Quote Originally Posted by OmegaNovaios View Post
However comparing the other way around it does look like SCH gained a lot over over SMN as far as what it can do. Sure both are equally effective at their corresponding roles, but really it feels more just like the stats changed more than the actual job.
That's because ACN, the base class, is designed with a lot more of the baseline functionality of a DPS locally because ACN *isn't* a healing class. BRD doesn't need to provide any attacks to ARC because ARC already has a fully functional attack string thanks to also being DPS. BLM doesn't get a whole slew of new attacks: it gets bonus AoE functionality (which is what casters are supposed to do better than anyone else) and some secondary personal-support functionality. SMN doesn't get abilities that fundamentally change how you play when you're a SCH because most of its needed functionality (attacks and damage buffs) is provided by the class itself (though Fester, Spur, and Enkindle are pretty big benefits, as I see it; especially Fester). SCH still *uses* a majority of the abilities that ACN provides while being a healer (depending upon how you view Energy Drain, there are either 9 or 10 ACN abilities that are directly useful to a healer; ACN has 18 total) though those act as the secondary requirements of a healer (healing buffs and damage reduction debuffs); the additional abilities that change SCH so much are there because the role is being changed and SCH doesn't have everything that a healer is *supposed* to have on its own (maintenance heal, big heal, AoE heal, cleanse, rez; ACN only brings the maint heal and the rez) though it's appropriate because ACN *does* bring plenty of useful abilities to SCH.

Compare to CNJ and all of a sudden SCH looks like it gained 5 levels of healing instead of 50, it just happened to be on a much more versatile class that has a lot of utility actions.
Except that, if you look at the base class (from a healer perspective), SCH operates at a significant disadvantage as a healer compared to CNJ. CNJ gets most of the healing functionality that it needs via the class: without even *getting* to WHM, CNJ fulfills all of the requirements for a healing role all on its lonesome. WHM isn't turning CNJ into a healer; it's *refining* CNJ because it is *already* a healer. Most of the stuff that SCH gets that you're counting as "levels" when comparing it to WHM/CNJ are (generally) worthless in the eyes of a healer: CNJ gets 4 attacks and 1 DPS stance (that's there for soloing purposes because you can't kill stuff by healing it); ACN has 8. WHM gives CNJ some missing-but-not-required functionality (self buffs), provides a couple heals to fill not-entirely-necessary-functionality gaps (instant heals; one for maintenance, one for uber-healing), and rounds it off with an attack.

To use your metaphor of "gained levels", yes, SCH gains 5 "level"s compared to WHM, but it's starting off 5 levels lower than WHM.

Because compared to the the more versatile setup of ACN, GLA does not look like it will sway very much at all from tanking, and again I would love to tank as RDM and/or BLU, but just adding 5 actions to GLA isn't going to make RDM nor BLU unique enough for me.
The problem with turning GLA into a DPS (or CNJ into a DPS) is that you have too many abilities in the base class devoted to the original role and too few devoted to the new role. GLA has 8 abilities that provide no useful functionality to a DPS (tank CDs, after parry attack, taunt; Flash *could* be seen as worthless, though it's possible to have it deal damage from the job change so I'm not counting it), and CNJ has 6. On the other hand, GLA has only 7 abilities that would be useful for a DPS (assuming Flash would get turned into one; it should also be mentioned that all but 3 of those are highly situational) and CNJ has only 4 (Cleric Stance doesn't count because it requires high baseline MND; if a DPS job was supposed to use Cleric Stance, they'd be stacking MND and, therefore, be able to heal nearly as well as a WHM when they don't have it active).

It's *possible* to construct DPS jobs for the classes (and, if you play it right, you can actually make a reasonably compelling playstyle; I played around with doing it with Geomancer here), but too much of the base functionality that the class brings would be rendered useless: DPS don't really need heals nor do they need a whole slew of tanking CDs (in fact, the slew of tanking CDs could very easily turn a GLA DPS job into something broken as hell in PvP since they'd be full DPS with tank grade survivability).

I really hope SE makes a Fencer class and extends to both RDM and BLU off that with BLU equipping Scimitars instead and GLA would make a great cross-class candidate for either job if SE wants them to fulfill a Tank Role or support tank via Support Role.
BLU could *maybe* pull a slot as a tank job, but I honestly expect that it would go to Mystic Knight (MYS) before it ever went to BLU. Also, you can't really go from equipping one weapon as the class and a different one as the job, so, if BLU were built off of Fencer, I'd expect it to use the same thing (fencing swords). As to GLA as a CC candidate, it's pretty much required because of Provoke, and, if you pull more than just the existing suite that WAR has access to in order to bolster existing performance, you end up stealing GLA's thunder (which is, you know, it's CD suite).

I definitely see RDM as an mDPS with support capabilities. BLU could probably do it too, though I'd expect it to get a different base class than RDM.