Holy trinity.. Or maybe not.

[Tiggy]

To put it in even simpler terms, I want the relative strengths of the classes to be about the same in endgame as they were in the early game. Early dungeons like tam tara and satasha, all the way up to brayflox, have a good ratio going. The DPS still does the most DPS, but they can handle a trash mob or two while the tank can handle about 6 with a good healer, and can even tan the bosses for as long as their cooldowns hold out. The tank does almost as much damage, about 80-90%, as the dps when not in their tank stance.

So in actuality we've come full circle and we understood you correctly right from the beginning, and it isn't at all about the fight mechanics. It's about homogenizing all the classes. I personally believe this would be incredibly boring and I know I wouldn't be playing this game if it worked that way. <insert everything I said earlier in the thread here>

Tanks in this game won't suddenly be patched to have DPS-like damage, and DPS suddenly won't be patched to have Tank-like health. If this is a problem for you then maybe you should just go play guild wars 2. These types of fundamental mechanics changes rarely happens once a game in launched. FFXIV:ARR is already breaking the mold by redoing it all once. Don't expect it a second time.

[Immut]

So in actuality we've come full circle and we understood you correctly right from the beginning, and it isn't at all about the fight mechanics. It's about homogenizing all the classes. I personally believe this would be incredibly boring and I know I wouldn't be playing this game if it worked that way.

It's about fixing the problem of nobody wanting a second tank for any content.

Go back to the example of lancers and conjurers. If they had access to every ability in the game to cross class, the current tank classes have abilities that would make sense for a player specializing in defense to have. There is no need for the massive stat discrepancy because the game would play exactly the same, more or less. You would still want abilities like sentinel, vengeance, inner beast, and rampart to block large attacks. You would still want black mage's unparalleled AOE damage abilities, you would still want dragoon and monk's mobility and support skills, you'd still want summoner's battle raise and pets to split damage. The jobs in this game are already specialized enough in their abilities alone, the numbers only serve to limit the number of valid strategies for a given fight.

Yes, thank you for restoring my faith in humanity by providing a clear explanation. Although I'd be concerned about the usefulness of a Bard if this were to happen..

Sorry, I'm still not understanding what you're getting at, your explanation is extremely contradictory. Do you want more support abilities or a buff in strength or tanks to be removed from the game or what?

That's because Dragoons are not Tanks, same reason you've never heard of a VIT Summoner, Black Mage, or Monk.

Ok first off, I can't imagine a tank having something like ballad or paeon, and anything they did get would stack with foe requeim.

But yes what essentially needs to happen for people to stop preferring single tank strategies AND for players to start actually playing tanks is a buff in tank strength AND more support abilities for tanks. Both things need to happen because right now they're the role nobody wants and nobody wants to play. You only take the one because you HAVE to. It's like when your mom makes you take your little brother to the movies with your friends.

And why can tanks dps, but dps can't tank? Kind of unfair, really. Sure, tanks aren't very GOOD at dpsing, but dps don't even stand a chance at tanking, which again divides adds sharply into what must be tanked and what doesn't only because the first does about 4-5 times the damage of the second.