Roles for Samurai, Red Mage, Dancer

[Arrik]

If a majority of their skills/abilities are instant then are they truly a caster tank though? Because in my opinion they'd just be a tank that has some casts. In which case that mechanic can be applied to just about any job in the form of a "charge up" mechanic for certain skills.

Is pulling back on a bow, aiming and firing a "cast?" Many pen and paper games allow quick casts, free casts, etc. and I don't really feel there should be a minium casting time on what counts as a spell. Even look at the barspells in 11 with full Fast Cast gear, that's hardly a casting time if you have gear to back it.

In a game where positioning is often key something like this keeping enemies at range makes positioning things exceptionally more difficult. It's impractical and thus highly unlikely. It's harder to move enemies when they're kept far away from you. You use Titan as an example but don't consider that Titan is usually kept at the edge of his arena, you simply cannot move him there if he can't get closer than 10 feet from your character. Impractical and ultimately a pointless mechanic, what benefits does this add except giving the illusion you're fighting from range?

This wasn't very fleshed out I admit. But I also don't think being in melee range discounts them from being a caster, I was just trying to address it.

Mechanically making a tank wear any kind of armor is easy, as abilities can be implemented that passively boost stats to be on par with other tank's defense. The problem comes with things like sharing loot. Role-mixing on loot in FFXIV would provide potential issues. I pointed out that tanks sharing gear is an intentional one that affords tank players the freedom to generally swap out to any of the 3 tank jobs pretty easily. (Same goes for healers). This is certainly an intended design to help keep Tank players playing tanks. If you remove this aspect, you've now introduced a tank that doesn't share armor with other tanks, meaning they have to choose between gearing the new mage tank, or the other 3 tanks. That's a bad decision and splits the tank players.

Now you have a tank that shares gear with a DPS, which means they can gear as a tank and then spend the rest of their time playing a DPS? That's counter-productive to trying to aid the age old problem of low tank population. Not to mention who would want to queue into content to get tank gear when you can be contest by quite possibly every DPS in the party as full mage parties are very common when queueing into duties.

I see your point here but a few things: 1)Even the tanks don't share gear all of the time. They seem to be getting better about this, but you can't wear esoteric PLD gear on WAR for instance so they break that cycle themselves on occassion. I don't think keeping the gear like that is so much intentional to keep people playing tanks as it is keeping it to 1 model instead of 3, but that might just be me seeing the glass half empty. 2)A little horizontal progression would allow people to gear more than one set of jobs a patch cycle and allow people not only to gear that tank and that dps, it might spur people to level tanks knowing they'd have a chance to gear it to be relevant that patch cycle. One of the main draws to this and FFXI was the ability to level everything on one character, and I feel it's sorely underutilized here with the lockouts. Many people don't play tanks because they don't like the playstyle, mechanics, etc of the current jobs and having one out of left field might do wonders for the tank population.

As for contesting gear I don't really think that's much of an issue. Not only do you have ways to avoid quequing with people that might take your gear DPS can and do contest gear with every DPS. Full BRD/MCH parties happen, maybe you think it's a big deal because you are now the tank and are used to fighting one person for drops at best but we've been doing fine fighting up to 3 others. Should I just drop parties with multiples of my job/role? Will you gear up a bit slower than a traditional tank? Maybe, but if you had more varied content and more horizontal progression you can do solo content every so often for decent gear, tome gear, 4 man parties and still get there. And this could go the other way as well, releasing DPS/healer jobs that use the tank gear would stop just the up to two tanks from having free reign on gear.

The simple reality of the situation is that challenges take time to iron out. And Time is not something this game has an abundancy of when it comes to developing content. Because they release content on such a regular basis they just don't have the time or resources to spend trying to reinvent the wheel. This means that new job additions are less likely to shake up the formula anytime soon.

It absolutely does take time, but they have to try. Tome #567345384 capped at 450/week across all jobs and two dungeons doesn't really do much to address things. And I'm not saying they should do this for patch 3.5 or whatever, but expansions are the place to fix the big stuff and they could attempt it there. However I do kinda feel like this is a bit off topic, unless you feel RDM is a full caster.

[Welsper59]

By this definition we have 2 caster tanks already then. So if redundancy is a valid argument against something like Samurai via their weapon choice, then this would also apply to future mage tanks being redundant when we have Paladin and Dark Knight, who both cast magic spells in an instant cast fashion.

