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

[Shurrikhan]

The supposed support role is P.Ranged.

Was*

And... hardly even then. Apart from Dismantle, Warden's, and later Minne, their sole "support" feature was "removes the arbitrary encounter play-time limitations that were added to the game with the express intention of making you need a Physical Ranged". You may as well call the coin-insert on an Arcade shooter (that you couldn't play without even when owning the game and playing it at home) "Support".

And even that wasn't unique to them. On CD (same as Refresh and Tactician come StB), all melee could give TP, and all Casters could trade away MP. Pound for pound, NIN had more support tools than Machinist before both were de-tooled.

As for WOW, they've more recently moved towards 'scripted big damage moments' too. Difference is, they have smaller ticking instances between those big blasts. For example, a boss I hated reclearing each week from the first raid in DF, Terros. Players are marked with markers, and they place earth spikes after a few seconds. While these spikes are out, they pulse damage on higher difficulties, and the longer the fight goes, the more spikes come out (on heroic, it was 5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8, enrage, iirc). To clear the spikes, the tanks aim a line-Tankbuster through the spikes to crack them. Doing so, however, causes the spikes to explode for a much larger amount of raidwide damage. Thus, there's 'constant pressure' from the ticking, and then big 'scripted moment of big HPS needed' to plan your big cooldowns around, like Aura Mastery, Spirit Link, Tranquility, etc. We've got the second half, but not the first half. Additionally, WOW's healers are designed around having basically zero spammable AOE. Closest there is to 'spammable AOE heal' is Chain Heal, and that eats your MP bar like nothing else. I expect that, if we dropped a WOW fight into FFXIV wholesale, we'd fold it's HPS requirements like a pretzel, because we can just dump AOE healing whenever we like. To have 'WOW style model', play WHM, but unbind Medica 1/2/Cure3 from your bar, and only AOE heal with Rapture, that's pretty close to what we'd end up with.

WoW has a surprising number of (more polished) analogs to old T8, whereby you have to balance short- and long-term dangers. I actually really enjoy that model, which is probably why I didn't hate Terros despite his bland aesthetic.

Also, I saw some 'very good at game' WOW healers complaining about healer design over there, saying it's getting too focused on 'use mit on big raidwide'. Apparently, having a raidwide that blasts you from 100% down to like 20% is not fun, who knew

I feel like those complaints are usually for when (A) that 20% leftover HP is even with said mitigation, (B) there's also a DoT that ticks for ~20% of HP at the same time, or (C) you literally need that mitigation to have any chance of healers not going oom before end of fight and causing a wipe.

And again, I'd say to that 'why add a Support role and screw up the matchmaking/queue times, when we could just make the 'already kinda heavy on support' Jobs like DNC be 'even more supporty'?

Aye. This.

[ForsakenRoe]

WoW

Ah, should have figured you've played, but I'll leave it there for context for anyone who hasn't. I ended up playing tank a lot more over there (friend group needed a reliable tank for M+) which probably goes to explain why I found the 'locked in place' bosses (Terros, Sennarth to an extent, Dathea) kinda ehh, and Kurog/Broodkeeper (move around the arena, position boss, etc) very fun and interesting. Terros reclears in pugs sucked because people, even with an addon telling them which way to move to place their spike, did not place their spike well, and we'd either have some left over (can't hit em with the line cos they're so out of position), or far too many spikes being broken all at once (instantly killing people due to the big burst damage). I did find that it happened less often in Heroic than Normal, but still often enough to get annoying. On the plus side, I got VERY good at aiming the line with such precision as to clip the exact number of spikes I wanted, even in situations that looked like they'd be blowing up far too many

The year-long wait for 7.0 might give me a good reason to go back again. Or to max in OSRS, one of the two

Actually while I'm thinking about WOW: Consider how much 'support' tools Prot Paladin has, despite being a 'tank' not a 'support': can give physical/magical immunity to an ally (depending on talents), can remove movespeed debuffs (which includes removing nasty DOTs, if said DOTs have any effect on your movespeed) for an ally or self with Freedom (or both with a talent), can give 'Cover' to an ally with Sacrifice, can give offhealing with Word of Glory, can silence with Rebuke or Avenger's Shield, can AOE silence thanks to Divine Toll (to my knowledge only Boomkins can also do this), can stun with HOJ, can slow enemies with a talented Consecrate, can full heal someone (probably yourself, but can clutch) with Lay On Hands, can CC specific things with Turn Evil, Repentance, or just incapacitate for a few seconds with Blinding Light... Probably a fair few more I can't remember. Anyway, point is, all of this and it's a 'tank'. How much more would it need for Blizzard to consider it a 'support role', I wonder

