What new class and or battle mechanics do you wish 4.0 will bring?

[Sandpark]

This is awesome. Something like PotD for this content would be solid. Being able to have party members all shifting to different classes like in XIII. If a huge attack is coming in having 3 people flip to a defense roll to reduce damage and leave a healer for AoE healing. Its something that I think would be great! Anything that encourages on the fly job swapping.

The class system allowed that in 1.0 if not mistaken. Content of that nature could be good for solo/low man in content like PoTD. Kind of limited things to do outside full parties and the squadron dungeon thing will or will not come at whatever time.

[Zohar_Lahar]

Perhaps something similar to the boss at the end of Xelphatol.

[Kiteless]

Just gonna say my piece, although I question how popular it might be.

If SAM does end up in the game, I'd like to see it as a hybrid bow/spear class. Seamlessly mixing ranged and melee (as a DPS or even a tank) could make for some interesting situations and class mechanics that haven't yet been explored, and katanas were pretty poor weapons anyway. Not to mention, it would avoid the weapon overlap with DRK while also being more true to how samurai actually fought.

[Chiramu]

Just gonna say my piece, although I question how popular it might be.

If SAM does end up in the game, I'd like to see it as a hybrid bow/spear class. Seamlessly mixing ranged and melee (as a DPS or even a tank) could make for some interesting situations and class mechanics that haven't yet been explored, and katanas were pretty poor weapons anyway. Not to mention, it would avoid the weapon overlap with DRK while also being more true to how samurai actually fought.

SAM would be good as a high DPS damage dealer like Auron in FFX imo . Slow attack speed but high damage.

[Aquaslash]

Too much problems for this game with that.

First, imagine having to get several copies of gear with the diferent elements, where would you put those with our current inventory. If resistances were a thing, BLM would be utterly screwed in fights against Ice/Fire enemies. If anything, that silly elemental resistance table has to go, is just trash cluttering the UI. Remove it completely from the game. Along with the status resistances, those should be hidden stats.

But that would be actually interesting. It would mean that the best gear would be encounter based, and so you'd have to think before entering, instead of grinding for one universal set of gear and calling it a day. It'd be like Destiny, where the enemies have solar burn, so you bust out your Gjallarhorn (an incendiary rocket launcher) and avoid fire attacks like hell because they'd one shot you.

As for what I'd want? Yeah let's make elements useful. Also I've noticed that as a DRG, I seem to be "weak" to magic damage. I'd like to see that kind of thing expounded upon. Advantaged and disadvantages based on class. There could be mechanics that I have to approach completely different because of said weakness to magic damage, or there could be an instance where my jumps allow me to reach certain heights or critical points.

Basically make the difference between classes more than just what weapon you use, cause that's all it is now.



Oh and samurai. The only reason I even picked DRG is cause I told my friends I wanted to be like the Red Shogun Ranger and they said DRG was the closest thing.

[Zafrei]

I'd like them to address the growing skill bloat. Skills need pruning a hell of a lot, two and a half hotbars and 20+ skill rotations is way too many skills in an mmo in 2016, even for a tab target system.

[Aquaslash]

I'd like them to address the growing skill bloat. Skills need pruning a hell of a lot, two and a half hotbars and 20+ skill rotations is way too many skills in an mmo in 2016, even for a tab target system.

They could merge a bunch of skills. Right off the top of my head, Inner Beast and Fell Cleave could be one skill that changes based on tank stance. Same with Steel Cyclone and...that other version that I don't have yet. DRG could also do this by merging Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw and basing them on if Chaos Thrust or Full Thrust is used. This also takes out that pesky RNG so it's win win.

[Gardes]

More emphasis on reactive skills.

Every class gets one reactive skill if they don't already have one (cooldowns and skill effects adjusted). Tanks can initiate a chain by using a reactive skill (shield bash, reprisal, etc). Once used, a monster gets a !! status for 3-5 seconds and any melee dps can break their rotation with their own reactive skill (like haymaker). A successful follow up will create a magical reaction (strength depends on total of tank and melee dps participation) and ranged dps can follow up on a downed monster to increase the magic explosion effect. If all 3 chain succeeds, monster gets downed for a couple seconds (or other effects if 8man boss) and party gets a minor healing received bonus.

If samurai is introduced as a dps, it has a unique gimmick of being able to initiate, close and finalize the chains (multiple reactive skills).

[Yellow]

Reworked classes/jobs to take into account elements. Elemental resistance being relevant for being attacked, rather than worrying about getting gear to mitigate elemental damage (i.e give black mage different play styles/rotations depending on the element they're using).

More interactive ways to use spells (i.e charge abilities by holding the key).

