I hope, against all odds, that we get two Magitek classes in 5.0.

[Dualgunner]

I mean, you say originally that you don't really agree with "Well DPS have like, 9 choices" but at the end of the day, with maybe the exception of Ultimate, a group can pick any 4 of the 9 and clear.

That doesn't mean that if I want to play a caster, I have five options. (Technically, I have six--three healing oriented casters, and 3 damage oriented casters, but that's in the same vein that I have 3 defense oriented melee and four offense oriented melee. Which leaves us in 7/6/2 with rangers being the odd ones out). It all depends where one decides to draw the line. I personally draw it at 3t/3h/4m/3c/2r.

They'll be making things more difficult for themselves by ignoring the sub-roles with the group, but they won't be making it impossible like they would be by trying to drop tanks for more melee DPS.

Solo tanking and solo healing things is something a lot of people do. It makes things more difficult but then again, so does ignoring sub-roles like you said.

You can stretch the boundaries and go solo-heal and solo-tank for a lot of duties. Even Ultimate can be solo-healed.

Not that I'm against getting another ranger, or making the sub roles within the DPS group more distinct. I just want my new tank (and healer) first.

That is completely fair. I'll keep reiterating because I want to be clear: I'm not against a new tank and healer. I'm merely voicing my opinion on how the job spread looks in my view, and how from my point of view the role spread is pretty even. I'm also all for sub roles in DPS becoming more distinct, give MCH a way to compete with BRD without screwing over caster balance.

In fact, if you look at it this way, the expansions have even become almost formulaic in the new jobs they give us. We got a caster and a melee in 2.x (SMN and NIN); we got a ranger, tank, and healer in 3.x (MCH, DRK, AST); we got a caster and a melee in 4.x (RDM and SAM). Although we did also get SCH in 2.x.

So it would only make sense we'd get a tank and healer in 5.x. Admittedly, the formula is broken by SCH and, though in its current state I disagree it's a caster that can be counted in our job selection, BLU. As much as I personally would love Soldier to be a DPS (for one reason, I have crippling tankxiety and wouldn't be able to really play a Gunblade tank; for another, ew gross another slashing tank can't they give tanks something different?), I can absolutely see it as a tank.

Actually, my dream spread would have been BLU tank DNC heal and SLD as ranger with melee elements.

[Jandor]

That is completely fair. I'll keep reiterating because I want to be clear: I'm not against a new tank and healer.

I get a little defensive. You see so many people saying we shouldn't get new tanks and healers, and arguing for another new DPS or 2 instead.

[Jollyy5]

I want to believe that the "new layer of balance" that we are apparently getting in 5.0 will be that thing which will help various classes to better find their place in a group.

[Dualgunner]

I get a little defensive. You see so many people saying we shouldn't get new tanks and healers, and arguing for another new DPS or 2 instead.

That's completely understandable. The reason I wanted to make my position as clear as I possibly could is because I know that my post could very easily be taken as "We don't need new tanks and healers." I think we have room for new tanks and healers. I hope with 4 of each, we can see a better balancing act done from SE regarding them all this time around.

[Shurrikhan]

It wasn't meant to be sarcasm.

Well shoot, I assumed so very wrongly.

I'm drifting into opinion, but also interpretation of the mechanics we've been presented thus far, but...sort of? It's always seemed, at least to me, that Bard (and by extension Machinist which was introduced to be the same role as Bard) was meant to be the closest this game got to having a Synergist role. And for its part right now, Bard is an amazing synergist: 2% constant crit buffs, unparalleled resource regeneration, Battle Voice facilitating increased DHit rate and Foe's being a straight damage increase.

To answer what is explicitly opinion with what is explicitly opinion: I don't think Bard is a decent Synergist, at all, because it scarcely presents in its gameplay. It was a mildly okay Synergist, imo, back in HW and ARR. But since then, every Synergist capacity it carries has no impact on its gameplay and feels more like just another dps cooldown to be hit on CD, but as rDPS rather than personal, or -- worse -- is outright passive. Dragoon, AST, and NIN -- hell, even Scholar -- feel far more involved to me in offensive output during raids, or even WHM during dungeon speedruns, than Bard because there's a desire to know what people will do with those tools, and/or those tools can at least provide something gameplay-affecting to others (CS to Bard or Monk). The only two components that maybe even feel like Synergist skills at all to me are TWP and NM; Troubadour isn't bad, and I like that it could re-prioritize personal vs. indirect contribution if only the songs were better balanced, but it allows for no specificity and lacks the impact to permit new, on-the-fly actions.

In my wholly personal opinion, Synergist effects shouldn't feel like... DoTs or place-and-forget actions that, if limited, you toss in during a time of high relevant throughput to squish or stretch the numbers. They should instead be something that one could see even without the numbers there. Now, of course all gameplay is numbers, and numbers determine breakpoints, and I'm not arguing against that. I just feel that most of the buffs the game has that might be seen as Synergist tend -- to put it in oversimplified fastion -- to be stretched too thin over too much duration, with too little flexibility in how they can be deployed to allow for significantly nuanced usage.

