Idea: Split Archer into Bard and Ranger

[Aiselia]

It's true that things would need re-balancing and reworked, however that's easier than having to start from scratch like your suggesting from a technical stand point.

Uh, no it isn't. They'd need to literally recreate their entire low level enmity system to make it so that DPS jobs branching from tanks would be able to use moves which have high enmity as a basic attribute without simply ripping everything off the tank due to that high enmity because as my example showed, a non-tank scaled to below 30 split from a gladiator would literally get to use two attacks and one buff and situationally a stun out of ALL of their moves. And none of those moves would have anything to do with their job as a RDM because none of them are magic.

SE is generally very lazy ... Having to go back to lvl up extra jobs also seem like a waste of time IMO.

I'm pretty sure that your suggestion isn't coming from a standpoint of SE being lazy. Sounds more like you're the lazy one. Because SE created three completely new jobs for HW plus Rogue/Ninja before that while you're the one complaining about how you don't want to put effort into playing the new classes that you say would be so great because of variety.

That's insanely boring and repetitive.

So is only being able to use two skills at anything below level 30 because the class doesn't allow you to play the job.

Base classes can be reworked to support branching.

Which is a lot more work than just creating new ones because they would have to recreate them to fit the theme (GLD uses no magic, so branching them to RDM which kind of needs to use magic to be a mage would make zero sense) and then rebalance absolutely everything.

I just think my idea is more forgiving to all players both new and old.

And your assertion that people wouldn't want to go back and grind doesn't hold up quite so well when you consider that they had to do exactly that to have DRK, AST, and MCH at 60. But I mean, there aren't any of those, right, because people don't want to relevel, right?

So the options are either rework absolutely every class in the game to fit with new branched jobs and rebalance absolutely everything, or just create new jobs which they only have to worry about fitting them into the balance, rather than rebalancing everything else.

Nobody who actually thinks variety is good will agree that branching jobs is the better option because they're less varied by being locked with a majority of the same skills as the other branch. The only people who think branching jobs is the better way to go are people who are just too lazy to actually want to play the "new jobs" that they claim to want so badly. If you REALLY want a new, varied thing to play, having to relevel it shouldn't be an issue because, well, it's something new.

[Noelzzz]

Because, for some jobs, thief and ranger specifically but there are others, devs used iconic weapons or abilities belonging to iconic jobs, doing some kind of mixed classes. What if my favorite weapons are daggers but at the same time i dont like mudra system? same goes for bow, what if i like the bow but i dont like the bard-ish play style? Doing branching jobs they would give me the option to choose. This doesnt mean that extra jobs will not considered imo. Not all jobs can come from branching, this apply just to some of them

[Dante_V]

They should continue with new jobs and let the class system die.

[Dante_V]

They've pretty much already said the classes are being phased out and branching jobs of the same role are an extremely limited variety. Let's not also forget the reason for Bards doing less damage to begin with was not only due to support options but also mobility. So it would be reasonable to say that a ranger would also have lower damage and without any viable utility it would never compete with Bard.or Machinist. Without damage it would never compete with the casters. As the others have pointed out is that it wouldn't really fix any issues or bring any substantial changes to the game. making it a waste of development time.

[DestinovaTrueblade]

And even though they were designed to split, sch/smn still had a host of problems, one of which being SE can't buff any acn skill without affecting both of them. Even if we do dps/dps ssplit we would run into similar problems.

[Duelle]

And even though they were designed to split, sch/smn still had a host of problems, one of which being SE can't buff any ACN skill without affecting both of them. Even if we do dps/dps ssplit we would run into similar problems.

I'll continue saying this until the day I die, but this is solely because their implementation of job crystals was extremely lacking. It would have worked if the SCH crystal renamed and outright changed ACN skills to show that it is a job designed for healing while the SMN just built on the foundation provided by ACN.

[RiceisNice]

...

ACN has half of the necessities that would make for a healer; a basic healing spell, a Resurrection, mp regen and utility buff/debuffs. You also need to keep in mind on what they have to work with and the restraints of recovering a game from 1.0.

Ignoring the amount of development needed to change the entire system of job crystals, even if it were to change the base skills to suit the class, you'd still have them share weapons and animations. Unless you want to go even further and differentiate that, then honestly wouldn't it just be far easier to build something from the scratch up than change each and every spell to give that job it's own identity?

And, so? They can change this system at any time. There's nothing even to say that every job needs the same number of actions or traits, let alone that every job must leave every source-class action unchanged.

Whether or not it's feasible to change it compared to remaking the job from the ground up is the thing. Button bloating (and by extension, muh precious datas) is also another thing you want to avoid, unless the soul crystal was to disable class abilities.

[Duelle]

ACN has half of the necessities that would make for a healer; a basic healing spell, a Resurrection, mp regen and utility buff/debuffs. You also need to keep in mind on what they have to work with and the restraints of recovering a game from 1.0.

I've given SE a pass on a lot of things because of the amount of time spent on developing ARR. This is where it was nearing the breaking point for me.

This said, I don't think the whole of ACN (all 18 abilities) need a complete remake. For example, Bio and Bio II could have become HoTs under the effect of the SCH crystal. Bane could have become a way to spread HoTs to other party members. Sacred Soil could have become the "alternate" version of Shadow Flare. When Yoshida talked about SCH being focused on healing over time, that's what I was expecting, not a singular HoT cast via the Fairy and a bunch of shields.

[DestinovaTrueblade]

That would have left sch with hardly any dps abilities

[Shurrikhan]

I've given SE a pass on a lot of things because of the amount of time spent on developing ARR. This is where it was nearing the breaking point for me.

This said, I don't think the whole of ACN (all 18 abilities) need a complete remake. For example, Bio and Bio II could have become HoTs under the effect of the SCH crystal. Bane could have become a way to spread HoTs to other party members. Sacred Soil could have become the "alternate" version of Shadow Flare. When Yoshida talked about SCH being focused on healing over time, that's what I was expecting, not a singular HoT cast via the Fairy and a bunch of shields.

At this point though, WHM would require Geomancer to strip away nearly all its dps abilities, and all three would likely be scratching their heads wondering why they only have significantly fewer abilities than every other job in the game. ...Would have to nuke AST dps too... And with healer off-role participation being so demolished, tanks would probably use tank stance even more sparingly.

I'm all for making SCH more different from its counterpart, but stripping away SCH dps to make an already high-control healer even better tooled in its healing does not sound like the solution. (Admittedly even the loss of Bio I and Bio II would not 'utterly condemn' SCH dps outside of raid settings, and their further improved control may then make them the dedicated main healer -- but that kind of re-balance would then need to be made on every healer job, not just the dual-job SCH.) It won't change that if you want their to be any variance in damage taken rates there will be downtime during which dedicated healing output is mostly wasted. I like being able to contribute during periods of less intensive healing. I don't like to be a role that essentially exists/acts only two-thirds or less of the time with almost nothing else to offer. I like to be a SCH/WHM/AST, with every tool they have at their disposal, non-healing included. If not dps, then support.

Take all this with a grain of salt though. To be honest, I'd probably have a lot more ideas for how to pull off a uniquely SCH skillset if the ACN skillset and its contribution to SMN didn't already seem to come so far out of left field. What little lore it has (a certain NPC's obsession with tactics, etc.) doesn't actually seem to fit its abilities, and connects only to the vague lore of SCH (especially via Japanese ability names), hardly if at all to SMN. That makes it really hard to form ideas on for me. I know how I would like ARC to split for the most part, given some revisions to how XIV handles job-splitting, but ACN/SCH...