In my opinion, Casters are casters because they have cast bars, whether it's a channel or fill guage. Yes instant cast spells are still "cast" but now it's just arguing semantics.




I certainly wasn't arguing for any kind of a ranged tank because that's an even more absurd idea than a tank that primarily has cast bars for their attacks.



That's one definition sure, but it can also be applied as a gameplay mechanic and not an identity, that's how words work they can have multiple definitions. And in the viewpoint of games development particularly for MMO's, a Caster is someone who casts spells usually via cast bars. You don't call Death Knights in WoW casters even though they cast plenty of spells, but you'd call Mages casters, Warlocks casters, etc. etc. You're really just arguing semantics here.

Well, DK's do focus on using their melee-range weapons to deal most of whatever damage they do, so they are classified as melee. It's not so much semantics as it is deductive reasoning/logic. DKs use their melee weapons to deal most of the damage, be it Shadow or Frost, so they must be in melee range. Purely physical classes like Warrior also has to use melee range weapons to deal most/all damage, which we classify as melee. Both rely primarily on their physical close-ranged combat skills and damage to do their roles. Thus, DK is melee by default and not caster.

Since WoW is brought up, I guess the primary example one can give on the matter is Paladin and Druid there. Do you consider Holy (healing) spec to be a caster? If so, do you consider Protection or Retribution to be casters? They do use spells afterall. I'm going to assume "no". If we're going on the cast time/bars bit, then what does that make Resto Druids? Their primary means of healing is instant cast HoT spells, where it was pretty rare to see them actually use a cast bar throughout various expansion pack periods of the game before. They obvious had some spells with cast bars, and it would only be there for a couple, but it was hardly a heavy occurrence. I'd argue it's not much different than how often you'd see a cast bar on PLD here. I'm going to again assume something, in that you'd consider those Resto Druids as "casters", despite it commonly not casting spells involving cast bars.

Thus we get to my point on that matter, and what I honestly believe is a universal objective acceptance of what we consider a "caster". They are classes/jobs that are magic users where magic spells (in general) are their primary function, and thus we are able to separate physical combat oriented cases like XIV's PLD from it, despite it have magic spells available. This is akin to the differing of Protection and Retribution specs from Holy in WoW. Heavy cast bar requirements being present for most/all spell casts for the term to apply becomes very subjective, as is the case with my mentioning of Resto Druids.

And just to note, I left out "primarily magic users" at the beginning of my reply you quoted, so while we do have 2 magic using tanks, that's not how they function to primarily do their role. I did mention the "primary" bit at the end, in my defense. The tanks we have now focus on their physical combat skills to do their roles, rather than actual magic like you'd see from a BLM or SMN. Keep in mind that the term "caster" is never officially bound, and simply applied by common understanding. So you're not technically wrong to view it that way, but there is an underlying understanding about it. I laid out as much of an objective definition for the community as I could think of, but from there, the details are where it becomes subjective. I get where you're coming from on the idea of cast bars, since that's what magic users are often tied with (lore wise due to incantations and chants), but then we have to look at examples that break the mold, again referring to Resto Druid.

Edit: Just to add another clarification, I agree that the redundancy argument is pointless to say SAM can't be a tank. Over saturation of many elements that make up an MMORPG game are centered around redundant themes lol. Source: 13yrs of various MMORPG play, which include 12yrs of WoW and around 8 staggered yrs of XI.

[Shippuu]

Is pulling back on a bow, aiming and firing a "cast?" Many pen and paper games allow quick casts, free casts, etc. and I don't really feel there should be a minium casting time on what counts as a spell. Even look at the barspells in 11 with full Fast Cast gear, that's hardly a casting time if you have gear to back it.

I mean if you have to bring in examples from games that have entirely different fundamental mechanics to make the point is it really that solid of a point? FFXIV isn't a pen and paper turn based RPG. FFXI was an asburdly slow and now dated combat system that allowed the freedom for casting to be more viable in different ways.

It doesn't change the fact that to make such a class work it needs lots of special exceptions/permissions and some of those include destroying the identity of an MMORPG caster to the point that it's not even what one might call a caster, but just a tank/melee/whatever that has a few spells not unlike 2 of our current 3 tanks.

