The Mystery Gun Job

[MartaDemireux]

[Brave and Faith ... don't really have a good direct translation into FFXIV]

Yeah that's why I said "essentially" in order for them to apply to XIV. While they didn't buff/debuff directly it was an effect they had.

I do agree that manipulating atk/matk directly is strong and will always be needed as opposed to BRD's situational songs. By "high recast timers" I was thinking along the lines of Hallowed Ground to prevent frequent usage. Basically encourage a DPS burst/hinderance at key moments in opposition of BRD's use of picking up the slack if things get drawn out too long.

Could make it more interesting by only being able to use them after building up charges with combos or something. Execute say 3 combo's in order to gain one charge to use on a job ability which then suffers a high recast time to cycle buffs/debuffs. And/or could use own HP/attack/determination/defense stats as a resource for a high-risk/high-reward scenario, make yourself weak to make your group strong.

I personally don't want to see "support" roles falling into an MP/TP restoral slump. Yeah they're really useful for when fights go on too long or accidents happen but I'd like to see a more pro-active support. Charge at the battle with guns blazing to down it ASAP versus BRD's more slow and steady, precisely aimed approach (in the eyes of the application of their support). So if you know you can beat the boss down with your group anyway, bring the ORA along to make it go more quickly but if you're unsure, bring out the BRD so that they can restore the healers MP or DPS TP if the fight is dragging on due to not knowing mechanics.

[Kitru]

I do agree that manipulating atk/matk directly is strong and will always be needed as opposed to BRD's situational songs. By "high recast timers" I was thinking along the lines of Hallowed Ground to prevent frequent usage.

A CD that causes the ability to suffer from what I generally call "grenade syndrome" or "nuke syndrome" (after those uber-consumables that you get in FPSs/light gun games/side scrollers, where you don't ever use them and end up getting a massive stockpile because you're always worried that there will be a more pressing need for it later, especially if there's a reasonable chance you could get out of whatever shit your in without it). HG only really gets used in 2 situations because of its incredible CD: when it's part of the explicit strategy (t4 double dread; Levi EX; Titan EX single tank) or when the shit very *obviously* has hit the fan and you're liable to wipe even if you do use it (t5 tank death). Compare that to Holmgang which is much weaker but on a significantly lower CD (low enough that you actually stand to use it multiple times over the course of the fight) such that you're almost always going to use it any time that you could feasibly get killed within the next few GCDs.

It doesn't help that burst DPS doesn't really follow the same use paradigm as a tank uber-CD. More damage is always useful so it's not like you're liable to waste it if you use it at an inopportune time (like the start of the fight).

I personally don't want to see "support" roles falling into an MP/TP restoral slump.

The problem I see is that, as soon as you start providing damage increase/reduction abilities to support classes instead of resource management, you basically render the resource management moot because increasing damage dealt is *always* useful and, oftentimes, can be easily used to preempt the loss of resources in the first place (plummeting a boss's damage when they're about to drop a meganuke or major AoE so everyone takes less damage; increasing everyone's damage during a burn phase so that you spend less time in said danger zone).

The BRD songs represent a really good place for support to exist because they're not so restricted that you have to hold on to them until the perfect moment ("hey, it's an AoE phase, better turn on Paeon" or "healers are at half mp, gotta turn on Ballad") while still being somewhat restricted ("healers could use the extra mp, but it reduces my damage by 20% and consumes MP I might need for songs later"). Furthermore, they're generally applicable without being universally useful: there are plenty of occasions where you could want to restore party MP/TP but there's no value in using it *every single time* you have the option to (why bother turning on Paeon/Ballad when there's about to be a 30 second period where you're not consuming any resources at all). Foe's Req is a damage increase, but it's explicitly limited in who exactly it increases damage for (as I said before, it's elemental resistance, which basically means that it buffs BLM entirely, BRD/SMN a little, and no one else at all).

There isn't much other support you can provide that doesn't render BRD's support basically worthless (or, at the very least, significantly subpar). You could potentially include other intangibles like movement speed increases (not really provided by anything else but very useful in dodging plumes) or pulling allies (yank an ally out of a plume or getting them to stack up for whatever reason), but tangible advantages like straight up increases to all damage or damage reduction as the primary form of support are too powerful (the final ability I listed on mine is a DR/dam ability, but it's got a very long CD, a short duration, and only affects a single target so that it doesn't overshadow Foe's Req; the primary form of support you'd bring them for is the TP/MP, not the damage).