Class and Job Idea: The Squire

[Cariborne]

Alright, so I know this is just happy thinking but I'm sorely disappointed that we don't have a Two-handed Swordwielder in FFXIV. How are people supposed to release their inner Cloud? So I got to thinking.... how would it work as a Class/Job? And this is what brought me here, to share my idea and see what people think! I have no idea where to put it, so I stuck it here.

Class: Squire
Weapon: Two-handed Sword
Role: Support DPS

Now, the way I see it is he'd wear the same armor as a Lancer. He'd be fighting on the frontline with the other Melee DPS, but he'd be supporting everyone else around him with his combos. I found it odd that we didn't have Power Break and Armor Break, when they've become rather big things in Final Fantasy. So I figured he'd support his team by finishing combos. Kind of like how the Pugilist has his Stance system, but different. Relatively early, like Level 4. Squire will get a move called Break. It's unusable unless you use a move before it, and then it changes depending on what the move was. So, let's say his Level 1 move is a simple attack called Broad Sweep. You use Broad Sweep, and then Break turns into Power Break, and now lowers the strength of your target by 5% Now, what if his Level 2 move is called say... Charge! And he literally charges at the enemy. It too would activate Break, and turn it into Speed Break. Slowing the enemy. Now, they'd have a move that also activates Armor Break to make everyone hit them like 5% harder. So, I'm sure you get the idea on how they work, they deal damage while keeping debuffs up on their enemy. The way I see them working is a 1-2-Break rotation but they're relatively short durations so for fights where ranged can hit but melee cant, they'd lose armor break after like 10 seconds. with 7.5 Seconds roughly taken for a Rotation, but Charge! should help them keep on enemies.

Now, after they hit 30 they can become one of 2 Jobs like the Arcanist. The difference is this time they're both DPS still, one of them turning into a Defensive Support and the other turns into more a more damage based form.

(Work in Progress)

[Kitru]

Class: Squire
Weapon: Two-handed Sword
Role: Support DPS

If we get a 2-handed sword class/job, I expect it'll be a tank rather than a DPS mainly because (1) we need tank class/jobs more than we need DPS and (2) there aren't that many tank-y weapons remaining.

Furthermore, "support DPS" isn't really a role. Support exists as a sub-role within the subset of primary role as, thus far, as only come into play as part of a job (likely to prevent too much of your class focus to devolve into helping other people out instead of actually making yourself stronger) and only provides intangibles, like TP and MP, rather than explicit improvements to damage or survivability (the closest you get to damage support is Selene, when she's providing 10% speed to a given Discipline half of the time, and that's only a ~4% increase to damage). Benefits like that (especially if they applied to all damage instead of a very small subset of damage like the Foe's Req, Storm's Eye, Disembowel, or Dragon Kick) would basically turn the class into an absolute "must have" (BRD doesn't even provide anything close to a constant global damage buff and is still often considered to be a "must have") unless it's native DPS is absolutely terrible (wherein it will be an absolute "never bring"). "Support" doesn't scale to group size because it's becomes way stronger in a large group than it does in a small group, which just has it cause even more problems (consider 2.0 WAR wherein IB was simply a self-heal without the DR: it was overpowered as hell in 4 man content and basically worthless in 8 man content; some stuffs just doesn't scale properly in different sized content; global damage buffs is one of those).

If we *were* to get another "support DPS", I expect it to follow the model of the BRD: a straight DPS that can reduce its own effectiveness temporarily to provide some useful non-damage benefit to the rest of the group.

I found it odd that we didn't have Power Break and Armor Break, when they've become rather big things in Final Fantasy.

Just because they're not explicitly *called* "Power Break" and "Armor Break" doesn't mean that they're not in game; they belong to MRD/WAR: Storm's Path is a 10% reduction in damage dealt by the target for 20 seconds and Storm's Eye is a 10% reduction in the target's slashing resistance (Disembowel is 10% to piercing, Dragon Kick is 10% to blunt). LNC/DRG's Feint (20% Slow for 10s) could easily be interpreted as "Speed Break".

Now, after they hit 30 they can become one of 2 Jobs like the Arcanist. The difference is this time they're both DPS still, one of them turning into a Defensive Support and the other turns into more a more damage based form.

That's not going to happen because you'd have 2 jobs playing almost exactly like one another. Classes provide you with 17-18 abilities (including all of your fundamental ones like a vast majority of your standard attacks) and 11 traits; jobs provide you with 5 abilities total, most of which are going to be situational or supplemental. Unless the devs suddenly decide that they're fine with having 2 jobs play almost exactly like one another, we're never going to see 2 jobs with the same role coming off of the same class. If it were to have 2 jobs, expect 1 to be a tank and another to be a DPS, not 2 DPS.

