How can they add more classes and make them unique and have their own flavor?

[Kaurie]

As a side note, I don't anticipate that future jobs will hold much variation. With the changes in HW and the new jobs, Square has shown they'd rather keep things relatively homogenized for the sake of balance and simplicity.

I remember I read somewhere that Yoshi P said that they will add more jobs instead of giving jobs more specializations (IE DPS Paladin, Heal Paladin).

Dancer I can understand being different because I heard it is a melee healer(?)

How can they make the new jobs unique enough to make them not be copy and pastes/combination of the other jobs we have now?

There are plenty of ways such as

- Illusion magic
- Class built around CC and utility with encounters to support that design
- Healers who have life drain and can apply life drain to party members
- Tanks who manually block/dodge/parry using their GCD skills



They could also add cross jobs combo's - Guild Wars 2 has a system like this, i.e. a Ranger (BRD) could shoot arrows at the same time that an Elementalist (BLM) places a fire AoE down. The fire ignites the arrows and increase their damage accordingly. That's one of the more simple iterations of the combo system. However, I think if FFXIV added something similar, the differences in jobs could be amplified with how they combo with other jobs.

The same way dark Knight, ast, machinist and ninja feel unique compared to the other jobs in their role

Huh, I guess we view those very different.

AST feels like a WHM with cards and without Cure III
MCH is like Bard 2.o
DRK feels like they decided to take what was good about PLD and what was good about WAR, put them together, add some MP/magic 'variation' and then toned it down a bit for balance
NIN was probably the best of the 4, but from my perspective as someone who generally dislikes melee classes, I don't see a huge difference between DRG MNK and NIN.

[dinnertime]

NIN was probably the best of the 4, but from my perspective as someone who generally dislikes melee classes, I don't see a huge difference between DRG MNK and NIN.

Well, they do have some differences between each other.

MNK does highest damage out of the 3 melees. They have 3 utilities I think but One Ilm Punch it is not that useful and a couple more could be done by another job. MNK is notable for having a lot of specific positions for their weaponskills and that the skills depend on the form you are on and not what weaponskill you used previously that chains to another to make a combo. The weaponskill would be blacked out if you aren't on the correct form, so there's less chance of messing up your rotation from having your hands slip and pressing the wrong button.

DRG has seen relevance in challenging content with Battle Litany and Disembowel, it's arguably the 2nd highest melee DPS. Jumps are also powerful ranged damage.

NIN is pretty unique out of the three because of Mudras. It has the most useful utilities out of the other melees as well. I don't see the enmity-controlling abilities useful, but still handy. I'd say NIN does the weakest damage though.

[Kaurie]

Well, they do have some differences between each other.

MNK does highest damage out of the 3 melees. They have 3 utilities I think but One Ilm Punch it is not that useful and a couple more could be done by another job. MNK is notable for having a lot of specific positions for their weaponskills and that the skills depend on the form you are on and not what weaponskill you used previously. The weaponskill would be blacked out if you aren't on the correct form, so there's less chance of messing up your rotation from having your hands slip and pressing the wrong button.

DRG has seen relevance in challenging content with Battle Litany and Disembowel, it's arguably the 2nd highest melee DPS. Jumps are also powerful ranged damage.

NIN is pretty unique out of the three because of Mudras. It has the most useful utilities out of the other melees as well. I don't see the enmity-controlling abilities useful, but still handy. I'd say NIN does the weakest damage though.

Yeah, I mean I know they have a few differences, but they are ultimately the same in my eyes. Like NIN to MNK to DRG is more similar than WAR to PLD, SCH to WHM or BLM to SMN - at least from my perspective.

[Synrin]

They can. It just requires a lot of developing, time, and resources. Hopefully they will have enough of those for the upcoming expansion.

Edit: Ah, an if they won't, then we'll just have to deal with qq threads.

[dinnertime]

Yeah, I mean I know they have a few differences, but they are ultimately the same in my eyes. Like NIN to MNK to DRG is more similar than WAR to PLD, SCH to WHM or BLM to SMN - at least from my perspective.

Yeah, I can see how they seem similar to you since the other pairs you've mentioned have entirely different gameplay when compared, but pretty much the differences between the melee DPS are what kind of damage they do (NIN is slashing, MNK is blunt and DRG is piercing) and the ones I've pointed out. That at least makes them pretty different to my eyes though.

[YGSLlew]

The same way dark Knight, ast, machinist and ninja feel unique compared to the other jobs in their role

Since when does a machinist feel significantly different than a bard?

[Iromi]

I would say maybe add an actual support slot job role? I dunno but something needs to change lol

[Alahra]

Yeah, I mean I know they have a few differences, but they are ultimately the same in my eyes. Like NIN to MNK to DRG is more similar than WAR to PLD, SCH to WHM or BLM to SMN - at least from my perspective.

Since you don't like (and I assume don't play) melee, the differences probably aren't as apparent "from the outside."

In addition to their damage types and their position on the DPS "totem pole," each class's combo systems are different, and their priority chains are of vastly different lengths (MNK's is the shortest, NIN's is in the middle, and DRG's is the longest). Each one has a varying level of utility, as well (with NIN being the highest, with proportionately lower personal DPS to accommodate that, and MNK having the least, and the highest personal DPS). Each one handles its maintenance buff (GL, Huton, BotD) differently as well, with DRG even have random/proc elements in their rotations, which NIN and MNK don't have. They also emphasize different approaches to DPS—MNK is all about long periods of sustained DPS growth, DRG is about punctuated burst, and NIN is more about increasing raid DPS for specific moments. The way they generally interact with positionals is also fairly different, with MNK requiring far more movement than either NIN or DRG, and NIN requiring less than DRG.

They play fairly differently in practice. That makes it harder to transfer the muscle memory from one melee to another, which is part of why you don't see a lot of players that play more than one melee seriously, but players who can play multiple healers or multiple tanks well, for instance—using whichever is better for a given encounter—are more common. Of course, that the roles share gear for the others helps, but if you couldn't transfer your basic knowledge from one to the other, it wouldn't be as easy to switch for the others, either—after all, DRG and MNK share accessories, which reduces the barrier for entry, but the classes are distinct enough that players who play both of them equally are fairly rare.

That isn't to say that, for instance, WHM and SCH are overly similar, either, only that they share a core set of abilities in common (with Cure/Physick pairing, Cure II and Adloquium pairing, and so on). The melee don't really have much that's like that, with the only real overlap being a gap closer and a stun, but the differences between their comparable abilities here are generally greater than those between the shared abilities that the tanks and healers have.

[OmegaStrongtan]

Dancer I can understand being different because I heard it is a melee healer(?)

So she will heal me by giving a Lap dance?

[Kaurie]

So she will heal me by giving a Lap dance?

Sexual healing