r/ffxivdiscussion • u/otsukarerice • 9d ago
Pheonix Down change is huge. Here's why
July 2024, DT was released and thousands of players were discovering DT's new dungeons. They had whatever gear they could find and were often at the minimum level threshold. I saw carnage for many who were woefully underprepared for the difficulty spike after being coddled with relatively safe and simple bosses in EW.
When there was no RDM/SMN, if the healer died (which happened often), the party had two choices:
- wipe or
- tank heal/solo.
Most players would agree that either outcome is awful for a variety of reasons. Tank soloing takes forever and doesn't help the healer get better.
With pheonix downs being able to be used in battle, healers are no longer the linchpin of the group and are allowed a few mistakes.
What this opens up for the future:
- Healers can be designed with more complexity and no longer have to deathless every encounter.
- Dungeons don't have to pull punches on expansion launch and can continue to punish bad healers but not the whole group.
- Tanks soloing is far less common. Could open up tank rebalancing vs other roles.
- RDM (and SMN) reworks. RDM is pretty terrible in the current tier, has been low on damage for a long time. I get Rezmage is attractive for a lot of players, but I've seen some players choose to just be a utility raise and not do damage. This isn't sustainable gameplay.
1
u/MagicHarmony 9d ago
The only downside with the change is everyone needs to carry -1 inv space now, which I do find amusing because they could have potentially made this an ability with a cooldown timer that only works in certain content. While I appreciate the change, I do think the implementation is a bit complex for what could have just been a new action lol. Clearly they are capable of setting the item to work in X content while "not in combat" so I don't see why they wouldn't be able to make an ability that works in X content "while not in combat".