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Right now they 3 roles dps tank and healer
support job can be familiar easy now
job that could possible meet the support role
red mage
Bard
Machinist.
future job I could see meet the support role
Ranger with snare and crossbow for Crowd control.
Black mage could gain more use for her or his sleep spell
BLM's support is damage and being the best candidate for a mana battery.
RDM is already support in being a sub healer and helping with raising.
BRD (and to a much lesser extent, MCH) is already by definition a support dps, have you seen what we bring to a party just by keeping our songs up?
There's no point in adding a new role. You either bring in the deeps, or you bring utility to help other people deeps and thus fall more into a support role, but still ultimately a dps. That's the balance in this game.
The problem with Support jobs is, if they realy want to make a Support role, then groups will be forced to take 1 Support class with them. Another issue is the Support class must not excel at the other roles, otherwise what is the point in taking a DPS, if a Support class can not only provide the same amount of DPS, but also add Support abiltiies.
When I think of Support role, I think more then few crowd controls spells, I think of buffs, debuffs, ability to off-tank or off-heal. Having 1 or 2 crowd control abilities does not make the class a support class. If you want to see real Support roles, look at some of the classes in RIFT or the Chanter from Aion.
...how much did I drink past night?
Support classes are a nightmare to balance and I'm glad Yoshida understands this and will never give us a pure support class. I've seen support classes in another mmo and let me tell you I'm glad we don't have them in ffxiv. I don't support this in ffxiv, ever.
Scrap what I said. I was half asleep when I wrote it and was thinking sub job not support job. I actually think support job would be good as long as the duty finder was replaced to reflect this. SE did say at one point they were working on this idea and it would cut down the dps queues.
They just never work, they're underwhelming and only good in the best of situations and completely uneeded in most situations.
I glad with simpleness of ffxiv. wow talent tree was far to complex for me
As others have said they would either be mandatory or useless. There seems to be no middle ground in MMOs.
Also look at the stats of those who play the defacto 'support' roles (i.e. healers and tanks) currently, non dps classes are generally not played/loved by the majority – I would imagine adding a pure support class would suffer the same indifference.
I loved Bard in FFXI, however this is FFXIV and the amount of reworking required would be colossal (not to mention disruptive). Also all of your support classes seem to be the entire spread of ranged DPS classes we already have (except for SMN, which is a better fit than BLM as a support already).