[Shurrikhan]

Ah, should have figured you've played, but I'll leave it there for context for anyone who hasn't. I ended up playing tank a lot more over there (friend group needed a reliable tank for M+) which probably goes to explain why I found the 'locked in place' bosses (Terros, Sennarth to an extent, Dathea) kinda ehh, and Kurog/Broodkeeper (move around the arena, position boss, etc) very fun and interesting.

Oh, for sure, on tanks, Terros is just another Tree-Boss / T10S equivalent, or worse, and I hate the trend of having more and more bosses that give tanks no agency/reward for moving them correctly both here and there. >.>
I just like the balancing-dangers model in a general sense. (See also DF's first "Council" fight, sorta, or the canisters boss in Castle Nathria (Invernia or w/e?), etc.)

Consider how much 'support' tools Prot Paladin has, despite being a 'tank' not a 'support'

I have definitely heard people refer to any sort of Paladin (but especially Prot or Ret) as 'supports'. While AugVoker has redefined its ceiling, the sheer amount of utility those guys carry is still no joke. It's just that (apart from AugVoker) "support(ive)" there is a profile description like "Bursty af", rather than a Role description.

_______________

Edit:

I would not mind it if jobs were instead able to take on a number of far more finely sliced roles like Defender, Sentinel, Vanguard, Enforcer, Skirmisher, Fielder, Reserve, Striker, Assassin, Saboteur, Controller, Synergist, Medic, etc., and we just named ourselves according to the primary slice of tasks we intended to purpose our kit towards. I just think that so long as Roles are meant to actually lend themselves to any sort of matchmaking, we aren't really going to see more than the trinity act as any sort of useful descriptors (since anything else is just like... an extra dimension to that initial spectrum/trinity, rather than anything essential).

For instance, assuming a more job-identity-first approach to revitalizing each job, I'd likely just refer to myself as a "Monk" when shouting for a group, but if a party were looking for a Vanguard, Enforcer, Skirmisher, Striker, Reserve, or Saboteur, I'd be able to play in that way well enough to throw my hat in the ring.

[ASkellington]

Was*

Is. I already mentioned what they lost and I also mentioned they could stand to add more support tools to them.

The point of my post is that 1. We don't need ANOTHER ROLE labeled support when you can make P.Ranged which was historically the support role more supporty and 2. even if you did make them more supporty, I still wouldn't main one and would be wanting my healers fixed.

[Shurrikhan]

Is. I already mentioned what they lost and I also mentioned they could stand to add more support tools to them.

They have historically had and even now have less non-rDPS utility than certain jobs that are not Physical Ranged, and haven't uniquely had access even to granting TP since 2.4 or MP since 3.0, so that connection was largely a misnomer then and is vestigial at best now.

And if you fixate the whole of the Physical Ranged role greatly around ally-dependent indirect value then you effectively remove the option to play with any of those aesthetics (bows, guns, etc.) unless one's into that degree of support (as opposed to personal carry potential / direct value, etc.).

So, again, no, I don't think the whole of ANY role should be turned into Support, nor do I think that label should siphon off jobs piecemeal (NIN, DNC, RDM, etc.) into a new Role.

Imo, the best course is to just avoid that separate label for a 'supportive' job entirely (it's nebulous af, as it ignores the actual primary function of the job as is essential to matchmaking) --regardless of whether that label be "Support", "Physical Ranged", "Ranger", or "Thundercat"-- and just allow what jobs would fittingly want more support options... more support options, regardless of their role.


Rather than altering any role wholesale or sectioning off a bunch of jobs via a tangential description irrelevant to matchmaking like "Support" or "supportive", just give RDM additional utility but at-cost (rather than pre-taxing it for merely having that ["free"] utility), reinvigorate Bard's songs to optionally provide utility (again, at-cost in some way), let Dancer be a bit more Dancer-y while allowing it more personal throughput (still almost always a net loss) when Closed Position isn't active, and allow SMN more indirect value that can be milked from its summons (again, at least slightly at cost), etc.

