Which is the most powerful role?

Hello guys, this is my first post and I want to know which of the available roles/classes has the highest positive impact on the outcome of a duty.
Mistakes happen, to me as well as to everyone else and I take them as a given. However, not all mistakes have to lead to wipes, because individuals can make an impact.
I'm very well aware, that each role is needed, but which one can make up for mistakes of the group the best?

I'm posting this in the healer forum, because my first class was a SCH. I'm 48 with it now and the hardest duty for me has been Garuda, which my party needed 3 tries for, because I died to mechanics that I didn't know.
I feel that the healer role is the most powerful one in this game personally, but I'm not sure if this is true since I'm new to the game.

This next part only exists to explain my background a bit more. If you don't want to read that much, feel free to ignore it and stick to the original question.

I have so far played WAR, SCH and THM and I would rank their impact the following: SCH > THM > WAR.

I expected to be able to do a lot more with my tank, but that wasn't the case. No matter how many cooldowns I used, it didn't seem to make much of a difference. Especially Foresight doesn't seem to be doing anything at all.
Overall I have not enjoyed playing WAR that much until now, because I feel that my survival is tied to my healer for at least 80%.
It happened a few times that my healer suddenly went afk without telling, which lead to me dying, even though I used everything I had to survive.

On my SCH I haven't died much in dungeons. I micro my faerie completely and I'm awarded with really strong throughput for basically no cost. I did some calculations and noticed, that spamming Physick+Embrace has the same HPS as Cure II, while being a lot more mana efficient. Also I can heal multiple people at the same time and stay mobile.
There were some really weak groups, but I felt, that as a SCH I could still carry them by playing better.

On my THM I've had pretty good experiences as well. If the healer is slacking or unable to handle the situation, I can help out by CC'ing mobs and - in emergencies - spam casting Physick without worrying about mana at all.
I noticed, that I have similar advantages as a SMN, but it doesn't look like attribute points change if you change the job, so I'm stuck with many points in Mind instead of Intelligence. That's the reason, why I didn't play it in dungeons at all.
I really like the Resurrection as SMN though and since Ruin does pathetic damage, I don't even lose much damage for supporting once all my DoTs are up.

Heals

/nuffsaid

Bard is always needed, for now anyway

Sorry, can't remember a time when I have said I must absolutely have a bard in my party. Pretty sure healers are most important, followed by the tank.

Thanks for the replies so far.

Please note, that I'm not looking for the most wanted role. I don't really care about queue times either. I'm looking for the most impactful role in a positive way, i.e. "Who can carry other players the hardest?"

That said, what makes Bards so special and useful?

For any fight where you're geared enough to recover from mistakes at all, it's generally the healer. Because most mistakes just result in damage that can be healed.

For fights where you're just at the minimum gear level, or that feature unrecoverable mechanics regardless of gear (landslide), it's less a question of who can cover mistakes, and more a question of who has the most/fewest possible points of failure. When someone in my FC needs Titan HM, I usually go as MNK, because I know I can push out very good DPS, not get hit by anything avoidable, and hit the LB appropriately; WHM is my second choice, but we have a good deal of strong healers, so that's usually covered. When someone needs help with Garuda HM, I usually go as WAR, because I know how & when to move, when to pop CDs, etc. For Ultima HM, my best contribution is generally WHM, because that seems to be the biggest failure point (tanks have that fight "easy" like Titan in comparison, but I go as WAR fairly often just because there haven't been experienced tanks available when people have wanted to run it).

The most impactful job really depends on the situation I think, since all three roles are very important to anything. The most important role is the one that pulls the most weight, and I think it's spread fairly evenly.

Tank role is very important because everything else is "squishy" by comparison, so holding hate is a must so nobody dies and the healer has a single target to focus on. Arguably the most important thing.

Healers need to keep everyone alive, arguably the most important thing.

Damage dealers need to kill everything as quick as possible so the tank takes less damage, the healer will be able to ease up on the heals, and ultimately win the instance for the party. If the DPS don't do enough damage, the healer might run out of MP or the tank might die. Arguably the most important thing.

Then you can break it down into the jobs themselves.

Tanks are kind of obvious, but they both have different traits that make them unique. WAR has more HP and more damage output (to my understanding), as well as having an easier time holding hate on multiple mobs with overpower and having some self heal capability to aid the healer when needed. While PLD has more defense and defensive buffs, as well as cross classable stuff from WHM (stoneskin for 10% shield of their HP and a very minor cure).

