Would you be ok with no new tank or healer in 5.0?

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Absolutely not. Seeing as there should be as many tanks as healers and tanks+healers should be as close to the number of DPS as possible, we absolutely need more tanks and healers.

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(Just to be clear: I generally agree, though to a different breakpoint, but... food for thought.)

In a given party, there will be twice as many DPS as Healers or Tanks individually. This has some trickle-down effects worth noting.

Let's take a compositionally optimal 8-man. (Not all this will apply if balancing changes fix some of these rigidities.)

If you take a SCH, you have the option of a WHM or an AST.
If you take a WHM, you have 2 options: a SCH, or kind of maybe an AST.
If you take an AST, you have the option of a SCH or kind of maybe a WHM.

If you take a DRG, the next DPS has the options of: BRD, MCH, NIN, MNK, or RDM.
If you take a MNK, the next DPS has the options of: BRD, MCH, NIN, DRG, or RDM.
If you take a BLM, the next DPS has the options of: SMN, BRD, MCH, DRG, or NIN.
And so forth.

By the last DPS, there are only the same number of choices as there are for the cohealer or co-tank. They can be one thing, or the other thing.

Now, with additional balance we may yet see RDM usable with casters. With the inclusion of rDPS-based percentiles on fflogs, SAM and BLM may become more accepted (as the meta will then be to tether the convert-string BLM for percentage, rather than exclude the "selfish dps" for your own percentiles -- not at all selfish, right?). That would reduce (mutual) exclusion, and increase the above count.
But, that would still leave you with only a minimum of 3 choices for each DPS slot -- only one choice more than any slot of tank or healer despite needing twice as many of them. Tanks get 2; Healers get 2; DPS, as numerous as tanks and healers combined, get 3.

Now, of course, this applies onto the highest levels of play, and one can decide who to play with in order to be accepted into a comp, or to avoid such a need altogether. In such a case, we do currently have many more flavors of damage-dealing than tanks or healers. Agreed. There's just no contesting that.

But, I still don't think it's ever necessary for tanks or healers combined to outnumber just the DPS. I know, that sounds imbalanced, but hear me out. I hate to come back to higher level play, but... this is an MMOrpg, and to a degree the classes you play with should, and currently do (at high-level play), matter.
You should feel something different as a result of having a different job with you. And the more jobs we have that go unseen, the less effective the addition of a job is to everyone else, too. That does have more to do with balance that just the amount of jobs benched due to roster too large, proportionately, for the team size, but the latter is still a factor.

I think the rule of thumb--assuming we actually have the job ideas to fill it out well, rather than just for the sake of filling it out--should be 1/2/1 T/D/H, rather than 1/1/1. At least until those roles blur and that T/D/H bit doesn't even matter.

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Also, argument that "it's for the balance" is just plain stupid. What's the point of balancing the classes at lvl70 if they will no longer be balanced at lvl80?! To balance the classes they'd need to not bring any LEVELS, not jobs. It's impossible to properly balance the classes at the new level cap without the game going live for several months. And just about the entire two years with the way they decide to release content that is actually needed to gather data on the jobs balance. So there's NEVER going to be a time to add new healers/tanks...

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This.

At least in WoW, also, there's rarely been an increase in balance as a result, directly or indirectly, of reducing a pool of choices. In WoW, that had to do with customization configurations or "talents", but that would probably work the same way in restricting (not growing as would normally be the case) our job pool, unless NO real changes or additions were made to the existing classes with the coming expansion.

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If you wanna be a tank you have 3 choices.
If you wanna be a caster you have 0.
If you wanna be a ranged you have 0.
If you wanna be a melee you have 3.

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Part of this will simply have to do with what is reasonable given the toolkit. It isn't exactly reasonable to regularly expect a tank to both redirect mobs as quickly as possible, which usually requires that they be immediately next to the mob, and to be at range ("ranged").

