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

[Shurrikhan]

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.

A more enjoyable healer than... what? Have we even tested the waters on other potential support jobs?

Until that point, I disagree. If a job is to be implemented, it should be implemented to its best benefit. Only once design is caught between an exhausted pool of candidates for a role should design consider compromising the job's own attractiveness in favor of filling out a given role.

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.

This isn't a problem with their roster, though; White Mage, Scholar, and Astrologian are entirely capable of differentiating themselves, as are Dark Knight, Paladin, and Warrior. Its specifically a problem with design philosophy, and compounded almost every step of the way by vast sections of the player community: the driving need for them to fill as nearly as homogeneous a set of capacities as possible. In XIV tanking is not an action or activity so much as it simply existing while having access to an enmity combo, an enmity AoE, an enmity ranged attack, 6 to 7 cooldowns, Provoke, and an immunity skill. Job identity has been sacrificed at nearly every step to ensure that every job which can tank (verb), is a (near-identical) tank (noun). It's precisely because job identity has been sacrificed in favor of homogeneity that healers and tanks have become "necessary evils". They do not meet a given role: they simply are that role -- the same protojob -- with a small allowance of randomization. Conceptually, certain DPS are no less hindered, but at least their toolkits, being centered around their own rotations, offer more variance where it most counts, i.e. in their gameplay.

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.

Agreed. Completely.

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'd be fine with Dancer as a healer, tank, or DPS; it really does not matter to me what role it's colored as. I care only that it has a cohesive toolkit that actually makes the most out of the fact it dances, rather than it being little more than flavor text when having access to <Enmity Combo/Ranged/AoE/Topper; Cooldowns; Immunity>, <Combo 1, Combo 2, Self-Buff>, or <Useless heal, More expensive heal, AoE heal, Augmented/alternate heal, cooldowns, special>.

But... you're treating the symptoms here. For Dancer to have a positive effect on the healer roster, allowance and philosophy are going to have to change first. Offer the current design philosophy a Dancer healer and you will simply have a bit more thoroughly butchered Dancer than you'd likely see from what the DPS role allows from its jobs. No role template alone is a good fit for Dancer. But, as you've already noted, the tank and healer templates are far more restrictive. So, until things change, I do think DPS would allow for a slightly better Dancer than would Healer or Tank, and I do think that's more important, given how closely another healer or tank generate "more of the same" in the current design philosophy, than Dancer making a good Healer, or Tank, or DPS. I sorely hope that philosophy changes such that Dancer is a Dancer, and not a template with flavor elements, and could thereby be colored however without losing its unique additions to the game, but so long as a lack of allowance for job identity is what's causing the problem, I have to favor job identity over role-bolstering.

[Mansion]

I would actually not mind if there threw out only one "new" job and chose to re-do in a real effort some of the existing jobs that have been flawed for a long time (looking at White Mage and Machinist as of today).
Each expansion brings a new level cap and a "re-thinking" of each individual job in the spirit of that new battle system (like the job gauges we had for 4.0). Ultimately, adding jobs built around those new concepts might fall flat when the new expansion kicks in with a new concept that works better for jobs than some others. For instance I like what they did with the song rotation on Bards, I like that they did not add anything to AST in that respect, as the cards are enough for the job, and I don't like how they tried to "force" that system on WHM with lillies, or SCH with the fairy gauge. Of course it is my personal opinion, I think that not all jobs will fit in the idea of "filling up a gauge to access other abilities".

My point is that if they are to add more jobs than what they can balance (not even in terms of effectiveness in the meta/high end content), each loop of patches we will see those sacrificed jobs "waiting for next expac". For me the point of having various jobs is to find a personal identity in each one that makes the job enjoyable to play.
I also think the current system of roles narrows the possibilities for each job. I do not know a lot about tanking, but I've heard a lot of complaints regarding tank and dps stances. The shielding vs regen healer duality. The overall balance of DPS with raid buffs, debuffs, rDPS and pDPS.
I would be disappointed if we would get a dancer heal that would be a shield heal resulting of always having WHM-AST / SCH -DNC, or a regen heal resulting in WHM-AST-DNC / SCH, or a versatile heal close to AST.


But yeah, I'm all for Dancer as a healer and Blue Mage as a caster (because it is what I like to play).

[Deathrose88]

A more enjoyable healer than... what? Have we even tested the waters on other potential support jobs?



I'd be fine with Dancer as a healer, tank, or DPS; it really does not matter to me what role it's colored as. I care only that it has a cohesive toolkit that actually makes the most out of the fact it dances, rather than it being little more than flavor text when having access to <Enmity Combo/Ranged/AoE/Topper; Cooldowns; Immunity>, <Combo 1, Combo 2, Self-Buff>, or <Useless heal, More expensive heal, AoE heal, Augmented/alternate heal, cooldowns, special>.

