Idea: Split Archer into Bard and Ranger

[RiceisNice]

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Going back to the topic of the thread, if you had told me ARC was going to split into two jobs three years ago, my first thought would be "one will probably be longbow that stands still and aims, the other will be mobile and use a shortbow". My suggested approach could have worked for ARC by making the BRD crystal add cast times where appropriate and replace Swiftsong and Windbite with appropriately-themed songs/skills. Conversely, Ranger would be an extension of ARC as it was designed in ARR and go from there. Maybe BRD having the benefit of additional range while RNG would have to stand closer to the mob. And thus the crystal helps define the job while also dealing with the sameness that would have otherwise made itself known.

I've mentioned a while back that if they wanted to do alternate job paths for the same class (such as archer and bard/ranger, or rogue and thief/ninja), you need to introduce a polarizing ability at level 30 and onward that completely gives the class their own identity since they will still share base job classes. From every perspective (balancing, differentiating, etc), that's a nigh impossibility if they're both dps routes, or a dps/healer coming from a tank class.

Even if you were redoing their skills that change from the job crystal, their traits will have to be changed as well to accommodate or otherwise it'll be a half-assed fixture (in your example, ranger would be losing one of their DoTs to proc river of blood). And my perspective is, if we're doing that much to impement a way that a skill changes depending on your job crystal, why not just do the new jobs from the ground up as they have done with the 3.0 jobs? It gives them much more room to work with from a design perspective, it gives the job the attention it needs from a developmental stand point so it has it's own identity, and it avoids the risks/problems that come from having job crystals (especially if you aren't going to change all the skills and traits).

Sometimes you need to work smarter and not harder. And with how some of the new jobs came out on release and the glaring performance problems they have, I'd rather them not go over the top with making a relic of 1.0 work (when they have expressed multiple times that they have wanted to move away from it anyway, and it shows with the lack of crossing from ROG, and the absence of classes all together in 3.0). What is the advantage of shoving in extra jobs into a single class that gives it a better perk over a new job entirely?

[Shurrikhan]

Sometimes you need to work smarter and not harder. And with how some of the new jobs came out on release and the glaring performance problems they have, I'd rather them not go over the top with making a relic of 1.0 work (when they have expressed multiple times that they have wanted to move away from it anyway, and it shows with the lack of crossing from ROG, and the absence of classes all together in 3.0). What is the advantage of shoving in extra jobs into a single class that gives it a better perk over a new job entirely?

Mostly just that as long as they keep weapon types mostly limited to a single job each (exception: THM/CNJ), there may often be someone who wishes to their use of a given weapon in a different direction. And each ability that seems an obvious choice for that weapon (e.g. Heavy CD-dependence in bows - both because combo-ing makes less sense with such little variance or momentum in weapon motion and because that ranged classes commonly tend towards the more tactical, stored and release-on-demand deployment of their strengths) composes the class. Granted, that first bit is just another relic itself. I definitely think that XIV ought to constrain itself to far fewer rules when it comes to Class-Job relationships and Ability and Trait acquisition for each, but there is a small part that would likely like within "Class" that seems almost unavoidable for Jobs exactly like these two. Paladin vs. Commander could be another such example, or Warrior vs. Berserker. On the whole I'd prefer new "from scratch" jobs over any job touched by the current Class-Job system, but I can't deny that a revised version of that system would really make sense for a lot of my favorite job opportunities.