Please make support jobs viable in the future :)

[Billzey]

It takes away any strategy to fights. You should never really NEED support. Look at ffxi. Bards are not needed for anything. Yet EVERYONE wants bards for EVERYTHING because they can just help sooooo much. You don't need to tailor content that much to fit support. It gets boring when jobs will ONLY be dps, healer, or tank. Lets add some variety please and give people something new and more unique to do.

Also, sage..... just sayin :P

BRDs were required for pretty much everything at the time I quit (last September). There's no way you could defeat the delve bosses before stun immunity w/o at least 1 BRD. COR was pretty much mandatory as well.

Speaking of BRDs... BRDs are pretty much mandatory in T8 for paeon, unless you go with all casters. They are kind of a hybrid class in that respect. Instead of introducing a whole new role, it might be more prudent to give existing DPS classes support roles similar to bard songs.

[Sapphic]

The game is designed around that every class can play solo. Adding pure support jobs would detract from that. Also they dont want it that certain jobs are needed for content. Hence minimal support abilities on BRD.

@Raelgun: Regarding Rift, support souls where pretty awesome for raiding, pointless in dungeons, better to roll as a DPS instead of support to make the dungeon easier. Also, good thing with Rift, I was 61 BRD but when needed switched to assassin for a certain boss, Matriarch in Endless Eclipse and Tactician for the trash for more AE. But on the rest, BRD. But still, was able to do some decent DPS whilst maintining buffs. T1 and 2 20 peep raids Bard was pretty important for the +5% to heals, reduced damage and stat buffs from resonance.

Can't comment on tier 3 as left before that got added. This is storm legion raids btw.

[Bawnawgwa]

I am not saying pure support like ffxi bard. I like ffxiv bard being bow damage. But it would be nice if their dps is usually lower and bard had songs to increase attack, attack speed, defense, etc etc. Giving back its buffs instead of just making it a pure damage with some battery. It is therefore still able to solo, but had a more defined role away from a black mages role Lol.

That would be awesome if Yoshi is really considering and working in hybrid jobs that increase party size to 6 I would be all for that

[ZephyrAM]

The problem with adding support classes is always the same: you can't balance an encounter around them. Either you 'need' one in the group to actually win the fight, or having one in the group completely trivializes the fight.

You need them, or you don't need them: there is no middle ground.

Also, 4 man groups are perfect for meaningful encounters, and I'd imagine that if they add a hybrid role, it'll simply replace one of the existing 4 slots.

[TeganLaron]

I don't see it coming any time soon. Who would the support class replace in 4 man content? DPS? Great, not like the queue is long enough as it is. You would then need to make content that requires support classes otherwise people would just overlook the new jobs. So the whole balance of fights would be off.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it too. Whether in the style of applying buffs to the team, or debuffs to the enemies, but I just don't see it being workable in the near future.

[Bawnawgwa]

Yea I suppose. It just makes me sad they built their game this way. They could have made room for support from the get go and made everyone happy, but they didn't.... They made parties as easy as they possibly could.....

[Bawnawgwa]

ALSO, lets look at an mmo called Aion, just for example. Chanter is probably the biggest support in the game. Provides amazing buffs like a bard, and great at knockdowns/stuns. Now, nothing in the game requires a chanter. If you get one in your group, awesome! The dungeon or what have you will probably be easier :P. If you don't have one, no problem, the dungeon is still perfectly doable. Thus this makes them wanted, but not needed, which is perfect.

Content does not need to be designed around these support roles. Many mmo's have proven this is false. ffxiv just royally screwed up their class/job crap and have made it incredibly hard to implement it (mostly because of 4 man freakin parties).

[Kletian]

Yea I suppose. It just makes me sad they built their game this way. They could have made room for support from the get go and made everyone happy, but they didn't.... They made parties as easy as they possibly could.....

The member of "everyone" is extremely happy with the small, quick and easy to form, traditional for FF size 4 man groups. Large party sizes aggravate me.

[Dyvid]

Maybe in the future SE will add a dps that's main source of damage comes from party buffs but in the mean time you'll just have to get used the fact the support is a secondary function of jobs like BRD and SCH.

[Hiruke]

THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN ANNOUNCED

Though, I'm sure mostly no one has it on their radar, because it has very rarely been talked about. However, it's been part of the design from the very beginning, so expect that fights have actually been designed with the idea of support jobs in mind.

Link: http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/119...s-with-Yoshida

There's probably another link somewhere that I forgot, because a brief glance through this one didn't seem to mention what I remember about him saying they were working on making hybrid roles viable without being too powerful.

While he apparently says "hybrid", I think it's more fair to say "support", and these will (probably) mostly be jobs that can do light dps and work to buff the rest of the PT. I imagine once the hybrid (support) role is added, BRD will be transitioned to support (dps lowered, songs made more potent).

That said, don't expect anything to be "pure support" like FFXI's BRD. Expect something more like FFXIV's BRD with less dps and more, you know, support.