But... you're treating the symptoms here. For Dancer to have a positive effect on the healer roster, allowance and philosophy are going to have to change first. Offer the current design philosophy a Dancer healer and you will simply have a bit more thoroughly butchered Dancer than you'd likely see from what the DPS role allows from its jobs. No role template alone is a good fit for Dancer. But, as you've already noted, the tank and healer templates are far more restrictive. So, until things change, I do think DPS would allow for a slightly better Dancer than would Healer or Tank, and I do think that's more important, given how closely another healer or tank generate "more of the same" in the current design philosophy, than Dancer making a good Healer, or Tank, or DPS. I sorely hope that philosophy changes such that Dancer is a Dancer, and not a template with flavor elements, and could thereby be colored however without losing its unique additions to the game, but so long as a lack of allowance for job identity is what's causing the problem, I have to favor job identity over role-bolstering.

Absolutely agree with all of this and is basically what I wanted to convey before things got out of hand lol my apologies. I hope the designers of this job take these points in consideration when deciding on heal vs tank vs dps for the dancer job, because as shurri said ,if I may paraphrase, it would be a shame to water a job down to just fill a place in a roster than to create it for it is best suited.

[Kazgrel]

I’d love a 2H hammer class akin to what we’ve seen from Nero. Unfortunately I don’t see that ever happening due to a plethora of WAR abilities sharing similar animations.

[Tanama]

-Chemist; a healer who uses non-magical means to heal, with cast times representing the mixture of potions, elixirs etc. (abstract resource units rather than actual inventory contents)

-Tamer; essentially a crossbow wielder with a pet

I would like those two.

[Stormfur]

I'd just love a pet class with wild animals. As you fight with them, you forge a bond like with a dog and his master. Over time their attacks and their abilities become your own.

[Melichoir]

I’d love a 2H hammer class akin to what we’ve seen from Nero. Unfortunately I don’t see that ever happening due to a plethora of WAR abilities sharing similar animations.

Would be cool if they did something unusual like give you teh option between a 2H Mace, or 1H mace and Shield on the same class. But I think they stepped away from that a while back.

That also being said, since classes are becoming static, it would be interesting to see classes open up having multiple roles, but I dont hazard thatll happen due to how much effort reworking not only balance but the game in general, to have that occur.

[kikix12]

1. Mog in 6 had 32 skills (31 if you don't include sunbath) of these skills 6 of them were beneficial....

No. Mog had eight dances. Eight skills from which you could choose.

Those eight skills, when used, would have caused one of four effects. You could not use, say, Tapir from a menu. You had to use Love Serenade which then would use Tapir 1 out of 16 times (statistically).

Saying that it had 31/32 skills is like saying that Rikku had 64 overdrives instead of one or Rinoa had 9 limit breaks when she have only two.

Don't mistake an "effect" for an "ability".

A more enjoyable healer than... what? Have we even tested the waters on other potential support jobs?

A more enjoyable healer than another copy-paste caster healer with a simple quirk to differentiate it. A healer that actually plays different, even if ultimately does the same thing. After all, there are only three major things that are being done in this game. Dealing damage, healing damage and taking damage. Well, you can count interacting with stuff and debuffs too...but meh. So it's how you do then that matters.

Until that point, I disagree. If a job is to be implemented, it should be implemented to its best benefit.

I believe that the game is for players, not the players are for the game.

This game is not one of those whose aim is artistic vision. There is no item mall in artistic vision. You don't expect to buy a statue of a human only to get the bare torso, head and limbs paid separately, do you?! Art is done and gone deal. If it's sold incomplete, it's not art but yer average product.

Only once design is caught between an exhausted pool of candidates for a role should design consider compromising the job's own attractiveness in favor of filling out a given role.

Except it doesn't. Why do you think that a healer dancer is compromising on the jobs attractiveness? Personally I always thought the opposite. Dancing is done to relax, people watch dancers to relax. Dancing may have been used by assassins as method of getting close to the target I guess, but that's because it causes people to relax and lower their guard. In comparison...one can cause serious damage with proper wavelength or loudness of sounds, so bards always DID seem to me as the sort with more potential for destructive/negative effects (though, of course, good music is as relaxing as good dancing).

And...let's look at it from another point of view. You are claiming that it should be a DPS (because you are claiming it shouldn't be a healer and I don't think anyone here implies that it'd do best as a tank). How it would work as a DPS then?!

Simple. Most likely option is a hybrid between monk and bard. Yeah. A melee class using monks "combo" pattern with party buffs. This is literally what mostly anyone thinks about first when said "fighting dancer". That's because both martial arts and dance focus around the "flow" of the body, while both dances and music are an ongoing effect which, in world of Final Fantasy, are a positive/negative status givers. And dancers always were a counterpart to bards in this series, so they had things in common within the game.


