FFXIV is in a Prime Position to Make Some Drastic Changes

[Shyle]

If they're DPS, they'd definitely be more in the support avenue (like BRD and MCH I'd wager), that's for sure.

Which I don't think would be a good choice to be honest. XIV I think needs to move from Trinity to a 4 pillars style MMO. Where instead of just tank/dps/heal there's Tank/dps/heal/support. Where the support is purely support. They do literally everything, but their main job is to aid each other role with it's buffs/debuffs.That way, Bards can be true bards, using songs to debuff enemies and buff the group, rdms can do their thing, then we can get Ranger as a true physical mobile dps and machinist as a mobile dps ranged slot with turrets (?). I honestly don't know what the role of machinist was in previous FF games, so maybe not have ranger and just have MCH take the mobile ranged dps spot? But considering the game is based on 4 man variant groups (4/8/24) having that fourth pillar would fit fine for groups.

in any case, the hybrid classes (BRD/MCH) suffer in this game without the support role as a slot for the group. just my .02$.

[Alahra]

Which I don't think would be a good choice to be honest. XIV I think needs to move from Trinity to a 4 pillars style MMO. Where instead of just tank/dps/heal there's Tank/dps/heal/support.

It's honestly too late for that, and it would cause huge disruptions in the Duty Finder, really. Support roles are already rather rare (if you ever played FFXI, you probably know how rare yet sought-after BRDs, RDMs, and CORs were), and they wouldn't really fit into the Light Party/Full Party setup very well, which is built around a foundation of 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 DPS (and then doubled for Full Parties).

Adding a codified support role would mean either changing the party setup to a 5-man/10-man structure/30-man structure, or giving the support classes enough DPS so that they could still fill the role of the 2nd DPS in 4-man content (which is pretty much the system we have now). Even if they went with the 5-person party foundation, support roles would arguably be more rare than Healers are (and potentially as rare as, or even more rare than, tanks are), creating yet another bottleneck for Duty Finder queues to get through.

It's just not feasible for the game to do that this late in the game--that's the sort of thing the game would have to have been built around from the ground up.