Save Scholar: Add one last Class to the game.

[KisaiTenshi]

I still don't know why people cite problems with XIV's implementation of the class > job system as conceptual flaws to the idea of having a broader opening class to a later, more focused advanced class (or "job").

Find any video from Wizardy Online talking about cross-classing and Elite classes and it will immediately become obvious why the class-Job system is bad. Final Fantasy I's class-job upgrade was lifted directly from Wizardy's Elite classes, just using different names. Where as in Wizardy the elite classes were 50% one and 50% the other class, in FFI you just got additional skills in the same class, and it wasn't half of anything.

From a design concept, you can pull 10 skills from any/all classes, some of these are useful, many are not. When you upgrade to Job, you get restricted to 5 skills, and only "useful" skills.

So the upcoming Role system does away with being able to cross-class anything from another role, but it's ultimately the same thing, just now you can't have Tanks with Healer skills, or DPS with tank skills. To simplify things further they removed skills that overlapped too much to reduce cross-bar creep.

To really look at how the Job system in FFXIV really works, you have to go back to FFV. You initially start in "Freelancer" and can switch to any job without changing your base level (that's how FFXIV V 1.0 worked) That base level was stripped out and now you can only switch between jobs you have main hand weapons for. It's an improvement but also screws up the job-progression since you can't fork off a class into two different jobs of a different role, as one of those jobs will be "half and half" (see my wizardy statement above)

So ultimately the intent was something that MMORPG's were trying (or in some cases had tried already and wound up switching to a role system too), but didn't actually do well. Historically even in single-player RPG games, being able to arbitrarily change the class of the character leads to a kind of power creep where one specific configuration leads to nothing but face-roll gameplay.

Could you imagine if you could just cast X-zone/Death on every monster and it would be over like in FF5 and FF6?

Just because a class allows you to level to the point that a job begins, or is somehow attached by name, doesn't even mean that it needs to directly transfer a single skill or trait into the branching job, nor that its traits or trait-based mechanics would have to be limited to what the class produces...

Alternatively, take the latest cross-role system. There's nothing to prevent the PLD, DRK, and WAR versions of the 20% for 20s per 90s mitigation buff (Rampart) from having a different name and animation on each.

Why the false ultimatums?

Players want to be outraged. As an equal comparison in the game Mabinogoi, up to a certain point, the game had no actual classes, you could learn any skill arbitrarily, and if you screwed up you "rebirth" back to level 1 and level other skills, repeat every week. Then Nexon decided to introduce actual classes into the game and there was extreme rage and in-game protests in Korea and in North America about "stuff being taken away" like not even close to the outrage with WHM here is. Nexon relented a little and didn't put in any of the debuffs, but you only get bonuses if you pick a class, which means any class you pick gets double training points, but if you use skills outside that class, regular "freelance" training rate. This feature otherwise would have made it so "healer" players unable to do any content alone.

People actually preferred that "min-max BiS" freelance mechanic and didn't want to become yet-another-cookie-cutter Fantasy WoW game. Classes means they actually have to pick sensible classes for content, and since new content skills often had the same progression as old ones, it was very possible to have every skill in the game, and still suck at hard content because because you don't know which skills are useful in certain content, and newer content often required using the new skills, and if you use the new skills on "hard mode" versions of old content, it was still a face roll. Like people made a point of solo'ing all old content using no skills at all because the base strength (no level sync) ensured there was no challenge.

FFXIV's best features is the level sync mechanic, because it ensures you can't just spam a dungeon in 30 seconds by running straight to the boss room and flicking the bosses nose and having them die. You can't be carried by having one over-powered player just blowing through the content.

One of FFXIV's worst features is the cross-class system, because it does not enforce picking useful skills for your role, rather it discourages teamwork by having every one pick the BiS skill, and ignoring everything else. The Role system, in theory means the role skills can be divided between the players playing that content in 8/24 man content, where as before everyone just picked the same thing.

