For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Sebazy]

I will die on the hill of my stance.

Support could, and should, be its own role. Rift had this, and it to this day baffles me that no other mmo replicates it.

IMHO the issue with this is the 4/8 man party size, there isn't really room to have a dedicated support role with this group size at this point. You can't really ditch the tank, going to 1 DPS isn't really viable either. IMO the clear solution here is that healers should really be the support role. We have a ton of 'spare time' given how few GCDs we actually spend on healing at the end game and it's a good route to explore that doesn't involve pushing us further down the green DPS path.

So why hasn't this been done? IMO SE don't have the manpower within the job design team to come up with sufficient kits and they most certainly don't have the ability to tune a bunch of varied and innovative kits into some semblance of balance. I'm 100% confident that healers are where they are today because it's quick and easy to balance them in the only metric that actually matters, DPS.

[Renathras]

I will die on the hill of my stance.

Support could, and should, be its own role. Rift had this, and it to this day baffles me that no other mmo replicates it.

Agreed. It just makes so much sense and it's really strange that other MMOs haven't followed suit.

I think it was Ghostcrawler (or whoever was the lead WoW dev at the time) who once said if they ever added another role, it would be Support.

May I ask why? Having a discrete Support role would seem to imply that others aren't allowed to tap with any significance into that capacity, denying any chance at a sort of spectrum across various jobs (regardless of role). That seems more likely a net loss to me compared to just broadening what is possible under the three existing roles.

Can't speak for the other person, but a couple things to consider:

1) It's nice to break things into discrete roles so they can actually focus on those things. BRD - is it supporting its party or doing damage? It does lousy damage and meh support, so it's the worst of both worlds. What about AST? Well, it ends up being a Healer with a few throwaway buffs that are all "lets someone else do more damage". Having an actual Support role would allow Jobs to flesh out support capabilities, which means they could be included in encounter design with the expectation a general party would have them, just as there's a general expectation now that a general party will have a Ranged Physical or two Tanks.

2) Having distinct roles doesn't mean there's no overlap allowed. I mean, CLEARLY there isn't such a prohibition now. PLD and RDM have heals. GNB has a DPS-esque rotation and has had higher damage. AST and DNC have party buffs. WAR is an omni-role Job. Look back at games that did this, and there was some bleed over as well. For example, in Everquest, Cleric was an out and out pure healer (though also having utility against Undead), while Shaman was a healer/support hybrid. Pantheon is looking to do a similar thing as well. In practice, the way it works is that you look at it more like a square with a sort of "role archetype" in each of the corners, and every other class somewhere on a spectrum between them.

3) It also helps because you have less infighting over what roles do. Should DPS have more support? Less support? Should Healers be Supports or Healers? Who has the "rights" to the Healer role/Jobs? Are encounters balanced around having buffs or not? If you have a GNB/WAR/AST/SCH/SAM/NIN/DNC/BLM vs a DRK/PLD/WHM/SGE/DRG/RPR/BRD/RDM, which is the encounter designed around, the party with tons of buffs and boosted damage to high damage Jobs, or for the party that will be doing only 80% or so of that damage, making it trivial to the high damage party or impossible for the low damage party, depending on where the tuning is. Those arguments all (mostly) go away once you actually design around having a Support role and how that factors into a standard party.

4) It provides a clear cut option, that encounters and content is designed to factor in, for players who want and enjoy a more support, less outright healing, playstyle and focus. Everquest classes like Enchanter and Bard filled this niche, as have classes in games like Guild Wars' Mesmer. And given how popular such classes have historically been, it suggests there's a good chunk of players that WANT that role.

IMHO the issue with this is the 4/8 man party size, there isn't really room to have a dedicated support role with this group size at this point.

Howso?

1T/1H/1D/1S; 2T/2H/3D/1S or 2T/2H/2D/2S, whichever is decided on. WHY isn't "going to 1 DPS really viable"? Considering the Support Jobs would likely be pulled from the DPS roles (BRD, DNC, SMN, RDM, and possibly NIN would all make sense as founding members of the Support role; especially if we look back at HW era foundations of these Jobs, like NIN having Goad or BRD having "better" buffs or SMN having things like Titan as a utility Egi along with Riase and a vaguely passable cure with Physic back then).

