Classes Superior to jobs?

[Jinrya-Geki]

I have been pondering a lot of things about the job system that is approaching soon. One of the letters mentioned that jobs are for group play, while classes are more for solo.

With these recent battles we've had, such as Ifrit and Batraal, some problems came to me.

When you become a job, certain moves will be locked out from certain classes.

So for example of my problem:
Let's say I am Black mage (Red Wizard ;3) and I am in the Ifrit fight. He's getting close to using Hellfire. I see the nails rise and what not. I try to use sentinel. There would be the possible problem. While others are classes they get to use other abilities from other classes. Me, being black mage, might not even be able to use sentinel anymore there for rendering me a possible hinder to the party rather than a help.

Unless moves like Emulate, and stoneskin become vastly strengthened from me being black mage, which is highly doubtful considering white-mage has always had better enhancing skills, I am going to die, or be very close to death.

If important abilities are looked out during a fight that are very important, I don't see how jobs could be a good for party fights.

During my experience during Darkhold runs. The mages heal the tank, while the DDs raise the dead players and heal themselves. If these moves are lock under certain jobs, then the mages would be forced to waste mp that is needed to keep the tank alive, by healing others and raising. Which can be a problem for some of the players.

Opinions/concerns?

[Alerith]

That's kinda the point to the drawbacks on the jobs. They aren't made to do everything. If we're lucky, the jobs take care of each other.

Paladin Tanks > White Mage Cures Paladin > Paladin Covers White Mage from terrible damage

And it goes from there.

[Jinrya-Geki]

[QUOTE=Alerith;408828]That's kinda the point to the drawbacks on the jobs. They aren't made to do everything. If we're lucky, the jobs take care of each other.

Paladin Tanks > White Mage Cures Paladin > Paladin Covers White Mage from terrible damage

There is no way to stop AOE damage from hitting everyone. Unless the cures are boosted, and cost a lot less mp, I don't see how 2 white mages could cover the whole ifrit fight, if only one person can sentinel. They would be out of mp fast too healling all the dd's from Ifrit using that heat shield thing after he starts to glow. The DDs wouldn't be able to keep themselves healed.

[Sephrick]

Unless the cures are boosted, and cost a lot less mp

For some reason all they've wanted to talk about is Paladin, vaguely. But some things they have mentioned is high defense and more HP when playing as a Paladin over Gladiator. So it stands to reason WHM will have better healing proficiency and more MP than it's class countrpart.

[Answa]

Wait for details before you get worried. Moreover, WHM will most definitely have better curing capabilities and hopefully decreased MP taxation.

Just... don't worry until you have to worry.

[Kaizlu]

But in this case, wouldn't the White Mage have better healing/protection skills for the whole party? After all, if jobs are meant for group play I suspect WHM will be more efficient in healing all members of the party and not just the tanks.

Also:

Just... don't worry until you have to worry.

[Aramil]

It'll depend of the new jobs abilities. Maybe White Mage or Bard will get skills like Barfire or regen or a more powerful Shell that will allow the whole party to survive without having to use sentinel. In that case you could still go with everyone using classes and taking care of themselves with self cure, defense skills. Or you could go with everyone using jobs and having the DDs do more damage and the healer/support in charge of keeping everyone alive.

[Neptune]

I agree. Would be a very lame realization of that scenario where jobs enter the picture. The Armoury system was brilliant, if anything it should be more hardcore than it is with better stat allocation, instead of seen as some kind of watered down "casual" system.

[Wolfie]

You're assuming that balance will stay the same as it is right now. Balance is an ongoing thing; if jobs end up sucking (which they won't, Yoshi & co are not that daft), combat will be rebalanced to make jobs better in a group/hardcore setting than regular classes.

[Alkoun]

This is something on the back of my mind as well, except that my fear is that people will go into group content like the ifrit battle as classes, even with access to jobs. People are going to play however they want to play. What's to stop me from going into the fight as a conjurer with the abilities of a gladiator and thaumaturge and archer and lancer, instead of just white mage? Why would I WANT to go in as a job if we can do this content just fine as a class?

I know it's premature to have these worries considering that 1.20 will affect how all class skills and abilities work, so we can't really make any assumptions based on what we have access to NOW... but I can't help but wonder how this will unfold.