Blue Mage (Melee/Magic DPS)
Red Mage (Melee support DPS)
Mystic (Healer)
Geomancer (Elemental caster that uses Wind/Water/Earth)
Time mage (Elemental caster that uses astral/umbral magic)

I mean, I guess this is just a list of things that'll never happen? :P

[Shurrikhan]

I won't comment on the "I like not just being a raid frames heal bot", because honestly, that's a subjective thing and I could make the argument that that's EXACTLY the kind of playstyle I like and neither of us would be wrong. I guess the clearly defining aspect here is that one playstyle seems more in line with what the healer role IS, whereas the other seems more like a hybrid design and in a trinity game like this one that's making for some VERY uncomfortable balance issues ATM. (I mean...the devs STILL think that buffing Astrologian's shields are what will make them competitive with SCH, lol.)

I'm sure people are tired of the WoW comparisons, but here's how my healing is scaling currently in that game: basic heal (Healing Wave/Surge on my Restoration Shaman) heals for about 10% of a tank's overall HP value (about 15-20% on a DPS). Note that in WoW, there IS no "basic heal II" equivalent - this would be like FFXIV healers only having Cure/Benefic. My AOE healing spell, which doesn't even hit all the players in a raid, is scaled about the same. I have a re-raise on myself only that I can use once every 30 minutes. I have no other form of in-combat resurrection. I have one big raid-wide heal that heals for about 30% of everyone's HP, assuming they're in range...this move is on a THREE-MINUTE cooldown. I have a move similar to Diurnal Aspected Benefic, a front-loaded small heal with a fairly decent HoT component; 9-second cooldown (this makes sense, you don't spam A.Bene in Diurnal Sect either). I have another 30-second cooldown HoT, as well as a VERY small-radii ground-target HoT that obviously only effects players if they stand in it. This HoT actually has a cooldown as long as its duration, which is unusual in WoW, but it's not very powerful (about 5% of tank HP, and 10% of DPS HP). Lastly, thanks to my artifact weapon (which is something only JUST added with Legion), I have a ground-target AOE heal that heals for about 5% of a tank's HP and about 10-15% of a DPS's HP, on a 45-second cooldown. Note that no healing class in World of Warcraft has a blanket throughput boost in the vein of Divine Seal, Synastry, Fey Illumination, unless MW Monks do because they're the only healer I haven't played. I HAVE a throughput boost, called Cloudburst Totem, that stores all the healing I do during the 8 seconds that it's up, and explodes after the duration to heal the party for 20% of the total healing it stored, but there's nothing scaled as obviously high as XIV's 30% healing-up buffs. (Cloudburst is maybe a 10%-20% raidwide heal, if you go absolutely HAM on the AOE heal spam during it, which will tank your mana really fast.)

The end result of a.) this particular heal scaling, and b.) the amount of recovery moves that are restricted to cooldowns actually means that bolstering raid-wide HP after an unavoidable damage blast (like Ursoc's Cacophony in Emerald Nightmare, the current WoW raid out ATM) is actually a multi-GCD affair, and requires ALL the healers in the raid to assist, because shortly after his Cacophony the boss will actually do a charge similar to Imdugud's charge in T10 and everyone needs to be topped off for that (it hits for about half of everyone's HP in the soak group). Meanwhile, the main tank is getting his face shredded by the boss itself right after Cacophony, so your primary tank/single-target healer needs to be on the ball to get the MT topped back off so he doesn't die right after.

I guess this sounds awful to some people, and I feel like my explanation isn't really doing it justice, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I actually have to WORK to get those HP bars back up in WoW, whereas in FFXIV any sort of damage like that is completely trivialized by Medica II/Indom/Helios-Medica spam, and as a result of that, when it takes maybe 2 globals from a single healer, or 1 global from both healers IF that to get party HP above comfortable levels, healers are just kinda left twiddling their thumbs in this game. As I said in my original post, this is great for people who struggle to juggle their UI and healing buttons...extremely boring for people who are veteran healers who thus have to fill the time with spamming the same 3-4 DPS spells.

I mean, if I were to be frank, I think the only way the devs really COULD adjust the meta is by scaling down how much HP tanks have (requiring them to use their mitigation/tank stances more) and how much of the HP bar healer spells actually refill (requiring more globals to get parties out of the "danger zone", so to speak), because anything other than that is serious ability/mechanical reworks and I doubt they have the patience or the budget to bother with that. On the other hand, I don't think the devs actually THINK their meta is broken (see: baffling adjustments to Noct AST), so realistically what will happen is absolutely nothing and future healing jobs will always be funneled into this "WHM-type or SCH-type" pipeline. (Future tank jobs funneled into the "DOES IT HAVE FELL CLEAVE OR NO" pipeline, lol.)

