Can an expansion survive without a DPS?

[Supersnow845]

So far for 7.0 will have 4 tanks, 4 healers, 3 aiming, 2 maiming, 2 scouting, 4 casters, and 2 limited jobs. To make it fare we need 1 more aiming, 2 more maiming, and 2 more scouting jobs to even them out. 8.0 should have another maiming or aiming job and another scouting job.

The gear classes are nowhere near as important as the actual balance of the roles, honestly they should have just deleted scouting rather than leaning into it with viper

Melee having three gear classes is not a justification for making more melee

[hynaku]

The gear classes are nowhere near as important as the actual balance of the roles, honestly they should have just deleted scouting rather than leaning into it with viper

Melee having three gear classes is not a justification for making more melee

There is no justification to add anymore new jobs. We don't need any more healers or tanks they already have hard enough time balancing them all. I would rather have them add sub jobs again.

[mallleable]

I don't understand the sentiment that we are reaching a point where fewer new jobs can be added. I generally feel like the only reason for there to be any difficulty when adding any new jobs is lack of imagination or lack to tropes to fall back on. Which is just not really possible.

[Supersnow845]

There is no justification to add anymore new jobs. We don't need any more healers or tanks they already have hard enough time balancing them all. I would rather have them add sub jobs again.

Well I mean I was exclusively responding to your point that they should be balancing the gear sets which they really don’t need to

I agree that if their ideas for new jobs are “SCH but worse” and “melee MCH” they need to stop adding new jobs

[VentVanitas]

hypothetically Yoshida could suddenly announce tomorrow that there won't be anymore new jobs for the future of the game past 7.x and I feel pretty confident in saying that XIV would still do just fine, and I say this as a resident forum doomer.

[Reinha]

I think they are probably going to continue with the same pattern, because it lets enjoyers of each of the 5 roles have something to look forward to at least once every 3 expansions and still keeps the number of melee roughly equal to the number of ranged+casters.

Melee + caster
Tank + ranged
Melee + healer

The expansion after DT would then have a new tank and a physical ranged dps.

[Rithy255]

Imagine having 13 DPS roles but only 8 support roles which take up the same amount in 8/4 man parties.

It's obvious this game is DPS bias because it's the only thing that has semi decent design and a "direction" to go into, If you look at tanks and healers those roles have been disasters that has everything unique about them took away at this point, so they can be boring 1, 2, 3 gauge spender dps or literally DOT and one button jobs.

In reality Healers & Tanks need to either be took into the "DPS-Support" Direction with actual fun rotations or their kits be actually Intresting, but who we kidding that's not going to happen. I'm glad I main black mage instead of Paladin now.

[Lyth]

As of DT, we'll have 4 tanks, 4 healers, 6 melee, and 7 ranged. I agree that 8.0 is likely to be a new tank (hammer) and a new physical ranged, if we follow the pattern started with Stormblood. The gear subtypes don't really matter outside of job aesthetics.

It probably reflects player preferences, since you generally see this sort of distribution between supports and DPS in games anyways.

[Kes13a]

I would be more hyped for an expansion with no new jobs period.

because it would mean they decided to stop diluting what we have available now, and put some effort into fixing the jobs we have. that is what I feel would be far more worthwhile.

[UkcsAlias]

There is no justification to add anymore new jobs. We don't need any more healers or tanks they already have hard enough time balancing them all. I would rather have them add sub jobs again.

For most players it realy doesnt matter as much. 90% of the game doesnt care at all which job you are, only tank/healer/dps matters. And outgearing is consistent at causing this balance to exist.

Job balance is only a thing that only matters in the current expansion. And this means that we can always provide tweaks to balance them here. If balanced in EW, it will generaly work in old content if the potency balance is the same. No need to refine things further. Extremes even in the current state do not require such refinement, except that some mechanics benefit more from having a few ranged jobs in the team. The slight damage variance they have is not relevant in this at all since most players arent even remotely playing well enough to ever even try going ultimate. The true balance only matters for ultimate.

And let ultimate be a special case on its own where its usualy not much of a problem. If you are that good at optimizing things, you will always go for the most optimized, which can only be solved if everything is exactly the same. Its impossible to balance this unles you want to kill fun entirely.

People that play ultimates are at a state where they can optimize fun out of the game, a problem a dev must actively fight against. And there are a few ways here that have proven to work:
- Fixed moments of rebalancing based on popularity. The more popular, the more nerfs are needed. It can make 1 job superior in ultimate by a huge margin, but at the same time, such reputation will push players towards using that job. Canceling out effects
- Focussing on only fixing anoying quirks in a job, ignoring the part that some unbalance exists. Fixing quirks can make a job more convenient (and therefor fun) to play. This can sometimes go along with a buff.

By combining these 2 things, while you dont have perfect balance, you will remain having a fun game that feels balanced for over 99% of the playerbase.

There is only 1 thing that goes besides this: Overpowered new jobs. New jobs rarely are made balanced as you want people to play them, and being stronger helps at making them feel fun. These do not need that semi passive 'maintenance balance' as process yet. Thats for later.

So they can just add new jobs to provide new content and some extra variety. It barely matters. As long as devs look at popularity of older jobs, they will have a good idea of how balanced things are.