The proposed solution that Healers should be the support role is not "clear". It's something that people who like a more support role are more in favor of, which is also a reason that having a Support role as an actual thing makes sense.

It's _A_ route, but not necessarily a good one or the best one. Especially when breaking out a dedicated Support role could achieve that so much better.

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I do agree with your second paragraph, though (think I've said so before and we kind of agreed on the point)

[Shurrikhan]

Agreed. It just makes so much sense and it's really strange that other MMOs haven't followed suit.

I think it was Ghostcrawler (or whoever was the lead WoW dev at the time) who once said if they ever added another role, it would be Support.



Can't speak for the other person, but a couple things to consider:

1) It's nice to break things into discrete roles so they can actually focus on those things. BRD - is it supporting its party or doing damage? It does lousy damage and meh support, so it's the worst of both worlds.

But you could as easily have it get most of its value from rDPS from supporting actions and still leave it as a damage-dealer... because it ultimately would be -- just a damage-dealer the majority of whose rDPS comes from buffing.

The only difference from swapping its label is that upon declaring it a separate role, (A) we are basically barred from giving any other DPS anywhere close to its level of utility without likewise rebranding it and (B) we are obliged to always bring a support now that it's a separate role that's separately matched (which in turn exacerbates its issue in greatly varying value between light parties and full parties).

Given that it's still ultimately rDPS contribution and the backbone of the job to fill with will still almost certainly be direct damage-dealing (else it'd be even less able to solo content than a healer would be)... I don't see the point in rebranding whatever jobs you want to add further support (options) to; just... add the support functionality and that's all that's necessary.

Having distinct roles doesn't mean there's no overlap allowed. I mean, CLEARLY there isn't such a prohibition now. PLD and RDM have heals.

And do they have anywhere close to the healing output available to actual healers?

If a healer can get by on without MP and only a fifth of their kit, that's a separate issue. But even a single Medica II is, given the Maim and Mend trait, effectively 1300 AoE cure-potency; that's more than a Clemency to each ally. And they've more than enough oGCD potency to be unlikely to even need to spend the GCD.

Or, look at the difference in defensives available between a tank and a non-tank.

Now, imagine that level of distinction in support capacity between a "Support" and anyone else.

And what of a Support that has higher tanking capacity among Supports? Of a Support that has higher healing capacity among Supports? Do we then define the Supports as Support-Tank, Support-Heal, and Support-DPS?

Again, I just don't see the advantage over leaving support as a spectrum that any role may dip into to whatever degree seems fitting to the given job, especially since the only way to uniquely leverage it mechanically as its own role is to make its exact tools obligatory, which would then require homogeneity across the role. If left optional, we'd see just as much use from simply leaving DPS, Healers, and Tanks alike capable of support to whatever degree befits their job.

[Renathras]

But you could as easily have it get most of its value from rDPS from supporting actions and still leave it as a damage-dealer... because it ultimately would be -- just a damage-dealer

That's the point.

That's not what people who want Support roles really want.

And do they have anywhere close to the healing output available to actual healers?

0 Healer TOP clear.

Seems to suggest they do in every way that's relevant. All the extra healing by Healer Jobs is, apparently, overkill and not needed.

Again, I just don't see the advantage...

I suppose this is where we just have to agree to disagree, then.

Looking at how many people want to turn Healers into Supports, it's pretty clear people want a Support role and don't want a Healer role, as such. Might as well just add one.

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I think the biggest thing is it would mean changing the combat model and encounter design to be far less rigid. For example, "puller" was a kind of support in Everquest, and even in Vanilla WoW. Something completely absent in modern FFXIV design (though it always has kind of been with FFXIV design other than NIN having that one ability to Shirk to a Tank...and maybe BRD? Quelling Strikes, was it?). I think the argument, at its core, is how different a game would have to be to support it, but also how that game would be fun to people.

I'd settle for the Support people to stop trying to kidnap the Healer role, personally.

[Shurrikhan]

All the extra healing by Healer Jobs is, apparently, overkill and not needed.

