Thread: Just AST banter concerning 3.1

Should have never made it a hybrid, tbh. Every balance change SE makes has to fit in with the mold of, "is this better/worse than the WHM/SCH equivalent?".

They did the development version of writing themselves into a corner over this one.

Originally Posted by DkDerek

Support classes don't work in MMO's...especially when there is only two slots in a raid for healing classes.

Sure they do. They're just not particularly suited to this one (and games of its ilk) because of how it's designed.

Originally Posted by Velox

Hybrid jobs can function just fine in a particular genre (mostly single-player games), but they can never perform in any particular area as well as a specialized job who has sacrificed everything for the sake of one thing. They are notoriously hard to balance against other classes and will ALWAYS be extremely overpowered or extremely underpowered. There is no gray area with hybrids in MMOs.

Haseo from .Hack GU would totally agree with this. And I'm starting to agree with this too...

Originally Posted by Velox

As I said in previous posts, this is why we will never see jobs like Red Mage in FFXIV, at least not the same Red Mage that appears in previous Final Fantasy games. If we do see it, it won't be the hybrid "okay at everything, master at nothing," but instead be great at one particular thing and lack-luster in everything else. That's just how it's going to be in FFXIV or else no one will bother with it.

I'd lay money that Red Mage will be a tank when they introduce it in XIV. With defensive cooldowns using their defensive White Magic from FFXI as inspiration, some black magic styled offensive attacks, a few Sword Weaponskills from FFXI not given to Gladiators/Paladins, and a self-healing spell or two and they'd capture much of the flavor of a Red Mage from say, FF1 but have a codified role in the trinity structure this game has.

Originally Posted by Kenji1134

Here's an idea to remedy that.

Remove Royal Road.
Extend the range of card effects to healing aggro range.
Make all cards AoE and last 30s.
Give Shuffle a 30s CD.

Now you have no reason to bring 2 ASTs to a group, as they would simply override eachother's effects.

This would be so broken i dont even know what to say

Originally Posted by Velox

That's actually a pretty neat idea. Of course people will cry foul over it being a tank (the way they are doing now with DRK) because they want to play the job without having that level of responsibility, but I would 100% support making a unique tank out of it.

I've been a Red Mage junkie since FF1, so it's been a frequent topic of conversation among friends and me, haha. I'm sure a lot of people would be upset about it not being a DPS, but RDM has never really been a DPS in the first place (though they were quite beefy in FF1, that's been the only title where that's really been the case). The other option would be to make it a melee healer, since Cleric Stance would allow some degree of swapping between support and offense, as well, giving it something of a hybrid feel. But overall I think Tank allows it to do all the things Red Mages have always done (hit stuff with swords, cast black magic, cast white magic) while still fitting into the game's class paradigm.

As an aside, though, I really don't care what they make it as long as I get the AF!