SAMURAI SHOWDOWN

[Noshpan]

It doesn't affect me what role they ultimately decide to have Samurai fill, I main Dragoon and I will always main Dragoon to the nigh-exclusivity of all of the other classes. No amount of tank/healer classes any MMO developer could add to their game will make me change my preference to playing a damage-dealer.

It doesn't matter the game, but so long as they use the holy trinity of tank/healer/DD, there will always be an abundance of players playing dps and a shortage of players filling the roles of tank/healer. And it always amuses me that some folks solution is "THEY NEED TO ADD MORE TANK/HEALER CLASSES THEN THERE WOULD BE MORE TANK/HEALERS PLAYER" when that has been repeatedly refuted. While there's absolutely nothing wrong with additional tank/healing classes, there will ALWAYS be a shortage of players willing to fill those roles.

[MagiusNecros]

Honestly just make SAM a tank class so FF fans can suffer the same pain DRK's do.

Make it OT as well so the WAR also has trouble finding a raid spot.

[Xlantaa]

The arguments I'm reading from some people who don't want Samurai as tank are most of them very weird (Not oly in this thread). Really. So, Samurai doesn't suit tanking, but blue mage or red mage yes? Some saying that "it is a waste put Samurai as Tank, like DRK"? What?

So, only the crap classes should be tanks, tanks cannot be cool classes. I can't believe what I read here... "Samurai is one of the favourites of most players, should be DPS, is it a waste if they put as tank..." Okay. Good, screw tanks, they have no right to have cool classes.

DPS has the "cooler" classes, like Ninja, Dragoon or Black Mage, but is not enoguh, you want all, Dark Knigth,Samurai, all. Tanks get teh scrap then?

[Evangela]

The arguments I'm reading from some people who don't want Samurai as tank are most of them very weird (Not oly in this thread). Really. So, Samurai doesn't suit tanking, but blue mage or red mage yes? Some saying that "it is a waste put Samurai as Tank, like DRK"? What?

So, only the crap classes should be tanks, tanks cannot be cool classes. I can't believe what I read here... "Samurai is one of the favourites of most players, should be DPS, is it a waste if they put as tank..." Okay. Good, screw tanks, they have no right to have cool classes.

DPS has the "cooler" classes, like Ninja, Dragoon or Black Mage, but is not enoguh, you want all, Dark Knigth,Samurai, all. Tanks get teh scrap then?

Blue Mage and Red Mage should be damage dealers too.

[EdwinLi]

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I think you miss the bigger picture on why Sam should be something else other than a Tank.

As SAM can be easily seen as a Tank due to being one of the classes that can be easily given heavy Tank Armor it is also a bit linear in concept if only classes people can see wearing Heavy Armor can be Tanks.

To make a interesting Tank they need more than just Heavy Armor = Tank Job. They need to get creative on how a Tank works beyond Heavy Armor such as a Mage Tank using a Magic Barrier to protect itself with the Tank function focused on maintaining that Magic Barrier around him or her self as the Job mechanic through using skills and skills buffing the Magic Barrier strength or give it special effects for harming enemies near the Tank, debuffing them in certain ways, or even reflect damage back at them.

Red Mage or Blue Mage can become that type of Magic Barrier mechanic Tank Job which would be a interesting twist to a Tank job compared to the Heavy Armor type of Tank Job we have now.

They can even create a new type of light weight or cloth armor based on this new Magic Barrier Tank Job mechanic with this Mage Tank change the armor defense amount that would normally be on Cloth or light weight armors into a Heavy Armor amount through a Passive that infuse the cloth or light weight armor with Magic strengthening it into a Magic infused armor.

[Radacci]

it doesn't matter how many tank jobs you add, there won't be more ppl playing as tanks. it's not going to affect DF ques, at all - the people who are main tank, will stay that way, people who are not tank mains, won't be, even if they added 10 more tank jobs.
i'd wanna see more 2h dps jobs - there's only drg atm.

So, only the crap classes should be tanks, tanks cannot be cool classes. I can't believe what I read here... "Samurai is one of the favourites of most players, should be DPS, is it a waste if they put as tank..." Okay. Good, screw tanks, they have no right to have cool classes.