As much as I hate being "forced to play a role", I would rather that be enforced during party play to encourage teamwork rather than everyone-for-themselves style play that many other MMORPG's evolve into, because the content becomes too easy too quickly. If Square-Enix is guilty of anything, it's allowing the content to become easy by not adapting the content to the player's power-creep as part of level-sync. If there is a 20% differential between wearing level 50 gear and level 60 gear in a dungeon that is level synced to 50, then (4) players are at least 80% too powerful once level sync kicks in, and in 8-man content, 160% too powerful. So what will happen with level 70 gear? Will players be able to just solo level 50 content while synced? I think that needs to be addressed.

[Eloah]

I love my dot based healer. Its synergy is undeniable with a fairy. Stopping a GCD to heal, is a much smaller DPS loss than if we were to have to spam Broil II every GCD to maintain DPS.

This, 1000x this. Scholar was a great healer and DPS, because of the DoTs. We didn't have the best spam-able heals, our abilities cost more, and we had limited resources for burst heals. But all of that meshed together with out DoTs and our Fairy to make us a viable healer. To remove any aspect nerfs us a great deal. And all other things aside, I might, might be okay with Broil II spams if it was the same potency as the other healers final moves. Now I know it lists Malefic III as 210, but they can turn any card into an attack if they desire, we will only Broil spam, and WHM gets Stone 4 with a 260 potency. I know its a WHM question buy why have they not been given any Water moves yet?

[Sunako]

Sorry, but just to be clear, what is SCH loosing? I though it was maintaining pretty much the same kit it currently had.

IF we are talking about dps rotatio, sch will only maintain 2 dots now instead 5 dots. Aero is not cross class skill anymore, bio and bio 2 is merged and shadow flare is off global dot ability that you can use during instant casts like bio 2.

[Shurrikhan]

Find any video from Wizardy Online talking about cross-classing and Elite classes and it will immediately become obvious why the class-Job system is bad. Final Fantasy I's class-job upgrade was lifted directly from Wizardy's Elite classes, just using different names. Where as in Wizardy the elite classes were 50% one and 50% the other class, in FFI you just got additional skills in the same class, and it wasn't half of anything.

From a design concept, you can pull 10 skills from any/all classes, some of these are useful, many are not. When you upgrade to Job, you get restricted to 5 skills, and only "useful" skills.

Again, this is a fact of implementation, not of Broad/Progressive vs. Focused/Advanced tiered classes.

So the upcoming Role system does away with being able to cross-class anything from another role, but it's ultimately the same thing, just now you can't have Tanks with Healer skills, or DPS with tank skills. To simplify things further they removed skills that overlapped too much to reduce cross-bar creep.

Locking out cross-role skills (e.g. those that would allow a DPS a tank skill or a tank a DPS skill) eases development's ability to keep the relative value of different skills more equal across progression (where these skills would otherwise be traded out in favor originally of survival and latter of damage assuming that the fight isn't built around DPS checks, as per post-Gordias design promises), but it has nothing to do the broad/advanced class tiers concept itself.

Further, trading out one set of actions for an equal number of actions does not reduce cross-bar creep. 5 is 5 is 5. Granted, the total spread of options within these new choices do appear slightly more varied and worthwhile. But that has nothing to do with creep.

To really look at how the Job system in FFXIV really works, you have to go back to FFV. You initially start in "Freelancer" and can switch to any job without changing your base level (that's how FFXIV V 1.0 worked) That base level was stripped out and now you can only switch between jobs you have main hand weapons for. It's an improvement but also screws up the job-progression since you can't fork off a class into two different jobs of a different role, as one of those jobs will be "half and half" (see my wizardy statement above).

Either a particular implementation works in its then-current context or it doesn't. It's history is irrelevant to that. The loss of Physical Level did not necessitate class-based bonus stat allotments nor shared skills, if that's what you mean by "half in half". The decision to base bonus stats ONLY on class, rather than overriding with a new allotment set when swapping to a job branching from said class, and the decision NOT to modify any inherited spells did that. These are not necessary limitations.

