What jobs are we hoping to see in the next expansion?

[Stormfur]

When I first started leveling archer, I was so happy because I thought I'd get to play more of a rogue/ranger type of class (I joined before the actual rogue/ninja class was introduced). Then I was disappointed that my amazing archer had to become a bard. No offense to those who like to sing and dance but I was really disappointed that I had to change to that particular play-style. Let me shoot arrows and lay traps!

And along the same lines...with machinist, I thought we'd have more of a focus on gadgetry rather than just guns. The new animations are superb and seem to follow this path, but you're always stuck with the lunchbox--I mean aetherometer--on your belt, and your two turrets that don't really do a whole lot. I want to love that class, but the rotation is insane and I can't remember all the steps...and it's so punishing if you miss one. Loading bullets is also a pain...bards don't have to load arrows... I can see why so few people play machinist.

I know people will probably riot if we get more DPS next expansion, but I wouldn't be surprised if we did. We need another Scouting class and another Maiming class.

[Ameela]

MCH can use hypercharge and dismantle. The former makes the enemy receive more damage and the latter weakens the enemy's attacks. MCH is a lightweight debuffer. That makes it not a pure dps, even if you put the regens aside.

I mean by that logic every class is a support, considering even BLM has Addle and SAM has Feint and Yukikaze.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

Defining the effects of ping on any and all things in XIV does not make your concerns any more relevant to the specific area being addressed: weaponskills.

I mentioned that I'd like Dancer to:
(1) use a rapid GCD
(2) to generate and consume buffs from weaponskills
(3) would use abilities to turn would-be builder weaponskills into spenders
(4) stances -- "if any" -- may subtly alter effects built by weaponskills

At most, these traits applies the same issues as any other rapid-GCD job with abilities to be woven singly. And yet there is no melee job in this game that commonly clips single abilities (barring the likes of Jump) save at the most ridiculous speeds. Of your list, the only traits to which your concerns could be rightly extrapolated are the 2nd and 4th, but neither of those require an immediate next-GCD effect, and as builders and spenders are both applied on the GCD, at worst it'd be susceptible in the same way Samurai's Iajutsu is... which is to say not until spiking over some 500 ms.

Why? Because weaponskills do not function like abilities. Unlike in B&S, where every ability costs a (retroactively variable, as per ani-cancelling) portion of (potentially unique) animation duration, and have only the currently outgoing animation's duration in which to queue the next (where these animations can be as short at a third of a second), you have massive amounts of queuable time available to queue (1) weaponskills, and, short of packet loss (2) your first oGCD. With over a full second of queuable time available to each weaponskill, short of equivalent (1000 ms or greater) ping, there is no uptime loss, no clipping. Abilities, especially those woven secondly within a shared GCD gap, do not have that benefit, and therefore are far more subject to ping. I have never disagreed on that point. But give me one example of a class with entirely weaponskills or instant casts for whom even a single woven ability costs uptime, because that is all that has been suggested.

Having a faster GCD, when one's toolkit still provides no real ability or need to double-weave, does not make a job far more affected by ping. Otherwise you'd never see a SkS Monk on any but the best connections, rather than seeing Monk incapable of TK rotation due to the double- (or even triple-) weaves required -- due to a poorer connection -- switching instead to a Demo-to-Demo RoF SkS build.

I've never disagreed that ping has an effect on gameplay. I disagree that weaponskills are equally affected as abilities. I disagree that having a higher GCD speed is somehow going to make a healer unplayable. I disagree that a healer -- assuming equal need to throw in an ability, say, every 6th GCD or so -- using all instant casts / weaponskills would be as affected as someone whose casts take up the whole or nearly the whole of their GCD. If anything, such gameplay would be LESS susceptible, because of that ever-available GCD gap and consumers only being on the GCD.

[kikix12]

I mentioned that I'd like Dancer to:

I have no issues with any of those. I quoted what I do have an issue with. I'll quote it again.

I want the Dancer to be someone who obsesses over macro rotation at the highest levels, timing to the very GCD(...)

That, I understand as mechanics that punish being even slightly late beyond simply the normal effects of delayed attack by milliseconds. You can include incredibly tight burst windows in that, trigger skills that are prohibitive in their nature (like a RANDOM trigger that is wasted if you use anything else at all). Stuff like that. Things that PING very much does affect.

If that is not what you meant...it's simply a case of miscommunication.

[Shurrikhan]

If that is not what you meant...it's simply a case of miscommunication.

