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

[Deathrose88]

Yes I also have heard that dancer is going to be a healer and frankly.... even though I may not sound like it... I have come to terms with it. My problem is most of you healers wouldn't care if they ruined the job as you guys would just go back to whatever healer you were playing before. While the rest of us who have been looking forward to dancer since the beginning look at something that could have been so much more. Look #dancer4lyfe but if this is not done well people in general (not just healers) might quit.

[Deathrose88]

That is why I chose to just accept the fact of it being a healer in spite of how I truly feel about it, because the fact of the matter is healers and tanks do need something new and fresh. I just hope they compromise both sides so it feels like a complete dps that just happens to support and heal.... I really loved the debilitating side of dnc and it just makes me sad to think it won't have that full arsenal of status ailments it's known to have.....

[Bellsong]

I'm hoping the leaks are right and we'll be seeing Blue mage, gunblade(soldier?) and dancer. but I want them to mix things up a bit. I'd want soldier to be a caster tank, and dancer to be a fast paced melee healer. As unlikely as that would be I would adore getting some game play variants to the current roles.

[kikix12]

This tone. Calling people out on prejudices. Because they note traditional identities.

This tone was used for an obvious reason. Because she is selective in her noting of traditional identities.

There is nothing wrong with her wanting the dancer to be a DPS. It IS common for people to prefer DPS, which is an absolute fact (hence why all the games I have ever known had more "DPS" classes than "tank" and "healer" classes, and in MMO's those numerous classes had significantly more people playing them than any of the healers/tanks). However the problem begins when someone tries to pass that under a veil of "keeping the traditional identities" as an argument.

Do you have any argument as to why, in a single post (heck, a single PHRASE), she both noted that bards are the "defensive" counterparts of the dancer AND used that as argument why they should stay "offensive" support despite the bards being that in this game?

(...)just because s/he happens to believe that the DPS role could make a more compelling use of Dancer's toolkit.

That's wrong. I say that she is strongly biased because she uses arguments that are, by their nature, very selective. She "conveniently" omits that were these arguments taken at a wider scope, they would have applied to more than a dancer effectively changing this game. Bard, Dark Knight, Warrior, Red Mage and Summoner, all should have been changed in part or in whole (Warrior and Dark Knight should be DPS, Summoner and Red Mage should have significantly more healing power...Phoenix is still the single most powerful heal in this gaming franchise). Going and selectively putting focus on how DPS was always an offensive support (in and off itself false...which the person in question knew very well "maining" the class in FFXI, with Mog in FFVI also using dancing with a fair deal of healing to it...and by fair deal I mean that 6 out of 8 skills could heal, 3 out of 8 could heal status ailments and only 1 of them could only damage) can only be seen as misuse of the argument. And the "kindest" reason for that is bias.

DPS How is your preference towards Dancer being a healer any less biased? I don't mean this rhetorically; tell me how.

You're putting the cart before the horse.

I have given arguments to support my claim that the poster is biased. Ones based not on an empty claim, but on logical flaws. If you can find arguments to support me being biased by using similar logic flaws...go ahead.

I need not do anything more in that respect until the time you do since you're the one accusing me of bias. Try and prove that before asking me to defend by stance.

And why, exactly, would the healer role create a more enjoyable Dancer than one situated in the damage role?

This is similarly approaching the matter from the wrong angle.

It is not why the healer role would create a more enjoyable Dancer, but why a Dancer would create a more enjoyable healer.
The problem: Healers and tanks being treated as "necessary evil" and not being given many "goodies". They are generic, similar to each other, lack variety in their lore. All tanks have one feeling as their energy source. Honor for paladins, anger for warriors and hate for dark knights. All healers utilize casting through abstract means. Elemental forces for white mages, mathematical calculations for scholars and celestial paths of some sort for astrologians. Only scholars out of the three don't even have pseudo-deities, instead replacing them with fairies as the catalysts.