I see your point here but a few things: 1)Even the tanks don't share gear all of the time. They seem to be getting better about this, but you can't wear esoteric PLD gear on WAR for instance so they break that cycle themselves on occassion. I don't think keeping the gear like that is so much intentional to keep people playing tanks as it is keeping it to 1 model instead of 3, but that might just be me seeing the glass half empty. 2)A little horizontal progression would allow people to gear more than one set of jobs a patch cycle and allow people not only to gear that tank and that dps, it might spur people to level tanks knowing they'd have a chance to gear it to be relevant that patch cycle. One of the main draws to this and FFXI was the ability to level everything on one character, and I feel it's sorely underutilized here with the lockouts. Many people don't play tanks because they don't like the playstyle, mechanics, etc of the current jobs and having one out of left field might do wonders for the tank population.

The thing is, there's generally only 3 sets of gear that aren't shared with tanks. (This is counting PvE gear, as there were 2 sets of PvP gear that are tank specific.) The AF, the Mythology gear, and later the Esoteric gear. That makes those the exception rather than the rule, as all raiding gear, dungeon gear, the vast majority of tomestone gear, crafted gear, is all universal for tanks. The Mythology gear was re-skins of AF armor from 1.0 and thus required little development time, and Esoteric gear was likely to recreat the feel of 2.0's pattern as well as used for promotional reasons to advertise more than anything. In 4.0 we will likely see the first set be job specific once again but shared after that.

Tanks sharing gear has many benefits, from development time on not having to create a bunch of sets, to my prior mention of offering tank players flexibility in playing multiple tanks simultaneously without needing to gear multiple jobs. It wasn't just one of these reasons that made them decide to do such a thing but a combination of them.

As for horizontal progression, that's a whole other can of worms that's pretty irrelevant to the topic. The game already offers many ways to gear secondary jobs and horizontal gear may or may not help people do that. Horizontal gear may also not work in this day and age as an appropriate carrot on a stick for this generation of MMO players.
It's risky and to be frank they can't afford to take too many risks, the game already failed once and people seem to forget that.

As for contesting gear I don't really think that's much of an issue. Not only do you have ways to avoid quequing with people that might take your gear DPS can and do contest gear with every DPS. Full BRD/MCH parties happen, maybe you think it's a big deal because you are now the tank and are used to fighting one person for drops at best but we've been doing fine fighting up to 3 others. Should I just drop parties with multiples of my job/role? Will you gear up a bit slower than a traditional tank? But if you had more varied content and more horizontal progression you can do solo content every so often for decent gear, tome gear, 4 man parties and still get there. And this could go the other way as well, releasing DPS/healer jobs that use the tank gear would stop just the up to two tanks from having free reign on gear.

Contesting gear for tanks with dps is indeed an issue, and while it's easy to say tank players are entitled or privileged that they don't have to compete with DPS for gear it's still eliminating a perk to playing a tank. The key to increasing or at least keeping your tanking population healthy is certainly not removing benefits/perks to playing that role. If anything there needs to be more incentive applied to play those roles. Is it fair? Not necessarily, but it's something that usually needs to be done.

By saying something like " releasing DPS/healer jobs that use the tank gear would stop just the up to two tanks from having free reign on gear." definitely shows your mindset on this that you want to see that perk removed from tank players and unfortunately that's just not healthy for this game's longevity and a bad design and business decision. You want to encourage people to play tanks, not discourage them.

It absolutely does take time, but they have to try. Tome #567345384 capped at 450/week across all jobs and two dungeons doesn't really do much to address things. And I'm not saying they should do this for patch 3.5 or whatever, but expansions are the place to fix the big stuff and they could attempt it there. However I do kinda feel like this is a bit off topic, unless you feel RDM is a full caster.

In a perfect world they'd have the time to do all the cool things, but unfortunately they just don't. It was also a game that failed and got an unheard of full remake and re-release pretty much and as such is likely limited in the choice of trying experimental things. They are unfortunately forced to play fairly conservatively as a result, even if slowly over time that runs the game into the ground again. They are more likely to continue with the pattern and slowly sink, then to keep trying to reinvent the wheel and blowing up their boat.

As for RDM, I don't feel it'd work best as a full caster and could definitely see it as a tank if not for the itemization problem as I've mentioned above on tanks sharing gear etc. From that standpoint it makes more sense to have Samurai be the Tank and RDM some form of DPS (or perhaps healer).

