What if Support Role was Added to FFXIV?

[Raven2014]

Don't be sad. I fixed it:

Yeah, 3.0 AST seem to be a prime example of the rose-tinted class. It was changed because it was just a lot of fat nobody wanted. Party even willing to wait for the AST to keep re-drawing until they get a balance card before pull. The current system isn't great, but still a lot better than the old, and the old system would suck even more in the current design then it was back then. I mean ... I'm sure a lot of people know the "Balance" Discord. Think about the implication how relevant the meme was for it to be adopted as the name of such a DPS focus community.

It was a mess, but a mess some AST for whatever reason loved dealing with.

I have never personally speak with any AST "at that time" said they love the card system. That kind of talk has only popped up once enough time had past and nostalgia set in. If they ever bring back the 3.0 card system, I'm willing to bet my in game house the community will not stand for it pass the one month mark.


And I just want to say this: this is yet just another example of how much the game had lost when they remove the majority of utility management from the game and make everything about DPS and DPS only. People complain about AST card are just all damage buff now ... sure, I don't like it either ... but what else you want the card do beside buffing damage? TP is gone. Why do people need MP when they can maintain full MP even in zero piety gears? Outside of ultimate we have enough mitigatition that even if half of your party forgot to hit their mit (PF meme) it's still ok. We already have more healing potency than we ever know what to do with. With how strict raid buff window is most DPS ain't gonna risk having their rotation desyn or drift due to unexpected and unreliable GCD, so giving SPS/SkS card out randomly may even be considered griefing.

Yeah, every card doing the same thing sucks, but that's because there is nothing else that they can do meaningfully.

[R041]

I have never personally speak with any AST "at that time" said they love the card system.

I loved it and it's why it was my main in HW-SB but I no longer use is. But I can realize the system wasn't a good idea for high levels of play. We agree that it was bad for specific reasons, but it still had good to it. The bad was just RNG, doesn't mean we should have thrown all of the utility out just because their methods of obtaining the utility weren't liked.

That's been SE's stance anyway. "Oh, people don't like X? Remove it entirely!" - We act like the current card system is even remotely better, when it's just broken jank of an old system that people feel the need to fix with mods now. We'll see what the rework does in 7.0 I guess.

[ASkellington]

Yeah, every card doing the same thing sucks, but that's because there is nothing else that they can do meaningfully.

I'll say this in regards to the card system:

Either remove the other 5 because they're worthless and rebrand AST as a Time Mage because there's nothing fun in giving out the same card in "three different flavors" for a crappy Seals System

Or do what you (SE) should have done in Endwalker if not all the way back in Shadowbringers and make the Seals give some of the buffs the old cards had on a toggle that we could control.

Bole was too RNG? How about getting 2 moons = a Bole like buff you can hold until you need it?

No, SE could have made support meaningful by upping mana costs and giving P. Ranged ways to keep you from Lucid Dreaming on Cool Down along with AST and the other healers if they wanted. Thing is, if they wanted. Its very obvious they don't.

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah, 3.0 AST seem to be a prime example of the rose-tinted class. It was changed because it was just a lot of fat nobody wanted.

It was changed because any legitimate attempt, even, to balance it was apparently beyond the devs and because they axed the systems underpinning a third of its cards. As soon as it went from a nuetral to controversial fact that it was balanced around luck as much as it was about leveraging tools (in no small part simply due to the lack of synergetic features like a CD-less spread or second charge on Draw and a retroactive Royal Road).

Yeah, every card doing the same thing sucks, but that's because there is nothing else that they can do meaningfully.

Except that's only due to having screwed over the underpinnings of each. If the devs had actually tuned content, stance modifiers, and the opportunity costs in such a way that tank stances could actually be danced (outside of bardic legends of shitshow Savage PuG runs), then external mitigation tools, too, could retain relevance since that lever wouldn't have been made passive. If MP were an actual mechanic in this game, instead of a Rez-Meter, so would Ewer. Etc., etc.

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Dude. Did you even play NIN when the mudras where off the global cooldown? Bunny Medium, bud. Bunny Medium all day, every day. Placing the cards/play on the GCD is just a suggestion. Don't lose any sleep over it.

I did, at 130+ ms ping and frequent packet loss. Bunny medium, very rarely. Bunny Medium maybe once per few hours of raiding, under lag spikes.

I don't particularly care one way or the other about Cards being moved to the GCD (so long as their duly empowered in compensation for the added opportunity cost), but we needn't pretend some vaguely similar system indicates that oGCD Cards (which are, right now, still working just fine outside of the same problems that plague the spot-usage of any and all oGCDs on controller-using healers) have been doomed all along, nor pretend that oGCD mudras were worse than they were.

(Moreover, none of that would have been a problem if the game had just flipped the switch, as done by plugins since late HW, to allow oGCDs to be queued. They'd had the ready and obvious solution all along. We needn't constrain our ideas to the most ass-backward approaches just because the devs' way out of a paper bag may be to eat the whole damn thing.)

