Which Job, in your opinion, has the biggest identity issue?

[Snorky]

personally i would love a pure archer, and would love to see bard moved to the magic tree instead and perhaps have a say Lute as their primary weapon..

iono i may be to invested in D&D style bards, i was never fan of a ranger that sings, i prefer the caster side of it. (granted they make good melee too)

i would love to see them attacking with music using a lute would be really cool in my opinion,
they could almost be a magic based dancer style system (i'm not speaking on difficulty more so flow of play), where you play certain damaging notes that proc the songs that work as combo finishers perhaps. kinda how monk plays where once you execute a certain combination of songs it triggers your big ultimate ballot based on which songs you use...

iono just spit balling here, but really like the ideal now that im thinking about it..
as for the archer class can become ranger keep its bow skills and pick up some more damage profile to replace the lost songs, maybe a range of dots or bleeds to add some complexity..

I actually really love this idea, I would play a bard and archer if something like this happened.

[Connor]

iono i may be to invested in D&D style bards, i was never fan of a ranger that sings, i prefer the caster side of it. (granted they make good melee too)

i would love to see them attacking with music using a lute would be really cool in my opinion,
they could almost be a magic based dancer style system (i'm not speaking on difficulty more so flow of play), where you play certain damaging notes that proc the songs that work as combo finishers perhaps. kinda how monk plays where once you execute a certain combination of songs it triggers your big ultimate ballot based on which songs you use...

iono just spit balling here, but really like the ideal now that im thinking about it..
as for the archer class can become ranger keep its bow skills and pick up some more damage profile to replace the lost songs, maybe a range of dots or bleeds to add some complexity..

Even in terms of FF itself the ‘archer/ranger that sings’ really doesn’t fit with anything that’s been previously established. Like in FF3 and 5 they use harps and sing in battle to grant various magical effects (stats buffs, regens, status ailments), in 4 they’re repped by Edward who again uses a harp and sings in battle to support the party rather than being a heavy damage dealer. I mean, we can’t even Hide , what kind of FF Bard is this?! Lol

Ranger itself has also had various iterations that usually revolve around elemental damage with different arrows and animal companions helping in battle (in FF5). Sadly, literally none of that gets any kind of exposure in ffxiv because there’s not enough space between the ‘laser beams’ and ‘vaguely-bard like music abilities’ lol. So FF Bards can’t be fully represented, FF Rangers can’t be fully represented…

[Supersnow845]

In terms of classes that are a mismatch and don’t really fit with what most people will think of when they hear the term I also agree on BRD, BRD has too many old cut actions and too many actions that should be cut (seriously why do we still have a 2 minute CD that does nothing but guarantee a proc of refulgent arrow when your stock standard GCD has a 20% chance of doing that every GCD) as well as actions that used to have cool effects but are now just boring. None of the actions convince you BRD is either one of the two things it tries to be either, recent bard has been about shiny arrows but the core rotation still revolves around songs and musical buffs (even if in practice you play one note on a bow harp you probably don’t have), I do like how the zeta relic steps made concentrated efforts to actually all be bowharps, but they dumped this with anima

For jobs whos actions don’t match the lore of the job quests in game I would go with either AST or SCH, AST’s card lore never changed so the lady is like “people look to the bole Constellation for protection in times of need” (bole effect 6% damage buff), they also still really haven’t removed the notes of the effect of nocturnal sect. SCH in the lore and the quests is a dirty battle tactician and field medic with DOT’s debuffs and trickery, SCH’s actions look like a gimped fairy mage with some tacked on allagen tech wizard for some reason

[Jeeqbit]

Even in terms of FF itself the ‘archer/ranger that sings’ really doesn’t fit with anything that’s been previously established. Like in FF3 and 5 they use harps and sing in battle to grant various magical effects (stats buffs, regens, status ailments), in 4 they’re repped by Edward who again uses a harp and sings in battle to support the party rather than being a heavy damage dealer.

How is that different to FFXIV?

