What if Support Role was Added to FFXIV?

Would it make sense to add a fourth role to the Trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS to help create a better balance between all the job classes?

Technically we have the support role with ranged dps. Its just that SE doesn't want to do anything to make support rewarding or good.

Ranged physical (BRD, DNC and MCH) are meant to be support.

There is Supposed to be, and then there is Actual Support.

Depends on what you mean.
Support like in other games, sure, though they'll mix it into something else like usual.
we do not have Conventional support.
it's all split into dps and buff and heal.

Considering they have been removing actual support abilities left and right, I highly doubt they'd add a whole support role.

while i can see DNC and BRD being a buff support, i do not understand how anyone can look at MCH and call it support lol

once upon a time, however...

Really don't see a whole category being added 10 years in.
If we get one new job per expansion going forward that would already be good.

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Originally Posted by Soge01

Would it make sense to add a fourth role to the Trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS to help create a better balance between all the job classes?

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BRD was much closer to support 2.0 launch. Remember the days when BRD LB was a heal? BRD gave mana and tp back to the party too. I am not so sure the game is better now that all of that is gone but it is what it is.

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Originally Posted by Zomkei

while i can see DNC and BRD being a buff support, i do not understand how anyone can look at MCH and call it support lol

once upon a time, however...

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MCh supports by making every other job feel better about themselves.

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Originally Posted by weebtext

MCh supports by making every other job feel better about themselves.

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okay, you got me there

I wouldnt be surprised if they will give natural lifesteal to everyone and change healer skills to support since it seems that they really dont know what to do with them.

i wish the game is like this

Each role have 1 support abilities, but range dps will have a lot more support abilites, like restore other player's mp, increase spell/skill speed abit, peleton but in combat only for a few secs, increase healing potency, increase damage, raidwide mitigations, and ofc DoTs. sounds like bard in 2.0 :v

my wet dream

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Originally Posted by Soge01

Would it make sense to add a fourth role to the Trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS to help create a better balance between all the job classes?

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I'd love it, I just fear it's 15 years too late for this game as it really needs to be locked in from the start, not all stripped away as they have class after class after class.

It's no good having cc/support if there is nothing to cc/support and when the game is build on a Leeeeeeroy Jenkins zerg wall to wall - doesn't matter if its a squishy wall to wall pull either.

Pure Trinity really doesn't exist in this game.

MCH support?

How to tell you never played MCH.
Maybe I'm doing things wrong and I'm not supporting my team with the flamethrower

yellow/purple/orange dps

Currently, I don't see the point of an additional support role. The only real "support" and "utility" tools that matter currently are damage buffs, which pretty much all roles have. I think the game right now doesn't support support roles, if that makes sense. There's nothing to support if the only thing to do is damage.

Like others said, the support role already exists in the form of p.ranged (I think MCH should revert to a more support-focused kit). I'd love to see a rehaul of MP and TP management, where all jobs are able to manage their resources on their own with good gameplay loop, but if things start to hit the fan, then the p.ranged can step in to help out the healers or tanks.

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Originally Posted by Soge01

Would it make sense to add a fourth role to the Trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS to help create a better balance between all the job classes?

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No, unfortunately not. They would have to redesign every single boss fight in the whole game.
FFXIV is designed very closely around the Tank/Healer/DPS trinity, with damage output as the central stat.

It would be really weird. I mean healers are normally support in other games right?

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

It would be really weird. I mean healers are normally support in other games right?

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Healers tend to stand on their own. Support would generally be a greater buff / debuff capability with less healing or DPS capability than other jobs. BLU tank is the closest we get to this. Here, we have support abilities spread throughout the jobs, which seems better than having another role.

Adding another role would require overhauling how instances and parties work. We can't even get full hat compatibility on all of our races.

City of Heroes did this. Technically it didn't even have healers. The four roles were tank, DPS, support (not healer) and mezzer. And most classes could fill more than one role.

It was wildly unbalanced in a way that wouldn't fly in the post WoW era, even though it was a ton of fun to play. It was also designed from inception to be like this, rather than adding it in later.

Weird, I always assumed the green dps had a support skill or two.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Adding another role would require overhauling how instances and parties work. We can't even get full hat compatibility on all of our races.

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It's by design. Get over it and move on.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

It's by design. Get over it and move on.

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Don't wanna, can't make me.

Why offer support when doing more damage will do the trick?

Putting aside the likely impossibility of them overhauling the entire gameplay system to support another role. A pure support role in general just wouldn't work in this game.

Balancing it would be damn near impossible because you either have enough support to supplant a dedicated DPS, in which case you always want that job/role. Or the support isn't enough to supersede raw damage, in which case nobody would even think of bringing one. At best, they'd have to force its inclusion via the 5%. That doesn't exactly make for a worthwhile investment.

What exactly you want a support role to do?