Unless Healers having enough DPS to clear content despite their inclusion somehow makes them indistinguishable from DPS despite their comparative paucity of offensive actions, neither do Tanks' 2-4 self-heal make them Healers.

Or are you suddenly instead so satisfied with the game's low healing requirements that you'd happily conflate one role's being able to do a tenth of another's output with their being the same thing just because that particular ceiling is so low?

I think the biggest thing is it would mean changing the combat model and encounter design to be far less rigid.

You're advocating that a capacity be allocated, to any real significance in capacity or gameplay, to a single role. That's literally asking for more rigid role divisions and less flexibility in how a given party may deal with encounter design or what encounter design may in turn leverage from the party. You'd have a greater breadth of tools available to work with if you just didn't section off those capacities to a single role.

The problem is a lack of undermechanics and actions or interactions by which to leverage them, not the lack of a role that'd be purposely neutered outside of full parties.

Quelling Strikes, was it?)

No, Quelling Strikes was literally just Diversion before it was moved to a Role Action for all but Rangers (who instead got their Enmity drop attached to Refresh and Tactician). It was never akin to anything like Misdirection or Shadewalker, let alone any distinct "Puller"-role tool.

[ty_taurus]

I suppose this is where we just have to agree to disagree, then.

Looking at how many people want to turn Healers into Supports, it's pretty clear people want a Support role and don't want a Healer role, as such. Might as well just add one.

I feel like this is the opposite of what nearly every responder is saying, and I have no idea how you're coming to this conclusion. I already play a support job as a bandage solution to the problem of healers being horribly designed and miserable to play as. I don't want to play a support; I want to play as a healer. I just want my healer to be fun, to be responsible for healing throughput while also being able to engage with this game's combat system. Whether or not a support role is added officially is irrelevant to me, and I don't honestly think it matters anyway because jobs like Dancer already exist in their current state regardless of what role they are labeled as. It's just a label that changes nothing.

[ForsakenRoe]

It's just a label that changes nothing.

To this end, changing 'healer' to 'support' but doing nothing to change the gameplay it has, also doesn't change anything in the long run, yet apparently it'd have people up in arms, I don't really understand how

Anyway, WOW recently added a support heavy spec to the game, where 60% of it's damage comes from buffs given to allies. It can teleport to a designated partner (and vice versa), cause everyone to get Wildfire style compiling damage to enemies for a burst window, give 'cast while moving' ability to allies, MP restoration to a healer whenever it casts, bonus armor and reflecting damage to an ally (probably a tank), speed up allies CDs so they come back faster...

Despite all of the support type stuff it does though, it's tagged as a DPS, not a 'support'. When interviews ask about it, the general response seems to be 'yeh it seems quite successful, so we were thinking maybe we could look into bringing back some old support options for other classes', likely referring to things like Shaman Totems, or Paladin Blessing-Of-X type things. But at no point do they ever consider making these specs a separate role, because the game's established now, and doing so would be too big an overhaul. Same here, we cannot add a dedicated 'support' role, because we're already so locked into the paradigm we have now. Plus, we don't exactly have much the support can 'do' that is unique to it. So it'd end up being a DPS with low personal damage, and high raidbuff contribution. Like DNC is now.

AST currently gets about 20-25% of it's damage from it's buffs. So I guess the question is, does that qualify it, even in it's current state, as a 'support', or a 'healer'? Is there some magic number, where it suddenly swaps to being considered a Support? IE, if it was at 29% it's a Healer, but at 30 it's a support? And what about Old AST, when it had Disable, Time Dilation, 6 unique card effects, a way to apply Heavy, a way to apply a Stun? Was THAT enough to count as a support? Point is, trying to assign a role name to an already established game is far too nebulous to work out. What one person might consider utility that qualifies as 'support territory' another might not. Like, Curing Waltz is support to me. But another player might look at it and say 'yeh but Warrior has Shake, and that heals, plus regens, plus shields, and that's a tank'.

