Roles for Samurai, Red Mage, Dancer

[Nalien]

I'd quite like Dancer to be a "frontline" healer - utilising TP - they could have traits which increase their TP generation and it would make for a slightly different kind of healer.

That's difficult considering certain mechanics, though not entirely impossible to solve... They'd just need to adjust the Duty Finder such that every 8 man party gets at least 2 ranged based Jobs, and mechanics like Judgement Nisi target ranged Jobs, rather than healers...

That said, I'd go for making Dancer a ranged based healer... Final Fantasy XI gave the Job a War Hoop as its first "artifact" weapon, though Relics and Mythics later went for daggers... Still, giving it a throwing weapon for ranged physical attacks, and dances for "spell" heals works nicely IMO...

As for Red Mage and Samurai... Both DPS... I guess either could be a counter-based tank, but I think fitting a tank role onto a Job ends up limiting what you can do with it mechanically, you've got to many "required" skills to fit in... Blue Mage makes the best of this IMO, it very much fits the counter-based tank role, and classic Blue Magic spells kinda fit in with the skills a tank is going to need... Blue Mage can have a Clemency/Divine Veil style skill in White Wind, it can have defensive spells that are classic Blue Magic spells... It works with that role perfectly IMO, while Red Mage and Samurai? Every concept I've come up with for the Jobs would have to be butchered to fit enmity combos and defensive skills in, so no thanks.

Tanks are very much the jack-of-all-trades in this game though, so if you forced me to put one on tank, I guess I'd have to go with Red Mage... Tanks can deal damage, they can take hits, they can all also heal fairly well, even if it's just themselves typically... That's exactly why I'd stick Blue Mage on that role though, Blue Magic had a range of useful spells that can cover all those uses, thus its perfect for a tank IMO... Same is true for Red Mage though, just I'd personally rather see a frontline DPS that fences and weaves spells into its combos...

[F4Bz]

My choices are just something coming out of RL lore\general fantasy lore...

Samurai is always described as a heavy armored person with a long sword (katana). That makes me think of a tank, as the Samurai was basically an armed guard, serving and protecting the nobles.
I can picture it as tank class based on dodging hits (or parrying them with their katana while distibuting part of the damage they would've received to the enemy\enemies).
They also were scholars, practicing some Zen arts, like Cha No Yu (Art of Tea) and Shodō (Writing) so those skills might as well find a place in the game... somehow... (Does anyone else thought about Yojimbo by any chance???)


Red Mage is usually a weapon wielder (one handed sword\dagger mostly) with white\black magic spells and the ability to use a completely different kind of armors compared to usual "mage" classes. It's kinda specialized in buffing and debuffing, but can deal good chunk of damage thanks to the spells it can cast from its "black side"...
That makes me think of it as a DPS able to boost the party damage\lower the enemy damage and able to support the healers with their peculiar skill able to refill the MP pool. We can't forget tho that the Red Mage is the only class that should be able to "dual cast". (Considering that ability is already scripted for Chrysalis as the Ascian is using it to double or even triple cast his magic!).

That leaves us with a doubt on the healing class. Now according to this thread, we could say that Dancer should be the healing class. I'd rather throw my two cents on a different choice adding a lot more "positions" to the game. Lately we've seen how healers evolved into half-dps (sometimes even to dps better than actual dps, but that's another story). What if... Instead of a pure healer, they add a Druid. Someone able to Totem up the party (depending on what they want the party to use: +dmg? +def? +crit?) while healing AND damaging effectively?
Think about it... SCH can apply dots and bane them to the packed group, they also can Shadowflare. WHM can Aero III whole packs right before Holying them to death while stunning. AST can Gravity the shit out of them and they're able to Celestial Opposition stun them.
Now imagine a Druid. Able to switch to its animal counterpart, dealing good damage but NOT being able to heal, and able to cast (timed?) Totems to do that job for him while he actually applies debuffs\buffs to the party with a spell applying a random partybuff\enemypartydebuff and only castable every 3-4 minutes (something like Enkindle). That's in my opinion a really great setup, as we're progressing toward healers able to deal almost the same damage as dps while keeping the party alive...

