SAMURAI SHOWDOWN

[ShinMetsu]

Hello, I'd also like to give my 2 cents on this topic and my take of samurai and red mage as well as the concerns of having tanking classes.

I think most people would agree that Samurai and Red Mage are most likely to be added in 4.0, going by the comments that they don't want to add 3 classes at once, i guess we'd be left with that.
Now, what does this mean? DPS is the most popular role, and to me it feels like it currently lacks a bit in variety.
At the same time people are always concerned not having enough Tank roles.
But what of the healers? I see them being even more uncommon.
Frankly, i don't think the queues are horrible as a DPS even, on average i wait 5min for dungeon queues, which are probably the main concern.

So what if we add, say, a tank and a DPS. The Lackluster of healers will still be there.
And is adding a tank really going to solve the issues of too few tanks?
Is there even such a thing as a perfect balance between roles?
I think it's true that if they added Samurai as a tank, a lot of people would give it a try, naturally.
But how many of those people would actually switch from their DPS role to a tank role? I don't think too many, of course some would though.
Mostly i'd see current tanks switching to Samurai as a tank.

And Red Mage is so over the place, i don't even know where i would see it. Although i do have a most unexpected vision for it, in my own mind.


Personally I would like to see Samurai as a DPS, because my take on Samurai isn't tanky enough to actually be a tanking class.
I see Samurai being the ultimate killing machines. That is mostly what they are known for in my opinion. I don't think many people think of Samurai like "Oh, that guy could take a direct hit no problem"
And their weapons aren't even as durable, they are quite brittle.
Of course, some people are gonna be like "They don't block, they parry", but i'd stress it's more the deflecting type of parry too.
And i don't see that concept being very viable for those kind of tankbusters we got, like A5 Twinkledink's or Sephirot's tank busters, deflecting them doesn't seem effective or anywhere near a possibility to me.
Furthermore I don't see Samurai as being anything remotely close to magical or superhuman powers, I think of Samurai in a sense of how they are portrayed, simply masters of their very deadly art.

Even if they went with a parry concept Samurai tank, I'd think it to be really boring to be honest.
How would it differ from Warrior or Paladin even, that type of mitigation is like... no differnt from blocks to me.
All we see is a "Parry (-20%)" pop up on the screen, and i don't really care much whether it says Block or Parry to be honest.
And being up against non-physical oponents, Samurai tank sounds like it would be screwed as you simply can't parry magical attacks.
So, this picture is most undesireable to me from a tank's perspective.
Who knows what they could come up with, but as mentioned above, it wouldn't fall into the category of how i see samurais.


What i would like to see instead for a tank...
Give us something new, something interesting.
I'd like to see a 'Barrier' type of tank, a tank that puts up magical barriers for mitigation, similar to an Adoloqium's Galvanize shield.
Those shields could be tied to weapon skills for example, or the weapon skills could give you some sort of... 'swiftcast' buff to put up a shield at your leisure, or if off-tanking unleash a devastating magic attack.
I think that would be nothing like we've got already.
I haven't played XI's Runefencer, but i'd imagine it something along those lines, your attacks would directly or give the ability to put up barriers, buffs, unleash attacks, or whatever else.
Another possibity for this type of tank would be Red Mage considering it's trademark Phalanx which acts sort of like a Barrier.


So yeah, i'd like to see Samurai as a DPS. Red Mage i'm really undecided on.
But i don't think it would be horrible even if we got 2 DPS and no Tanks or Healers for 4.0.
Rather than just using Samurai as a means to get people to play Tank, keep it real to the lore and how Samurai are portrayed.
Keep the Jobs what they are, not what you need them to be.
Instead find a more suitable and interesting idea to fill the tanking position.

[Reiryuu]

Am I the only one kind of hoping he actually goes back and implements something he's said he wants to do for a very long time?

Hybrid classes-
I'm kind of sure that he said the earliest changes to DF/Raid compositions/Party comps/etc could be made was 4.0.
He's mentioned before that he likes the idea of a hybrid class system and increasing the party size.

