Speculation on how jobs will change

[Altena]

In one of the early live letters Yoshi said that many jobs will be changing dramatically, and noted that MNK will be seeing the biggest change, and joked that the battle team are angry with him because he wants to change so much!

So what do you think is changing ? What would you like to see ? I would love to see a very creative discussion on this topic.

MNK:

What has been mentioned is MNK will be more focused on chaining skills. The more abilities you chain, the higher the damage bonus. Personally I like this concept as the idea in my mind is that MNK is a fast, consistent attacker. However in saying this I would also like to see MNK in more of a light tanking role, by bringing back a blocking/counter system that XI saw, perhaps something like a "Counter stance" (which is good against fast hitters), a "Guarding stance" (blocks / reduces heavy hitters), a "Flurry stance" (or something similar, which increases attack speed), and "Lightfoot" stance which increases evasion (good against mobs with high accuracy).

In saying this of course I don't want to steal some of the PLD fire, but I don't have enough experience on the job to comment (perhaps a PLD vet can chime in here).

DRG:

I would like to see a heavier focus on the "flamboyant" fighting style that DRG has always had. Over the top weaponskills, a larger focus on "Jump", along with augments/enhancments that come with the ability. DRG being probably my main job in 1.x I wouldn't ask for it to be changed an aweful lot. I do hope they hold themselves as crit hit beasts.

WAR:

Since I see WAR as a hybrid tank/DD/Crowd control, I would prefer to see war in a more specific role. Personally I would like to see a heavier focus in DD war's now that they have defined PLD a little more. To me "Warrior" has always had a huge weapon, slow attack speed, heavy hitter, solid DD. I would personally prefer this, and for them to become more of a traditional WAR in the series.

BLM:

To be brutally honest I hated 1.x spell casting.. 1...2....3....1...2... etc. I would like to see a higher focus on chaining magic with melee weapon skills, or more variable casting options with things like DoT's, elemental weakness triggering etc. I am not much of a mage player to be honest but when having to step in the shoes of a BLM in 1.x I found myself lying back in the chair spamming 123.

I will leave it at that for now as they are the jobs I ended up playing the most in 1.x, however I would love to hear where people would like to see their favourite jobs going in ARR. We already know some very basic things, and quite a few of you probably had a play around in alpha so you probably already know the direction some jobs are heading (please don't break your NDA's).

[Yrusama]

Would be nice if THM could bestow elemental attributes to melee party members, like Vivi in FFIX or the Lalafell in the original opening movie fight against the malboro.

[Altena]

Would be nice if THM could bestow elemental attributes to melee party members, like Vivi in FFIX or the Lalafell in the original opening movie fight against the malboro.

Yes this as well! I was looking forward to being able to cast fire on my friend's arrows after watching that CS... I was utterly disappointed.. I think it should be only short and temporary though, as I would like to see RDM (as a proper melee elemental mage) make an appearance with en- spells eventually..

[Aion]

Seeing how much they changed the "alpha" classes (lancer/arc/conjurer) I have faith the rest will be interesting..cant wait for beta!

[Solace]

I would like to see more team work..
I would like for mages to have more assist spells with cooler effects.
Similar to Cutscene effects for adding fire to an arrow, or a barrier over an entire party, in an AOE.

I would also like for melee to have more abilities, to save those mages, if they end up pulling too much hate.
There is never a shortage of team mates, willing to push the healer out of the way and take one for the team.
Sometimes that is the most honorable sacrifice and it can allow a team who was going to die, one last chance.
It would have to be timed properly to make it fun.

Say you see the mob readying an ability on a party member and you know it will kill or seriously hurt them.
You use that ability on that member and you take the effect of that next ability, onto yourself.

In AOES you might be able to use this strategy, to cover half the team, using the other halves bodies as shields.
So only half of you take damage, or wipe, etc.
Might be nice for an ultra powerful move.. Like say oh idk... Megaflare....