So...what is a "better use of dancer". Making it into an Astrologian of the DPS (combining two difficult classes into one, making it impossible for average player to enjoy it) or making it into a healer that would (hopefully) force a different design philosophy due to it's differences from what a healer is?

Its specifically a problem with design philosophy(...)

And that's why a dancer is good choice for a healer because it cannot really work with the same design philosophy. Lore-wise the three healers we have here now are all very similar no matter how you look at it. They are similar by their very nature. Just like in real life a heavy knight was similar to a cavalry knight (once the cavalry knight dismounted their horse). Making them feel and seem unique takes effort.

On the other hand, making Dancer feel and seem similar to them is the part that takes effort. It is by nature as different as a knight and an archer.

(...)the driving need for them to fill as nearly as homogeneous a set of capacities as possible.

That's false. I know only one person that claims that every tank and every healer should have the same core skill set. A single person. And his main (only) argument as to that is the fact that all the tanks and healers up till now shared that. You mistook the cause for the effect. It is Square Enix that locked themselves to that one design, not players. What players want is for the classes to be viable. Not for them to be similar.

But, as you've already noted, the tank and healer templates are far more restrictive.

The problem is that templates are used at all. And dancers being so different from what other healers stand for have far higher chance of making the developers see that using a template is detriment to design. Templates by very definition can are for removal of differences. You do not make a different class only for it to be the same as all before. That's why a template never should have been made in the first place.

So, until things change, I do think DPS would allow for a slightly better Dancer than would Healer or Tank(...)

Once again...What is better in a hybrid between monk and bard than a different take on a healer?


You're also making a very major mistake. You assume that the philosophy needs to change FIRST before doing something like that. Do you know what is wrong in that? That it is impossible. Using that argument, no matter what they would try to make, they'd need to follow the same template until this games death.

After all, for the philosophy to change there needs to be some influence to change it. And that influence is a class that does not fit the "template" they made. If you want all the classes that do not fit the template to be put into whatever category they "fit in" until the template will be changed, you basically are expecting an impossible thing.

[Shurrikhan]

You're also making a very major mistake. You assume that the philosophy needs to change FIRST before doing something like that. Do you know what is wrong in that? That it is impossible. Using that argument, no matter what they would try to make, they'd need to follow the same template until this games death.

After all, for the philosophy to change there needs to be some influence to change it. And that influence is a class that does not fit the "template" they made. If you want all the classes that do not fit the template to be put into whatever category they "fit in" until the template will be changed, you basically are expecting an impossible thing.

There does indeed need to be something to manifest a change. But, for the addition to do so, there first needs to be a change in the parameters.

Imagine it as a range. At present, you can go from -5 to 5. If the variance from the template exceed whatever those values stand for. You're asking that the game and its spread of options be improved by adding in a 10. It literally cannot happen until the parameters are expanded. Once they are, the first thing to use that expanded allowance to break out of the former rut shows the change. It does not make the change; it shows it.

The problem is that templates are used at all. And dancers being so different from what other healers stand for have far higher chance of making the developers see that using a template is detriment to design. Templates by very definition can are for removal of differences. You do not make a different class only for it to be the same as all before. That's why a template never should have been made in the first place.

You seem to be implying I'm okay with these templates simply because there's one that's not quite as horrifyingly stiffling to design, despite 5k character post to the contrary that berates templates at least once per paragraph? I'm not. That's the whole point: I do not think the template will largely matter so long as new jobs are not allowed to deviate from them.

If not, I can only say I obviously agree, although you apparently have far more faith in XIV's current mindset for job design that I do. Every interview in regards to fan-requested jobs have set -- damn near explicitly -- only two expectations: (1) if it will be implemented, it will be implemented as per all other jobs in the (sub)role, with the same core features (explication on DRK, AST, and RDM), and (2) if it cannot be implemented per that template, it will not be implemented (BLU).

That is the philosophy they've both followed to the tee and made clear to us that... they will continue to follow to the tee. If that does not change, Dancer will not shake things up for any one role, nor for the stale and limiting structure of roles themselves. It will be a WHM/SCH hybrid or just another support-DPS.

That's false. I know only one person that claims that every tank and every healer should have the same core skill set. A single person. And his main (only) argument as to that is the fact that all the tanks and healers up till now shared that. You mistook the cause for the effect. It is Square Enix that locked themselves to that one design, not players. What players want is for the classes to be viable. Not for them to be similar.

Check early BCoB and Gordias-era posts. Check the developer responses and rationales to balance changes in those areas. The responses often borderline come off as "we didn't want to do this, but you're giving us no choice". While the cause was undoubtedly vocal minorities making themselves known at opportune times and events, that at least became the driving perception of the commmunity by development, to the point that we can scarcely go a gameplay/balance segment of a live letter where Yoshida reminds us "but then it wouldn't really be a BLM anymore..."