[Shippuu]

Druid WoW stuff

I see where you're coming from and I understand. Druid is definitely a sort of anomaly if that's the case. At the same time they still have casted heals like regrowth and healing touch but they're definitely an example of something that can't be easily labelled caster or not.

So you've pointed out my flawed mindset of what I would describe something as a caster and I'll concede that to you. You have a broader definition of caster than I, and so when I think of a caster something more specific comes to mind but it doesn't have to be confined like that.

I still feel I'd have a hard time calling a job that used mostly instant cast spells in FFXIV a "caster tank." A Mage tank certainly. Even then it doesn't really broach the issue that a primarily magical damaging tank has it's own problems, but that can be solved with simply having said magical attacks deal normal typed damage and not magic damage, even if that doesn't make the most sense. It's done on current jobs anyways so guess it's a non-issue.

There's still the itemization issue if it's supposed to look like a mage. But if it's an armored mage then that'd be fine too. There's just not many iconic (and popular) Final Fantasy jobs that fit that bill. Samurai could still definitely be one of them though as it's had some history with magical attacks/summoning spirits etc.

[Welsper59]

I see where you're coming from and I understand. Druid is definitely a sort of anomaly if that's the case. At the same time they still have casted heals like regrowth and healing touch but they're definitely an example of something that can't be easily labelled caster or not.

So you've pointed out my flawed mindset of what I would describe something as a caster and I'll concede that to you. You have a broader definition of caster than I, and so when I think of a caster something more specific comes to mind but it doesn't have to be confined like that.

I still feel I'd have a hard time calling a job that used mostly instant cast spells in FFXIV a "caster tank." A Mage tank certainly. Even then it doesn't really broach the issue that a primarily magical damaging tank has it's own problems, but that can be solved with simply having said magical attacks deal normal typed damage and not magic damage, even if that doesn't make the most sense. It's done on current jobs anyways so guess it's a non-issue.

There's still the itemization issue if it's supposed to look like a mage. But if it's an armored mage then that'd be fine too. There's just not many iconic (and popular) Final Fantasy jobs that fit that bill. Samurai could still definitely be one of them though as it's had some history with magical attacks/summoning spirits etc.

Oh I definitely agree. The naming convention of a "caster tank" just doesn't flow well. Thus, I'd probably never call it that, even though it technically would qualify, but as you've stated a "mage tank" would be better. From my experience, the type of damage a tank of magical properties would mostly do is such a cop out field lol. "Non-elemental" is a frequent one RPGs like to turn to.

As for itemization, just like the damage type, they can always just make up something. Samurai though, follow Bushido, which lore wise does have a bit of spiritual magics involved, is more akin to giving them super human capabilities. SAM would probably be the least likely candidate of being a magic type... in fact, the only one left of potential options (since DRK and PLD are done) would be RDM lol.

[SaitoHikari]

I highly, highly doubt we're getting all three classes in the next expansion, let alone even two. They'll want to spread out the popular classes for future expansions. At most, we'll see one of the hyper popular suggested classes, a mildly popular/slightly oddball class, and a complete oddball class that still fits into the game's lore.

[silentwindfr]

my point comes from what have said Yoshida about bring new jobs in the game, what about the fact that they must bring something new to the game and the party.
sam as tank is too close of war and drk for be really bring something news. the only difference will be mainly the gimmicks.... no new mechanic.

where dark knight and war differer is in the use of the ressource, one is mostly throught tp the other is more mana.
samurai is not a caster, meaning most of him technic will be tp focus, one more time close of what we have already. your point are simply ignoring this... you think:" we need more tank and i want samurai as tank" ignoring the fact that samurai is redundant with war and drk.

if they want to bring another tank, they need to create a new mechanic and something different, not that close of what we have already. what will be the samurai niche?
more a damage dealer tank, more a resilient tank, more a magical tank... no as a samurai he will really on counter, what is quite random, without forget the classe already present are doing it too, they have counter skill. but they are too limited for be really good as mechanic.

they will have more opportunity to create something news with caster tank or even a pet tank, than a samurai tank.

you absolutly want a samurai tank, because you love samurai and playing tank periode, not because it's needed or will bring anything news to the game. Samurai as tank will bring nothing new to the tank role. plus it will not help the tank population to increase, if people don't want to play tank even if they love the class, they will not play tank.

