Tank Roles, DPS Roles, Healer Roles... No Support Roles?

No seriously - why no support roles?

You know, roles that carry the primary responsibility of making sure other members of your party are either buffed or debuffed, and where everything else (healing, DDing, etc.) is secondary?

Any hints at when they might be coming to this game, if at all?

I'm personally planning on possibly playing smn as a supportish role (rouse w/ physick spam + eye for an eye if healer needs help/surecast titan if tank goes down/virus on boss during big incoming damage/etc.) all that mixed with the 20% chance of increasing spell speed by 20% for 8 seconds when pet crits should make smn a worthy support role if played right (which I plan to do!).

Bard however I've heard their support has been nerfed, and their damage has been buffed, however their MP regen sounds like something that would really help out if needed and rain of death/army's paeon are some interesting skills that are definitely support, but rain of death is also a decent aoe it seems so it's kind of half and half. I'm not sure how bard curing is going to work but in theory it sounds ridiculously bad, due to having 0 mnd and no cure potency increases/cast speed increases (like smn has) so I don't see a reason to get it especially since you have no MP regening abilities.

Edit : Well my posts for the "day" won't reset, it's been like 2 days and I still can't make a new one....this forum system sucks.

Anyways, my smn theory is down the drain, rouse isn't what I thought it was :( so I guess the class closest to full support would be a brd now....no idea what class I'm going to play instead of smn though, maybe a sch even though everyone and their mother is rolling one right now >_<;.

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Originally Posted by Reaujien

No seriously - why no support roles?

You know, roles that carry the primary responsibility of making sure other members of your party are either buffed or debuffed, and where everything else (healing, DDing, etc.) is secondary?

Any hints at when they might be coming to this game, if at all?

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I think hard part about having something that's opposite of current jobs like Scholar (healing / support) and Bard (damage deal / support) is making something that's Support / Damage but doesn't overshadow the secondary support focus of the other jobs.Though I would like to see more buffing / debuffing jobs that act as their primary. I don't think we will. But who knows..maybe Yoshi has something in mind.

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Originally Posted by Reaujien

No seriously - why no support roles?...

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I highly doubt that will be implemented anytime soon, for multiple reasons. The main ones being;

First: We would need a wider class variety, the only class I really consider a "support" or "Buffer" if will are the Bards, Scholar really IS just another healer.
Second: Parties are too small for that, given our 4man party, after tank/healer, giving a "buff/debuff" spot would only leave 1 raw dps class, it would have to be some pretty insane buffs/debuffs to make up for the lack of dps, which would in turn completely unbalance 8/24man content.

Perhaps once we see a bigger abundance of classes, such as Ninja, Samurai, Fencer, Calculator, Mediator, Thief.
But definitely not anytime soon.

What has me concerned is that so much of the UI and even Forums stick to the idea of 'Tank' 'Healer' and 'DPS', that I feel all jobs will end up in one of these 3 buckets only. So there may one day be a job we would think as mainly a support role (RDM with Buffing/Debuffing abilities), but it will probably be adjusted to fit into one of the 3 categories above, and every support ability would be 'secondary'.

how about a shoulder to cry on? get it? cuz you want support? hahaha just kidding, just kidding.... the game hasn't even launched (or i guess relaunched, heyo!) and you want an expansion already? relax, i'm sure they'll figure it out eventually, just like it took them 3 years to figure the basics out. :) think about it, where is the red mage class or job, potentially a support class, green mage (or elementalist i guess) also a support class... ummmm.... nothing else comes to mind... maybe time mage if were lucky. there's a bunch more. but probably just like an OG final fantasy game you gotta start with the basic jobs ;-) also they don't fit into the duty finder roles (for now). maybe they just don't need them?

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Originally Posted by Iwazaru

Bard I've heard their support has been nerfed; however their MP regen sounds like something that would help out. I'm not sure how bard curing is going to work.

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From what I understand from B4, BRD doesn't have CNJ as a secondary class to pull abilities from anymore. The BRDs I talked to could use ARC (of course) and LNC, PGL skills. So BRD has no healing it can do whatsoever.
The MP Regen is really only useful in very very very long fights as MP is generally not an issue for a majority of the cast since most if not all mana using jobs/classes have ways of managing their mana that it's not an issue. BLM has umbral ice buff and PLD has Riot Blade. SCH and SMN shouldn't have mana issues since mostly a pet class and supplemented with spells, so those are generally mana efficient designs. WHM generally doesn't have mana issues but could potentially benefit in extremely long high damage fights.

Good luck finding a bard that will sing and reduce their damage by a massive amount in a DF party.

Regardless, to answer the OP- A support job isn't casual. So Yoshi didn't want it. Support is sorta spread out between all classes.

Looking at FFXI, every party wanted a support job but few people wanted to play them. The long and short of it is that pure support jobs are fairly boring, tedious, and thankless to play for extended periods of time.

Pure support jobs are a NIGHTMARE balancewise, because you typically wind up with one of two situations. The first issue, which mostly crops up with debuffs, is that they're pretty much useless. Either too many things resist their status heavily (Or are outright immune) or their effects are small enough that just adding in another DD would be preferred.

The other example is what we saw happen in FFXI, where they're so powerful that nobody will want to do anything without them. Usually this is a case of buffs that increase damage (Since faster kills is generally preferred more than being invincible), but it can also be the case with downright broken debuffs. While it's possible to play without these debuffers, because they make all the party members so much better, it's considered not worth it to do an event without them.

Anyway, in FFXIV it seems what they've done instead is spread debuffs out across many jobs. You've got Virus from arcanist, slow from Lancer (via feint), as well as a wide variety of poisons you can use as items to inflict debuffs on a monster. Plus most DoW have their own self-buffs, and CNJ comes with party buffs of it's own. By spreading the support out, it's easier to balance without ruining a class. They can keep the buffs to an extent where they're useful, but not REQUIRED (Nobody would take a buffer class if the buffs were only "ok" rather than "essential"), while the class can do their main role in addition to their buffs.