Speculation on how jobs will change

[Reika]

I don't really know what to think until Phase 1 of beta... But what I am hoping for is:

BLM:
Debuffs moved back to being spells of their own, debuff effects removed from most elemental magic, ice not suck, and thunder not magically being the strongest element. Each element should have equal potency and the player should chose the element to attack at the monsters weakness, not simply the one that unreasonablly has more base potency. Ancient magics become better and not gimicy: Flare be targeted and do more base damage, and it can lose the weak dot if it isn't going to really be useful. Freeze not be some weird way of reducing enmity and be an acual damage attack with potency equal to flare. Burst not depend on being near death and have potency equal to flare and freeze, and also have all of them have the same reasonable cooldown (globally shared possiblly). And weaponskills should be added that use the element of the weapon you are using. They should also be able to use Water, Earth, and Wind magic, because there can really never be Quake, Flood, or Tornado ancient magics for use by black mage otherwise. And burst definantly should not be BLM's ultimate 15 min skill. It should be more like something that Removes MP cost for a period of time, or makes the next attack spell cast have quadruple potency, or be ULITMA. (BTW I 100% hate what they did to BLM/THM in 1.0... if you couldnt tell)

As for Thm... I would like the return of sacrifice and resurrect, only that they arent useable when a BLM. That isn't likely to happen tho.

WHM:
Like BLM, most debuffs should become spells of their own again. Especially dispell. Aeroa should not be a dispeller.... Should go back to having Banish and Dia for its damage, low MP and cooldown, so BLM can have elemental superiority. Holy would hopefully change to not use all MP, and instead be an attack that is simply more damaging than Banish and be more effective against undead while having a higher cooldown and MP cost. Hoping WHM also has the elemental defense buffs, and that they get a Reraise spell at some point.

Both WHM and BLM:
Return the aoe toggle and impose cooldown increase/mp cost increase/possibly potency reduction for casting spells in AOE. Casting fire in single target should have same/similar cooldown and MP cost as casting thunder, casting thunder in aoe should have same/similar cooldown/mp cost of casting fire. TP could also become a resourse used while casting spells in AOE instead of extra MP as neither have been given anything to use TP for.

MNK:
I dont use MNK, so I have not many thoughts on it. But I do hope it and every other job has some kind of buff it can share with the party that no other Job can do, in order to encourage balanced play.

WAR:
Hope to see it be able to actually fulfil a DPS role efficiantly. It was hard to not be the agro target with warrior without sacrificing damage to do so. Berzerk skill should reduce enmity gain while active to help with this. I think it's ability to gain HP back from crits when using Rampage is much. I think that should be limited to MRD class, and not carry over to WAR to promote using WAR and all jobs like they were advertised in the first place: Party play, and solo classes for solo with greater survivability but less party utility.

PLD:
Hoping to see the ability to have aoe threat increased. Wardrum was just too impractical and really didn't have much of an impact dispite its tooltip saying it generated high agro. Hoping they changed the spirits within combo from being phalanx -> SW to fast blade - flat blade - spirits within. I am also hoping paladin can finally Parry with a shield equipped, and the values listed for both parry and block rate are actual %'s against a target of equal level.

DRG:
The main thing I hope for is Dragonfire dive, dispite sounding like a fire attack, will become non-elemental. Not being able to use your ultimate skill because it will be absorbed or resisted based on the monsters element is a balance flaw in my eyes. I liked what I saw from the video however and hope more great things are in store.

BRD:
..................I never liked how they did this job :/ A bow class that doesn't do as much damage as it should because its musical support. I wish they had just put an 8th class for this instead of what they did and made archer go to Ranger....

[Altena]

WHM, BLM, Both

Big ups for the mages. I am a bit of a traditionalist in a sense and would much rather see BLM get back to being the elemental caster, and WHM the healer. Give stone/aero/water to BLM, throw in Quake, Flood, Tornado. If the spell list is starting to get "too large" then remove a few of their mediocre abilities.

I do hope it and every other job has some kind of buff it can share with the party that no other Job can do, in order to encourage balanced play.

The only problem I see with this is you will end up (like in some fights) having a job for the sake of having that buff, so you are effectively nerfing someone's fun due to a party wide effect. BRD unfortunately falls victim to this in dungeons (as an example) with songs. They usually get stuck on chest duty which isn't really a fun job in comparison to the others after the 2738123789123th time.

WAR:

Yes, just yes. 100%

PLD:
Hoping they changed the spirits within combo from being phalanx -> SW to fast blade - flat blade - spirits within.

Well considering that a lot of abilities have changed, along with the combo system - I am sure you got your wish, or at least a less strict one. Phalanx has a very strict parameter that was more often then not force triggered.

DRG:
The main thing I hope for is Dragonfire dive, dispite sounding like a fire attack, will become non-elemental. Not being able to use your ultimate skill because it will be absorbed or resisted based on the monsters element is a balance flaw in my eyes. I liked what I saw from the video however and hope more great things are in store.

Yes please !

BRD:
..................I never liked how they did this job :/ A bow class that doesn't do as much damage as it should because its musical support. I wish they had just put an 8th class for this instead of what they did and made archer go to Ranger....[/QUOTE]

ARC can be quite powerful in certain fights, in fact BRD can do a fairly solid amount too if they aren't doing any form of support. Certainly not as heavy as a straight DD class but I do think to balance the job they need to nerf some of this damage otherwise they will just end up too high in demand. This is the one area I would like to see diversity start playing a part. Support jobs should have a little bit of diversity in order to hold the more defined roles together. I personally believe they nailed it, as it does give room to breath for Ranger if they ever decide to introduce it.

[Fantasia]

BRD:
..................I never liked how they did this job :/ A bow class that doesn't do as much damage as it should because its musical support. I wish they had just put an 8th class for this instead of what they did and made archer go to Ranger....

I think this is a bit of an unfair summary. I mained BRD and with the right gear it was stupidly powerful. Even if it wasn't, ranged classes shouldn't be as powerful as their melee counterparts, solely for the fact that they're usually out of range of 90% of attacks. The exception obviously being BLM, but they have MP to make their output fairly limited.

Besides, in other FFs, a Ranger's weapon of choice is a crossbow, so there's still room for a more DD ranged-class out there.

[Reika]

I think this is a bit of an unfair summary. I mained BRD and with the right gear it was stupidly powerful. Even if it wasn't, ranged classes shouldn't be as powerful as their melee counterparts, solely for the fact that they're usually out of range of 90% of attacks. They exception obviously being BLM, but they have MP to make their output fairly limited.

Besides, in other FFs, a Ranger's weapon of choice is a crossbow, so there's still room for a more DD ranged-class out there.

Well then they will never add Ranger or any other ranged DPS if it should never be compareable to melee dps. Ranger in XI wasn't a weak job at all and was majorly perferred over the melee ones. Its also saying they should greatly reduce black mages damage output to be below melees because they can attack from afar.

[Fantasia]

Well then they will never add Ranger or any other ranged DPS if it should never be compareable to melee dps. Ranger in XI wasn't a weak job at all and was majorly perferred over the melee ones. Its also saying they should greatly reduce black mages damage output to be below melees because they can attack from afar.

Wait, what? I'm saying that they ARE likely to add RNG as a more damage outputting version of the ARC. And I'm not saying that BLM output should be reduced, because they are already limited by having an MP pool. One big splurdge of spells and they're out for a bit.