"This is unplayable for my job" posts, despite the neglected outcries of SB MCH and -- for a while, especially -- DRKs, have gotten more attention than any others. And as those posts are most concerned with how another class does X thing better, the solution requested is has usually been direct parity. Heck, Shake it Off's homogenizing reform, plus or minus only the Intervention-scalability component, was requested exactly on both NA and JP forums (one of which I posted on, and the other I kept track of at the time) -- an instant raid damage shield... because Paladin had it, and Paladin's is (was) OP.

Except it doesn't. Why do you think that a healer dancer is compromising on the jobs attractiveness? Personally I always thought the opposite. Dancing is done to relax, people watch dancers to relax. Dancing may have been used by assassins as method of getting close to the target I guess, but that's because it causes people to relax and lower their guard. In comparison...one can cause serious damage with proper wavelength or loudness of sounds, so bards always DID seem to me as the sort with more potential for destructive/negative effects (though, of course, good music is as relaxing as good dancing).

I never said placing Dancer in the healing role, mutatis mutandi, would compromise its identity. I was specifically referring to your suggestion that Dancer be placed in the healer role because the healer role needs more distinct* healers. (* Again, we're at a impasse here; I don't think Dancer, in the present climate, can make a distinct healer, only another butchered hybrid that then functions just as WHM, SCH, or AST would, though I'd love to be proven wrong despite the development history thus far.)

For the record, I too see Bards as more offensively oriented than Dancers. I like what 1.x's lore did with them; their use literal point-commanders and squad-leaders made perfect sense -- convey instructions, keep the units coordinated, keep up morale, and take advantage of or work to counter the tide of battle through tactical strikes (by arrow) and through, in a sense, mental warfare (by song). That's practical and beautiful. Dancers I see more as someone able to flow between front and back lines -- a true hybrid range fighter, rather than a range-alternating combatant like RDM -- as if able to strike without striking, or where strikes are happenstance of movement and proximity (perhaps slightly sacrificing speed, resource generation, or adaptability in order to inflict direct damage). All should be about that flow, and what can be made of that. I see that as support. The problem is that at present, healers have very few support characteristics. They have healing... and then damage. In just three abilities per character, Overwatch supports, for instance, have more nuance of actual... support.

Dancer is an incredibly, incredibly powerful concept, and I do not want to see it squashed or left in a butchered state just because the game hadn't yet allowed for a "real" Dancer. But if the job is what makes, rather than shows, the change in how roles function (in themselves and/or together), that is not only a real risk, but the likely outcome. Sure, Dancer might nudge public outcry so the next is done right: that would make change. But it will be too late for Dancer, just as it's apparently too late for the WHM, SCH, and AST concepts you seem to find irredeemable. That's why I'd rather see changes made to the existing jobs, to the role itself, before Dancer is wholly considered for implementation. But, if the rumors are true and Dancer is slated for 5.0 anyways, I just hope its in whatever template destroys its gameplay potential the least.

I believe that the game is for players, not the players are for the game.

This game is not one of those whose aim is artistic vision.

Again, I'm not suggesting some artistic oligarchy here. I'm not suggesting some sort of Westworld-esque project, where players are merely pawns to artistic ends. Your "for the people, by the people" vibe here is wholly misplaced.

I am suggesting that when the leading issue with the game is the poor allowance for job identity, that you don't sacrifice job identity. You deal with the problem, rather than just throwing on more bandages.



tl;dr: Yes, changes are easier to broach when you have a poster child to head them. Dancer, like Blue Mage, would be an ideal poster child for a sweeping reform that allows jobs to center on themselves, rather than on their roles/templates, thereby correcting much--or even most--of what is wrong with the current healer and tank rosters. But you don't throw away a trump card like that early on before any of the context is set. You certainly don't throw it in there to smooth things over (albeit badly) in the meantime. Jobs reforms that allow, say, a Dark Knight to wholly be a Dark Knight--which fills the needs of its roles in its own way, rather than off small and mostly irrelevant deviations from a template--would be attractive enough to existing players in their own right. You neither ought nor need to martyr another job to that cause. Improve on what's there first, set the stage, and then play the trump card when it can actually do something, rather than to merely placate healers/tanks. As reasonable as their complaints are, those complaints would be better met by whole measures, not bandaging.

[Catsaber]

Time mage as an support dps class that has their own types of buff/debuffs and a short burst window, AST will never be a "time mage attempt on ffxiv" in my eyes >->

Also i would really enjoy a class that's based of Terra from ffvi and can go into primal-trance modes, enabling them to use a fragment of x primal powers for a short period of time (maybe treat the trance as memories of ppl that became primals at one point, like ysayle/thordan/zenos/yotsuyu)