Suggestion for Heavensward expansion: Lancer 2nd Job Holy Dragoon. Make it a tank.

Since Dragoons appear to play a big role in the next expansion I have a suggestion I hope that the developers (and players) will really take to heart:

It's great that Dark Knights will be a tank spec. We need more awesome iconic classes to be tanks. The game has enough DPS classes and there needs to be some balancing out with more healer and tank Jobs.


But I imagine that Dark Knights will need to be leveled up from 1 to 50. This won't help the queue times at patch launch. So I suggest that a 2nd Job be added for Lancers: Holy Dragoon ( Kain's class upgrade in FF IV: The After Years).

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2...2HDKainAlt.png

The quest requirement could be to already have unlocked Dragoon and be level 50, and also have level 15 in Conjurer.

Think about it. If every current Dragoon player had the option to do a 20 minute quest to unlock a tanking spec, the nightmare queue times on Duty Finders (over an hour these days) would probably vanish overnight, as people who already have a Lancer at level 50 would not have to re-level a new class to become a tank. That is the main hurdle to solving this issue; they have to grind up from 1-50 all over again on a class whose playstyle they might not enjoy. But Holy Dragoons would still use the same basic rotations as a Dragoon; it's essentially the same class just performing a different party role.

Plus those players who really love the idea of being a Dragoon would not need to abandon being a Dragoon in order to roll as a tank when necessary.

Holy Dragoons could have a toggle buff that, similar to Shield Oath, dramatically increases their threat generation and damage reduction while decreasing their offensive damage. Give them a few defensive cooldowns unique to the class, and allow Gladiator and Marauder abilities to be cross-class skills (Provoke, Flash, Foresight, Mercy Stroke, etc -- also use Stone-skin, Cure and Protect from Conjurer) and allow them to wear tanking gear.

Holy Dragoon players would become effective tanks with these slight changes, the extremely long wait time for DF queues would vanish AND it would fit in line with the idea of the new expansion.

I really hope the developers seriously consider doing this!

Na, make it a healing class. Just think about it, the more you impale your allies, the more you heal them! :D What? If a chemist can use a gun and heal, why cant a dragoon?

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Originally Posted by FyrmurlFloerasksyn

Na, make it a healing class. Just think about it, the more you impale your allies, the more you heal them! :D What? If a chemist can use a gun and heal, why cant a dragoon?

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From a purely design perspective, I don't think healers are the issue with long wait times in DF. This is because Arcanists have two jobs: DPS (Summoner) or healer (Scholar). People level up as Summoners but then can switch to Scholar to overcome the DF troubles.

I'm suggesting something similar for Lancers, since Dragoon is a hugely iconic class that draws players to it. I think there is probably more Dragoon players than anything.

Right now tanks have to be leveled from 1-50 as a tank spec the entire time. Allowing someone to level up as a DPS spec instead (more useful for soloing) would help relieve the issues.

If we're going to add another healing Job for existing classes, it'd make more sense to have Thaumaturge be able to become Red Mages.

While i don't mind them adding a Lancer tank job i don't see how it would impact DF wait times all that much. People who want to be tanks are already tanks. People that don't want to tank aren't likely to start doing it just because a new tank job is introduced. Sure there will be people playing the new job but it will mostly be the same ones who were playing the other 2 tank jobs. SE could add 100 new tank jobs and it still wouldn't change the amount of people tanking. Especially one like your suggesting that would be 50 from day 1. A new tank class that has to be leveled would help low level DF queues for a little while while the tanks get it to 50 but wouldnt have an impact on wait times for endgame.

Exactly, the one thing people don't seem to understand:

You can have 20 DPS Classes
20 Healing
20 Tank

You will still have DPS overflow and tank/heal underflow because most people quite frankly will not and do not want to tank or heal because DPS is the easiest to do in MMOs.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Exactly, the one thing people don't seem to understand:

You can have 20 DPS Classes
20 Healing
20 Tank

You will still have DPS overflow and tank/heal underflow because most people quite frankly will not and do not want to tank or heal because DPS is the easiest to do in MMOs.

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And let's not forget how toxic players get when either a tank or a healer makes a mistake...

With 2.4 having made it so that the only thing a pld tank needs to do in duns is ultimately flash spam, all they need to do is create more easy tanking classes like that. Perhaps make them do competitive dps and the problem is solved.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

Think about it. If every current Dragoon player had the option to do a 20 minute quest to unlock a tanking spec, the nightmare queue times on Duty Finders (over an hour these days) would probably vanish overnight, as people who already have a Lancer at level 50 would not have to re-level a new class to become a tank.

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It's not as simple as that. It's never an issue of available tank specs. Also, how does a Dragoon tank work with synced dungeons since they don't have tank/enmity tools? Scholar only works because they have one heal and the faerie does most of the work.

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Originally Posted by FyrmurlFloerasksyn

Na, make it a healing class. Just think about it, the more you impale your allies, the more you heal them! :D What? If a chemist can use a gun and heal, why cant a dragoon?

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Excellent Idea!!! A Dragoon healer that can raise other Dragoons!