WAR and DRK, are cool.
As Yoshi said, tank role doesn't even fit the theme of SAM.
We can blame the class system being so restricting - if we had skill trees, we could pick whichever role we want - DPS-WHM? why not. It's just gonna continue being like this, every time they add a new iconic job - half the playerbase will be upset it's not the role they wanted.

[Katchoo]

it doesn't matter how many tank jobs you add, there won't be more ppl playing as tanks. it's not going to affect DF ques, at all - the people who are main tank, will stay that way, people who are not tank mains, won't be, even if they added 10 more tank jobs.

This ^

If you don't like tanking, you don't like tanking, and i would imagine that it's less to do with the Job and more to do with the way you have to learn a fight or the pressure etc etc that comes with it. Same goes for healing i figure.

Learning a fight with a DPS however can vary wildly from Job to Job. I'm sure there are people that will disagree with me on this point.

[DWolfwood]

it doesn't matter how many tank jobs you add, there won't be more ppl playing as tanks. it's not going to affect DF ques, at all...

I'm guessing you don't remember DF when 3.0 launched. It was nearly impossible for tanks to queue, and DPS had the easiest time for awhile.

A better tank option would be something like Viking with a shield and hammer that focuses more on block strength and lightning attacks, especially since Mjolnir as a relic weapon would make it ideal.

This idea seems like something WoW does with their PLDs and I can't say it sounds interesting. I would rather see Viking as a 2h Greathammer DPS job stone applied to WAR, personally. Which probably won't happen considering their take on SCH/SMN, but hey this is just my opinion on the matter.

Putting three classes on "of Casting" would even it out with what we have on "of Healing" and "of Fending."

3 tanks or 3 healers are almost never in competition for loot in raid. Thus, they could accommodate a limitless number of VIT/STR tanks and MND healers.

...in Rift... ...an ability called Arcane Ward that functions like the tank stances... "enables Block. Causes Block to derive from the Mage's Intelligence. Increases Base Health by 25%, Resistances by 35%, and Armor by 150%. Increases threat generation by 300%. Reduces damage and healing done by 20%. " They could very easily add a buff like this without changing current itemization.

Let's assume they take the time to balance this, and they consider every minute detail, like how INT potions affect this, the party buff, and all the mechanics present in the game already that affect INT. Would you really want them to add this new "mage tank," presumably BLU or RDM, which use swords and possibly shields as well, rather than just add better spell utility to PLD/DRK? What is the fascination with a tank that uses INT for damage? If RDM and BLU use swords, does this mean their swords' damage is affected by INT too? If they add this, all of a sudden we got 3 sword wielding tanks, 2 possibly with shields, that all use magic as well. So much for adding something new.

How would a RDM/BLU even offer anything different? Different combo combinations? Give me an idea seriously, because pretty much every caster's mechanics revolve around MP management which is exactly what DRK is, so it sounds like you just want different animations and gimmicks. I really don't see how people miss this redundancy and not favor simply adding more utility to PLD's CNJ abilities since they already have them, and giving PLD/DRK more magic spells here and there. It would be easier for the dev team, and also give us more distinction between PLD and DRK, which is what people greatly complain about in the first place. Alternatively, would people really rather keep PLD/DRK how they are, just to facilitate an environment where a RDM/BLU tank might be considered "different?"

If we're gonna do a true "caster" tank, I think it needs to be something completely new and different, and use their hands or some kind of psychic power. Maybe Necromancer, but that really wouldn't make sense to me. Just doesn't look like a tank, but the caster-tank doesn't really make sense to me beyond PLD anyways, so whatever.

I dont have paladin up much but to my knowledge its only MP use is Flash up to 50?

