New Role?

[Connor]

Would they be buffing every GCD? If so, what difference is there between buffing the damage of a dps and actually dpsing?
If not, then why not just make them a dps or healer class?

Isn’t that the whole point? It’s a different means to the same end which lets them implement different playstyles.

A DPS cannot have a GCD buff ability, because even if it’s useful it’ll be avoided at all costs due to DPS loss. Bard 2.0 - 3.0 kinda made this apparent with old songs, using anything other than Requiem any time the party wasn’t just raised was ‘bad’ because of the DPS loss. Without a DPS loss it’s severely overpowered.

Healers can’t have GCD buff abilities because they have to contribute damage and wouldn’t be able to do that if they also had to heal and buff on top of it. Healers would have to contribute game breaking amounts of rDPS to justify ever using a support GCD over direct damage

Tanks can’t have GCD buff abilities because - you guessed it - it would get in the way of their damage output.

For a ‘buffer’ that uses all of its GCDs to support it would really have to be able to contribute nearly as much as a DPS, or at least a healer. Even if ‘support’ was a required role, nobody would take it over another DPS if it didn’t come close. Though sadly this also makes them impossible to balance

I wouldn’t expect it to happen either like OP says, but a new role is the only way we’ll ever get a buffer type job that uses actual GCDs to support the party. Because unfortunately they simply can’t work on any other role, mostly because of how important personal DPS is to every role.

I’d love a true buffer type class but I wouldn’t expect to ever see one in FFXIV. It would require an amount of the work that the developers just aren’t willing to put in when they could be focusing on new content