As for Dancer... I can't see a real use for it, unless they wanna add a Whip class that uses songs (anyone else thought about BRD?) and dances to deal damage (!?). According to the last comments, that would be a good idea for a magic ranged dps especially if they'd add "variants" to the whips... like fighting styles (Fire gives more damage, Ice recovers some TP\MP, Lightning steals HP are just an example). That would make Dancers having to be aware of both MP\TP usage to deal their damage.

That said, this post is way too long, so i'm gonna stop now and i'm looking forward to your comments too :P

[AutoWhit]

Samuai DPS
Red Mage tank
Dancer healer

I'm not sure why people still think that having another tank class is going to fix the shortage of tanks. People don't tank because it's the most demanding role (except maybe healers) and requires the most attention while playing. People get nervous queuing with them. SE could add 3 more tank classes and no dps/healer classes and it still wouldn't change the shortage issue.

[Shippuu]

I'm not sure why people still think that having another tank class is going to fix the shortage of tanks. People don't tank because it's the most demanding role (except maybe healers) and requires the most attention while playing. People get nervous queuing with them. SE could add 3 more tank classes and no dps/healer classes and it still wouldn't change the shortage issue.

Why do new tank jobs have to come with an absurd stipulation that they must magically fix an issue that plagues every trinity mmo? Their players deserve new jobs just as much as the dps and avoiding the problem of lower tanks is the opposite of a solution.

Not adding new tanks that are alluring and interesting and only adding dps will only make the tanking problem worse.

[silentwindfr]

Why do new tank jobs have to come with an absurd stipulation that they must magically fix an issue that plagues every trinity mmo? Their players deserve new jobs just as much as the dps and avoiding the problem of lower tanks is the opposite of a solution.

Not adding new tanks that are alluring and interesting and only adding dps will only make the tanking problem worse.

you can add 200.000.000 tank jobs and only 1 dps jobs even if the tank jobs is super alluring, most of the people will not play tank, for different reason!

1) no big number
2) too much responsability
3) don't want to bother to tank and simply want to focus on what they do

and such... adding a new tank jobs will solve nothing. a good example is wow, when they did have added the death knight most of the people was playing it as dps than tank... because people wanting to play tank already do it. adding a jobs will solve nothing.

another point, we already have a 2 hand sword and 1 hand sword tank class then adding the samurai as tank physical is.... silly.
you have a better chance to have a red mage as tank what will be quite interesting but who know... maybe we will not have a tank at all.

so far we have 2 caster dps, 2 ranged physical dps, 3 melee dps (even if this category can be divided between the dragoon who wear chain armor and the monk/ninja wearing leather armor)
and we have 3 tank and 3 healer.

Was there...? The 2014 official census lists 19% tanks, 13% healers and 68% DPS for the role breakdown (30+) (Note: Ninja was not included in any of the figures). The 2015 official census lists 19% tanks, 19% healers and 62% DPS 30+. And that's with 2 DPS, 1 tank and 1 healer released in the meantime. Seems odd - you release 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 DPS, yet the relative amount of DPS goes down?

Now, there could be bloat in that due to people picking up the job at 30 (thus entering the statistic) but never actually playing it, which would relatively impact tanks and healers far more - 1/3rd of the Tanks/Healers start at 30, only 1/6th of the DPS do. That cannot explain however why healer relatively shot up while tank relatively remained the same and it's doubly odd because DRK is the iconic FF job, not Astrologian.

Now...these are pretty cool numbers, right? Unfortunately, they don't say much, because they only say how the distribution looks like in levels - that means it shows the potential, not the actual participation. I have all jobs at 60, so my personal distribution is like 54/23/23. Yay, I'm pushing the statistic! Shame I play like 85% as DPS. For actual participation, we unfortunately lack data.

Since people dislike logic and deduction, I'll leave the interpretation to you guys. Make of that what you will.

don't forget a nice point into your data, in raid often you only need 1 tank (24 raid by example) means you end with 1 tank, 2 healer and 5 dps...

plus it's important to make the difference between ranged and melee dps.

[Shippuu]

And yet every new class added to WoW has a tank spec. So clearly Blizzard felt it was certainly worth it to continue adding tank classes along with dps ones, just like SE is very likely to do.

