Roles for Samurai, Red Mage, Dancer

[Welsper59]

As a main healer on that game, people taking damage were not a burden. Actually, healing silly DRKs was about the only time I wasn't falling asleep. I mained SCH for most of my time on there (the last 5 years I played). Most of my healing was passive, or prevention. People taking damage was whatever.

I don't know how you did Xarcabard, but the way we did it, it didn't matter where you were standing. You were going to get hit by Hecatomb Wave. It's also a breath, so it's a joke at low HP. And it wasn't even dangerous at high HP. Most of the other enemies you mentioned were not commonly fought. You're talking exceptions and not the rule.

Overwhelm didn't exist when Zilart was current.



An ability you could only use every 2 hours hardly makes a tank. SAM's stance, on the other hand, gave it a 100% guaranteed dodge, multiple hits in a row, with counters if you dodge with it, every 30 seconds.

DRK also had hate generation on Last Resort. It also lowered your defense.

BRD's AoEs never required you to stand in danger. You could stand off to the side and hit only the tank. If you couldn't, maybe you were the bad BRD.

THF evasion skill helped them survive tanking better than SAM ever could, so you can't ignore that part, even if you ignore Perfect Dodge... in fact, that's part of what made them a pseudo tank for small parties or soloing difficult NMs later. Third eye only evaded once, then it was gone until CD is up. The counter wasn't even guaranteed, it was a small chance. Hell, your argument literally makes it sound like you're saying MNK is intentionally a tank. Tons of HP, evasive cooldown abilities, Counter skills/abilities, Guard skill, etc. Where does it end with you? LOL

Indeed Overwhelm didn't exist at launch of Zilart, but why are you using that as an excuse to say that SAM should stay in front of the mobs at all times, when it only affects WS? Your bringing that up actually hinders your argument on devs designing it as a "tank", because it wasn't even a trait that originally came with it.

I'm referring to BRD in the cases of narrowed halls, which weren't uncommon to be in. Think Crawler's Nest or caves that you'd camp at. Also, I'm not saying that the danger was always present, just that it too could, on occasion, put itself in danger... I mean, it did in the case of normal all around AoE attacks, since you needed to position yourself in harms way if you wanted to hit melee with songs (and avoid hitting casters who are likely farther back). The most common setup was:

tank - mob - DPS ---- casters

If BRD needed to cast a song to only hit melee, they'd be like: tank - mob - DPS - BRD --- casters : which puts BRD in harms way. Or are you implying you could cast Valor Minuet songs on all melee, without hitting casters, from ranged? Like you could specifically choose where your songs radius will be, without moving? Cuz, just FYI, that's not how BRD worked.

[MomomiMomi]

Third eye only evaded once, then it was gone until CD is up.

Factually incorrect. You really don't know much about FFXI's SAM so I don't know why you brought it up in the first place.

Seigan is literally a tanking stance that you can keep up full-time.

[Welsper59]

You just keep digging yourself deeper and deeper. I'm not sure how long you played, or as what job, but you might as well just stop trying to pretend you know how SAM and Overwhelm worked. Your statements here would make career SAM's in FFXI cringe.

Just to address a few of your points though: No one stood in front of Kirin during RotZ days, because not even a tank stood in front of Kirin. Kirin was kited by a tank, not tanked in place. I suppose you could technically argue that the kiting tank was in front of Kirin but, regardless, Kirin was FAR from a typical situation. And, anyway, Overwhelm was not even available in those early Kirin days. I can't remember exactly when limit point skills and traits were added, but I think it wasn't until well after Chains of Promathia.

For most, if not all of the other monsters you named, TP abilities had a charge time, and there was plenty of time for a SAM to move out of the way to avoid them. Tanks could not do the same, of course, since mobs in that game turned to face their targets, but for anyone but the hate target, dodging was still a thing. And, for the very rare mob where it was simply too dangerous to stand in front - SAMs didn't stand in front. Simple as that. They were less effective against such mobs, but job balance was never a strong concern in that game, and such mobs were few and far between anyway.