What if we get 3-4 new hybrid type classes? Sam- DPS/Off Tank; RDM: DPS (melee with en-spells?)/Heal (TP heals?) Geomancer(?) Heal/ (Ranged/caster)DPS (maybe functions like RIFT's Chloromancer with small heals on dpsing?) *shrug* Not sure how he'd work them and since there's only 3 roles there's not very many combos lol.

[DWolfwood]

Gonna ask this again. What can SAM offer that isn't already there. And simply won't be popular new job of expansion pack.

Regardless of what jobs they choose to implement, they'll need to overcome this hurdle of creativity. In regards to Samurai, I think countering is the big thing that I imagine. Countering is something that is a major part of nearly every Final Fantasy game since I can remember, but is largely missing in XIV. Aside from that, I don't think every job needs to reinvent the wheel. Just look at all the DPS we have now and you'll see that there's not a whole lot of uniqueness to any single job if you examine them closely, but they can easily be defined by their playstyles.

I've seen many a forum poster on here have much grander idea's then what the devs have seen to throw at us.

There are tons of great ideas the dev team misses that make me wonder who they have working for them sometimes, but I also think a lot of the great ideas here on the forums are not very practical. Even the idea that started this thread I think goes to the limits, but I still think it's within the realm of possibility to bring us two samurai jobs. It only hinges on whether they could be distinct, and samurai is nearly the only job that can easily be both at the same time because there is plenty to distinguish a "Shogun" job from a "Ronin."

...going by the comments that they don't want to add 3 classes at once...

I wouldn't jump to any conclusions just yet. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, they jokingly revealed that when they asked the dev team how it was making 3 jobs at once they said, "never again!" However, keep in mind that Ninja was released less than a year before 3.0, and SCH/SMN was released a year before NIN, so they had no time off in between considering they also said it takes 1 year to make a job. I think it's perfectly safe to assume they'll still add 3 jobs in the next expansion until they explicitly say otherwise. Remember that they've been working on the next set of jobs for already a year now, longer in the case of Samurai, and they still have another year to go.

...is adding a tank really going to solve the issues of too few tanks?
Is there even such a thing as a perfect balance between roles?
I think it's true that if they added Samurai as a tank, a lot of people would give it a try, naturally.
But how many of those people would actually switch from their DPS role to a tank role? I don't think too many, of course some would though.
Mostly i'd see current tanks switching to Samurai as a tank.

This topic has been discussed throughout this thread, but basically, the big point to remember is: the first day of an expansion is when people are judging things the harshest, and this continues over the next month or two before things start to calm down. Releasing a tank during this time does in fact help the queue times with other jobs, and the benefit is two-fold when weighed against the option of not releasing one at all.

I don't think anyone expects many long term converters to the tank role. Many hoped and tried to do that with DRK before realizing it was just too much for them. That said, I think people are still trying to, so to that extent, we're still seeing the benefits to our leveling queue. The same result could be expected with samurai for sure. There are going to be tons of people trying to level samurai, should it be a tank, that a lot will delay their leveling of it until the tank queues become instant for them again, which again benefits everyone. If you think adding a tank such as samurai wouldn't help queues at all, I say just look at the people who are still leveling DRK. People still love the concept of DRK and will continue to level it despite not wanting to tank.

There's an abundance of DPS jobs, more than healing and tanking combined, so there will never be a shortage of them in queues. Tank jobs make up only 3 out of the available 13, and they have to create more to keep that DF popping. Who wants to keep doing low content as a tank? Eventually they might have to address this, but for now I think we still need more jobs in the healing/tanking roles.

In regards to the endgame aspect of people switching to tank roles, well... If they hadn't released DRK, I can say it would be tougher on the community now than if they hadn't. Even giving tanks unique mounts doesn't entice enough players. In the case of SAM, I think it would cut into the WAR numbers, which right now is almost assuredly higher than PLD and DRK combined. So, there's that aspect.

Rather than just using Samurai as a means to get people to play Tank, keep it real to the lore and how Samurai are portrayed.