- The only support DPS will care about is buffing their damage, of which the game already have plenty. Even PF has enough DPS to skip like 1/4 or 1/5 on several fights.
- Supporting tank and healer? I mean ... why would you? Their kit is so powerful already that their focus is not even on tanking or healing, but DPSing. "Please don't make your healer heal even less" is a meme.

Its called "physical ranged dps" thats the support class. Technically all jobs are considered support because they can support the party in buff of party members or debuff of enemies in at least 1 way.

Honestly just give more unique buffs/debuffs for both healers, ranged and casters and design boss encounters were stuff like that is actually useful like a MMMMHMPH and rpg should?

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Originally Posted by Soge01

Would it make sense to add a fourth role to the Trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS to help create a better balance between all the job classes?

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What's a support role going to be tasked with in FFXIV?

This question doesn't even begin to compute for me.

We have "Support" but you wouldn't call it that because it doesn't even look like one. Healers are supposed to be "Support" but they can barely support outside of just healing/shielding. They're just 1-button DPS otherwise, and it sucks on so many levels.
AoE Esuna? Removed. Increased Skill speed & Spell speed? Removed. Restoring TP? Removed. Regenerate MP to party member? Removed. Knockback enemy? Removed and replaced with Bind. Where's Bind you ask? Removed.

Pretty much all semblance of support has been reduced to just DPS for the sake of balance and 'ease of use without stress on that party member to make a difference whether the party lives or wipes'.

Literally, the ONE support skill that isn't just a DPS buff is Expedient because it gave movement speed in combat, and that's only unlocked on SCH at level 90 and usable every 2 minutes. And even then, the movement speed effect got nerfed.

The one actual support skill all healers have is Rescue - the skill that so many players complain about. People don't use it much because every job has so much mobility, because it has a huge cooldown, and because of the pull delay that it's easier to make a mistake from using it. Not to mention, a lot of mechanics outright don't even allow the possibility of rescue from messing up a mechanic. You can't rescue someone from Down From the Count debuff (Holminister Switch Left/Right Knockout, P5 Devour), can't rescue a target that's chained to move them (Holminister Switch Chain Down, Battle in the Big Keep Enchain, Kugane Ohashi Hell's Gate), Can't rescue someone that's about to die from being eaten (World of Darkness Stepping into Slabber and being stuck). The skill has so many limitations to its usability. You only use it if you are sure you can pull someone to safety or to pull someone mid-LB animation to safety. Otherwise, you get blamed even if that person was going to die otherwise because you "interrupted them".

Ranged DPS are supposed to be "Support" but most of their support utility is just DPS, but you can literally count the number of support utility they provide. They have bind, heavy, and interrupt skills, but they rarely see usage. Peloton gets usage but mainly in dungeons and alliance raids, not in combat. Their individual shield mitigation? That's basically Feint/Addle, but applied to parties instead of a target. We have Warden's Paean, which is just a longer-lasting Esuna effect.

MCH? Is that even a support? Maybe during Heavensward, but not anymore. It's hard to call Physical Ranged DPS as the support class when MCH doesn't support the party outside of Tactician. Even MNK can be looked like a better support class than MCH (provides a DPS buff to the party, an AoE healing up buff, and Feint).
Physical range DPS is not so much of a support role because it has support utility, but because it supports the party by attacking from afar... which isn't even true anymore due to boss hitboxes getting big enough for melee uptime.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

We have "Support" but you wouldn't call it that because it doesn't even look like one. Healers are supposed to be "Support" but they can barely support outside of just healing/shielding. They're just 1-button DPS otherwise, and it sucks on so many levels.
AoE Esuna? Removed. Increased Skill speed & Spell speed? Removed. Restoring TP? Removed. Regenerate MP to party member? Removed. Knockback enemy? Removed and replaced with Bind. Where's Bind you ask? Removed.

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I think one of the main things to keep in mind alongside all this is that, once up and balanced, support is less about additions/features than it is about interdependence. The ability to make a significantly more pleasant experience or any other unique opportunity requires creating a baseline experience that is that comparatively that much more unpleasant or lacks those otherwise accessible opportunities, and will more than likely make what feels like it should be your gameplay deferable by others' errors.

Take granting Haste (SkS/SpS), for instance. If you already had a rotational speed you like, unless the particular percentage somehow coincidentally hits upon another pace that syncs up in itself and to your combo-progress when the buff is granted... it's just been screwed over. A healer Role Action to AoE immune a knockback mechanic? For that to be significant, the fight would have to offer X more knockbacks than would otherwise seem fitting.

