Which is the most powerful role?

[D00meriksen]

Hello guys, this is my first post and I want to know which of the available roles/classes has the highest positive impact on the outcome of a duty.
Mistakes happen, to me as well as to everyone else and I take them as a given. However, not all mistakes have to lead to wipes, because individuals can make an impact.
I'm very well aware, that each role is needed, but which one can make up for mistakes of the group the best?

I'm posting this in the healer forum, because my first class was a SCH. I'm 48 with it now and the hardest duty for me has been Garuda, which my party needed 3 tries for, because I died to mechanics that I didn't know.
I feel that the healer role is the most powerful one in this game personally, but I'm not sure if this is true since I'm new to the game.

This next part only exists to explain my background a bit more. If you don't want to read that much, feel free to ignore it and stick to the original question.

I have so far played WAR, SCH and THM and I would rank their impact the following: SCH > THM > WAR.

I expected to be able to do a lot more with my tank, but that wasn't the case. No matter how many cooldowns I used, it didn't seem to make much of a difference. Especially Foresight doesn't seem to be doing anything at all.
Overall I have not enjoyed playing WAR that much until now, because I feel that my survival is tied to my healer for at least 80%.
It happened a few times that my healer suddenly went afk without telling, which lead to me dying, even though I used everything I had to survive.

On my SCH I haven't died much in dungeons. I micro my faerie completely and I'm awarded with really strong throughput for basically no cost. I did some calculations and noticed, that spamming Physick+Embrace has the same HPS as Cure II, while being a lot more mana efficient. Also I can heal multiple people at the same time and stay mobile.
There were some really weak groups, but I felt, that as a SCH I could still carry them by playing better.

On my THM I've had pretty good experiences as well. If the healer is slacking or unable to handle the situation, I can help out by CC'ing mobs and - in emergencies - spam casting Physick without worrying about mana at all.
I noticed, that I have similar advantages as a SMN, but it doesn't look like attribute points change if you change the job, so I'm stuck with many points in Mind instead of Intelligence. That's the reason, why I didn't play it in dungeons at all.
I really like the Resurrection as SMN though and since Ruin does pathetic damage, I don't even lose much damage for supporting once all my DoTs are up.

[o3o]

Heals

/nuffsaid

[Cons]

Bard is always needed, for now anyway

[NorthernLadMSP]

Sorry, can't remember a time when I have said I must absolutely have a bard in my party. Pretty sure healers are most important, followed by the tank.

[D00meriksen]

Thanks for the replies so far.

Please note, that I'm not looking for the most wanted role. I don't really care about queue times either. I'm looking for the most impactful role in a positive way, i.e. "Who can carry other players the hardest?"

That said, what makes Bards so special and useful?

[SeraviEdalborez]

Thanks for the replies so far.

Please note, that I'm not looking for the most wanted role. I don't really care about queue times either. I'm looking for the most impactful role in a positive way, i.e. "Who can carry other players the hardest?"

That said, what makes Bards so special and useful?

Healer, specifically Scholar. I'm biased but Scholar has great versatility. Lots of MP to work with, has more freedom to throw on DPS than WHM (arguable), and a much better "emergency" heal. More MP over the course of a fight means you have more glue to apply to anything falling apart, such as battle resurrection.

Bards are "just" a very easy to play DPS, dodging doesn't adversely affect their damage (because they can attack while moving unlike casters, and don't need to be in melee range), and they have Ballad to help healers recover from MP-taxing situations (like somebody dying) and Requiem to boost magic damage. It's definitely great to have one, but "best carry" is, in my opinion, unarguably a healer. If all heals die, the fight is over.

[Vid]

Healer, specifically Scholar. I'm biased but Scholar has great versatility. Lots of MP to work with, has more freedom to throw on DPS than WHM (arguable), and a much better "emergency" heal. More MP over the course of a fight means you have more glue to apply to anything falling apart, such as battle resurrection

As a White Mage Main, who has downed Twin more times then I wish to count, I would have to agree. I love my White Mage, but his versatility isn't as good as a SCH in my personal opinion. While I have more raw healing power, that's all I have, where as SCH is more utility based from my experience. Like a jack of all trades who is more about mitigation then raw healing. Also why I believe both jobs/classes compliment each other so well in raiding situations.

The SCH I run with is just pure awesome though, so I'm spoiled when it comes to our raids. She knows her class inside and out, which makes our raiding so much easier. Our jobs not only compliment our raid composition but we are both pretty much in synch when it comes to healing. We watch each others backs and are aware if the other is in trouble and won't be healing for the next 1-3 seconds (or more depending).

I've dabbled into SCH healing, and quite frankly it's not for me, but I do know the jist of their abilities and what they are capable of doing, from doing it first hand and having seen it in our raids. But in no way am I an expert on SCH healing and if I have any questions I would definitely ask our SCH for tips before anyone else.