"Lore" and "how samurai are portrayed" should honestly just be kept out of discussion. If you really want to get into it, I suggest reading what people have posted already. Samurai history can basically be divided into 3: their rise, reign, and fall. Up until their fall, they were extremely well armored on the battlefield and had a much higher chance of survival than the ashigaru, aka footsoldiers. If you're unclear what the ashigaru looked like, here's a picture of the armor they wore:



Armies would use them for archers and as fodder to basically dwindle the enemy forces before sending in the heavily armored samurai. To be a samurai was a great honor and you were payed very well in exchange for your loyalty and service to one of the very wealthy lords. No lord had their samurai dressed in shitty armor, and surprise surprise, armor actually worked and they could shrug off arrows and the massive amounts of direct blows. This isn't some secret either that the media chooses to ignore, and if anyone thinks that only the Musashi/ronin-esque, off-the-battlefield samurai is represented in the media, the cause lies in what they're drawn to in media, not media itself.

Am I the only one kind of hoping he actually goes back and implements something he's said he wants to do for a very long time?

Hybrid classes

I'm semi-hopeful that he'll go back to this, but he's seemed to change his position on the matter because he doesn't feel like messing with the DF standard. It's a big mess, and I think they realize that it is. Rather than spend time on the major changes, they're probably working up to it by making all the smaller changes that it needs, while shaping up the game around it as well, such as adding the jobs we want before adding the customization. Until we get the customization, I think the best we'll get are healers and tanks that can DPS and DPS with extensive support.

[Shippuu]

DPS is the most popular role, and to me it feels like it currently lacks a bit in variety.

Saying the role that has over twice the number of options as the other two available roles lacks variety comes off pretty badly. If only tanks and healers had 7 options each to choose from...

At the same time people are always concerned not having enough Tank roles.
But what of the healers? I see them being even more uncommon.
So what if we add, say, a tank and a DPS. The Lackluster of healers will still be there.
And is adding a tank really going to solve the issues of too few tanks?
Is there even such a thing as a perfect balance between roles?
I think it's true that if they added Samurai as a tank, a lot of people would give it a try, naturally.
But how many of those people would actually switch from their DPS role to a tank role? I don't think too many, of course some would though.

Will adding new tanks fix all the problems? No. Will not adding new tanks help in any way? Absolutely not. Even if the overall population of tanks doesn't increase, it's a step in the right direction from their numbers actually decreasing. Also, 4 tanks to level means that tank players will ultimately spend more time in all those levelling dungeons as tanks providing more overall queue pops for more dps overall.

Mostly i'd see current tanks switching to Samurai as a tank.

If it's between this and tank players quitting/changing to dps than it's still a positive thing.

I see Samurai being the ultimate killing machines. That is mostly what they are known for in my opinion. I don't think many people think of Samurai like "Oh, that guy could take a direct hit no problem"

That's your opinion. In Final Fantasy games they have quite often been portrayed as staunch defenders of others. Especially when it comes to named characters who are Samurai. Cyan and Auron are both samurai archetypes, and both are bodyguards, protectors of others, and in Auron's case, have direct abilities that shield his allies. They have a long history in Final Fantasy games of having supportive capabilities. As opposed to Dark Knight who had virtually none and they still made that a tank. Samurai in Final Fantasy actually has tons of merit to playing a tank.

And their weapons aren't even as durable, they are quite brittle.
Of course, some people are gonna be like "They don't block, they parry", but i'd stress it's more the deflecting type of parry too.
And i don't see that concept being very viable for those kind of tankbusters we got, like A5 Twinkledink's or Sephirot's tank busters, deflecting them doesn't seem effective or anywhere near a possibility to me.

Weapon durability means jack all, it's a video game. Dark Knights somehow parry attacks with a 6 ft slab of metal. Warrior's are somehow capable of parrying all attacks from the front for 20s with an unwieldly greataxe. A Katana is far easier to parry attacks with than either of those two weapons.

Furthermore I don't see Samurai as being anything remotely close to magical or superhuman powers, I think of Samurai in a sense of how they are portrayed, simply masters of their very deadly art.

You'd be wrong then, as in multiple Final Fantasy games Samurai have had magical abilities. Final Fantasy Tactic's Samurai summoned spirits from their katana. Final Fantasy XII's Mononofu scaled on magick attack. Tenzen from FFXI had a magical sword imbued with the fire of Phoenix. There's plenty of possibility and merit for Samurai to have a magical/spiritual aspect to them.