At this point, the only Full Party matchmaking criteria should be 2 Tanks, 4 DPS (at least 1 Melee and at least 1 Ranged so both ST and AoE LBs are accessible), and 2 Healers.
There is functionally no difference between Physical and Magical Ranged dps that isn't already overshadowed by the differences just between Red Mage and Black Mage.

[Renathras]

You mean like...

I thought we were talking about the role/Jobs/design, not individual players. This place DOES NOT provide a better platform for counter points and debate. I get ragged on constantly when making an opposing position, and people frequently lie about or insinuate things about my motivations. I get ratioed here all the time, and I can count 3 times in the entire 2 years I've been posting here someone came to my defense on something.

I've been downvoted there before, but that place both represents and tolerates a wider swath than this place does.

The difference you're describing is due to the system (that is, this forum mechanically doesn't have "hidden via downvote"). That's not really an adequate defense considering how often people have mentioned in regard to my posts they wish there was a dislike button...

And if you fixate the whole of the Physical Ranged role greatly around ally-dependent indirect value then you effectively remove the option to play with any of those aesthetics (bows, guns, etc.) unless one's into that degree of support (as opposed to personal carry potential / direct value, etc.).

While I sympathize, this argument isn't really a useful or practical one.

Consider that some FF fans may want to play a Black Mage...like Vivi. They love the aesthetic. They like just casting the biggest elemental spell they have over and over, Osmose to refill MP, and keep going with it.
...yeah, you can't do that here. And if someone suggested BLM should be able to just chaincast Fire 4 inter spaced with Osmose - and that be a valid playstyle - no one here would support it. "Ice Mage" is not a viable playstyle, no matter how much one might like the aesthetic.

While it's a sympathetic position, at the end of the day in game design, we have to recognize that not every aesthetic will support every playstyle and preference. I like ROG but not NIN. I like the aesthetic but not the Ninki stuff, and I don't like the burst. Does it get changed to suit me? Of course not. There will be people who like an aesthetic but not the playstyle associated with it. That's an inevitability of game design.

Ideally, you match the aesthetic as best you can to the playstyle (e.g. SCH [at least its healing kit] is a technical Job requiring setup for the biggest and most powerful ability combinations; NIN's rotation is relatively fast matching the agile and quick archetype, and so on), but there's no way that those things will suit everyone who might like the aesthetic. There will always be some people that like a particular aesthetic, but the playstyle won't suit them. And that's even with games that have specs and a lot of customization. In games like FFXIV where Jobs are pretty rigid and all have the same setup and abilities, this is even more true.

EDIT:

What is happening right now? I answered you multiple times over and over. I even gave you a flowchart answering your question in the most straightforward way possible. What else do you want from me? To answer you in seven different languages?

I'm not going to engage with you on the Support thing anymore, either.

Actually? You know what? Duck it. I don't give a damn anymore. You can answer or not, I legitimately don't care and won't respond any more to you on this derail.

[Shurrikhan]

While I sympathize, this argument isn't really a useful or practical one.

Consider that some FF fans may want to play a Black Mage...like Vivi. They love the aesthetic.

Okay, and then sometime comes along and tells you, "No, Role X are actually supposed to all be Supports, because that's how they were (mis-)labelled in the past." So now not only can you not play BLM as it was, you can't play a pure DPS unless you swap to an entirely different gear class.

See the difference?

Again, all I'm asking is to simply let Dancer, Red Mage, etc. have more utility options (i.e., at cost per use, rather than things they're charged for merely having since they'd then be "free" and have to be balanced in turn), without moving them into a new Support category or forcing the whole of Physical Ranged role to turn into Supports without regard to their individual job identities.

Leave the damn label out of it. Just stick with Tanks, DPS, and Healers, with any amount --small or high-- of support available to jobs of any and every role based simply on how well that fits their identity.

[ty_taurus]

Okay, and then sometime comes along and tells you, "No, Role X are actually supposed to all be Supports, because that's how they were (mis-)labelled in the past." So now not only can you not play BLM as it was, you can't play a pure DPS unless you swap to an entirely different gear class.

See the difference?