We need more tech as well.
I would love to see a "Barrett" class, with more accessibility to tech.
This is FF, not knights of Camelot and I think we forget that way too much.

[Feln]

I'd like to see some more exotic weapons, similar to what the guy above me mentioned with Barret. Don't get me wrong, I love the sword, shield, greatsword, polearm, HAND TO HAND, and all of that.. but where are the unconventionally mastered unconventional weapons? Gimmie a swallow. A whip. Deck of cards. Flail. Shotgun. Vial of corrosive ooze. Pogo stick. Broken beer bottle. Something out of the normal, man!

[Alaltus]

Monk: some form of the Cover Counter ability from FFIV the after years could be pretty cool to see. Like the monk could go into a stance(Like berserk not able to be kept up indefinitely) and counter blows for another party member. Preventing damage or not the ability would still be pretty useful and put the Monk's counter prowess to work.

Dragoon: I want to see spears raining down upon the enemy whilst my character is performing jump. I'd love to see something reminiscent of Dragon magic and/or for Dragoon to branch out bit more than just being a out and out physical DD.

Warrior: I can imagine Warrior getting a aoe-knockback weaponskill to go with those big axes of theirs =P Mostly i feel Warrior's aoe damage/aoe range was a bit overkill compared to it's competition and would like to have a bigger selection of single target weaponskills otherwise /shrugs i'm not the biggest fan of Warrior.

Black Mage: In 1.0 the spells were too much about Utility it took away any advantage you would have had targeting a weakness. I'd like to see it become as simple as it was in the older games. Turn elemental spells into straight damage and allow for adding a Aoe effect for some spells at the cost of your damage being cut say in half.

White Mage: Pretty efficient as is in 1.0 not much comes to mind besides Reraise.

Paladin: Could use a bigger pool of spells to use if only to flesh it out some more as a part magic user.

Bard: More songs and more varied effects from them. Like actually being able to heal a chunk of health with a song and deal damage with a song.

[Radacci]

MNK:

What has been mentioned is MNK will be more focused on chaining skills. The more abilities you chain, the higher the damage bonus. Personally I like this concept as the idea in my mind is that MNK is a fast, consistent attacker. However in saying this I would also like to see MNK in more of a light tanking role, by bringing back a blocking/counter system that XI saw, perhaps something like a "Counter stance" (which is good against fast hitters), a "Guarding stance" (blocks / reduces heavy hitters), a "Flurry stance" (or something similar, which increases attack speed), and "Lightfoot" stance which increases evasion (good against mobs with high accuracy).

In saying this of course I don't want to steal some of the PLD fire, but I don't have enough experience on the job to comment (perhaps a PLD vet can chime in here).

DRG:

I would like to see a heavier focus on the "flamboyant" fighting style that DRG has always had. Over the top weaponskills, a larger focus on "Jump", along with augments/enhancments that come with the ability. DRG being probably my main job in 1.x I wouldn't ask for it to be changed an aweful lot. I do hope they hold themselves as crit hit beasts.

WAR:

Since I see WAR as a hybrid tank/DD/Crowd control, I would prefer to see war in a more specific role. Personally I would like to see a heavier focus in DD war's now that they have defined PLD a little more. To me "Warrior" has always had a huge weapon, slow attack speed, heavy hitter, solid DD. I would personally prefer this, and for them to become more of a traditional WAR in the series.

BLM:

To be brutally honest I hated 1.x spell casting.. 1...2....3....1...2... etc. I would like to see a higher focus on chaining magic with melee weapon skills, or more variable casting options with things like DoT's, elemental weakness triggering etc. I am not much of a mage player to be honest but when having to step in the shoes of a BLM in 1.x I found myself lying back in the chair spamming 123.

