Originally Posted by
HunkaMunka
Good day, sir.
I played whm and blm, along with an handful of other jobs, in ffxi for 7+ years, so here's my two cents on con & thm in ffxiv:
I don't understand the problem with con & thm. Why do people want to see them divided/rearranged into different, more restricted, classes? I realize they each need a few tweaks here and there, but they do not need to be destroyed and rebuilt.
Throughout this thread, people have frequently mentioned topics such as class uniqueness and role ambiguity.
What I don't see discussed very often are concepts like responsibility, communication, versatility and choice.
The system in xiv allows for each class to be customized according to whatever the needs are to achieve a given objective. Again, what is the problem here? Do other players really need to be told, in no uncertain terms, what their duties will be for every activity?
Consider, if you will, a situation where I join behest as a con and it just so happens that the other participants are all melee DD builds with the exception of one melee tank build. Wonderful, I can adjust my actions to perform a more support and healing based role and we're set.
Same situation, but consider that instead of having a versatile con at my disposal I am now locked into a role as a strict and pure DD caster (blm). Oh well, looks like we have no one who can cure, and now we're all toast.
Same situation again, but consider now that the party consists of conjurers. If they were all pure and unadulterated blm then we're going to have one hell of a time getting anything done. Without the cures, or at least buffs, from a whm or a rdm sub, if not a dedicated support role player, blms in xi were pretty much useless.
With the xiv system those same players, who would have been in a very difficult situation had they all been playing with a strictly pure blm, now have versatile and customizable cons at their disposal and are able to discuss a strategy amongst themselves and decide who will be responsible for fulfilling each role in the party (healing, DD, support) and performing those various duties.
I really don't understand how being able to select actions from across multiple classes is a fundamentally different concept from having a main job and a sub job. In xiv your actions associated with your main class receive a slight bonus in terms of effectiveness, recast timers and the like, while actions from other classes are generally similarly restricted. In xi you had access to all of the abilities of your main job up to your current level, as well as many of the abilities of your sub job up to half of that same level. Smells just about the same to me.
One suggestion had to do with reverting to a system basically the same as that in xi, that of having rdm, whm and blm. I don't see how this would fix the situation, or even effectively change it. If anything, that arrangement would only be more restrictive. By having classes that can be healing, dd or support, xiv allows for more versatility within a class without requiring multiple classes be taken to max level.
Several posters mentioned the need for a dedicated healer. I could not agree more with Alicia_WM: if you want to be a dedicated healer take both con and thm to 50 and build your actions around healing.
Another complaint had to do with the lack of unique spells between xi and xiv. I have the original Final Fantasy for NES on my shelf over there. /points. In that game there are spells like cure and fire. I didn't see a single complaint that cure has existed in many forms, sometimes under slightly different names, throughout nearly every title in the FF series. Unique spells will be largely impossible to create, sure, they could have funny names but the concepts would still be the same. You could call the concept of restoring HP through reducing your own MP a Rumplestiltskin, but it`s still the same concept as a cure spell and nothing has really changed.
I concur wholeheartedly with Neptune, splitting the mages into more classes, each of which would be less functional than the current con and thm, is not going to accomplish anything.
From what I`ve read, white mage has been discussed as a possible name to be adopted, which does not necessarily mean anything other the name has been considered. It certainly does not imply that the current mage classes will be disassembled in favour of more xi style mages.
Traditionally, whm has indeed had the best cure potency. However I contend that outside of very context-specific uses (banish or cure v. undead mobs) whm nukes are basically useless. Fully merited banish with some support gear for a light-based MB against an appropriate mob could do some dmg, but by and large, whm rarely used any kind of direct damage spells. Regen, Haste, Erase, Cure, Nap....lather, rinse, repeat.
As far as having more restricted classes being the more traditional style of Final Fantasy, again, I have to respectfully disagree. There have been several installments of FF where nearly every ability could be used by nearly any character. There are usually some restrictions on this, and there are even titles where abilities are very restricted; but to try and claim that either style is the more traditional or pure FF style seems unfounded and quite unprovable.
My last two points are directed at MagicofGaia:
Do you realize that the phrase "in lieu of" is meant to mean "instead of" or "in place of"? I ask because you present your arguments and then open your conclusion with "in lue of", which implies that your conclusion should be a suggested replacement for your arguments where instead it is an affirmation of them.
Also, you claim that splitting con into multiple classes "...'WILL' give role ambiguity...". I think what you are trying to accomplish is a reduction in role ambiguity. You seem to want your mage jobs to have a more defined role. Ambiguity is something which is unclear or uncertain. I suspect you may be trying to 'REDUCE' role ambiguity.
Every FF game is different from every other FF game, that is part of the beauty of the series. To claim that everything in xiv is broken and needs to be fixed when the game is still in its infancy is an overly broad statement. To say that everything can be made better by doing it in the same manner as in a previous title is an oversimplification.
Communication, responsibility, versatility and choice. These are the hallmarks of xiv. You have to be able to communicate effective with your fellow players, organize yourselves and work together as a team. You have to know your responsibilities within that team dynamic. You have to be versatile and flexible enough to fill different roles based on the situation and objectives, and to fill multiple roles at the same time. You have to be able to make a choice, decide how to make yourself as effective and useful as possible, and use those strengths to your advantage.
This is how you fix the classes in xiv.
TL;DR you are lazy! wtf are you doing reading forums and complaining about the length of the posts. act like you have some common sense and three brain cells to rub together or gtfo.
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