Again, all I'm asking is to simply let Dancer, Red Mage, etc. have more utility options (i.e., at cost per use, rather than things they're charged for merely having since they'd then be "free" and have to be balanced in turn), without moving them into a new Support category or forcing the whole of Physical Ranged role to turn into Supports without regard to their individual job identities.

Leave the damn label out of it. Just stick with Tanks, DPS, and Healers, with any amount --small or high-- of support available to jobs of any and every role based simply on how well that fits their identity.

You know, thinking about it more, if you actually want to enhance the experience for players who want to be more support-y, what you need to change isn't the jobs, it's the encounters. A big problem with support in general is that there are very few ways to actually provide support. Offensively, we have direct damage buffs, critical hit buffs, and direct hit buffs. In terms of utility, we only have raise, sustain (healing/shielding), healing enhancements, and combat sprint. Mitigation would normally be treated as utility, but since fight design has shifted toward making mitigation mandatory and available on every job, it's less utility and more required battle mechanics at this point. There are some fringe examples of things that could be utility, like esuna, silence, stun/sleep, and dispel, but they are incredibly infrequently needed.

If there were more avenues available to provide utility or offensive support in the first place, you'd have room to offer more variety in supporting as jobs like Dancer or Red Mage. I've referred to Red Mage as a support before, and it's regularly referred to as such, but it doesn't actually feel very supporting when you think about it. A single target GCD heal you never want to use, a tiny magic mitigation attached to increased healing effect every 90 seconds, and instant raises don't actually promote a very consistent support-like experience. Most of the time, you're never going to even use Vercure or Verraise anyway. Embolden exists as an offensive buff, but nearly every DPS has an Embolden equivalent, and two healers have one as well.

[Renathras]

Okay, and then sometime comes along...

Note that's what people want to do with Healers. But yes, I agree. I don't think they'll ever add an actual Support role anyway. Ranged arguably WAS a Support-sub-role in the past, but it's changed away from that. I think that was their original design intent. In ARR, BRD used the Healer LB3, and in the End of an Era ARR cinematic, cast protect on the WAR while the WHM moved up to heal him.

I think the issue largely comes down to...balance. Say DNC has a lot of support options and MCH has none. So how do we balance that? Does MCH need to do all the damage that DNC would contribute to a SAM or BLM if they were in the party (highest) or what it would be if DNC was Dance Partnering the RDM? Does MCH new more utility like Dismantle? If so, is that weighted by players as more or less important than Dance Partner SAM? Maybe it depends on the fight. Maybe it depends if one fight has mechanics at 2 mins that make SAM's burst less but Dismantle worth more, or if the 2 min burst has the boss doing nothing so the SAM can blow it out of the park with Dance Partner and Dismantle is barely useful that fight because boss mechanics happen 100 seconds from each other so that Dismantle isn't ready but for every other major mechanic at 240 sec, losing 2-3 uses over the course of the fight because the mechanics don't line up with it.

As much as people hate the dreaded "b" word, it's the reason there's not a lot of differentiation. Pull up the DPS spreads on specs in WoW sometime and you'll see massive % gaps between the top and bottom spec. But the game's combat system also is a lot less rigid, with talent choices and Jobs having various levels and types of utility and stuff. The cost of difference is people having to take a turn at being blackballed - something the community has not shown it won't do - so the Devs do everything they can to avoid that. Which happens to include beating anything different or interesting out of Jobs... <_<

(...though it is funny to me reading Nizzi's post in the SGE thread where he's pointing out that SCH and SGE and even AST and WHM are distinct from each other...)

But I agree with you the rug shouldn't be pulled out from under people. It's one reason I oppose changing all the Healer designs to be damage rotation focused.

You know, thinking about it more, if you actually want to enhance the experience for players who want to be more support-y, what you need to change isn't the jobs, it's the encounters.

Agreed in part. It's really a whole combat system change. Encounters are too rigid and class design is too rigid. And the community has a bad habit of punishing any Jobs that aren't if they underperform (or overrewarding them if they are different and overperform, such as Ares- er, I mean, WAR-god.)

I do agree that there need to be more avenues for types of support. I think that's why Expedience was such an exciting ability to me, since it's something that's NOT directly damage related (and while it has the mitigation, movement itself can be a different kind of mitigation), yet is very clearly useful and people prize it, showing there are other options for support besides "Raise" and "more damage".