On my part then. I didn't realize how unclear I'd left it that what followed that part was meant to explain specifically what I was looking for in reference to that same part of the post.

I meant only that
(1) the rotational flow would be hugely modular, such that rather than timing to a given combo, one times to any given GCD,
(2) weaponskills would grant softly cumulative effects (to give example: not ones with distinct breakpoints or effect tiers... outside of perhaps attack speed bonuses allowing for an additional GCD within a given window),
(3) all spending of such effects would be done on the GCD (similar to Iajutsu, not Higanbana, for instance), as to reduce impact of latency,
(4) resource building is done well ahead of time, such that one would rarely if ever need to spend a resource that was just built (especially as it'd likely be weak, or merely accelerates access to or the cooldown of a given ability) while a dominantly HoT and tether style of healing allows for fairly lenient output timing alongside the ability-based (generally allowing a weaponskill to the spend, rather than build, resources) heals,
(5) and that the combination of these things means that perfect play in a Savage environment and a fixed composition could mean very distinct impacts from each and every GCD, in more than just the sense of additional damage, with huge re-adaptability if the need arises outside of perfect play party-wide

Though posting somewhat in haste, I had actually been intending to suggest -- in the designs spitballed -- a healer who would be more fluid and less negatively affected by latency than most healers. I see now, though, that I should have clarified all that much closer to where I initially mentioned that "timing to the (very) GCD". I really didn't well connect the explanations that followed to that wording. My apologies.

[JamiaHaab]

This thread sure is wordy for the sake of it.

[MDSB_Antarius]

Honestly, I'd rather see DNC closer to how they were in FF Tactics *cough* Ivalice *cough*, It was unlocked by leveling the melee classes so the translation would be DoW. Their main focus would be AoE and Debuffs so they would both contrast against and compliment the BRD. AoE vs single target could be managed either by a 'stance,' combo chains, Their job bar (like RDM's Mana), or build it into the class where a portion of their damage is split between all enemies in range (Say 75% goes to your target and the remaining 25% is evenly split across the others). So yes, my 2 cents are the DNC should be DPS with a focus on debuffs. That being said, I wholly agree that at least 1 of the new jobs should be a tank or healer. A TP based healer sounds very interesting and chemist would be a great fit. A tank using some form of Megitech also sounds awesome. I honestly think that 3 new jobs at the next xpac would be ideal; DNC dps, CHM heals, and a tank.

[Deathrose88]

Interesting thought although as some one is undoubtedly going to say "they won't add 3 jobs since it's too much on the dev team.". That being said yes I too would like dnc to be introduced as a DPS and probably add a healer to compliment.

[MDSB_Antarius]

Oh yeah, 3 classes is definitely very high hopes. Plausible but unlikely because of the strain on the dev teams, especially for balance (A coder friend of mine claims that balance is legitimately the most difficult part of making a game). I just feel that there are much better healer options than DNC. As much as I want to see them I'm willing to wait since we did get 2 DPS classes this round.

Edit: We have gotten 3 classes in the past; Heavensward added AST, DRK, and MCH. But like I said, I'm aware it's still high hopes.

[Bonbori]

Every time the story makes me fight Garleans, all I can think of is "I WANT YOUR GUNBLADE! GIMME!" >.<

And now there are even unique combat animations for NPCs who wield them (like Nero during the solo parts of Omega) as if to deliberately tease me by showing "we could make a playable gunblade user job anytime we want... but you can't have nice things, mwahahahaha!"

>.<#

Aside from that I'd love to see a magitek-based healer too. I've seen some Chemist concepts floating around and they made me fall in love with the idea of a healer class that is not a traditional spellcaster but uses technology and aetherochemistry to achieve the same results.

So I guess what I'm looking for would be classes whose flavour sets them apart from existing conventions, preferably tanks and healers. DPS already cover a wide variety of combat styles and weapons (everything from mages to gunners to multiple flavours of melee, even fistfighters) but the same cannot be said about the other 2/3 of the holy trinity. All tanks are brute-strength-melee fighters and all healers are spellcasters.
I'd love to break up the monotony by introducing more flavour diversity to those roles. Maybe, just maybe, more people would enjoy them (which would lead to shorter queues) if there was an option to play a non-mage healer or a tank that isn't just about swinging a heavy piece of metal (oh look! that's a perfect role to take up the gunblade, wink-wink, nudge-nudge... poke-poke... shove-shove?)