If there were to be a poster-boy Synergist job I would -- still oversimplifying here -- expect it to have a resource or resources specific to that function.
As a Conjurer with a Synergist tendency, for instance, you'd use Blessings of Earth, Wind, and Water over gameplay, flexing how one runs their general throughput in order to ensure sufficient number of actions available and the type thereof, and spend those granting players the speed, durability, cleanses, and the like in powerful, pivotal moments that lend less to the numbers themselves produced than the opportunities to keep producing them.

As an Astrologian you'd build up theoretical suns, gravitating allies and enemies, orbiting and deorbiting, while perhaps siphoning away mana and personal action power in order to feed mighty cards under starsigns shaped by your actions all under constant adaptive play based on the cards you've let loose, each with their own totally unique effect (Balance binding two players or two aspects of one player, Bole allowing healing and damage received by central to spread/split to nearby limbs (players), Arrow being further controllable after being set to needle through your ranks for maximum effect, Spear summing Critical Hit and Guard down your ranks, Ewer regening MP/HP on a target player and spilling over to other players of lower MP/HP percentiles, etc.).

It should demand and reward knowledge of the game, of your team, and of what all is presently and soon to be in play. At present, that's something I might find in Overwatch, despite only two core abilities to play around with rather than 24+, but hardly if at all in XIV.

In contrast, the Caster role is a different game of risk/reward. It's a game of finding where to stand still in a system that punishes idling in one spot, with Black Mage being the apex of this role. Personally speaking, it feels weird to try and categorize Casters and Rangers into the same role, because not only do they play incredibly differently, their primary gameloop to achieving DPS is entirely different. I could just as well say, in this focus, that a tank is just a beefier melee dps, trading its focus on positionals into focus on directing and mitigating outgoing damage.

I see your reasoning here, but I think it'd be a damn shame if the only thing really separating ranged from casters is, in a sense, that they can be more brain-dead (in a preemptive positioning sense).

[Dualgunner]

Well shoot, I assumed so very wrongly.

I don't blame you for the assumption; I am a bit abrasive on the forums, and the tone of my post can easily be read as sarcastic. Were I not me, I'd have assumed the same, and for that I apologize.

To answer what is explicitly opinion with what is explicitly opinion: I don't think Bard is a decent Synergist, at all, because it scarcely presents in its gameplay. It was a mildly okay Synergist, imo, back in HW and ARR. But since then, every Synergist capacity it carries has no impact on its gameplay and feels more like just another dps cooldown to be hit on CD, but as rDPS rather than personal, or -- worse -- is outright passive. Dragoon, AST, and NIN -- hell, even Scholar -- feel far more involved to me in offensive output during raids, or even WHM during dungeon speedruns, than Bard because there's a desire to know what people will do with those tools, and/or those tools can at least provide something gameplay-affecting to others (CS to Bard or Monk). The only two components that maybe even feel like Synergist skills at all to me are TWP and NM; Troubadour isn't bad, and I like that it could re-prioritize personal vs. indirect contribution if only the songs were better balanced, but it allows for no specificity and lacks the impact to permit new, on-the-fly actions.

Is bard really that simple (genuine question)? My group's bard swapped to MCH, but I know that all four of our DPS have gone into extensive discussions amongst each other and the group at large to discuss when, how and why we're using dps cooldowns, dps aided mitigation (addle etc), how that will affect our performance through the rest of the fight, and how that will affect our rotations as we plan bursts around each other. Simple things like a delayed burst window after Hello World 1 in order to realign everyone with our Ninja's trick attack afterward for instance, were things our whole group got together and plotted out.

In my wholly personal opinion, Synergist effects shouldn't feel like... DoTs or place-and-forget actions that, if limited, you toss in during a time of high relevant throughput to squish or stretch the numbers. They should instead be something that one could see even without the numbers there. Now, of course all gameplay is numbers, and numbers determine breakpoints, and I'm not arguing against that. I just feel that most of the buffs the game has that might be seen as Synergist tend -- to put it in oversimplified fastion -- to be stretched too thin over too much duration, with too little flexibility in how they can be deployed to allow for significantly nuanced usage.

This is personally why I said "the closest this game can have to a Synergist role." They've taken out damn near everything an interesting Synergist, Saboteur, or any combo of the both, can do: crowd control? Nope. Cleansing debuffs? Nope, most debuffs just straight can't be removed, and the most useful debuff to remove was Pacification on WAR...which SE nuked. So I don't necessarily disagree with you that Bard is not a good synergist as far as synergists go--but it is the closest XIV can get. Definitely on the rDPS end of the pDPS vs rDPS spectrum.