Healers are very different from one another. WHM is the "cure bomber", good single target cures, three AoE heals (one target, other two around self), two heal over times, and a single target 18% damage mitigation spell. WHM also has better raw DPS output than SCH. SCH, on the other hand, is the damage mitigation healer. While having lesser heals by itself, the fairy makes up for it. It has far better and more efficient damage mitigation than WHM at the cost of slightly lower cure amounts and lesser AoE heals. Eos is a better party healer, and Selene is a party buffer with skill speed and spell speed buffs. SCH has a far more efficient MP recovery skill, regaining 20% per minute with aetherflow, while WHM has to rely on Shroud of Saints, which gives back 1000MP per 2 minutes (meaning we have to rely on bard's mage ballad far more often than SCHs).

Damage dealers are quite different from each other as well. Monk and Dragoon have some of the best damage output in the game, Monk is far more positional and hits really hard, while DRG relies somewhat on the debuff it gets from the second attack in the Chaos Thrust combo (piercing damage debuff alongside chaos thrust DoT) in order to increase the damage from the Full Thrust combo. Black Mage has the highest burst damage in the game and the best AoE damage alongside a near infinite pool of MP if they switch from Astral to Umbral efficiently, at the cost of casting time and having to interrupt casting in order to dodge wide area attacks like plumes in Titan HM. Summoner has the best damage over time spells plus a summon to help with the damage output at the cost of a weak raw damage spell (ruin).

Bard has the lowest DPS output in the game, and relies heavily on critical hits from DoTs to proc the Bloodletter reset. In spite of this, Bard has party buffs. Bard can restore MP and TP with Mage Ballad and Army Paeon respectively, as well as a magic defense debuff so a BLM or SMN can do even more damage (all songs at the cost of 20% damage output for the bard). Bard can also move while attacking, meaning a constant stream of damage is always coming from a bard, whereas all the other DPS jobs need to stop attacking in order to dodge an AoE (for blm particularly since most damage stops, mnk and drg only if they need to run away from the mob, and smn is good as long as DoTs are up).

It's all subjective to who's most important in what content. Everyone can go on and on about what's the most important thing overall, but nothing conclusive will come of it.

Most powerful? Tank = Healer >> Dps

Typically if the tank or healer drop, the party will struggle to recover. If a dps dies, the encounter is generally salvagable depending on boss mechanics/gimmicks.

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Originally Posted by D00meriksen

Thanks for the replies so far.

Please note, that I'm not looking for the most wanted role. I don't really care about queue times either. I'm looking for the most impactful role in a positive way, i.e. "Who can carry other players the hardest?"

That said, what makes Bards so special and useful?

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Mp and Tp regen songs. Plus a song that practically lets magic attacks deal more damage

On top of that they have a healer LB for oh shit moments when the other DPS are dead and the healers are focusing on keeping the tank alive

It depends on the fight. Once you get to endgame, some fights are a healer check, some a tank check, and most a dps check. Once you're in coil, a bad healer or bad tank could ruin the party, but more often than not if you're dps is lacking, it doesn't matter how good the healers/tanks are. Although I main sch, and I really only enjoy playing healers, in endgame, dps are the most important, they must know their optitmum rotations, and how to perfectly do dmg, ilvl can't fix that either, a good dd can do coil in Darklight while a bad dd still has low damage in ilvl80.

That being said, as a healer, I feel I can carry a lot of bad players, easier than other jobs can, but...I can't carry just abysmal dps, which is why I say...dps. I know it sucks, they are the most populated jobs in the game, but in reality it doesn't matter if 60% of the population are dds, only 25% of them are actually any good ; ; The bottom line is, most end game content boils down to, if your dps sucks, it doesn't matter if you have good tanks/heals, they just won't be able to clear it.

I disagree on the healer lb even being any good, especially on a brd. If you have to use the healer lb...you're party sucks, that is just the truth, in a good party the "oh crap" moment that leads to healer lb3, should never happen. Healer lb is almost more useless than tank ; ;...it just by nature, shouldn't be used unless your party is really that bad.

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Originally Posted by D00meriksen

Thanks for the replies so far.

Please note, that I'm not looking for the most wanted role. I don't really care about queue times either. I'm looking for the most impactful role in a positive way, i.e. "Who can carry other players the hardest?"