If you had a BST, for instance, who fires from afar while his pet holds things in place, that's not really a ranged tank. That's a melee tank bundled with his sidekick, the player. Now, if you had a <Psychic Puppeteer> of sorts, perhaps it could swap between positioning itself and relatively positioning the mobs, moving them with WASD as if standing at the edge of their hitbox in lock-on mode. It would be able, therefore, to quickly intercept or cover for blows around self and the enemy -- usually one and the same positionally, but by swap here -- then so be it. But you're very limited in what's possible across multiple jobs there without being redundant or compromising. Creating two caster tanks who actually feel like they belong as tanks, rather than casters who are just currently holding back mobs who are focused on them (which, say, a physics-inclusive BLM and GEO/CNJ could probably do just fine with Ice and Earth magics), is tremendously difficult. Possible, I'm sure, but... not worth the attempt just to fill a quota.

That's especially true when you consider that the niche, within already niche tank players, who would like a caster experience while tanking are probably a very small portion. Most tanks like being in the thick of things; it's often why they're tanks.

I like tanking and healing so I'd be a bit bummed if they didn't give us more of that. As you all know (I hope), at their very core, these roles are about taking damage and keeping your allies up respectively, but it is the how of it that has me interested. I'm curious, more than anything, in how SE could come up with another way to perform these roles in a unique way.

Direct response to OP: Absolutely not. I exclusively play casters in end game content and that includes healers. If we don't get a new healer / tank combo again it would already compound to the disappointment in the game I already have from other things going on this expansion ( don't wanna babble on or change topics so I wont bring it up ).

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

How can they dig themselves out when people are asking for them to dig deeper? Or do you consider them adding new classes digging themselves out? Never spoke of doom and gloom either just pointing out the hypocritical nature present in the thread. Can spin it however you want, there is no escaping that you are asking them to increase balancing difficulty by adding more classes.

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Sometimes a little imbalance is what's needed to get things just balanced right.
It might sound odd, but it's true. If everything was "truly" balanced, then everything, every job would be the same thing. You can't have anything interesting without imbalance.

I've played lots of imbalanced games, some were great, some were a total mess. It depends, really. Imbalance can be a blessing and a curse at the same time. FFXIV, however, is not that imbalanced as you think: Every job can and does perform good in the raiding scene. No job has a big "No, we don't want you." There's always a static willing to accept x and y jobs even though they're not meta or currently not that strong.

So yes, SE might as well dig their hole deeper so they can finally see why they're going down the wrong "hole". Sometimes you need to hit rock-bottom in order to pull yourself up again. You might as well try instead of regret not having tried it. Depening on what you find the lesser of the two evils, I'd rather know than not know.

Just lending my voice and echoing those who would be disappointed if we are not given a new healer. And as much as I have tried to avoid spoilers, they are everywhere and talk of Dancer has my hopes so high. I remember clinging to my friends last Fan Fest with joy because I thought who we now know as Lyse was a Dancer. I don't know if I can handle eagerly anticipating Dancer twice and twice being let down.

If they will not add new healer and tank it will shorten my time with this game. I will probably finish the story and leave. I would love to see tank who do damage by reflecting and mitigating and healer who heal by doing damage... But my hopes arent high so...

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Originally Posted by Alrin

I would love to see tank who do damage by reflecting and mitigating

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I'd say you don't necessarily need a new tank for this. You just need to change Grit to Dread Spikes (A skill that reflects back and leech a portion of damage taken, which existed in FFXI DRK), to have a new kind of tank and give DRK more identity at the same time.

If they plan that kind of changes to make (at least) tanks more unique, I'd be okay with no new tank.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

By the last DPS, there are only the same number of choices as there are for the cohealer or co-tank. They can be one thing, or the other thing.

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That being said, the several people before the last one have a greater choice.
In the first place, the "choice" you speak of applies only to pre-made parties as in Duty Finder you'll simply be dropped into whatever party waited the longest that have a spot free for you.