It should demand and reward knowledge of the game, of your team, and of what all is presently and soon to be in play. At present, that's something I might find in Overwatch, despite only two core abilities to play around with rather than 24+, but hardly if at all in XIV.

This is where I have to disagree. I've posted my anecdote before, and perhaps this is something that really only comes into play when looking into optimization or tackling Savage+ content. My team and I spend a lot of time outside of raid discussing when and how we'll use DPS cooldowns to optimize bursts; more than just what our classes can do, but meshing together better as players as well, learning who is willing to take what risks and when. Very specifically, if I didn't know my NIN to a "t", I wouldn't be able to play mana trimming on RDM like I can: since I know when each trick attack will drop, when each chain and each Hypercharge will land, when I'll have Litany, I can plan my mana pool around getting the most melee + finisher attacks in under buff windows as possible. Likewise, my team knows when every Embolden is going to come out, and how to plan their own rotations around the finicky fading buff that Embo is to get the most out of it.

We know how the healers plan to heal everything, how the tanks plan to mitigate everything; both know where DPS are going to use party buffs like Manasong, Addle, Apoc, Feint, Palisade; what mechanics we can ignore for uptime, and how to optimize around the mechanics we can't ignore.

I see your reasoning here, but I think it'd be a damn shame if the only thing really separating ranged from casters is, in a sense, that they can be more brain-dead (in a preemptive positioning sense).

I was very careful to say a different game of risk/reward for the point of this exactly. I think the risk-reward for BRD and MCH (mind, I've only played MCH of the two) is the rotational difficulty.

What is your rotation as Black Mage? Fire IV is your heavy hitter, you go into ice to regen mana, keep up one dot, and get 1 free nuke to drop every 30 seconds. Beyond that your gameplay is finding a good place to stand so you can accomplish this.

Red Mage? Cast-dualcast, cast-dualcast, cast-dualcast. You manage your idling with 2.5ish seconds of movement every other spell, manage three resource bars (black mana, white mana, MP), and find safe places to shove your magicked sword into the enemy.

Summoner has a three section rotation, and of the casters, have the most movement capability, but have the relatively most complex rotation as well. I (affectionately) call it a CINO because of the three casters, it bears the most similarities to a ranger: complex mechanics, and not a lot of punishment for mobility. Ruin 2 only costs ~20 potency to cast compared to Ruin 3, and there's the chance it will be a Ruin 4 and be a net gain. They're even more mobile in DWT when R3 is instant, and they're locked down in Bahamut mode because the lardbutt can't cast and move.

Then you have rangers: high mobility, high reaction requirements, and high punishment for screwing up a rotation.

Machinist is a game of managing your heat on a minute to minute basis. 10 seconds out of every 60 is going to be a ridiculous zergfest of buttons that even one misclick can ruin your damage for the rest of the fight. Fall behind on MCH, and it's a very interesting game of catch-up. I imagine the same is bard with how it has to react on the fly to procs, and sometimes one can have more procs than they know what to do with; in addition to a strict song-to-song rotation given the length of all three comes very close to the cooldown of each one.

One could argue MCH is too punishing (I wouldn't necessarily disagree), but I think the theme of it is the rangers have all this movement they can do, but they have to manage a tight rotation while also helping manage team resources.

[Meta-Flare]

I very much doubt it, they said that implementing 3 new jobs is really demanding and that they'd rather not do it again after HW. Furthermore the leaks have only mentioned three jobs of which one is Blue Mage, meaning they are already giving us 2.5 jobs.

Not that I'd mind being proven wrong.

2 jobs as Blue Mage in its current form is not a job, but a pointless side activity.

I also hope for 3 classes. It makes since to do it to me. The classes would be closer to being even.We have 4 melee dps, 3 caster dps, and 2 ranged dps. One more tank makes 4, one more healr makes 4, and if the third is a physical ranged dps that would be three. The job split would be much better if they did this, but what do I know im just a guy.

[Jandor]

Bard was better as a battery pack with a bow.

[Lumadurin]

We get away with being instant cast ranged damagers, but often our damage seems... lacking?

Well, that's the trade-off really.
Melee DPS embody high damage and high mobility. They can dodge mechanics while seamlessly keeping up their attacks, but they cannot move away from the boss for more than a couple of seconds without losing damage.
Casters embody high damage and long range. They can plant themselves anywhere and do good damage. But they cannot move freely for extended periods of time without losing damage, so they must prepare for movement long in advance.
Ranged embody high mobility and long range. They can stay as far or as close as they like, and can (mostly) move whenever they want while keeping their attacks up. But their damage isn't as good as the other two archetypes because of the safety and freedom inherent to their kit.

A Ranged that can compete with a Melee/Caster in damage will be an overly-dominant pick in groups because they bring the same amount of damage, but without the downtime caused by disconnects and movement-heavy mechanics that balance the latter out.

[Derio]

Why would we get 1 dps and 1 tank and 0 healer. I dont think that makes any sense.