The Warden's Paean, Nature's Minne, Troubadour, Mage's Ballad, Army's Paeon, The Wanderer's Minuet and Peloton all have animations of you playing instruments. We used to have another too that got removed.

[Carin-Eri]

I agree with everything said regarding Bard so far - in fact, can't really add anything to what has been said as such.

I do think it's a shame that Bard is in the position it's in though. I still find myself wanting to play Bard often, but 99% of the time default to Dancer instead since, functionally, it makes more sense.

[Snorky]

I agree with everything said regarding Bard so far - in fact, can't really add anything to what has been said as such.

I do think it's a shame that Bard is in the position it's in though. I still find myself wanting to play Bard often, but 99% of the time default to Dancer instead since, functionally, it makes more sense.

Your post gave me a idea, wouldn't it be awesome to be able to pair certain classes in harder content of course that would give buffs or extra damage to the paired partners? Kind of like what happens with dancer now but maybe pair a dancer with a bard, the bard plays a certain song the dancer uses a certain step and hits harder. Same could be done with other jobs. But only on difficult content it would be a way for lateral progression and encourage group play. Just playing around with ideas. I wouldn't like to see any jobs locked behind group content but power progression has to flatten out at some point. Besides it would give these jobs more identity. I chose a most obvious example of Bard and dancer. Just musing.

[Supersnow845]

Your post gave me a idea, wouldn't it be awesome to be able to pair certain classes in harder content of course that would give buffs or extra damage to the paired partners? Kind of like what happens with dancer now but maybe pair a dancer with a bard, the bard plays a certain song the dancer uses a certain step and hits harder. Same could be done with other jobs. But only on difficult content it would be a way for lateral progression and encourage group play. Just playing around with ideas. I wouldn't like to see any jobs locked behind group content but power progression has to flatten out at some point. Besides it would give these jobs more identity. I chose a most obvious example of Bard and dancer. Just musing.

Job interplay used to exist and they basically deleted it in the name of…….whatever the hell the modern job design is

In a world where they deleted skills like foe’s requiem I can’t imagine them doing anything that involves actual communication around how to best utilise said interplay

Like even dance partner and kardia have no interaction with the partnered person, it’s just the DNC/SGE optimising their own skills around another bystander

[Hyperia]

Job interplay used to exist and they basically deleted it in the name of…….whatever the hell the modern job design is

In a world where they deleted skills like foe’s requiem I can’t imagine them doing anything that involves actual communication around how to best utilise said interplay

Like even dance partner and kardia have no interaction with the partnered person, it’s just the DNC/SGE optimising their own skills around another bystander

They didn’t want to have a situation if you have job X in your party that you must have job Y to satisfy the meta. This was a big problem in the past so they changed things that you can mix and match jobs now.

[Connor]

How is that different to FFXIV?

The Warden's Paean, Nature's Minne, Troubadour, Mage's Ballad, Army's Paeon, The Wanderer's Minuet and Peloton all have animations of you playing instruments. We used to have another too that got removed.

Because those ‘animations of you playing instruments’ are immediately interrupted by laser beams arrows. You literally need to clip your gcd to see the animations. FFXIV’s version of Bard completely misses the mark relative to any other ff, and it’s the only classic ff job to get that kind of treatment. And it doesn’t fit as a Ranger because it doesn’t really have anything ‘Ranger-y’ either, just a bunch of ‘attacks that are definitely not magical pure physical laser beams beams of light’ so ultimately nobody’s happy

[Supersnow845]

They didn’t want to have a situation if you have job X in your party that you must have job Y to satisfy the meta. This was a big problem in the past so they changed things that you can mix and match jobs now.

Which I have always found to be a poor decision, it’s an MMO in which you can play any class on the same character, I don’t think DRG having a debuff that WAR can also take advantage of is bad design, communicate, change jobs or raid with someone else, it’s not like these interactions mattered in anything besides savage (except in very niche cases where you had like the dragon kick b****** in alliance raids for other MNK’s)

The pursuit of any comp being able to clear any content has led to this samey job design, and P8 shows they still can’t get it right