Break the Trinity System Please

[Toodles]

True Support Jobs would serve this game so well.

Bard, Dancer, Time Mage, mmm.

The premise behind a True Support is just exciting.

What do you all think?

[Kata]

+1
Agreed.

IRL it takes all types to make the world work smoothly. Some people like to play the hero and seek fame & title others are just happy to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

imo support roles can be more fun; having to keep an eye on the pulse of the party is exciting

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Either you'll get a broken game or people pressuring others to play specific classes/get certain cross skills

[Inflorescence]

The trinity system wasn't designed by game developers, it was designed by players. As long as "Make the boss's HP go to 0 before yours does" and "bosses attack specific, nonrandom players" are ideas that exist in a game, the game's meta will migrate toward a trinity system, or will force certain support classes to be in a party.

The trinity makes sense: Imagine we are in a pre-WoW world, where you can allocate your stat points freely. You want the most damage going to the boss as possible, so you put all of your stats in Strength. Your party of 4 goes out to fight the boss, and you do a ton of damage, but not fast enough that the boss dies.

So one of your party members says, "Hey, why don't I just put points into Defense, and take this enmity-generating skill, and then I can survive while you guys deal the damage?" So you go back out, and you survive a little longer, but even though he has points in Defense, your party member dies because your party is now outputting less damage.

So a second party member says, "Alright, why don't I take these healing spells, so I can heal Mr. Defense, and then you guys can deal as much damage as you can?" Lo and behold, you're at the trinity. One tank, one healer, two DPS.

The reason it's so hard to break it is because any "support role" is just to enhance the trinity. Anything that boosts your attack power is enhancing the DPS. Anything boosting your defense is enhancing the tank. Anything debuffing the enemy's attack is enhancing the tank, and anything debuffing the enemy's defense is enhancing the DPS.

In order for a support role to be viable, it has to enhance the abilities of your party members at pretty close to exactly the same magnitude of your lost DPS (because you just can't do it without a healer or a tank, without some massive defense buffs, which would totally imbalance the game). Any higher, and parties quickly become, "[tank][tank][healer][healer][dps][dps][dps][<specific support class>]," and that kind of job obligation is exactly what FFXIV has always (rightly) striven against.

Do I think that support roles could exist in FFXIV? Absolutely, but only because it does an incredible job of making each class play differently. Playing PLD and then switching to WAR doesn't just change your animations and damage/enmity values, it actually makes you completely relearn how to play the game. And when you do learn, you find yourself in the exact same position; you find out that the classes are, in fact, completely balanced. Every other role in the game shares this balance, and it's that mastery of understanding how to balance classes while providing a totally unique experience to each job that gives me faith that SE will eventually introduce a class whose main focus is in managing buffs and debuffs.

[Kyroc]

Either you'll get a broken game or people pressuring others to play specific classes/get certain cross skills

If you let someone make you play a job that you don't want to, that's your issue, not a problem with having more role variety. And everyone uses the exact same cross class skills for each job already. I am failing to see your point.

[Rubieus]

To be honest I think Bard (currently implemented) is as close to a support as we are going to see, however; I think it could be tuned a bit more, allowing for more variety such as melee (dancer) or caster (Red Mage) yes I know, Red mage uses swords. But let's face it, Red Mage's best attributes are En/Bar spells and the ability to use healing and damage dealing spells. their melee dps will never beat a drg or mnk, but their spells are at least unique enough to make it worth having.

[Hurlstone]

I would not mind the addition of support-based jobs. I have fond memories of basically being a supporter RDM in FFXI many long moons ago. That being said, I cannot really see them being added into the game. I think what they may do, if anything, is give Bards and healers more incentive/spells to perform more supporting tasks.

[Giantbane]

True Support Jobs would serve this game so well.

Bard, Dancer, Time Mage, mmm.

The premise behind a True Support is just exciting.

What do you all think?

If true support is anything like BRD or RDM played in FFXI, no thanks. That is the height of boring/no skill play. Buff > Buff > Buff > Debuff > Debuff > Buff > "WHAT ARE YOU DOING STOP TRYING TO MELEE" > etc

[HakuroDK]

snip

Actually, I do recall Yoshida going on record to say that they did want to bring more Support jobs into FFXIV. I remember because that is what I really want to play. The trouble is that some people automatically assume Support = Healer when it's not. The closest jobs to Support in this game right now are, interestingly enough, Bard and Ninja. Bard is supposed to be, like, THE Support job, but somewhere in development, it did a Fusion Dance with the Ranger job and now it's a shadow of what it's truly supposed to be. Ninjas seem to have borrowed one or two Dancer abilities, but one or two abilities does not a Support job make.

My fingers are crossed for a de-fusion of Ranger and Bard, the introduction of Dancer as a branch from Rogue, or the introduction of a new support job a la DRK using any of the myriad of support jobs in Final Fantasy history, like Time Mage, Mediator, Mystic Knight, or something else.

[Evtrai]

No.

Go play GW2.