New Class Speculations

[Kazrah]

Very good and informative post. I agree with pretty much all of your points, except RDM fitting any of the three roles. With such a strict trinity system and them being so big on the lore, I can't see RDM as anything other than a Hybrid Melee/Magic Support DPS. For me, that's the only way to convert a jack-of-all-trades type of job into FFXIV.

When people wanted Dark Knight, they looked at how it was traditionally and thought "it sacrifices health to do extra damage, so of course it'll be a dps". When Dark Knight came out as a tank instead, that simply proved that job concepts can be more or less bent toward roles not expected by the playerbase.

This is why I said that Red Mage could be pinned to any role: it has far more flexibility than Dark Knight in that regard.

[aeoncs]

When people wanted Dark Knight, they looked at how it was traditionally and thought "it sacrifices health to do extra damage, so of course it'll be a dps". When Dark Knight came out as a tank instead, that simply proved that job concepts can be more or less bent toward roles not expected by the playerbase.

This is why I said that Red Mage could be pinned to any role: it has far more flexibility than Dark Knight in that regard.

Not really a good comparison. The Dark Knight, whether as a DPS or Tank, is a very straight-forward job and thus only the most basic trait had to be tweaked/changed for it to work as a Tank; so that instead of sacrificing health to do damage, they absorb health depending on the amount of damage they deal, which was already a thing in previous FFs through the use of Blood Equipment.

To make Red Mage work as a tank or healer, you'd have to completely change the whole concept of the job, which is them being versatile allrounders who are adept in many forms of combat and magic but not excelling in any of them. How can you tank with mediocre (at best) defensive abilities and lackluster base stats, or be a committed healer when you're not able to use the higher levels of White Magic? It just doesn't work.
As a Hybrid DPS they would however be able to make use of their versatility, utilizing both melee combat and offensive magic while buffing themselves and their party members with offensive and defensive utility spells.

So, imo, there's no way to sell RDM as a tank or healer without completely redesigning the whole job.

[Rhaja]

I wouldn't be surprised if we got SAM and RDM for 4.0, with SAM wearing Maining gear and RDM going into a truly dynamic direction.

What I'm hoping for is for them to use the WM/GB idead. RDM has always been a jack of all, master of none. If they put them in Casting gear, give them exceptionally high HP, and a stance that converts all melee attacks into spells I think they could achive this. If the stance change also worked like Cleric's stance, you would have a class that could go in all sword swinging, or sit back and cast all day. Maybe mix it up when the bard has the magic buff I can't think off.

Also if we're headed east for Ala Mhigo, I'm really hoping that includes Thavanir and Dancer or BLU.

[Morzy]

Looks like someone forgot all tanks share armor, Summoner and Black Mage share Armor, and all Healers share armor with the only thing excluded being the Iconic Armor sets.

Sam will obviously not be sharing the Dragoon's Iconic armor but share the mail armor types.

Ninja and Monk only got separated because they used different base stats being Dex and Str.

Ur naive if u believe i forget.

Casters n healers n tanks all seem equal. Theres not much that set them apart enought to separate their gear, imo.

But melee classes r different. It doesnt bother me that monk n ninja dont share gear frankly im over the dispute. But i do respect the diiferences between the three especially with drg. I do not want to wear drg armor.

[Gabrielleblanc]

snip.

Monk and Nin should never share gear, they have different main stat, Sam and DRG sharing an armor type makes sense due to the fact that unless Samurai is a dex based dps in which case it will share with Ninja, splitting gear like they did with Ninja and Brd/mch is the dumbest thing I have seen yet, same stat priority same design on gear with a slightly different shade. Monk though I would hate to see them in "mail" armor like DRG.

[loreleidiangelo]

I'd love Dancer if it were much more support-oriented in it's downtime and less about contributing DPS. A channeling healer, maybe? Your heals only channel as long as you're "dancing"? Or maybe even different "dances" kind of like BRD songs that alter their healing effects.

Don't let me down, SE!

[EdwinLi]

If we can't have SAM as a STR melee DPS type and SAM end up as another Tank. I would prefer the next STR DPS to be Gunblade Job as we are getting closer to the Garlean Empire now assuming 4.0 is Ala Mhigo.

With Gunblade Job as a Melee DPS we can even have Lion Heart as our LB3 or a more single target style Blasting Zone.

[Kazrah]

So, imo, there's no way to sell RDM as a tank or healer without completely redesigning the whole job.

The job has been redesigned before, going from all-arounder to spellblade and back. There really isn't as much as you'd think stopping them from reworking something like Red Mage into a role you'd never expect.

If Red Mage was made into a tank, it would still retain that hybrid aspect: it's in melee, it'd still have some sort of spells and have back-up healing ability in case that healer has a worse attention span than I do healing. Either the tank stance or some starting trait could modify defenses to match those of other tanks while their unique mechanic could be a partial MP-shield where part of the damage they take is reduced and most of that reduced damage gets converted into MP burn while having some attacks and cooldowns (more than Dark Knight has) to restore MP to compensate.

If it was announced that Red Mage would be a healer, that would only confirm my suspicions that Red Mage wouldn't get the "black and white magic" concept, but rather mock versions of those spells. It would still have offensive spells, melee attacks would probably be an MP generator, and Doublecast could either be a cooldown or a Darkside-type buff that would either allow double healing strength, healing while doing damage like an AoE version of Bloodbath, or working in a more similar fashion to Synastry but possibly at a greater extent for a greater MP cost.

I do applaud your point of view as well since it also provides the possibility of the story for Red Mage: with many views and preconceived notions on what Red Mage is or what it should be, the story could very well be the search for what it is meant to be.

[Morningstar1337]

If we can't have SAM as a STR melee DPS type and SAM end up as another Tank. I would prefer the next STR Tank to be Gunblade Job as we are getting closer to the Garlean Empire now assuming 4.0 is Ala Mhigo.

With Gunblade Job as a Melee DPS we can even have Lion Heart as our LB3 or a more single target style Blasting Zone.

It seems like any Job that uses RWBY style weapons (Yes I know that the concept didn't start there but in Final Fantasy, but it seem to epitomize that idea more then Final Fantasy) would be a Melee/Ranged by default (not like Bard and Machinist, but still close tot hose two) and unless they make Bind viable or ease on positioning mechanics (though that seem to be a player thing anyway), a Ranged Tank would run into some issues.

On the other hand, Tanks are associated with stances, so it might still be possible if the Tank stance turns ranged attacks into Melee and the DPS stance turned melee attacks into ranged.

[EdwinLi]

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Sorry there was a typo in my comment being"STR Tank" is actually "STR DPS". Was a bit out of it when typing the comment since I am grinding my anima weapon mats.

On topic:
I just personally picture Gunblade Job more as a Melee DPS over a Tank since despite how the game always picture Gunblade users in Tankish armor they attack more aggressively like DPS instead of defensively.