About Classes

Get ready for a wall of text.

So, I'm sure a topic like this one has been posted somewhere, sometime, but I wanted to suggest this anyway.

So, with the coming of class only gear, jobs are still preferred/better than their class counterpart. So, with that, to balance classes and jobs (and to give classes more flavor and competence at what they are "meant to do") why not give classes 5 abilities that help define that class from the job?

For example, for CNJ, the 5 abilities would be supportive abilities, but not focused on healing so much as damage prevention and mitigation...might as well toss in some elemental attacks in there as well to define the CNJ as an elemental user (which I think it should still be)

The abilities would looks something like this:

Ability 1 : A shield that blocks damage similar to Stoneskin, but a lesser amount and party wide, with short duration. (barrier from LL opening please?)

Ability 2 : Another shield spell, but instead of blocking damage, it would mitigate damage by X amount per hit. For example: Shield lessens damage by 50 per hit shield is active for 20 secs. (of course this is just an example, numbers are completely just thrown in)

Ability 3 : A water nuking spell, would slow attack speed of target, more powerful than stone/aero that CNJ already has

Ability 4 : A short self-buff. The next time you cast a Cure spell, you shield the target for 5% of the total cure (again, just example)-long cool down.

Ability 5 : A tri-elemental nuking spell using water, earth and wind, fairly powerful attack.

giving a class like CNJ abilities like these would help CNJ in it's role of being a healer without being a lesser version of WHM, and the nukes given would help it solo, as classes are supposed to be better at soling than jobs (right?)

So, with all this, what do you all think? What abilities would you give other classes?

Be careful what you wish for; if they gave 5 unique abilities to classes, they would probably lower the ability to set cross-class abilities down to 5, like they did with jobs.

That said, I'd be all for it.

Wasn't there a thread that asked for exactly this less than a week ago?

...Was there?

I'm tempted to go look for it now.

Honestly I dont care for classes as they are now.

I rather see them be turned into unique jobs instead. A paladin and a gladiator should be very different from one another not by just five skills.

Gladiator could be a dual wield job with curved swords or something with its own set of skills.

A Puglist could be a pure boxing job relying on jabs (remember that? Before they changed h2h animations) and wear gloves instead of the current h2h weapons and such while monk can shift into a full martial artist that kicks often as a trait instead of occasionally using spinning heel.

And so on and so forth.

Having a class and a job which are basicly the same thing except for 5 Extra skills and an over abused "equip all the skills!" gimmick is meh and I kinda suspect that classes weren't scrapped after yoshi took over because it would have caused too much QQing.

Here's my question...why are we so stuck on having 5 abilities...since this is a game that gives/offers so much freedom and choice, why are we even limiting ourselves. Granted I have nothing to really offer as a counter-argument, but how does having more than 5 abilities present a balancing issue, if SE's intention is for classes to be used as a solo option I think we need more than 5 abilities, even with the option to select from other classes.

More than 5 could work, if it could be balanced.

As for locking classes to a few class ability options like jobs, wouldn't it still promote a more horizontal leveling style? And having choices other than GLD and PUG for the role of healer would be interesting, I think.

Hey guys, let's make classes different by making them more like jobs.

I don't exactly see how it's making them like jobs, other than giving them exclusive abilities. I mean sure, but that's it, the abilities themselves, and how they define the roles that are supposed to be played by the classes are what matter, I think.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maeili

I don't exactly see how it's making them like jobs, other than giving them exclusive abilities. I mean sure, but that's it, the abilities themselves, and how they define the roles that are supposed to be played by the classes are what matter, I think.

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Class: Jack of all trades who gets his abillities from other classes.

Jobs: Specialists who can't draw from other classes for abillities but has their own unique abillities available only to themselves.

And it's a the jack of all trades that makes the classes a little useless compared to their job counterparts, giving some class only abilities (in addition to their ability to use other class abilities) to classes could help them actually out perform jobs in soloing and small party content, what they were meant to do (they are still meant for that, right?)