SAMURAI SHOWDOWN

[DWolfwood]

I don't get where people are hearing Yoshi P confirmed it to be a DPS, source please? For starters the job isn't even confirmed... the only thing I recall is an interview talking about how he would like to see SAM and looked at the 2 perspectives of tank and dps for the job.

Yeah, it's exactly what you're thinking. People misunderstanding an already bad translation:

"Regarding Samurai
They had an idea to make Samurai a tank. However because the Heavensward (I think they call it Souten no Ishigard in Jp) theme is dark, they felt a dark knight was more fitting for the role.
Inside of YoshiP the Samurai feels more like a DPS than a tank...".

He's saying that the image of a robe-wearing iaido master is strong as a DPS, and I agree. It's part of the reason why I want 2 samurai jobs. I really wanna see the "Shogun," heavily armored samurai more than a robe wearing iaido master, and Yoshida believes Shogun to be a tank. Rightfully so according to most in this thread as well.

I feel like i've been misunderstood. Also i don't really see PLD or DRK as magical tanks really, they have like 2-3 spells each, that is even with cross-classing for PLD.

I actually do get what you have in mind, but what I'm saying is that it really isn't that unique or new. PLD and DRK can be presumed to be getting new abilities in the future, and I would rather see them work with their identities to make them stronger and giving them more magic, PLD specifically. PLD already has Cure, Stoneskin, Raise, and Protect from CNJ that it hardly does anything with. Though considering they already have a healing spell, I think they should get an ability to speed up their cast time so that they can use Stoneskin more. Stoneskin is essentially the magic shield you're referring to. They should also be able to use Raise as well since it's a slow cast anyways and would be nearly impossible to pull off. PLDs are not just linked with healing/white magic in every FF game, but in pretty much every fantasy game from Ultima to Dungeons & Dragons, so I think they really need to work on it a bit more.

As for DRK, I'd like to see some Dread Spikes type of ability, and in regards to how similar it would be to your RDM/BLU idea; what I mean is that this new caster tank when you boiled it down passed the fact that they're just pressing mitigation buttons and attack/enmity inducing buttons, their core mechanic would be MP management, which is exactly what DRK is already. This is on top of the fact that RDM is very closely associated with a sword, and while you could give them a piercing attribute, at the end of the day you still got something not very unique that took an extreme amount of effort to make work since RDM can't really wear tank gear. The only difference between making it BLU instead of RDM would be that BLU possibly has more weapon options, but every other point remains.

While it would be a tank, wouldn't that be too similar to Ninja? Two eastern themed Jobs dual wielding blades...

That's kinda the point really though. It allows for 2 things: a tank that dual wields and the potential to still bring out a samurai (ronin, robe wearing) to the DPS side of things. I really don't see any redundancy here, personally. Just more variety.

...don't get me started on how disappointing dual wielding is at the moment anyway, Paladin has it right, Ninja sucks and Thancred got it right in 3.1... I want to equip two weapons, not one weapon that just clones itself in the offhand...

I'm fine with the way they have it now. While yes, it would be fun to use two different weapons, it makes playing those jobs a lot more difficult due to the extra hurdle of gearing them up. It's exactly the reason why they don't do this, although I guess they could make specific offhand katanas for NIN like PLD, but it just seems unnecessary imo.

I'd quite like Samurai to mainly use a bow, personally... Bow in the main hand, Dexterity as the main stat, Katana in the offhand slot... That can be a DPS or tank TBH...

I'd rather just see this applied to a special ability, like WAR's Tomahawk. Katanas are the "soul" of a samurai, so it doesn't make sense to me that they'd be an offhand. In XI and other games it works because you can use multiple weapons (like this game should be about.)