That's not to say designing in support functionality is always going to be futile or a matter of... mechanical racketeering (wherein your problem exists only because it was designed in, without the usual concern for thematic or mechanical cohesion/alignment/etc., just to give those tools their place), but they create a fine line devs have to then walk between feeling like a bonus when they happen and making the baseline/normal feel like crap when they don't. Ideally, one ought to get a bigger dopamine spike, so to speak, from receiving that bonus than if it had come from their own kit, despite all the additional ways that could then go wrong (and all the massive balancing headaches it'd give in trying to make that support functionality worthwhile outside of just hivemind-ed statics).

There's also the matter of "fool-proofing" some of these potential Support skills. If Rescue extended melee range and allowed for casting while moving during and for some half-second after its use, people would complain a whole lot less about being Rescued. If players had specific control over their GCD speeds, or could allow Skill/Spell speed to be "junction"-ed to only increase GCD speed if able to hit certain thresholds (otherwise/thereafter spending it all on periodic potency increases), they wouldn't mind receiving Haste. Etc., etc.

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Originally Posted by Hysterior

Really don't see a whole category being added 10 years in.
If we get one new job per expansion going forward that would already be good.

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I really dont want new jobs.
the jobs are close to being as non unique as you can get without removing the names and just name them all tank, healer or dps.
adding more jobs just gets us closer to that since they just remove skills from the rest to give it to the new one. (and usually the best skills to make it more flashy)

FFXI had legit support jobs. BRD and COR (Corsair) come to mind. BRD provided such good and strong buffs for casters and melee that parties had at least one BRD. Sometimes 2 BRDs in a 6-person party, situationally.

BRD was considered off-heal support—you were expected to aid the main healer in between singing songs, which took 4-8 seconds to play each.

COR, on the other hand, was DPS support. Its buffs were similar to BRD, but COR was expected to maximize DPS in between buffs. Neither BRD or COR would never top the charts, but their utility and the way they maximized the party was desired.

This is what I see missing from FFXIV. As a BRD in FFIX, your role was to run around the battlefield so you could buff people with the appropriate songs—casters got MP and Magic+ buffs, and the frontline got Haste, Attack+ and other melee goodies. Your rotation consisted of singings with the occasional off-heal. Your role was really to support your party. This concept doesn't exist in FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by FiliusLunae

This concept doesn't exist in FFXIV.

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It used to. :/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pve2swkUMUI

SE is so afraid of us breaking their content, and their 'intended' DDR playstyle, that they've just been removing our individual capabilities in favor of different flavors of damage abilities and extended bursting that match their designed windows. With how everything else has gone, Crit is probably on the chopping block for next expac. There's nothing to support anymore.

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Originally Posted by R041

It used to. :/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pve2swkUMUI

SE is so afraid of us breaking their content, and their 'intended' DDR playstyle, that they've just been removing our individual capabilities in favor of different flavors of damage abilities and extended bursting that match their designed windows. With how everything else has gone, Crit is probably on the chopping block for next expac. There's nothing to support anymore.

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nothing to support 'cept the game which to some is considered a downright abysmal failure in almost every single way in its current game.

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Originally Posted by Soge01

Would it make sense to add a fourth role to the Trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS to help create a better balance between all the job classes?

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It has been asked several time to Yoshida in interviews and sadly it isn't planned at this point.

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Originally Posted by FiliusLunae

FFXI had legit support jobs. BRD and COR (Corsair) come to mind. BRD provided such good and strong buffs for casters and melee that parties had at least one BRD. Sometimes 2 BRDs in a 6-person party, situationally.

BRD was considered off-heal support—you were expected to aid the main healer in between singing songs, which took 4-8 seconds to play each.

COR, on the other hand, was DPS support. Its buffs were similar to BRD, but COR was expected to maximize DPS in between buffs. Neither BRD or COR would never top the charts, but their utility and the way they maximized the party was desired.

This is what I see missing from FFXIV. As a BRD in FFIX, your role was to run around the battlefield so you could buff people with the appropriate songs—casters got MP and Magic+ buffs, and the frontline got Haste, Attack+ and other melee goodies. Your rotation consisted of singings with the occasional off-heal. Your role was really to support your party. This concept doesn't exist in FFXIV.

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Another role I miss is that of debuffer from FFXIV. This usually fell to RDM, who got the highest enfleebling skill and the strongest debuffs. Depending on the situation, you could opt for bringing a RDM as a main healer and sacrifice efficient healing for the strongest debuffs.

I feel that type of strategic decision making is missing in XIV.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

nothing to support 'cept the game which to some is considered a downright abysmal failure in almost every single way in its current game.

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I don't even know what you're trying to say. But I do find it funny that you have more posts in 1 year than most that have been playing for a decade. lol

You sure are the whitest DRK. :p

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Originally Posted by R041

I don't even know what you're trying to say. But I do find it funny that you have more posts in 1 year than most that have been playing for a decade. lol

You sure are the whitest DRK. :p

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I have no clue what you're even talking about. Im just echoing what the forums are basically saying really.

Also I cant be white if Im green (well this current character at least) and a Paladin sooooo..