Sorta. Their oaths are spells, and they also had Stoneskin, Protect, Cure, and Raise available to them. Their CNJ spells were, and still are, pretty much useless, but I do think they should do something with that. PLD is the only true caster-based tank I can envision making it work easily considering all they'd have to do is give them a bonus to casting speed (maybe a new ability?) and give shield blocks/parry the ability to stop spell interruption. Though, idk how they'd make the potency work for Cure. With all the crazy ideas in this thread about caster tanks though, I don't think it would be nearly as difficult, and considering we got Clemency, it might not even be necessary. I think their intention with 3.0 was to move them in this direction, but it failed a bit with Clemency considering you can see that they wanted us to use it more frequently by looking at the TP values of PLD.

...what better way for a physical healer to enter the fray then Dancer?

RDM (° ͜ʖ ͡°) and considering that RDM can cast spells, they could back off the boss when necessary. I think RDM is their most solid healer choice out of the remaining popular jobs: SAM, RDM, BLU, DNC, BST, and RNG. That's not to say they couldn't make an entirely new healer, which they might. I also think DNC makes for a really great melee support, which is currently missing. I've never really considered DNC to be a full blown healer in any game even in FFXI where it was more of a solo class that you could do small content with. Dances also seem better suited to functioning like BRD songs, giving the party an array of different buffs or giving the enemies debuffs. We also need a pure DPS ranged job, so I think RNG would fit this nicely.

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All this discussion on SAM being both a tank and DPS (Shogun/Ronin jobs) is thrilling!

[EdwinLi]

I'm guessing you don't remember DF when 3.0 launched. It was nearly impossible for tanks to queue, and DPS had the easiest time for awhile.

As stated before what happened in 3.0 was a very short period of increase. A lot of people wanted to try out Dark Knight and speed level the Job to lvl 50. However, that only lasted around 1 month and after that the queue returned to the usual tank instant queue and DPS longer queue.

We are talking about long term increase in Tank population which involves keeping players playing a Tank Job longer than a 1 month period. Even if they decide to add 2 Tank Jobs per expansion or something if the player base of Tank players does not stay higher than it originally started before the release of those New Tank jobs longer than 3 or 4 months then it will not be considered a significant increase in Tank population for long terms.

On topic:
As fun as this discussion been Yoshi-P plan to only release 2 jobs per expansion now, as stated back in 3.0 interviews, will certainly put a bit of a higher standard than currently. However, this will certainly make or break FF14 if the reduction to 2 new jobs per expansion doesn't end up producing enjoyable New Jobs.

[DWolfwood]

As stated before what happened in 3.0 was a very short period of increase. A lot of people wanted to try out Dark Knight and speed level the Job to lvl 50. However, that only lasted around 1 month and after that the queue returned to the usual tank instant queue and DPS longer queue.

We are talking about long term increase in Tank population which involves keeping players playing a Tank Job longer than a 1 month period. Even if they decide to add 2 Tank Jobs per expansion or something if the player base of Tank players does not stay higher than it originally started before the release of those New Tank jobs longer than 3 or 4 months then it will not be considered a significant increase in Tank population for long terms.


On topic:
As fun as this discussion been Yoshi-P plan to only release 2 jobs per expansion now, as stated back in 3.0 interviews, will certainly put a bit of a higher standard than currently. However, this will certainly make or break FF14 if the reduction to 2 new jobs per expansion doesn't end up producing enjoyable New Jobs.

I'd say we're still seeing the diminishing returns of the benefit from having released DRK. Yes, it drops off fast after a month, but considering that month is the one in which people are going to be leveling new jobs the most, it's also the most crucial. Yoshida himself has said that they lead job development in expansions with the tank because it should be the most interesting job and inspire people to play it the most. If you flip that around and either don't release a tank or make it the least interesting job, you have the reverse outcome where that first month of DF becomes unbearably bad for non-tanks, slowly alleviating but still never as high as it would be in say 3.x since you still find many people wanting to level DRK in DF purely because of the aesthetic of the job.

Also, I wouldn't go stating that they're only releasing 2 jobs per expansion as fact just yet. The dev team did jokingly say "never again" when asked about creating 3 jobs at once, but that was a different schedule. SAM had already been worked on a bit, and they rushed those jobs since they had been developing NIN prior. They will have had 2 years since 3.0 came out by the time 4.0 realistically comes around, so it's plenty time to keep up with the power-trio job release that is optimal.