That said, what makes Bards so special and useful?

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Healer, specifically Scholar. I'm biased but Scholar has great versatility. Lots of MP to work with, has more freedom to throw on DPS than WHM (arguable), and a much better "emergency" heal. More MP over the course of a fight means you have more glue to apply to anything falling apart, such as battle resurrection.

Bards are "just" a very easy to play DPS, dodging doesn't adversely affect their damage (because they can attack while moving unlike casters, and don't need to be in melee range), and they have Ballad to help healers recover from MP-taxing situations (like somebody dying) and Requiem to boost magic damage. It's definitely great to have one, but "best carry" is, in my opinion, unarguably a healer. If all heals die, the fight is over.

@SeraviEdalborez

It seems I wasn't too far off with choosing SCH then. I like that I have a good mana pool, so I can throw out "support" whenever needed, be it mitigation for damage spikes on tanks, additional offense for crucial dps phases or combat resurrection when someone dies.

Basically I'm looking for classes which are not that gcd constrained while doing their regular job, so they have more time to use situational support abilities. I guess "versatility" was the word I was really looking for. Bards seem to be able to do just about that, but pay with lower dps, which is not a big deal if they can make everyone else do more damage with their buffs.

How fare Monks and Warriors? Do they have strong oh-snap buttons to save the day?

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Originally Posted by D00meriksen

@SeraviEdalborez

It seems I wasn't too far off with choosing SCH then. I like that I have a good mana pool, so I can throw out "support" whenever needed, be it mitigation for damage spikes on tanks, additional offense for crucial dps phases or combat resurrection when someone dies.

Basically I'm looking for classes which are not that gcd constrained while doing their regular job, so they have more time to use situational support abilities. I guess "versatility" was the word I was really looking for. Bards seem to be able to do just about that, but pay with lower dps, which is not a big deal if they can make everyone else do more damage with their buffs.

How fare Monks and Warriors? Do they have strong oh-snap buttons to save the day?

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Scholars have a lot of abilities to rotate and choose from, and their ability to DPS is far less taxing than WHM holy spam. In that sense they are similar to their SMN counterparts, who have a large ability pool and some powerful cross-class abilities. Virus, E4E, Resurrection, these are top notch abilities that see frequent use in all content.

In general the person with the most ability to pull a party out of a hole...Scholar perhaps since they can more efficiently tank and heal/kite and heal than a WHM. However, I would caution against taking this too seriously as the death of one member, even a DPS, frequently spells a wipe in a lot of endgame content (and even Ultima HM if the other 3 DPS aren't top notch).

Due to the nature of this game (and MMO's in general) the most useful job is the one with the best player behind it. Everyone has their responsibilities and the game is set up so that the fight gets really tough if people don't successfully deal with their responsibilities.

The tank and healer are obviously critical though I think good DPS get overlooked, for the most part. Good DPS make life so much easier for everyone from BLM's who know when to use Blizzard and Eye for an Eye to SMN who can Raise leaving the healer to concentrate on the tank. Not only that but he faster the fight is over the easier it is for everyone, as long as hate is stable, and hate is a team effort not just the tanks job.

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Originally Posted by D00meriksen

How fare Monks and Warriors? Do they have strong oh-snap buttons to save the day?

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Every job that isn't a healer (and often healers, too) is generally going to be pressing a GCD button every GCD, with a few oGCD abilities thrown in. If that's what you meant by GCD constrained, there really isn't much variety in that department. Every DPS and tank class has a rotation with their GCD abilities, and you don't step outside of it all that often.

Warriors have next to no utility moves. They have an off-GCD stun. Pretty much everything else in their toolkit is threat, DPS increase, or damage reduction. And most of it is not about suddenly busting out such-and-such skill to turn the tide, it's mostly about using the correct cooldown at the correct time so you don't get wrecked by the big hit you know is coming.

Monks have an off-GCD stun as well (this is hardly unique, btw), an on-GCD AOE silence that can only be used every third GCD (well, it can be used anytime; but it's only a silence if they're in the right form, which happens every 3rd GCD), and one-ilm punch that removes a single buff from the target (which can't actually be used on much of anything at all; either buffs aren't there at all or they're not removable or not important enough to bother).

(A good) Main Tank > Healers > Range DPS ≥ One good Melee DPS for LB ≥ The remaining Melee DPS
Second tanks can be thrown anywhere on this, depending on how extensive adds are.