[Raven2014]

It was changed because any legitimate attempt, even, to balance it was apparently beyond the devs and because they axed the systems underpinning a third of its cards. As soon as it went from a nuetral to controversial fact that it was balanced around luck as much as it was about leveraging tools (in no small part simply due to the lack of synergetic features like a CD-less spread or second charge on Draw and a retroactive Royal Road).


Except that's only due to having screwed over the underpinnings of each. If the devs had actually tuned content, stance modifiers, and the opportunity costs in such a way that tank stances could actually be danced (outside of bardic legends of shitshow Savage PuG runs), then external mitigation tools, too, could retain relevance since that lever wouldn't have been made passive. If MP were an actual mechanic in this game, instead of a Rez-Meter, so would Ewer. Etc., etc.

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2 Months ago when I talked about this very same thing, I remember you dismissed and argued against me hard. No, we had 2 round, once at beginning of Nov and another in Dec, over the exact samething.

Remember someone talked about how MP and enmity management should have been refined instead of removed?

Remember someone used the example saying that when you decide to remove one color from the pallet, you lose not just that one color but all the combination of it?

Remember someone kept using the pennies saved up to dollar argument?


That someone ... was me.

And remember someone else argue against that ... ? Well, you weren't the only one, but definitely one of the most persistent of them all. You even asked for my idea of what I would considered a fix for AST ... and I obliged.


So yeah ... no argument with this particular quote ... after all that have been my point for months ... years even.

If MP were an actual mechanic in this game, instead of a Rez-Meter, so would Ewer. Etc., etc.

At some in the long distance past ... it could have been.

[Shurrikhan]

Remember someone talked about how MP and enmity management should have been refined instead of removed?

Yes. And I repeatedly asked you what gameplay you wanted from it beyond it just being a resource that CDs get hit on CD for.

That was, to me, the difference between simply returning to a pretense of an attempt (or, at the least, a failed one) at a given mechanic and making an earnest attempt (one that might actually do as allegedly intended).

I noted that there had never been even a "penny," as you put it, of success, only of promise, let alone adding up to any sort of "dollar," and therefore asked you how you'd want to reconcile the two.

P.S., You can find people actually trying out the details of how MP might be an interesting/workable/as-promised within the last half-hour on other threads. That discussion never stopped; it's still going on without you. It just doesn't so often conflate what could be with what was, nor limit itself to the latter.

[Raven2014]

You can find people actually trying out the details of that within the last half-hour on other threads.

Like I also did back then?

D - Astrodyne stack can give 1 of these 2 buffs: a haste buff that allow more cast, or a % damage buff to melafic but also increase its MP cost. The math should be worked out that while it improve output, it can not be sustained with a zero piety build.
Reason: One: I had said it before, when the role ignore its supposed main 2nd stat (piety) in favor of a non-relevant stat (DH) then there is something really wrong on a fundamental level of the design, that has to be fixed. Two: provide an alternative option that make DET/PIE a viable competitor to the CRT build- similar to how the SpS vs Crit option on BLM. For example: a CRT build would favor to maintain a 2 stack Adstrodyne while a DET/PIE built would prefer a full 3 stack up time. Or, high level of play can have AST juggle the stacks throughout the fight to find the ideal sweat spot between output and MP regen ratio ala ram up for buff window, drop down to conserve MP. (This is my idea of active MP management, not just pressing some buttons).

The "oh you just want another button bloat for to press" or the "this silvie thinking spaming cure 2 100 times in a fight is fun" have always been a stereotype the people on your side of the argument want to super impose "as if" what people like me want, and that has never been close to the true. The core point has always been all of those things in 2.0 and 3.0, as rugged and imperfect as they were should have been refined and expanded, instead of removed. And I remember repeating that ad nausea.

[Shurrikhan]

Like I also did back then?

D - Astrodyne stack can give 1 of these 2 buffs: a haste buff that allow more cast, or a % damage buff to melafic but also increase its MP cost. The math should be worked out that while it improve output, it can not be sustained with a zero piety build.
Reason: One: I had said it before, when the role ignore its supposed main 2nd stat (piety) in favor of a non-relevant stat (DH) then there is something really wrong on a fundamental level of the design, that has to be fixed. Two: provide an alternative option that make DET/PIE a viable competitor to the CRT build- similar to how the SpS vs Crit option on BLM. For example: a CRT build would favor to maintain a 2 stack Adstrodyne while a DET/PIE built would prefer a full 3 stack up time. Or, high level of play can have AST juggle the stacks throughout the fight to find the ideal sweat spot between output and MP regen ratio ala ram up for buff window, drop down to conserve MP. (This is my idea of active MP management, not just pressing some buttons).

The "oh you just want another button bloat for to press" have always been a stereotype the people on your side of the argument want to super impose "as if" what people like me want, and that has never been close to the true.

I already noted then and there the problem of leaving the broader system fruitless/DoA just to try to manage it through tacked-on job-specific balancing nightmares.

And I've said nothing here of button bloat (outside of LD), only of systems existing just for the sake of existing, instead of being leveragable for broadly enjoyable gameplay. ???

If you are referring to my comments months ago on Lucid Dreaming, though... yeah, I'll stand by that. It's just bloat (or, at best, adds a further degree of punishment for being killed off at an especially unfortunate time).