I get that a lot of healers like full intensity healing. Heck, in a raid, I have no issue with taking on that role on my Resto Shaman. I just happen enjoy even more when I have a decision to make -- do I want to allow my teammates to ignore certain things and go ham to get that mob down, or do I want to help kill it myself?" Tidal Pools hastening, a fairly strong HoT in Riptide, Deep Healing Mastery, and a beautifully effective toolkit alongside low-ramp DPS options is what sold Resto Shamans for me, largely because I usually got to see both sides of that coin. As for the more aesthetic switching, take the (enemy) target-damage-absorbing Smite as example; if an enemy is about to deal a flurry of random-target damage, my most reliable choice to keep the party alive and well is to damage that target, absorbing the damage it'll deal (at least to a point). I especially like being able to work closely with a friend, in a some ridiculously complex tacit understanding, as to how or when to use my utility skills.

Tldr; I like versatility, I like seeing multiple sides, and I like helping out in ways that don't so directly equate to "thoroughput" (requiring more creative or adjustive use). That's just player preference, but I see no harm is giving the options for all of those.

I'll agree fully with the comparison of WoW %HP of healing vs. XIV's. It may come down to aesthetics when you consider that a given fight may (it won't, typically, but with enough frequency of damage in XIV, it may) have the same % of time or actions spent healing, but even then, it's quite an effective difference when you're spiking half the tank's HP bar per cast in XIV vs. struggling to refill a third of it in time in WoW. I guess it mostly just allows for a lot more sense of urgency even when spike damage is technically less frequent.
(Though it also gets sad when (pre-IG-nerf) I could heal for more than any of the pure healers on Ursoc on my Protection Warrior just through Ignore Pain and a bit of raid aura leech bonus.)

That said, and you may hate this opinion of mine for good reasons, I feel like DPS in XIV are generally the least versatile role in this game, and tend, if say the needs of a particular fight were to scale with its composition, to have the least thoroughput of any role. Healers, I believe, have the most. My solution to that would likely be to revert some of the HP-inflation of the last general tank change, such that there's not such a passive difference in which roles can survive heavy blows, reduce healing output slightly (though the resultant playstyle would likely be less attractive to me as I'd feel like I spend more time catching up and less time preparing / scampering after rather than feeling ahead of the game), or (my preferred path) by giving DPS a more utility that allows them to play more pivotal roles in the other two's playstyles. That can come down to undermechanics (such as damage naturally causing suppression, or some sort of native sharing or passing of resources or boons, etc.), finally making something of their generally unreliable and underwhelming defensives, empowering skills like Mantra, whatever, so long as it works.

I've gotten off track again, so let me just summarize:
I like less rigid roles. I like cross-overs. And I like multiple perspectives by which a role can fill its functions (e.g. damaging or enfeebling enemies as a way to keep the party safe as a healer). Ideally, I also like less rigid compositions, and less obvious means by which a job contributes throughput. And I feel that having such options should almost only ever be a good thing; multiple paths of viability can broaden gameplay in ways that even adding on any number of jobs or character customization paths cannot. To that end, I'd like to see a more (under)mechanic-heavy XIV that can give greater throughput to things like buffing allied movement, off-healing, covering, damage splitting, reactives, etc., even if that may require giving those things a bit more direct of bonuses where the fights cannot be improved to provide them without causing unnecessary annoyances. I'd like to think more about my composition, and for fights to be more than just 'group them up and hit them until they're dead', even or especially where mechanics are not forced upon you. (I.e. I tend to get more of a kick out of well-executed soft-tanking swaps than forced ones.)

Or to put it another way:

Let the tanks be tanks, the healers be healers, and the DPS be DPS.

I'd rather it be more often viable for DPS to be doing more along the lines of healing and tanking to improve raid DPS where possible, than to actively strip jobs of "cross-over" components or play.

I remain under the option that anything you're doing as a healer or tank that does not have the goal of improving overall raid dps means you aren't preforming to the best of your role / party slot. When you take damage for others, it should be to improve raid dps over the given fight or run. When you place early HoTs on people, it should be to improve raid dps over the given fight or run.

Mistaking labels for the end-all-be-all of the class it's attached to, and denying all else that the given job might best do, is to gut it and then polish the remains. The class can be designed to fit a role, but that doesn't mean it should be cut at the wrists and ankles any time it's actually more beneficial to the raid, whose output should be its only objective, should it step outside that. You say let tanks be tanks, healers be healers, dps be dps. I hear "give the tanks nerf swords, strip cleric stance, strip Mantra (healers' job), Shadewalker (tank's job), and DPS defensives (tanks' job) and self-heals (healers' job). Because that is where that design goal ends up. It needs massive disclaimers.