...

So you know, being ratioed and browbeaten and accused of all sorts of things like ulterior motives and such CONSTANTLY doesn't feel better than just having my posts buried. I won't keep arguing the point, but I can post things like I do here and my posts aren't buried. I often will get downvotes and some people disagreeing with me (vehemently), but also some people agreeing or saying "But he's not wrong" or otherwise coming to my defense/agreeing with me, and so on.

That doesn't happen here. I've seen you once recently (thank you again, btw) correcting someone for lying about me...but it took 2-3 pages and literally no one else would do it, with people upvoting the posts instead. I've seen Vetch semi-correct I think twice now (not really support me, but more say to someone else that their attack may not be fair - not actually calling them out or supporting me, but it's something as at least a respectful "point of order"), though again, those posts got upvotes and mine didn't and his corrections didn't. Both of those (semi-positive) examples are incredibly recent and, so far, isolated cases.

Perhaps it's that Reddit is less tolerant of different views than here, but I see posts there with people raging on healers and posts where people praise them, and the comments come from both sides. Here, it's me and...that's it. And the attacks on me here are worse than any I've ever gotten on Reddit. And that's saying a lot, since Reddit isn't the kindest place on the internet.

[Shurrikhan]

You know, thinking about it more, if you actually want to enhance the experience for players who want to be more support-y, what you need to change isn't the jobs, it's the encounters.

I mean... it's kinda both. It's always both. A kit can't interact with content that doesn't have any space for it. An encounter can't play on kit that isn't there.

I've been pushing for more avenues of providing and featuring/using (on the sides of kit and encounter) utility since 1.x for that very reason. Undermechanics (something with a label to refer to and with a coded effect that players and/or enemies can trigger in some way -- a la Vulnerability, Heavy, Slow, Draw-ins, etc.) is my broken-record word at this point. v.v

A big problem with support in general is that there are very few ways to actually provide support. Offensively, we have direct damage buffs, critical hit buffs, and direct hit buffs.

Honestly, I don't consider that as "support" (and, like you, certainly not "utility"), so much as just "My dps... through you all (meaning that I can bring more when at lower ilvl than my team but less when at higher ilvl than my team, compared to playing a more direct contributor)."

Granted, I only really consider utility as something (A) not accounted for in or required by the direct tuning of a fight and/or (B) difficult to provide a stable quantitative estimate for in terms of either primary category (damage or sustain) -- i.e., "(other) usefulness".

"How much utility does it have (here)?" = "What use does it amount to that we didn't already account for under the more easily actionable labels of damage and sustain (in the given context)?"

So, if you have more bursty of damage than is strictly needed, which could thereby help to kill a highly damaging add that much quicker, that burstiness has utility because it's saving resources (e.g., oGCD heals that'd otherwise be useful for random damage later and without which the healers have to play far more cautiously and/or might go oom) and/or efficiency (other DPS would otherwise have to sacrifice DPS over the course of the larger fight in order to blow all their shit then, breaking rhythm, in order to burn the add in time).

Similarly, if you can Cover someone who'd otherwise die, that won't always be an available means of value, but when it is applicable, you're saving MP and the rDPS that'd be lost to Weakness. Etc., etc. That utility will still ultimately amount to some value in sustain (tangentially, shorter-term) resources saved which in turn allow for more damage (long-term / uncapped) output, and should be judged accordingly, but we'd just use that vague term of utility (literally, usefulness/resource or action that'd be [eventual] value) instead of just 'damage' or 'sustain' because that exchange is so situational.

I've referred to Red Mage as a support before, and it's regularly referred to as such, but it doesn't actually feel very supporting when you think about it.

To me it's far from 'supportive', since you can't generally extract any meaningful savings in damage or sustain resources from having used the likes of Magic Barrier and Embolden just shuffles your own would-be damage to others (and then back again, on fflogs), leaving it only with the value of Verraise relative to Summoner or Healers' access to that skill (which, Thin Air arguably then outperforms in terms of situational value).

EDIT: That said, I'd love to see more (non-rDPS / not number-circle-jerking, to be clear) utility added to RDM, of course. I've wanted that since its original premise of a caster balancing White Mana and Black Mana that turned out to be... just arbitrary names for two reskinned halves of the exact same thing.