[ty_taurus]

To this end, changing 'healer' to 'support' but doing nothing to change the gameplay it has, also doesn't change anything in the long run, yet apparently it'd have people up in arms, I don't really understand how

Let's just rename all the roles to Marketing, Analytics, and Human Resources for all the good it'll do. Unless a role renaming is accompanied by a literal ground-up redesigning of the entire game's combat structure, it'll have about as much of an effect on the game as me changing my underwear.

As for what qualifies as 'Support' anyway, at the end of the day, damage is damage whether it's direct potency damage, or damage via increasing the potency of others. That's why it doesn't make sense to me that people refer to things like Technical Step or Divination as "Utility." Utility is stuff like Expedient, Warden's Paean, Mantra, Magick Barrier. The "Utility" offered by Brotherhood is roughly the same as the Utility offered by Phantom Rush, with the only difference being the absolute value of damage dealt through either action--the utility of ending the fight sooner. That's not to say you can't have something like a support heavy spec job, but trying to establish an entirely divorced role exclusively for those jobs is arbitrary unless they have access to something that is fundamentally exclusive to that role that is essential for gameplay. For example, if group mitigation was removed from every job except whatever gets classified as "Support" and the "Support" role is the sole responder to mitigation needs, that could justify the addition of a new role. Or at least, the only jobs capable of meeting mitigation requirements across an entire encounter are the Support jobs, where other examples of mitigation found in non Support jobs is not enough to clear content with.

[Renathras]

Unless Healers having enough DPS to clear content despite their inclusion somehow makes them indistinguishable from DPS despite their comparative paucity of offensive actions, neither do Tanks' 2-4 self-heal make them Healers.

I didn't say Tanks were Healers. That was my point. You were arguing we can't add a Support role, as it means other roles wouldn't be allowed any support buttons. My counter was that we already see Tanks and DPS having healing abilities, Tanks and Healers having DPS abilities, and even DPS having and Healers having some Tank abilities/defensive CDs (Aquaveil, Shade Shift, Third Eye, etc).

So technically speaking, it doesn't really matter how much or how little, your point was already countered. But when you tried to salvage it with "Well, is it enough to heal encounters?", the answer is "Well...yes. Apparently, given all the 0 Healer clears of all content in the game, it apparently is.", but that's actually not relevant to countering your point that a fourth role would mean the existing roles could no longer have any Support abilities. You trying to turn it around on me "Or are you suddenly instead so satisfied..." is you trying to move the goalposts, so I'm not going to entertain it, just point out that it's irrelevant to countering your point.

You're advocating that a capacity be allocated, to any real significance in capacity or gameplay, to a single role.

No, I'm not.

You're insisting that's the only way to do it.

I'm saying it isn't.

Which means I can't be advocating it since I'm saying that it isn't necessary and I haven't actually advocated for the specifics of the Support role nor the other roles once Support is split off. You're doing that all on your own.

The problem is a lack of undermechanics and actions or interactions by which to leverage them, not the lack of a role that'd be purposely neutered outside of full parties.

This is true of literally every role in the game already. Healers and Tanks are "purposely neutered" (in terms of damage) outside of full parties. And in full parties. AST even moreso than normal. In any of the content that actually does consistently high or moderately high damage, DPS are also neutered and unable to clear it. SOMEHOW that works anyway.

No, Quelling Strikes was...

....which is why I put the "?" there, since I couldn't remember.

You DID see the "?" there, right?

I feel like this is the opposite of what nearly every responder is saying, and I have no idea how you're coming to this conclusion. I already play a support job as a bandage solution to the problem of healers being horribly designed and miserable to play as. I don't want to play a support; I want to play as a healer. I just want my healer to be fun, to be responsible for healing throughput while also being able to engage with this game's combat system. Whether or not a support role is added officially is irrelevant to me, and I don't honestly think it matters anyway because jobs like Dancer already exist in their current state regardless of what role they are labeled as. It's just a label that changes nothing.

You're speaking in an absolute statement. The AST number one request was more buffs, and it seems people want a gameplay that revolves around buffing allies. This is also true of DNC and BRD.