Back to the main topic though, I feel that there is more leeway with the healing job/class in most fights. Does this make it the most powerful? Well not exactly, but I would say one of the more forgiving jobs/classes to have during an encounter. While higher end raids do have gear checks for each class, the healer is what will keep you alive if you make a mistake most of the time (there are always exceptions).

On the same level though, the tank controls the enemy(s) you are fighting, and keeps them in line so they don't run all over the place just smashing peoples faces. They have the potential power of saving lives due to placement of the enemy(s). In some cases tanks can even save their other tank partner in situations that would otherwise be deadly.

So I would say both the tank and healer have an equal roll in power for any group. It's very unlikely to have one without the other and expect to do well (yes there are always exceptions). That being said though, without the dps, a tank and a healer won't get very far. Just my 2 cents.

[Bixby]

For any fight where you're geared enough to recover from mistakes at all, it's generally the healer. Because most mistakes just result in damage that can be healed.

For fights where you're just at the minimum gear level, or that feature unrecoverable mechanics regardless of gear (landslide), it's less a question of who can cover mistakes, and more a question of who has the most/fewest possible points of failure. When someone in my FC needs Titan HM, I usually go as MNK, because I know I can push out very good DPS, not get hit by anything avoidable, and hit the LB appropriately; WHM is my second choice, but we have a good deal of strong healers, so that's usually covered. When someone needs help with Garuda HM, I usually go as WAR, because I know how & when to move, when to pop CDs, etc. For Ultima HM, my best contribution is generally WHM, because that seems to be the biggest failure point (tanks have that fight "easy" like Titan in comparison, but I go as WAR fairly often just because there haven't been experienced tanks available when people have wanted to run it).

[File2ish]

The most impactful job really depends on the situation I think, since all three roles are very important to anything. The most important role is the one that pulls the most weight, and I think it's spread fairly evenly.

Tank role is very important because everything else is "squishy" by comparison, so holding hate is a must so nobody dies and the healer has a single target to focus on. Arguably the most important thing.

Healers need to keep everyone alive, arguably the most important thing.

Damage dealers need to kill everything as quick as possible so the tank takes less damage, the healer will be able to ease up on the heals, and ultimately win the instance for the party. If the DPS don't do enough damage, the healer might run out of MP or the tank might die. Arguably the most important thing.

Then you can break it down into the jobs themselves.

Tanks are kind of obvious, but they both have different traits that make them unique. WAR has more HP and more damage output (to my understanding), as well as having an easier time holding hate on multiple mobs with overpower and having some self heal capability to aid the healer when needed. While PLD has more defense and defensive buffs, as well as cross classable stuff from WHM (stoneskin for 10% shield of their HP and a very minor cure).

Healers are very different from one another. WHM is the "cure bomber", good single target cures, three AoE heals (one target, other two around self), two heal over times, and a single target 18% damage mitigation spell. WHM also has better raw DPS output than SCH. SCH, on the other hand, is the damage mitigation healer. While having lesser heals by itself, the fairy makes up for it. It has far better and more efficient damage mitigation than WHM at the cost of slightly lower cure amounts and lesser AoE heals. Eos is a better party healer, and Selene is a party buffer with skill speed and spell speed buffs. SCH has a far more efficient MP recovery skill, regaining 20% per minute with aetherflow, while WHM has to rely on Shroud of Saints, which gives back 1000MP per 2 minutes (meaning we have to rely on bard's mage ballad far more often than SCHs).

Damage dealers are quite different from each other as well. Monk and Dragoon have some of the best damage output in the game, Monk is far more positional and hits really hard, while DRG relies somewhat on the debuff it gets from the second attack in the Chaos Thrust combo (piercing damage debuff alongside chaos thrust DoT) in order to increase the damage from the Full Thrust combo. Black Mage has the highest burst damage in the game and the best AoE damage alongside a near infinite pool of MP if they switch from Astral to Umbral efficiently, at the cost of casting time and having to interrupt casting in order to dodge wide area attacks like plumes in Titan HM. Summoner has the best damage over time spells plus a summon to help with the damage output at the cost of a weak raw damage spell (ruin).

Bard has the lowest DPS output in the game, and relies heavily on critical hits from DoTs to proc the Bloodletter reset. In spite of this, Bard has party buffs. Bard can restore MP and TP with Mage Ballad and Army Paeon respectively, as well as a magic defense debuff so a BLM or SMN can do even more damage (all songs at the cost of 20% damage output for the bard). Bard can also move while attacking, meaning a constant stream of damage is always coming from a bard, whereas all the other DPS jobs need to stop attacking in order to dodge an AoE (for blm particularly since most damage stops, mnk and drg only if they need to run away from the mob, and smn is good as long as DoTs are up).

It's all subjective to who's most important in what content. Everyone can go on and on about what's the most important thing overall, but nothing conclusive will come of it.

[mythicrose]

Most powerful? Tank = Healer >> Dps

Typically if the tank or healer drop, the party will struggle to recover. If a dps dies, the encounter is generally salvagable depending on boss mechanics/gimmicks.