So ultimately the intent was something that MMORPG's were trying (or in some cases had tried already and wound up switching to a role system too), but didn't actually do well. Historically even in single-player RPG games, being able to arbitrarily change the class of the character leads to a kind of power creep where one specific configuration leads to nothing but face-roll gameplay.

Examples? The only reason stacked or narrowing class choice would result in power creep is if the game specifically failed to balance the weight or outputs from different roles, classes, or other forms of load-outs. (See EDIT.)

Could you imagine if you could just cast X-zone/Death on every monster and it would be over like in FF5 and FF6?

As above, that would simply be a failure of balance — of implementation. None of this is relevant to a system of having Broad & Focused class tiers. I can understand your thoughts on the subject, but not what relevance your post here has to what you've quoted of mine.

One of FFXIV's worst features is the cross-class system, because it does not enforce picking useful skills for your role, rather it discourages teamwork by having every one pick the BiS skill, and ignoring everything else.

EDIT: This seems to be where we don't see eye to eye. Picking BiS skills and making best use of them through optimal gameplay is teamwork, technically. It might not feel particularly "together we stand", but if that is where design has placed the optimal advantage by which a party, working perfectly in conjunction, most quickly clears a given overall challenge, then that is the best choice for team play. It is simply a failure (or at least, lackluster aspect) of implementation that a skill that has no party synergy or is otherwise unengaging would most contribute to party success, not some fated flaw in concept. Whether is comes through a bank of skills shared between classes, among a role, or unique to a given class is irrelevant to that. One wants what's engaging, but will, FOR THE SAKE OF TEAM PLAY, pick what is optimal, even if dull.

[KisaiTenshi]

EDIT: This seems to be where we don't see eye to eye. Picking BiS skills and making best use of them through optimal gameplay is teamwork, technically. It might not feel particularly "together we stand", but if that is where design has placed the optimal advantage by which a party, working perfectly in conjunction, most quickly clears a given overall challenge, then that is the best choice for team play. It is simply a failure (or at least, lackluster aspect) of implementation that a skill that has no party synergy or is otherwise unengaging would most contribute to party success, not some fated flaw in concept. Whether is comes through a bank of skills shared between classes, among a role, or unique to a given class is irrelevant to that. One wants what's engaging, but will, FOR THE SAKE OF TEAM PLAY, pick what is optimal, even if dull.

This is the problem with everyone picking Cleric Stance in the healer role. You get screamed at, shouted down, and basically told you're a bad player if you don't have it, because maybe you wanted something else with more utility. If you don't follow the BiS guide for best rotation from some arbitrary wiki, good gawd you're a bad player, don't even play this game /s.

Yet the only cross-class skill that has ever felt necessary on healers is Swiftcast (and even then, just to avoid cast times of StoneSkin II and Revive.) That remains in the role system. Ruin, Psysick, Virus, Blizzard II, all gone. As Conjurer, you also lose Convalescence, Provoke, Awareness, Featherfoot, Second Wind, Internal Release, Mantra, Foresight Bloodbath, Mercy Stroke, Keen Flurry, Invigorate, Blood for Blood, Raging Strikes, Hawk's Eye, and Quelling Strikes already when you switch to White Mage. This is why the class -> Job system is broken.

If you're playing SCH, you still keep the arcanist skillset. But can pull Cure, Aero, Protect, Raise and Stoneskin from Conjurer. Yet because Arcanist is a DPS and Scholar is a healer, you don't get to pull any of the other DPS job skills you do as Summoner. Yet why would you want to pull Cure and Raise from Conjurer when you already have Psysick and Resurrection from Arcanist? Why does Arcanist have these skills if they are a DPS?