YOU may not want (or say you don't want) to play a Support. But when proposals for "healer to be fun", specificallyt he proposals to "be() able to engage with this game's combat system" are essentially making it into a Support, then it stands to reason what people would enjoy is a Support. As many people have said, RDM with Vermedica that was viable they'd be all over. Many proposals for Healer changes, particularly for AST, involve essentially transforming them into what would be considered a Support role in the games that have them.

And I think part of it is also that people have a weird aversion to the name for some reason that honestly makes no sense.

I don't think it's "a label that changes nothing", since it would also influence how parties were constructed in pre-mades and how their abilities are balanced, as well as what lines the draw within and without and how encounters are designed.

You're a literary enough person, Ty, that I think you understand the power words and their meanings have. For example, using "elitist" vs "hardcore" or "challenge content players" all evoke a different response, and can even be considered to describe different people. Words do have power, as do labels and categories; and this is ignoring that such things DO entail changes.

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I do agree with your comment on Utility, though I think it's more different people mean different things and are using language in a clumsy way to describe it. That, and there's so LITTLE Utility in this game people have taken a definition of "anything that isn't just damage", and for non-healers, healing, for non-tanks, defensive CDs.

[Shurrikhan]

I didn't say Tanks were Healers. That was my point. You were arguing we can't add a Support role, as it means other roles wouldn't be allowed any support buttons. My counter was that we already see Tanks and DPS having healing abilities, Tanks and Healers having DPS abilities, and even DPS having and Healers having some Tank abilities/defensive CDs (Aquaveil, Shade Shift, Third Eye, etc).

I argued solely that...

1. Having a discrete Support role would mean that no one else could have more support features relative to Support than, say, non-Healers have healing actions relative to Healers or non-Tanks have relative to Tanks. Which is literally less than a fifth. The maximum amount, 100%... vs. <20%. That's a huge step.
   
   Again: Why polarize what's permitted to solely the 0-20% of support options/actions/gameplay on non-Supports vs. the 90-100% on Supports? What is the benefit of that huge gap, especially given that you can just have a DPS, a co-Healer, or a co-Tank that has a majority of its value come from supportive buffs?
   
   
2. To classify that role separately as Support means that you then need to adjust matchmaking for the purposes of obligating Support, which means that (A) those tools then feel like a given rather than a bonus and (B) you will necessarily encounter whatever issues in overall supportive power may exist between a Support in a 4-man group vs. a Support in an 8-man group (i.e., literally doubling the value of its AoE buffs unless they are fundamentally redesigned).
   
   I believe those issues should be dealt with anyways, but assuming equal difficulty, the value of a role-flexible job also increases as party size decreases by nature of that flexibility when it matters most, while the value of something that is only a "Support" by nature of its dependence on others to achieve its value... rests on a far finer edge.

Which means I can't be advocating it since I'm saying that it isn't necessary and I haven't actually advocated for the specifics of the Support role nor the other roles once Support is split off. You're doing that all on your own.

Then you are including a distinct matchmaking category... that would nonetheless lie somewhere between "indistinguishable from DPS [or Healer or Tank]" and "is far less varied from other Roles than the existing Roles are to each other".

Again: Why? Why bother?

....which is why I put the "?" there, since I couldn't remember.

And yet you were happy to include it among a list of alleged precedents for / hints at a possible "Puller" role in XIV despite having no memory of what that skill actually did?

__________________

EDIT:

Don't get me wrong; I'd love to see more hybridization of roles. Given the possibility and the ability to make synergetic supportive changes, I would gladly replace the whole 1:2:1 ratios of matchmaking among set Roles with simply whether a party has enough total Enmity control, sustain, burst and overall damage, etc. (within a sufficient ratio overall and per kit such that they aren't constantly wasting far more of one output to make muster towards another more immediately crucial one) and just have actual Jobs instead of Role+Gimmicks. You don't need to sell me on any of that.

I just don't think whether one's rDPS comes from damage done yourself or damage done doing damage via someone else is enough to make a DPS a different role. It's still functionally just Damage-Dealing. I don't see whether one's mob control and eHP-increases and damage-nullification comes from directing actions towards yourself and buffing self vs. directing them towards another synergetic ally and buffing them as reason enough to call the given job doing that a "Tank" or some a different role. It's still functionally just Tanking. Etc., etc.