From my experience in the DF, it seems that if the tank sucks, you probably won't succeed at anything. So they're probably the most important.

I vote healer. I am biased with scholar being my main class and my dislike for all other roles.

I've been in parties that can clear some lvl 50 dungeons without a tank. Just last night my party 3 manned the first Pharos boss with a first timer in the group before a tank joined. These situations tend to strain the healer the most. But I find the runs more fun than tank groups. I come from Guild Wars 1 where there are no tanks so I am used to chaotic encounters. It is fun when the tank can't hold threat. However, without a healer no one is going anywhere.

I'd like to see content where the tank can't hold threat at all. Control, debuffs, and kiting are perfectly viable options.

Tank is obviously the most powerful role. It has the least waiting time in Duty Finder. From sketch, leveling a tank without any friends help would be way faster than leveling any other job.
So please play tanks more, guys! Help the game out! We need more tanks!

By "not gcd constrained" I meant classes like summoner. Yes, you should be using Ruin if all other priorities are met, but you won't lose much damage from not casting it. At the end of the day support (like Resurrection) should come at a price, but I feel with this class it's rather low. Bards seem to be similar.

Nobody of you said anything about CC like Sleep, yet. Is it not used anymore in end game?

Virtually everything that matters resists every kind of CC except sometimes Stun.

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Originally Posted by SeraviEdalborez

Healer, specifically Scholar. I'm biased but Scholar has great versatility. Lots of MP to work with, has more freedom to throw on DPS than WHM (arguable), and a much better "emergency" heal. More MP over the course of a fight means you have more glue to apply to anything falling apart, such as battle resurrection

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As a White Mage Main, who has downed Twin more times then I wish to count, I would have to agree. I love my White Mage, but his versatility isn't as good as a SCH in my personal opinion. While I have more raw healing power, that's all I have, where as SCH is more utility based from my experience. Like a jack of all trades who is more about mitigation then raw healing. Also why I believe both jobs/classes compliment each other so well in raiding situations.

The SCH I run with is just pure awesome though, so I'm spoiled when it comes to our raids. She knows her class inside and out, which makes our raiding so much easier. Our jobs not only compliment our raid composition but we are both pretty much in synch when it comes to healing. We watch each others backs and are aware if the other is in trouble and won't be healing for the next 1-3 seconds (or more depending).

I've dabbled into SCH healing, and quite frankly it's not for me, but I do know the jist of their abilities and what they are capable of doing, from doing it first hand and having seen it in our raids. But in no way am I an expert on SCH healing and if I have any questions I would definitely ask our SCH for tips before anyone else.

Back to the main topic though, I feel that there is more leeway with the healing job/class in most fights. Does this make it the most powerful? Well not exactly, but I would say one of the more forgiving jobs/classes to have during an encounter. While higher end raids do have gear checks for each class, the healer is what will keep you alive if you make a mistake most of the time (there are always exceptions).

On the same level though, the tank controls the enemy(s) you are fighting, and keeps them in line so they don't run all over the place just smashing peoples faces. They have the potential power of saving lives due to placement of the enemy(s). In some cases tanks can even save their other tank partner in situations that would otherwise be deadly.

So I would say both the tank and healer have an equal roll in power for any group. It's very unlikely to have one without the other and expect to do well (yes there are always exceptions). That being said though, without the dps, a tank and a healer won't get very far. Just my 2 cents.

In low levels, I would say healer, because even without a tank and mediocre DPS, a healer can carry a party through everything. The higher the levels, the more important the tanks becomes, and eventually, you get into most fights being DPS races, at which point all three roles are equally important to the group's success.

But: Healer undoubtedly feels the most useful, because you get constant immediate, crystal-clear feedback when you 'do your thing'... HP bars going back up. (And dead people reviving.) As a tank or DPS, your contribution only really becomes apparent once the enemy is defeated.

My list would be
SCH - WHM - Tank - SMN

A good healer can carry a party the best. SCH has the best enmity management and burst heals so ideal to carry the party. WHM is a great healer but in burst situations can end up pulling hate from a bad tank.
Tanks can carry a lot of the party but if they don't get good heals they can only mitigate so much.
SMN is the best DD to help carry a party. Battle Raise. Pet Tank. Party Buffs. Enemy debuffs. Crowd control. Great kiting between Ruin II and Sprint.