Give it the ability to Raise himself and we are gold!

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Originally Posted by Ulathskullsplitter

While i don't mind them adding a Lancer tank job i don't see how it would impact DF wait times all that much. People who want to be tanks are already tanks. People that don't want to tank aren't likely to start doing it just because a new tank job is introduced. Sure there will be people playing the new job but it will mostly be the same ones who were playing the other 2 tank jobs. .

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Players usually do not choose classes based on party role, but rather the idea of the class.

In general, people nearly always play the same kinds of classes in MMORPGs even though the mechanics may be wholly different.

ex. if you play a Paladin in WoW, you'll probably play one in FF XIV.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

It's not as simple as that. It's never an issue of available tank specs. Also, how does a Dragoon tank work with synced dungeons since they don't have tank/enmity tools? Scholar only works because they have one heal and the faerie does most of the work.

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You clearly didn't read the whole post.

All they need to do is give the Dragoon a skill similar to Shield Oath that boosts enmity generation and give them access to cross-class skills like Flash. It's really not that complicated.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Exactly, the one thing people don't seem to understand:

You can have 20 DPS Classes
20 Healing
20 Tank

You will still have DPS overflow and tank/heal underflow because most people quite frankly will not and do not want to tank or heal because DPS is the easiest to do in MMOs.

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I basically agree with this. Most people will choose the life of a DPS for simplicity sakes, not because there is not enough options. If they gave Arcanists or Lancer another tanking job, I would still play as the DPS versions because tanking simply terrifies me. There would be some who love these new jobs, for sure, but I fear not on the level the OP seems to think.

Or how about, no. (to OP)

The expansion (3.0) has already been planned and prepared. If anything you would be better off making suggestions for the second expansion. Because they won't be taking anything you could think about and post on these forums about a new Job and suddenly add that in for an already planned and created expansion. The core of 3.0 is likely already completely finished, and if they are doing anything else with it it would be fine tuning and small details/adjustments as well as bug testing.

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Originally Posted by Ecks007

Or how about, no. (to OP)

The expansion (3.0) has already been planned and prepared. If anything you would be better off making suggestions for the second expansion. Because they won't be taking anything you could think about and post on these forums about a new Job and suddenly add that in for an already planned and created expansion. The core of 3.0 is likely already completely finished, and if they are doing anything else with it it would be fine tuning and small details/adjustments as well as bug testing.

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I'm not sure why you'd make this statement.

Sure, they have a plan for new content. That doesn't mean they cannot decide to alter that plan to incorporate additional content.

There is already evidence showing they have made changes based on player desires; Godbert was added to the latest Hildibrand storyline quest based on unanticipated fan popularity for the character. And those were some pretty sweet cutscenes they made.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

There is already evidence showing they have made changes based on player desires; Godbert was added to the latest Hildibrand storyline quest based on unanticipated fan popularity for the character. And those were some pretty sweet cutscenes they made.

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There's a bit more involved in creating something like that than there is for taking an already existing character and finding a way to place him in a story that he's already a part of.

Edit: My bad, not a new job but a new role for Drg. Eh, again, that's a lot of work to redesign an already existing class and rebalance a new set of skills in order to turn it into basically a completely new job. And they would have to make tank gear available to it and only it, with it not being available for Lancer or Dragoon. None of Lancer's traits are complimentary for a tank style job coming from it. Lancer skills mostly, wouldn't work well with a tanking class and pretty much only have their uses for a dps role.

They would have to completely rework Lancer in order to make something like this work.

I'm almost positive that because they would have to rework all current classes to fit secondary roles (if those roles were different than the original Job the class became, and if they weren't what would be the point?) is the main reason they are likely not going this route with the expansion. (Dark Knight has no class, and in my opinion they will likely continue to go this route with new jobs in the future).

Arcanist was pre-planned to be a dual path class from the start, so it was easy to lay the groundwork to make both branching jobs benefit from Arcanist traits despite their different roles and Job skills.

I honestly don't expect to see another class branch into two jobs again, unless it's a brand new class that is designed to do just that from the beginning, like Arcanist.

"An hour long queue"? The hell are you talking about? My queues are friggin instant as DRG.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

You clearly didn't read the whole post.

All they need to do is give the Dragoon a skill similar to Shield Oath that boosts enmity generation and give them access to cross-class skills like Flash. It's really not that complicated.

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It is that complicated. The current way classes and jobs interact prevent this. To give lancer - not dragoon - a tank stance would serve pointless as they aren't a tank at that class level and couldn't function as that. They could indeed have gladiator as a sub class but they wouldn't be able to have them as primary enmity generation tools since 'dragoon tanks', although not actual dragoons, would not have a way to replenish mana like riot blade. Warriors also have access to flash but it's not their primary AoE enmity generation tool, just an additional one.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

It is that complicated. The current way classes and jobs interact prevent this. To give lancer - not dragoon - a tank stance would serve pointless as they aren't a tank at that class level and couldn't function as that. They could indeed have gladiator as a sub class but they wouldn't be able to have them as primary enmity generation tools since 'dragoon tanks', although not actual dragoons, would not have a way to replenish mana like riot blade. Warriors also have access to flash but it's not their primary AoE enmity generation tool, just an additional one.