At any rate, I never claimed that SAMs spend ALL their time in front of the mob. Just that that is where they did the best damage. As you said, TP was typically generated from the side, and then weaponskills performed up front. Which still meant that SAMs spent a lot of time up front, since weaponskilling often was kind of their schtick. Like everyone else, they avoided damage where they could, but that risky zone in front of the mob was still their place, something which is practically never true in this game.

I'm also amused at what you assume you know about my performance in that game. I played for fourteen years, studied the meta extensively, and was a respected and trusted player. Your insinuations are frankly hilarious. XD

The bottom line is that, however little you feel I know about FFXI's SAM, you clearly know even less. It's not a fertile ground for supporting the points you're trying to make.

In the case of Kirin, that's not entirely true. It was a common strategy to kite, especially at first, but some JP groups straight up tanked it when people learned about the potency of melee better (and obviously their gear got a little better) in combination with BRD buffs + Soul Voice to just burn him down ASAP. SAM still didn't stand in front of it though if they could avoid it, even then lol. Maybe we were a little more advanced than some groups, although we did do the kiting for a while. If you could evade most/all of the abilities I mentioned all the time, you had some perfect connection or lightning reflexes. Some abilities took time, others did not and the game registered you in front as a result. I'm not sure on when Merits were added neither, I want to say end of Zilart, but you might be right on CoP.

As far as your not claiming to stand in front at all times, you jumped in and claimed I was wrong about what I was saying, which admittedly applies to my comment on the trait being useless, but not the other parts, though that was more aimed at being useless for the reason it was brought up. I was replying to someone that used that as evidence to say SAM was designed as tank... in other words, that justified them being in front of the mob at all times. So get defensive all you want, you jumped in without even knowing what you were engaging yourself with.

Factually incorrect. You really don't know much about FFXI's SAM so I don't know why you brought it up in the first place.

Seigan is literally a tanking stance that you can keep up full-time.

All right, fine, I concede to that. "Once" wasn't accurate in combination of Seigan, which is what you meant, though it could still wipe out from one AoE or multihit abilities. Seigan was a stance, but it didn't guarantee anything. You could still lose Third Eye after 1 normal hit lol. Likewise, the counter wasn't even guaranteed nor as high as MNK.

So I have to ask again, if your points about SAM justify it being a tank, are you saying the same for MNK? MNK had better consistent output, better evasion, higher HP, more tools to use to mitigate damage, and default Guard and Counter skills. THF even tanked better than SAM at later points.

[MomomiMomi]

So I have to ask again, if your points about SAM justify it being a tank, are you saying the same for MNK? MNK had better consistent output, better evasion, higher HP, more tools to use to mitigate damage, and default Guard and Counter skills. THF even tanked better than SAM at later points.

Are we still talking about FFXI? I would not cite FFXI to be the sole reason that a job should be anything. But okay, I'll go with XI.

MNK definitely did not have better mitigation. It also had paper armor.

Could it be turned into a tank that makes sense? Sure, with some tweaking. Was it used as a tank in XI in some cases? Yes. But we already have MNK, and it isn't one, and I can't think of any good example of it being anything similar to a tank in the FF franchise. So I don't feel there is any need to argue for MNK being a tank, and I personally would not do so, either.

The only way THF could tank better than SAM was with /NIN. That wasn't THF tanking. It was quasi-ninja tanking. The only thing THF had was unreliable high evasion. I still will not count an ability you can use every 2 hours as an example of tanking. 30 seconds was hardly enough time to tank anything.

Samurai is different. It's always had heavy armor. In its original form, it had Shirahadori. Shirahadori makes a return in FFT as a notoriously overpowered defensive ability. Even if you don't go out of your way to exploit the ablity's mechanics, it's extremely powerful for most characters. And on FFXI, despite it obviously being a DD, did have some explicit tanking abilities as I already mentioned.

To bring up Overwhelm one final time. They could have chosen to give Samurai any positional requirement. They gave it the front position. I don't think this was chance or coincidence. I think it was intentional with the Samurai image in mind. Now, if they gave them that same position on this game, there has so far only been one role that uses that position. Sneak Attack is the one exception, but that isn't used as often as most attacks. In this game, the front is far more dangerous than many other games. Regularly used cone attacks are commonplace, and they hit like a truck if you're not a tank. So if they make it a front position fighter, the most likely role for that position is tank.