Any class can be made to fit any of the three roles, once you consider the artistic freedom of the designer. Since the lore of the world is changed for every Final Fantasy piece, no lore of the previous titles have a tight bond beyond the very, very fundamental parts of it. Dragoons are related to dragons, white mages use holy and heal while black mages use elemental magic to destroy etc. If you'll pay attention, the "realistic" classes, like paladins, warriors, bards etc. utilize real-life aspects of these professions instead. These jobs really existed and always had some things in common to be called that.

That means that dancer have only one thing that is absolute. The fact that they dance. Then there is something that was upheld for all of their appearances. They supported the party in some manner alongside their individual offense. Those are the only two things that need to be upheld for the Dancer to be...well...a Dancer.

So if the problem is lack of highly-attractive, unique jobs for the healers and tanks, Dancer being the solution is simply reasonable. Personally I would be as satisfied with it being a tank, really, but that is highly doubtful. This game does not permit evasion tanks by design, so quite a lot of hoops would need to be jumped through to make a tank with a Dancers esthetics that could work in this game. Not impossible, but unlikely. So the option left is a healer.

I really loved the debilitating side of dnc and it just makes me sad to think it won't have that full arsenal of status ailments it's known to have.....

That's impossible. The developers in this game make their best effort to remove ANY status ailments they can, without moving away from the fact that Final Fantasy series is riddled with them. That's why most effects that work on bosses are ONLY DoT or some vulnerability+ (which they culled as well). There is no crowd control, no fixed damage (gravity effect), no nothing. The negative status effects are used purely against players, and most of them are uncurable because it would be too easy to just Esuna them.

[Ramesses]

I'd like to see Time Mage... see image below, number two on the last row.

[Dualgunner]

I'd like to see Time Mage... see image below, number two on the last row.

Hate to be that guy, but right now AST is our Time Mage.

[Ramesses]

Hate to be that guy, but right now AST is our Time Mage.

...Really? Looks like you intended to be that guy. I must've leveled the AST job all the way to 70 and had absolutely no idea.

I was actually looking at this from the lens of the job being a support DPS, as was its traditional role in Final Fantasy Tactics.

[Deathrose88]

As I said before I understand why most people want dancer to be a healer.... it IS because most people really don't like the healer/tank role because for the most part they are pretty mundane, but I have to think that even if they had released a healer for stormblood you would still be biased to dancer being a healer judging from the very... lol assertive stance (that's putting it lightly) you have... its ok though the fact of the matter still remains and is a large part why I choose not to argue this point further.... Healers AND tanks for that matter do need something to draw people to them. Whether this helps or not I don't know, we can only hope it does. However there is one last thing I do wish point out looking at the misinformation about FF6 and about my maining DNC in XI... 1. Mog in 6 had 32 skills (31 if you don't include sunbath) of these skills 6 of them were beneficial.... 2. When I spoke of maining DNC I did that to point out how I know how they tried to make it work and ultimately were not successful due to amount of dmg and status ailments going out. They ended up later in the expansions changing the weapon values and 1 handed weapons value to help give one handed jobs a boost to their dmg to bring them on par with 2 handed weapons. This ultimately made it so DNC produced far more damage and was used more for it dmg production than its healing. Now, I'm not discarding the fact that it has healing because yes I did on occasion use them, but that was only when shit hit the fan. So I say all that to say this, no my point of view is not only coming from a biased side it's coming from facts as well and having had actually played this job to its full potential. So make sure we read before we go head hunting sweetie.

Edit: Mog's dances used sunbath twice which is why I said 31. My apologies it wasn't communicated appropriately.

[Dualgunner]

...Really? Looks like you intended to be that guy. I must've leveled the AST job all the way to 70 and had absolutely no idea.

I was actually looking at this from the lens of the job being a support DPS, as was its traditional role in Final Fantasy Tactics.

Said as if having an intent does not mean I like having that intent.

Healers in this game can be viewed as support DPS, with Astro themselves offering several support cards on their own. All in all, I'm not convinced Astrologian doesn't fit the fantasy of a Time Mage in all but name.

[spectrabn]

I'd like to see blue mage and necromancer like death knight from wow where you control a zombie as a pet to help out.