My point is from what we have already as tank jobs.... Samurai is too close of warrior and dark knight for be a good choice. it will be a weak choice and will not help the game to become better.

ps: i do have the three tank maxed, and did play them quite a lot, however i fail to see how add samurai will help the tank role... bring something news is needed.
about casting spell as a tank, i must recall to a lot of you that tank role are the one that must move only when is absolutly needed, it's one of the less moving role. meaning it have all the freedom to cast spell.

[Rawrz]

Blue Mage. I want to believe.

[Balipu]

I really hope they'd make Dancer more Bard than Bard actually is here. I miss the concept of support jobs from the FF series, even if they were lackluster in practice, outside of XI's nearly perfect application of the role in an MMORPG.
.

Well problem is, there is no support slot in DF. For a pure support role the devs would need to rebalance every single encounter in the game. Nope. Not going to happen. Like it or not, we are stuck with the holy trinity.

Dancer is actually the least likely of the 3 however. It's one that a lot of players have asked for but its not once been mentioned by Yoshida or the devs. Samurai has been talked about quite a bit and is undoubtedly a surefire addition to the game at some point, whether its 4.0 or later, it was originally in consideration for the tank role for 3.0 but lost out to DRK at the last minute (so some could argue it's role has already been decided and simply pushed back to a later expansion). And red mage has been mentioned quite a bit, and notoriously Yoshida has said recently it's one of his favorite jobs. Which interestingly enough he said the same thing about Dark Knight and Machinist in one interview months before the first Fanfest back in 2014.

So I would say, in my opinion, that Red Mage is potentially the most likely to he added in 4.0. It's iconic appearance will make for easy marketing and I wouldn't be surprised to see a CGI trailer where the Hyur changes jobs again to the Red Mage

I personally think the job change will be to monk. We are going to Ala Mhigo after all. To mirror the Heawensvard trailer even more. Then again, the Dragoon armor is a lot more iconic than whatever monks wear.

Btw um I think dancer should be race restricted, can't see a lala twerking to stun enemies or doing a very sensual dance to get aggro or grinding on the tank to heal their hp.( btw a AOE heal should involves splits and twisting in the air like a acrobatist)

I can totally see em twerking Besides ARR doesn't do race restricted classes.

3 melee dps and 4 ranged. Redmage could make it 4 and 4, or samurai could make it 4 and 4. But there are more ranged dps than melee because melee dps have partial tank mentality whether they know it or not. DRK added alot of new tank players to the game. Even though the census says 19%, there are many players that play tank for dungeons for fast dungeon queues, but main dps for everything else, thus they skew the census by a tad bit

And there are people like me who play every class. Although I ninja most of the time.

the trouble with samurai as tank, and it was pointed countless time but ignored by some, is... it will be:
- a two hand sword class (like the dark knight)
- based on parry (like dark knight and warrior)
- mostly physical damage (like paladin and warrior)
- wearing heavy armor (like every tank)

Well there is a reason why I picked SAM - dps and DNC - tank as my favorite.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Keep telling you guys, RDM tank is where it's at.

What are they gonna do with their Shields anyway otherwise?

So many possibilities for unique tank stuff, and since it would be a Mage Tank, have their shield block magic hits too!

Well Black Mages can use shields as well. Yet, they don't tank.

I highly, highly doubt we're getting all three classes in the next expansion, let alone even two. They'll want to spread out the popular classes for future expansions. At most, we'll see one of the hyper popular suggested classes, a mildly popular/slightly oddball class, and a complete oddball class that still fits into the game's lore.

I'd be fine with those as well. hell, I'd be fine with all three being complete oddballs. I love oddball class and races choices. But I still think we are going to get at least two of these now.

[shao32]

snip

Apart to add a new fresh air to tanks, you forget WAR utility go to get nerf and there is no other tank how figth to WAR in the OT spot, so add a new tank with some utility take it from WAR, a new gameplay, only need to watch other tanks un other mmo to see there is todo many mechanics to add to the role.

I can use the same excuse to say why we need new dps, for what? Whe already have a burts melee, a high constant dps melee and one with nice utility, long sword dps? Just a dragoon or a monk with a long sword.

My point is every role deserve have new fresh gameplays, if you want a mmo where only are dps and all the new jobs are dps then ffxiv is not you game, only add a job with a creative gameplay is already adding something fresh and new and many ppl go to enjoy it.

Every role deserve have new toys to play.