On top of that, the class would have to be explicitly built around having both roles' capabilities either present or easily included: SCH gets its baseline heal, almost all of its healing buffs (via Selene/Eos and Rouse), and its rez through ACN, which is a DPS class. Neither the baseline heal nor the rez are functions you'd expect to see as static capabilities of a DPS, so those abilities were placed there so as to make the conversion into a healer possible (and, even then, SCH has to wait until 50 to get the full suite of capabilities that a WHM basically gets by its mid-20s).

As a final point, Yoshi has said that they're only going to go to the effort to add class/jobs that are iconic to the series. While Cloud is definitely iconic, he's not really iconic to the series. A 2-handed sword class is much more likely to be something like Dark Knight or Mystic Knight, which have a much more significant and defined presence in the series than SOLDIER.

[OmegaNovaios]

"Support" doesn't scale to group size because it's becomes way stronger in a large group than it does in a small group, which just has it cause even more problems (consider 2.0 WAR wherein IB was simply a self-heal without the DR: it was overpowered as hell in 4 man content and basically worthless in 8 man content; some stuffs just doesn't scale properly in different sized content; global damage buffs is one of those).

If we *were* to get another "support DPS", I expect it to follow the model of the BRD: a straight DPS that can reduce its own effectiveness temporarily to provide some useful non-damage benefit to the rest of the group.

While current support doesn't scale that well between party size it's possible to be programmed to do so similar to how LB works, but aside from that all 4-man content in FFXIV: ARR is a joke anyway (you can just run double SMN and obliterate any single target DPS fight or watch BRD tanking on YouTube) so that's not even necessary so SE should just focus on how support affects 8-man content. When scaling to 24-man content for debuffs such as Foe's Requiem SE will either have to reduce the effectiveness of said debuffs per boss or just make the bosses stronger by assuming these debuffs are highly likely to occur, but IMO that's not even necessary that's just if SE wants 24-man content to be as challenging as most 8-man content.

Either way by avoiding heavy support whether it is a true support job (buffs and/or debuffs) or a hybrid that is 50%/50% between support and any other role is very unfavorable for SE. Sticking too strictly to the trinity is boring and bland. Omitting the trinity completely is horrible (look at Guild Wars 2). The trinity is a great concept and starting point, but if needs to be expanded upon. If you look at it figuratively you can compare it to a triangle because it has 3 points. IMO adding more points to create a more complex shape is what is going to really draw people into their jobs. The more diversity there is in play style the more fulfilled players will be in how they have chosen to play.

Balancing stuff really isn't that difficult and should never hinder an MMOs ability to provide options for players (if they really have such a hard time then they should consider hiring a rocket scientist to balance their equations for them because this stuff is pivotal for MMOs to develop into something truly great because I'll be honest I've played countless MMOs over the course of over a decade and most of them are bland pieces of crap and the "good" ones aren't really that great compared to what is impossible).

But I'll say again what I said in another thread about another "DPS support" at this current point in FFXIV: ARR. BRD is a 75% DPS/25% Support that happens to be both ranged and instantaneous. A lot of people were speculating similar things about COR, another 75% DPS/25% Support that happens to be both ranged and instantaneous. This is too similar. The same can honestly be said about PLD and WAR being 100% Tank that happen to melee w/o any directional combos or WHM and SCH being 100% Healers that happen to be ranged with both instantaneous and non-instantaneous actions.

Say someone doesn't want to play a pure role job, what option is available for that person who wants to play FFXIV? What option is available for a person who has played MMOs for years and wants a job that is more interesting than the same trinity that has been known to them inside and out like the back of their hand? There is no such options but very few familiar options and even among those most are similar to each other.

The issue with what is reality and what is conceptualized is everything is quite similar. Why add something that is VERY similar to BRD when we already have 1? Aside form that we have 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 5 DPS. NIN, THF, and COR are all speculated to release next. Most people assume ALL 3 of these are DPS. Would you care to hope 1 of these is a tank or healer? From reading your previous posts it's quite obvious that's not the case and I'll agree with you but I'd rather not see another pure DPS nor just a BRD rethink either. The same can be said for tanks and healers. We want something that performs the same roles differently AND we want something that is a mix of roles. Those who don't want these things already have options that suit them and they will continue to have those options either way.