Then there's the job image. Unlike a lot of the jobs in FF, this one has a real life counterpart. And with that real life counterpart comes an image. In this case, probably the most popular image is a result of Bushido. Much like the chivalric knight, which is the quintessential hero of legend. These two images are pretty much analogous. Most things you can apply to the chivalric knight you can apply to the samurai. We already have the knight job; here we call it Paladin. I would not consider it far-fetched to see Samurai being added as the eastern-themed knight.

Someone else mentioned Log Horizon, which has a great example of a Samurai tank. That said, that's a more flexible game, and it can also be played as a dps. In LH, Samurai is actually a region exclusive class for Japan. The Western Europe version of Samurai is Paladin.

I'm not mentioning any of these as strong arguments for SAM tank individually. I'm looking at this all as a whole package. Overall, taking all of these things into account, I think SAM tank would make a lot of sense and would be a perfect fit for it. As also mentioned before, it's one of very few existing jobs in FF that make sense as a tank.

And Ninja was also one, wasn't it? While I won't deny that Samurai could sort of tank in FFXI (It's the only entry in the main series I haven't played yet, so I literally can't deny claims like this) throughout the series Samurai's main thing was doing horrendous ammounts of damage. Heavy armor or no, it was the most DPS of DPS classes.

Not at all by design, but simply out of lack of balance. If there was one thing that XI did not do, it's balance its jobs. At one point their idea of balancing NIN tanking was to make enemies do ridiculous amounts of damage to the point where they simply could not survive a hit. It got to the point where PLD couldn't even tank without /NIN, much less any other jobs.

[Zephyrin]

Samurai healer - Red Mage tank - Dancer dps

Just because they surely dont have the balls to make it real
Also, you should better forget the idea of ​​having 3 new jobs on 4.0
1 or 2 at most, surely dps for both. My gut tells me that.

[Shippuu]

Samurai healer - Red Mage tank - Dancer dps

Just because they surely dont have the balls to make it real
Also, you should better forget the idea of ​​having 3 new jobs on 4.0
1 or 2 at most, surely dps for both. My gut tells me that.

Considering recent comments from Yoshida during the 14 hour broadcast it's actually more likely we'll see 3 jobs in 4.0 given his comment about almost giving away the number of new jobs in the expansion having something to do with the Moonfire event. The only obvious number being 3 for 3 rangers.

Releasing only new DPS jobs is a recipe for disaster. So if it's 3 new jobs it will very likely be 1 for each role.

[Aamalthea]

They will probably end up mixing some skills from two mage classes into one. As much as I want to see a Red Mage AND a Dancer, we probably won't get both. Or if we do, I suspect it won't be anything like the RDM or DNC we remember from FFXI. Personally I love the game as is but nostalgia can lead to disappointment.

I still want Samurai to be a DPS, I desperately want to play a DPS with a giant sword as I love DK but hate tanking for random people.

[Lexia]

Dancer should be a dps or healer, I don't think it should be a tank.

[MomomiMomi]

EDIT: Actually no, I'm wrong on Third Eye on that, yeah. Deleted the previous sentence. Seigan bonus. So let me ask this then... why was SAM never used as an actual tank? Real question, since apparently it has so many great qualities.

Answered this earlier.

That it "didn't work" is a result of, again, XI's poor balance. PLD and NIN were just that much better. And we already know that NIN was never meant to tank. That it could tank doesn't suddenly make people think that the image of a ninja is that of a tank. What the players use things as has nothing to do with the job's design. The players are always going to use things in the way that benefits them the most, intended or not.

Tank balance got worse in endgame as they tried to balance the game around NIN tank existing, which made things far worse for every other job; even PLD couldn't keep up with the amount of damage being dished out anymore and had to resort to using /NIN just to stay alive. Even though other jobs had clear examples of tanking abilities, if you don't make them as good as the best, they're never going to be used, because the game has to be balanced around the best thing available to the players.