Petition: Add A Support Role To The Game.

[Orihara_Izaya]

I had this idea after watching the anime Log Horizion. I felt like Scholar fills this roll pretty well as it's a class that has a support fairy (speeds skills) and it can place multiple barriers on teammates to allow them to take no damage etc. I would love a plain support class.

So +1 you have my support.

[Uriel_Sinclair146]

Okay so i have thought a little about this now first off the HP thing i feel should be removed we have healers to restore HP but yes the support should restore TP/MP as well as debuff/buff unsure how rdm played in ff11 but i feel that Blue Mage would be perfect for this role as that is what they have previously done if the keep Blue Mage to the core as it used to be absorbing skills from enemies then they could get a collection of buffs/debuffs from the monsters and have the restoring and dps attacks be class/job skills

[Lunavi]

Personally I think it would be better to split DPS into Controller and Supporter as that says alot more about the specific DPS's role in the battle.

But yes, I do agree. This is practiacally already in action with premades. We do however need more support classes if we shall do this in DF. If Bard is the sole supporter it is a grim day for all other DPS's...

[Evangela]

DPS WHM is already available.

[Deusteele]

How about no. To make support classes work you have to gut the output on the rest of the classes to make the new support role necessary. Then you risk the further support of class stacking to multiply the out from said support class. Or you make the them unnecessary and everyone ignore's them. The former can create the "Princess <Class>" attitude and the later just disenfranchises players with a fondness for a class but unable to play due to being pidgeon-holed into unnecessary support.

To reference the Saboteur and Synergist comments. You are not meant to keep a person in that role the entire fight, but rather to swap them in and out of it as the fight wears on.

[raelgun]

theres a reason why its called the holy trinity, let me explain some things, when you add a "role", you take account of the content to have that, i.e bosses need a tank, healer and damage dealers, and mechanics are designed to have those, with support, then the bosses need to take account of that role, otherwise why have the role right?
now, saying that, how many tanks and healers are there compared to damage dealers already?, what was that, the combined amount of main spec tanks and healers still being less then damage dealers?, add another role into that fragmentation, its a headache from the playerbase front, and the devs know this, they know this as they aquire data in game, adding another role thats needed in a fight just makes things even harder to do from a logistical standpoint and waiting times are longer

[Kiroh]

theres a reason why its called the holy trinity, let me explain some things, when you add a "role", you take account of the content to have that, i.e bosses need a tank, healer and damage dealers, and mechanics are designed to have those, with support, then the bosses need to take account of that role, otherwise why have the role right?
now, saying that, how many tanks and healers are there compared to damage dealers already?, what was that, the combined amount of main spec tanks and healers still being less then damage dealers?, add another role into that fragmentation, its a headache from the playerbase front, and the devs know this, they know this as they aquire data in game, adding another role thats needed in a fight just makes things even harder to do from a logistical standpoint and waiting times are longer

I hate to break it to you, but new jobs (and even new classes) are going to be added to the game. It's not really negotiable.

[raelgun]

I hate to break it to you, but new jobs (and even new classes) are going to be added to the game. It's not really negotiable.

yes, but they will still be part of the holy trinity, its called flavour, some people prefer summ to BLM and vice versa.

This doesn't have to be the case. If they indeed include the option for ACN to choose to be a healer or a DPS role they could do the same for other classes and jobs. Current 4-man fights could be made to fill with either 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS or 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 DPS, 1 Support. 8-man fights could follow the same formula, accepting up to 2 supports.

you cant force people to be specs they dont want, thats what your asking for here

[MartaDemireux]

you cant force people to be specs they dont want, thats what your asking for here

How so? I'm afraid either I'm misunderstanding you or you are misunderstanding me. I've never mentioned forcing a different role on anyone. The only one I've mentioned of the current classes is BRD and that is primarily just a re-classification of it to prevent 2 from ending up in the same party. I'm not talking about completely requiring in what you quoted, I'm talking for duty finder purposes. It's entirely possible to sign up for a duty in a pre-made party made of 4x SMN if you wish to and that wouldn't change.

[MartaDemireux]

adding another role thats needed in a fight just makes things even harder to do from a logistical standpoint and waiting times are longer

This doesn't have to be the case. If they indeed include the option for ACN to choose to be a healer or a DPS role they could do the same for other classes and jobs. Current 4-man fights could be made to fill with either 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS or 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 DPS, 1 Support. 8-man fights could follow the same formula, accepting up to 2 supports.

And as someone said above, new classes and jobs will indeed be coming to the game which would essentially increase respective wait times as it is, this is just another option to handle it. If you have only a ton of DPS classes coming in then you're going to be wishing some were able to queue as support to ease the strain on the DPS queue time. Healers currently face the same issue in that they have slow queue times as compared to tanks. If a SCH could queue as support (with restrictions) then the group would fill faster.