Hybrid classes - SAM & RD MAGE.

[Shougun]

I think if they do it like AST it won't be a problem and edits to the duty finder could come with it. I hate when people shoot down idea of it b/c they have change

Hope you don't take it personally mate, don't stop posting about it if you want it - its good for SE to know desires. Its just my opinion they won't work very well with the game's current design, and even if they made it fit - it still wouldn't work very well. SE is very smart though, .

It is true Yoshida mentioned hybrids once before, way back in 2.1 or something. But you have to imagine a hybrid cannot be as good as a pure in two different categories, as you wouldn't want a pure then. A hybrid cannot be so bad that two separate pures can be more efficient in total, otherwise why would you want a hybrid.

A suggestion was to use an in-combat locked stance, that still has significant problems for certain scenarios. How would a tank dd hybrid tank swap if locked to his DD field- this is a required mechanic sometimes. Having inferior damage throughout the fight would make the hybrid undesirable for boss fights (if locked to a certain stance), and matching it so it can DD as well as a tank in off tank stance (in tank mode) is not balanced because you're back to unbalanced pure vs OP hybrid. Also gearing can be an issue, and lead to an imbalance in job usage or general balance as well (if it is just as good as a pure tank when it needs to, and you need less gear to be able to do two different things - why would you do more work for less?). Of course you could just make it need a different set of gear for the other activity, but then you'd get the "my job costs more to play than other jobs" issue, which SE apparently cares about because they took arrows out of the economy (one of a few reasons).

I believe in Yoshida's comment a while ago there was mention to add another slot to duty finder. That could be an issue for past content, having to re-balance everything for mediocre damage or an extra job all together. In the future you'd have awkward moments where a dungeon was designed to be challenging for a tank/dd but you got a healer/dd, or a clear preference for one hybrid type over another (as of right now I'd prefer a healer/dd over a tank/dd, though they could add more opportunities that need many tanks at once). Also if hybrid includes "support" as a Bard may have been, then you're going to really compound that issue of preference. One duty finder role that includes incredibly dynamic and likely problematic results.. dd mix? healer mix? tank mix? debuffer? buffer?. I suppose you could argue that would add spice to each run, but good luck balancing distinctly different jobs and in a way that people would like to see all crammed into one to two slots of random (maybe it can be done).

SMN does have a few niche tank moments, some being nerfed if they outsource a tank though - as SE has shown they don't want (Ramuh). Their healing is awful, dire use only (can be helpful, but still dire use only). Like the other DD, SMN has some support features (buffs, recovery, debuffs). They sort of already build hybrid elements into all jobs, just not to the extent to say "this can DD, Heal, and Tank - effectively" <- as that tends to be unbalanced.

I have no desire to squelch you, nor can I - just gave my opinion :P.