZebra]

I do know that player position isn't updated regulary. Not relevant to the discussion, not relevant when it comes to boss mechanics either though.

It's of critical importance when it comes to the variety of mechanics you can offer.

There can't be debuffs that deal damage based on how fast you're moving, the distance you've moved, when you're moving. You also couldn't apply a DoT that ticks faster the more you've moved during a fight, or even speeds up it's tick speed in relation to your movement speed.

You can't have things drop off after players have moved a certain distance either, or have abilities that need to be jumped over and so on.

Never encountered anything weird with E7S. I'm pretty sure that the bird-animation is completely irrelevant to the damage you recieve.

It's also highly relevant. The fact that the game can't accurately predict colision also limits the variety of potential mechanics.

To use another WoW example, there's a boss in Ny'alotha where you've essentially got to play Football by moving a ball around some obsticles into a goal. That would never work in FF14 because there's a good chance the server would completely miss the contact between the player and the ball. Mechanics that pass on or spread debuffs to other players you come into contact with also couldn't work, nor could abilities that deal damage to people around you.

It's also limiting for players too. You can't give players placable objects, think Traps or similar, because the game can't handle the ability. You can't have abilities that are attached to players because the game can't resolve those appropriately. You can't have abilities that jump from player to player because, again, the game can't handle them appropriately.

These severely limit the number of potential mechanics that can be included in game. That smaller design space leaves you with less room to expand healers into because there are less problems you can ask them to solve.

It's always hilarious when I hit the add, get the red blob in the enemy list, yet the add continues to the healer.
Then it stands there, arms raised as if wanting to hit him just to go "nope, gonna hit the other one" and then comes to me.

I especially love it when I've tagged the mob on pull with a Nascent Cyclone - There's absolutely no way it's chasing after anyone but me at that point, but it's going to go through the motions anyway.

Yop, you fight your own class and UI way more than the boss as a DPS player.
Esp since FF-XIV derives it's difficulty from overloading your visual cortex and providing little acoustic feedback to ease the strain.

What I hate most are "stare at the bosses' animation" mechanics, where you have to see whether he scratces his left asscheek or whether he caresses his crotch to figure out what happens next. >.<

It's why I've been criticising the UI - It does a very poor job of relaying information. I see far too many people die because they were too busy staring at how long they've got left on Astral Fire rather than looking if they were going to be knocked off into oblivion or not. If you've got all spell effects on you're probably going to miss a lot of the none-telegraphed attacks, which is another problem in and of itself.

I just decided I'd had enough and made myself some quality of life mods. Seriously, you guys will have no idea how much you've missed having a Pass on all Loot button until you've finally recieved one. I realise that's not an option for everyone, but now that I've beaten the UI boss jobs like Summoner and Gunbreaker are so much better to play.

[Granyala]

Mechanics that pass on or spread debuffs to other players you come into contact with also couldn't work, nor could abilities that deal damage to people around you.

Erm... I believe O7s would like to have a word with you.
There is a bomb mechanic you have to pass from player to player and they will eventually go off and damage peeps around you.

[Hyral]

The worst victim to the server ticks to me was the Nier raid. I knew it would be impossible to replicate those signature bullet hell phases Automata has where you weave around fast moving orbs, and true enough they had to replace them with snails in purple hamster balls instead.

Given that yeah, I could see their netcode being a huge part of why there's no mechanics that require very quick reactions because there's always the chance a player will die due to no fault of their own. And it would stand to reason if healing is (generally) a reactive role that creating situations of sustained damage that require rapid healing would lead to moments where people would die to no one's fault but the server's.

And that leads back to why healing, and everything, is the way it is right now. Everything has to be put in slow motion so everyone has ample time to do mechanics because the server is just too damn slow to keep track of things properly.

[StrawberryZebra]

Erm... I believe O7s would like to have a word with you.
There is a bomb mechanic you have to pass from player to player and they will eventually go off and damage peeps around you.

I assume you mean Aether Rot, not the Bombs themselves? I mean, I did this one for the first time literally today so I may have missed something but I had to run over the bomb wire a couple of times to get it to actually register.

As for the Aether Rot, it took standing with someone else for maybe a second or so to pass it on. It needed to be very intentional, I had to stand directly on somebody else to pass it on and you couldn't leave it to the last second without risking the timer running out.

I was thinking more along the lines of Burn from Brutalus, where it can easilly be passed on between players if you're not careful and can quickly cascade into a wipe. Something like that in FF14 would technically work, but trying to determine which of the 7 other players you've come into contact with at which points would lead to all kinds of inconsistencies.

As for abilities that would deal damage to people around you, think something like the 4 Horsemen Auras. Tracking where the aura has moved and who is now currently in it would be a mess in FF14. The fact that it's attached to a mob with inconsistent movement too would only complicate the matter further. You'd get a lot of people hit with the damage when they weren't visually in range, but perhaps worst of all, you could get players damaged because the server has registered them as standing where the aura has been recently.

The same would be true of player Auras too for what it's worth.

[Nasuuna]

Erm... I believe O7s would like to have a word with you.
There is a bomb mechanic you have to pass from player to player and they will eventually go off and damage peeps around you.

TEA has Gavel as well, gotta keep 4 short duration debuffs up until that mechanic resolves. has to be 2 of each on the cast or its a wipe.

[Granyala]

As for the Aether Rot, it took standing with someone else for maybe a second or so to pass it on. It needed to be very intentional, I had to stand directly on somebody else to pass it on and you couldn't leave it to the last second without risking the timer running out.

Hmm we never had that "problem". While it is not as if running past s/o transfers it, running through s/o was usually enough.
I certainly never stacked and waited.

Just don't try to pass it with 2 moving players. Ugh. One target has to be stationary or it won't work.

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As for abilities that would deal damage to people around you, think something like the 4 Horsemen Auras.

Yeah I can see what you mean now.
Aye, I don't think that would work at all.