Ultimately, meta aside (because number of DPS have nothing to do with why certain classes are more or less wanted), DPS's have three times the amount of choices than tanks/healers. No matter which they will choose, they will be able to find a party. One may be filled, another may not want their class...but numerous ones will.

Besides...you used the "meta" to dismiss some classes. That already skewers the results. For all we know, the added tanks or healers could also be "out of meta". As far as I know, Dark Knight and White Mage are unwanted in the current "meta" as well. The only reason why they can reasonably find a party is because of these roles being rare altogether so "It's better than nothing at all." applies here.

And...addition and subtraction simply should not be used for ratios. So long as you add the exact same number of classes to each of them, the result will be the same. So if you are saying that the last DPS have the same amount of choices and, at least I understood it like that, you imply that it's good, then if you will add 100 classes to tank, healer and DPS you'll get the exact same result. The more classes there will be the more obvious will be the excessive number of healers/tanks compared to the DPS.

This made me think of fines. 500$ fine for speed is a matter of life or death for someone that is extremely poor, but for a person that earns that much in several minutes, maybe an hour, they would exceed the speed limit at their leisure because they just don't care. Use multiplication (in the form of %'s of income) and suddenly everyone is hit the same. It won't kill the poor guy to pay, but it will hurt him. It will also hurt the rich guy.

Hence why I believe that it should be a matter of multiplication keeping a constant ratio based on the party composition numbers.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Part of this will simply have to do with what is reasonable given the toolkit.

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Yes, I know. But ranged tanks is the only thing that I cannot see being done. Seeing as I'd like half the amount of DPS in tanks, distributing the tanks evenly between melee and caster would be fine, with healers having their cards in all three categories.

But really, what I wrote that for is to show why the posters argument is invalid, incorrect even.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That's especially true when you consider that the niche, within already niche tank players, who would like a caster experience while tanking are probably a very small portion. Most tanks like being in the thick of things; it's often why they're tanks.

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But caster tanks would be in the thick of things. It's simply a matter of them using force fields and barriers in place of physical armors. Them using magic to attack those close to them rather than blades. Sure, I would expect caster tanks to have more than one ranged attack, but that's not a problem. Paladin and Dark Knight already have two, each (three if you count that pounce ability of Dark Knight). They'd still use them mostly from point-blank range. It'd mostly give them comfort of dodging AoE's from immobile bosses without their damage plummeting, or maybe aggroing several adds at once without having to move to them.

And I'd say that the amount of people interested in tanks for the experience of being tough as nails is significantly higher than those which tank just for the heavy armors.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I'd say you don't necessarily need a new tank for this. You just need to change Grit to Dread Spikes (A skill that reflects back and leech a portion of damage taken, which existed in FFXI DRK), to have a new kind of tank and give DRK more identity at the same time.

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They can't do it because in that case DRK damage would be dependent on the enemy's damage output/frequency, which would make the job nigh impossible to be balanced.

This is partly why ifrit's radiant shield was nerfed and why the reflect damage effect of vengeance is so neglibible.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

They can't do it because in that case DRK damage would be dependent on the enemy's damage output/frequency, which would make the job nigh impossible to be balanced.

This is partly why ifrit's radiant shield was nerfed and why the reflect damage effect of vengeance is so neglibible.

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However, it's becoming homogenisation for the sake of balance... which they'd have to make everything exactly the same just with different animations for that. I do feel that there should be a change. You could make some bosses have stupidly fast auto-attacks that would make DRK a brilliant tank for that, for example. By reversing the homogenisation, you can create more varied and interesting fights that would favour certain tanks, and keep a rolling rotation going. It'd probably still be able to be balanced so that all tanks are viable.

As for the original question... no, I would not be OK with it. I tank and heal, I don't do DPS (well, rarely do DPS). So I basically got no new toys for what I mainly play with. Put that in two expansions in a row, and that might just push me to quit.