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I know this is hard but you need to use this thing called 'imagination'.


They can give the Job class a Riot-blade like ability.

Hell, they don't even need to do that. There is a like a thousand other ways they could do it.

Many MMOs these days have hybrid classes capable of doing various roles, depending on how they are specced. If freakin Arcanists can be both a healer or a DPS, there's no reason to insist Lancers could not be capable of tanking if a Job was created for them to be able to do so.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

I know this is hard but you need to use this thing called 'imagination'.


They can give the Job class a Riot-blade like ability.

Hell, they don't even need to do that. There is a like a thousand other ways they could do it.

Many MMOs these days have hybrid classes capable of doing various roles, depending on how they are specced. If freakin Arcanists can be both a healer or a DPS, there's no reason to insist Lancers could not be capable of tanking if a Job was created for them to be able to do so.

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1. Imagination is used in the creation of something new. However, with the way the Lancer class works it does not adapt to being useful for any Job skills in which you could (and would have to) give in order to make a tank spring from Lancer.

2. Giving a Job 1 new skill, or even 5 new skills isn't going to help it become a tank when it's base class has no tanking traits or skills at all.

3. You're right. They don't even need to do that, because it wouldn't work. There might be a thousand other ways they could do it (no there isn't) but they all involve re-working the base class in order to create such a thing. They won't do this. It would greatly alter Dragoon in the process in a variety of unexpected ways that would doubtlessly cause balancing issues in which they are trying to avoid.

4. MMOs that have hybrid classes have them designed that way from the ground up (and when they don't they run into all sorts of balancing issues). Way back in 1.x they had thought of the idea of each class having multiple jobs. There's just one problem. When they designed the class/job combinations that existed in 1.x to be represented in 2.0 they gave them fixed roles from the start, starting with the base class. Arcanist was created as an addition to 2.0 and was a completely new class and built from the groundwork to be split into two Jobs. As much as you want to believe, the facts speak for themselves. Current classes do not work in a way that would support a new role Job branching from them because they are classes that specialize in skills and traits that fill one particular role.

Arcanist's class traits and skills can apply to both Summoner and Scholar because it was designed that way, and yet even then there is the issues of skill point allotment that (while minimal) benefits 1 of the Jobs more than the other or makes neither quite as good as they could be (if you split stat points). Other classes do not have this issue when their stat allotment is spent on their best stat.

I fully agree with your idea. Though technically, the Holy Dragoon would actually fall moreso under the Job named Templar, found here: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Templar_%28Job%29

A few tweaks here and there and it could end up being a very impressive Tank with some unique features! Not to mention that it would fit quite perfectly with the Heavensward themes!

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

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Setting aside for the moment any questions about how a DRG tank would function at lower levels, I also have to ask - what would make this job unique? I imagine quite a bit of time has been spent making sure DRK "feels" distinct from WAR or PLD. Throwing a fourth tank role into the mix, particularly so soon, would almost surely dilute the differences.

Moreover, as other posters have mentioned, by far the biggest barrier to tank availability is the toxic reactions other players have whenever a mistake is made. Adding a new class / job won't fix this, unfortunately.

Was doing thinking at work besides actual work. Going by the new start cg added after 1.0 a player is able to manifest a job after receiving a crystal not a weapon. It occurred to me that is the clue to what the dev team wants to do. Instead of weapon determining job, they will switch to job crystals, and eliminate the classes adapting them into jobs unlocked with crystals instead of weapon type. Take for instance Conjurer, they eliminate conjurer replace it with redmage red mage crystal received, what do you do with conjurer? nothing it becomes a redmage, but redmage has 2 subclasses it becomes. at lvl 30 you do a quest and lose your redmage crystal, and gain a crystal for the subclass of your choice in this case Fencer a tank job, and Warlock an elemental dps/dot class. The unneeded job abilites are lost and you unlock your new factional job, at lvl 60 you can recieve another crystal and raise the other faction job from level 1.

Stupid post limit, the whole purpose of the elimination of classes is to allow SE to move away from weapon locked job systems, and the clunky class system itself as it is a clone of the Monstrosity system implemented with seekers of adoulin FFXI. As long as jobs are locked to 1 weapon type it is difficult to develop this game further, for what purpose do you level Conjurer, Arcanist, Lancer, Thaumaturge, Gladiator, Pugilist, Marauder to lvl 50? You don't actually play those classes they are wasted space, by replacing those classes with root jobs you can take the game much further and develop hybrid jobs using a variety of iconic weapons and styles.

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Originally Posted by TThibi

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That doesn't make any sense... In the trailer Herp the Warrior just becomes Herp the Dragoon, using a spear and all.....

And its not as simple as giving 1 or 2 enmity skills to a class and call it a tank. You need more skills, traits, some form of dmg mitigation, etc. Unless Yoshi makes some heavy changes on LNC I don't think it can become a tank. IMO anyway.