Only reason for monks to do endless combos, is if there's no TP cost for their skills or if their TP regain is faster than others.
Fast hitters...there's no such thing in XIV ^^ except maybe other monks, but it wouldnt make sense to have a counter stance vs your own class...
your evasion stance sounds odd. if it was aimed at countering high-acc mobs, then no other mobs with low-mid acc would ever be able to hit you, so it would counter everything else. and you'd basically never get hit by anything else but high-acc mobs....OP much.
Your ideas turn monk into a Overpowered hybrid of everything ^^ block, high eva, DD, counter, atk spd...really? Maybe monk should be prime tank, and paladin Holy-DD ^^

BLM cant even use any weaponskills, and they are a caster class, so they should cast spells, not whack mobs with wand anyways.
I think what you're talking about is closer to what other jobs do. They should add another job for debuffs, dots etc instead. I think they wanna keep the 16 skills/class, and 5/job; so they cant start adding a bunch of new stuff to each class/job.

DRG: well with just GCD, you can jump every 4sec, but the only reason to jump a lot, would be if there was some combo involved with it. Or turn more skills into jumps; but that would be absurd

Seeing how much they changed the "alpha" classes (lancer/arc/conjurer) I have faith the rest will be interesting..cant wait for beta!

They barely changed anything...only removing CD, and using GCD. Some combos are different too.

I would also like for melee to have more abilities, to save those mages, if they end up pulling too much hate.
There is never a shortage of team mates, willing to push the healer out of the way and take one for the team.
Sometimes that is the most honorable sacrifice and it can allow a team who was going to die, one last chance.
It would have to be timed properly to make it fun.

Say you see the mob readying an ability on a party member and you know it will kill or seriously hurt them.
You use that ability on that member and you take the effect of that next ability, onto yourself.

In AOES you might be able to use this strategy, to cover half the team, using the other halves bodies as shields.
So only half of you take damage, or wipe, etc.
Might be nice for an ultra powerful move.. Like say oh idk... Megaflare....

Uhm no, people should just learn to manage their aggro more that's what the aggro bars are for.
And you got tank, that should aggro mobs to get them off mages.
It may be appropriate for PLD to have cover, and Sentinel buff, that reduce damage to party, like in FF13; but not melee in general. PLD already do have cover though, but dont know how it works exactly.

I'd like to see some more exotic weapons, similar to what the guy above me mentioned with Barret. Don't get me wrong, I love the sword, shield, greatsword, polearm, HAND TO HAND, and all of that.. but where are the unconventionally mastered unconventional weapons? Gimmie a swallow. A whip. Deck of cards. Flail. Shotgun. Vial of corrosive ooze. Pogo stick. Broken beer bottle. Something out of the normal, man!

Broken beer bottle...you planning to kill Bahamut with that? ^^
You should already be aware that classes are tied to weapons, so you'd need a new class for your beer bottle; that's a big no no. I'm sure they will add new classes/jobs with new weapons as we go along. there's plenty of unused classes/jobs.
If you look at other FF games, there's something like 100 different classes/jobs, and we have 25ish.

[Lyriq]

As long as SMN isn't horribly broken by the time it's released... I'll be happy. I just feel like Summoner hasn't gotten a chance to TRULY shine in the SE MMO's. I guess that isn't related to a job being changed but... yeah. Don't break Summoner this time around please!

But if we're gonna talk CURRENT jobs... I guess I'd like to see CNJ & THM handled differently. I don't quite know exactly what that is yet, but I was disappointed in how spell distribution between the two occurred when the battle system had it's first significant change. I understand that WHM in other FF's (III, I'm looking at you) and WHM had access to stone, aero, etc... however, I just don't see a BLM functioning W/O all the elemental attacks. I'm really curious to see the changes the mage jobs will undergo.

[Altena]

Oooo yes the big barrier Loui uses in the vid.. Would be nice to see WHM get a small version of that (perhaps similar to the Limsa opening cutscene against the jellies), that surrounds the WHM in an area. Players inside that barrier are protected for 5-10 seconds. (Perhaps not 100% damage mitigation but perhaps a 50% would suffice). A nice "shatter" effect after the effect ends would be nice to see too..

All great ideas guys.

But yeah please try and stick to current jobs. There are already many "what jobs would you like to see in the future" threads around.