See how this is a mess?
Class = Access to all the cross-class actions (most ending at level 34, and no passives), Nothing from Astrologian, Dark Knight or Machinist can be cross-classed, because they don't have a class.
Job = Access to only cross-class actions of Two Melee or two Caster types related to the class

In other games that have had cross-class systems, every class had some kind of wanted skill in the upper levels of that class that made leveling that class useful. So your character would have all the BiS skills from every class. That is going away.

What should be expected when the "class" system disappears at some point is that the arcanist storyline get's moved to Scholar, and they create a new storyline for Summoner to replaced the arcanist storyline. The storyline itself fits more with the Scholar theme. Then just to be fair to everyone Square-Enix will let everyone reset the Level 1-30 storyline on any class, and the most obvious change will be the replacement of the former class name with the job the entire time, and the "job stone" aspects just disappear entirely.

[Kabzy]

Sorry, but just to be clear, what is SCH loosing? I though it was maintaining pretty much the same kit it currently had.

Blizzard 2 removed, Miasma 2 removed, Shadow Flare uptime nerfed, and Bane potentially nerfed. AoE damage on SCHs will be terrible if this is all true, but apparently our ST damage will be the same or even slightly better.

But going beyond that, I don't even think this is a matter of numbers for most of us SCHs. It's the fact that we go from juggling 5 DoTs with ability weaving, to having a rotation easier than 2.0 PLD. Not saying that 3.x SCH is challenging, but it at least kept us busy and hitting different buttons constantly with that, healing and Faerie management. Having only 2 DoTs and a nuke is going to be mind-numbingly boring for SCHs who are used to doing so much more. They've definitely made this game easier, but they've also toned down the fun for a lot of us who could actually handle 3.x rotations.

[Vulcwen]

They've definitely made this game easier, but they've also toned down the fun for a lot of us who could actually handle 3.x rotations.

You mean 2.x rotations.. The rotation for SCH didn't actually change going into 3.0, the DPS kit we have is from 2.x aside from broil, which just replaced ruin/ruin2 as a spam skill.
When I first started playing, I switched to SCH because I couldn't stand the boring WHM rotation, with this nerf, SCH will get an even worse rotation than WHM (since the remaining SCH dots have a longer duration than WHMs). There is also no DoT-based job in the game with 4.0 because of these changes.

Anyway, there is room in the cross-role system to give SCH a AoE spam still: break.. it's 50 potency.. they only need to make it AoE.. AoE heavy in PvE won't be OP. (that said I like blizzard 2's animation.. that will be gone from the game as BLMs will never use that anyway).

[Ariane]

Anyway, there is room in the cross-role system to give SCH a AoE spam still: break.. it's 50 potency.. they only need to make it AoE.. AoE heavy in PvE won't be OP. (that said I like blizzard 2's animation.. that will be gone from the game as BLMs will never use that anyway).

50 wouldn't be enough. They need more like a 200 potency AOE like the other healers now. They took almost all the AOE spells from SCH. Without bio and if those bane numbers are right, bane is going to be worst than Aero iii. Shadowflare is only going to last 15 seconds on a 60 second cooldown.

[Ama_Hamada]

Yes I am worried about our AoE damage. Guess only choice is just wait and see. More I think about the update / 4.0, more of a mess some jobs are going to be.

[Vulcwen]

50 wouldn't be enough. They need more like a 200 potency AOE like the other healers now. They took almost all the AOE spells from SCH. Without bio and if those bane numbers are right, bane is going to be worst than Aero iii. Shadowflare is only going to last 15 seconds on a 60 second cooldown.

Yeh, aoe break would still only be worth using at 5 targets or more (250 > 230), but that would've been the case if we kept access to blizzard 2 as well.
I don't want a 200 potency AoE like the other healers tho.. things should be more varied instead of homogenized to the point everything plays the same.. I like DoT-based classes so I want SE to focus more on that aspect for SCH.. however SE has made a decision to move away from DoTs in general.