Even if they went with a parry concept Samurai tank, I'd think it to be really boring to be honest.
How would it differ from Warrior or Paladin even, that type of mitigation is like... no differnt from blocks to me.
All we see is a "Parry (-20%)" pop up on the screen, and i don't really care much whether it says Block or Parry to be honest.
And being up against non-physical oponents, Samurai tank sounds like it would be screwed as you simply can't parry magical attacks.

Nothing stopping them from giving Samurai any kind of barrier or other forms of mitigation. Also nothing stopping them from giving them an ability that say, augments their sword with spiritual/magical energy which allows them to parry magical attacks. The idea of a samurai slicing through an incoming fireball or deflecting a laser beam is definitely within the style of samurai.

What i would like to see instead for a tank...
Give us something new, something interesting.

And then you suggest Runefencer from FFXI...And also imply you still want SAM as a dps which you earlier said dps was lacking variety. So...SAM tank is not new or interesting, but SAM dps apparently is?

But i don't think it would be horrible even if we got 2 DPS and no Tanks or Healers for 4.0.

You're welcome to think that, but objectively it's a bad idea.

Rather than just using Samurai as a means to get people to play Tank, keep it real to the lore and how Samurai are portrayed.

As stated earlier, keeping them how they are portrayed in Final Fantasy (Which is where their portrayal matters most) means that they are a strong contender to be a tank and it would be more in line than how they turned DRK into a tank.

[Derio]

When DRK launched with HW there were nothing but "Need DPS" for the on duty. So it did help in a sense and did expand the tank population for a short time, and in the long run we have a slightly larger tank population. You also have to remember there are more dps classes than tank and healer classes combined.

SAM could be tank or dps. If it is a melee dps instead of tank, then obviously they would need to add a tank class that is unique and desireable to get the same outcome of players playing tank like they did with DRK.

[FyrmurlFloerasksyn]

DPS please. I'd be pretty annoyed if tanks get yet another sword class. Us dps don't have a sword class yet, the closest is ninja's with their over sized daggers, but it's not the same. Oh and don't go crazy with the positional requirements. The last thing i want is another monk iike class lol

[Reaperking386]

I predict Samurai will be the dps class, but with a Tachi (two-handed sword) and a tank class Shogun (Wakizashi + Katana). As far as a healer class...I would say a seer or Oracle. Something that goes with the Samurai Style classes.

[DWolfwood]

I predict Samurai will be the dps class, but with a Tachi (two-handed sword) and a tank class Shogun (Wakizashi + Katana). As far as a healer class...I would say a seer or Oracle. Something that goes with the Samurai Style classes.

That's pretty much what I want personally. lol

Dual-katana Sam tank in heavy armor would look so awesome.

[Handheld]

As someone who is kinda fresh to his drk and has also been working on a drg honestly iconic tank classes are desperately needed far more than iconic dps classes.

I can hop in duty finder and instantly find a group as a tank and run through it no problem. Hopping on dps however nearly quadruples the time i have to wait. As cool as a DPS Sam would be it would probably cause nothing but issues seeing as a ton of people would jump over to DPS and then the Que would be even more heavily skewed. I can honestly see DPS ques being double or even triple the amount of time they are now if Sam is released as a dps simply because its such an iconic class.

Having it as a tank would honestly drastically help out Duty finder and would thin the DPS herd a bit for awhile.

[Xlantaa]

The Samurai is one of the most liked classes in every game, because, let's say the truth, everyone loves katanas. I can tell you if the Samurai wear another kind of weapon, like a Kanabo, or Yari probably people pass and didn't bother on them. We will see a lot of people wearing katanas trying to glamour as their favourtie anime style character (eh, I have nothing agains this eh, I will be probably one of those...). Let's be honest here, is not that? :P (Of course, some people love the Samurai as is it, eh).

Also, if Samurai is a DPS, they will need REALLY put a tank class which people wants even more than Samurai to avoid DPS congest de DF, of we will have a DPS queues or 60 minutes (At least, the first weeks) and every roulette with a party with 2 Samurais. It happend on the ninja release.

Now, what tank can surpass the Samurai in people preferences? Blue mage not, Red mage not. They are popualr classes, but cannot surpass Samurai. In my opinion, Samurai tank will help to acelerate DPS queues at least the first weeks on release. After a tiem, all will return to normal, like always.