The issue isn't so much to get more people to tank (which is still something to always aim for, and something Dark Knight did indeed do) but it's more about tank player retention. Because the last thing you want is your tank population to go down, and that is something that will certainly happen if tank players aren't thrown a bone. The existing tanks get stale, they deserve variety.

But instead selfish dps players who have the largest variety in classes want more. If there's no reason to add more tank jobs then there's even less of a reason to add dps jobs.

[Evangela]

There's no shortage of tanks problem to begin with.

[Claymore65]

There's no shortage of tanks problem to begin with.

Except for the fact that the "Role in Need" is 95% of time Tanks. Tanks also have "instant queues". That indicates that there probably aren't enough people playing Tanks and Healers, at least in Duty Finder. Now the actual role distribution among characters is a bit better (19% Tank, 19% Healer, 62% DPS according to the official 2015 census here: http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/Eorze...N_Census_L.PNG), but in an ideal world it would be closer to 25% Tank, 25% Healer, 50% DPS. Note that this isn't really surprising. In pretty much any "Holy Trinity" based MMO there is always a surplus of DPS players and a shortage of Healers and Tanks. There are multiple theories as to why (Added "responsiblity" when playing a tank or healer, more "cool" class options as DPS, "Damage is fun") but it's very rare to find a Trinity MMO where Healers/Tanks are more popular than DPS roles.

When Ninja was first added, DF queue times dramatically increased as many players who would normally play Tanks or Healers flocked over to the new DPS job. I can't imagine if the expansion were to add two, let alone three new DPS jobs. That's why I'm guessing it'll be "Tank, DPS, Healer" for this expansion. It keeps the roles balanced and should lessen the effect on queue times, although they will still be affected, especially if a more "desirable" class is the DPS.

For the question above, I could see it going more or less anyway. I'd lean toward "Samurai = DPS, Red Mage = Tank, Dancer = Healer". but I'm not really sure.

I feel like Samurai would work best as either a Tank or DPS. As a tank, they'd likely focus on a "counter" mechanic, similar to the "Swordmaster" class in Bravely Default. As a DPS, I could see them having stances, focusing on either quicker strikes or slower "casting-like" strikes (iaijutsu). As a DPS they could have the added benefit of sharing equipment with Dragoons, which would be pretty nice. I could easily see them going either way.

For Red Mage, they could technically fit all three. Red Mage is going to be tough to fit in this game, if only because they are defined by being "Jack of All Trades, Master of None". The Red Mage will see quite a bit of change, and depending on what they decide to emphasize it will change. As a Tank, they could easily have a number of defensive abilities, support abilities, and offensive abilities (not unlike Paladin), while still fighting in melee. It might make a great fit. However, it would likely need heavier armor, which might not work as well. As DPS it could probably still do all three as well. Healer I see being a bit harder, if only since it's supposed to be melee, but it could fit. I think Red Mage is a pretty good bet for the expansion though. The two major Ala-Mihgan characters we've seen have both combined swordplay with fire magic (Ilberd and Raubahn), I'm just not sure what role they'll fill.

Dancer I could easily see as a Healer, or a DPS. As a DPS they could easily fit the "melee bard" kind of role, with support focused dances and quick melee strikes. As a Healer, they could focus on party wide support abilities, although I'm not sure how they would handle "melee" healing. Tank fits some of their aspects thematically (attracting attention), but I feel like would be a bad fit. Either they would have to wear heavy armor, or they would have to be an "Evasion" tank, and to be frank I don't see that happening. "Evasion Tanks" are notoriously hard to balance correctly, as they usually end up either too weak or wildly overpowered. So, I don't realistically see "Dancer" as becoming a tank, though healer or DPS could work.

[LineageRazor]

Samurai being a tank seems like the obvious choice - but I kinda hope it doesn't happen. Samurai will probably use a katana or great katana, and that would make for THREE out of four tanks wielding swords... It'd be nice to have a sword-wielding DPS for a change. Of course, they could get fancy and give SAM a Naginata, or even a bow...

I'm not sure why people still think that having another tank class is going to fix the shortage of tanks.

It DOES help, some. There was a notable increase in the number of tanks when DRK came out, and that was largely attributable to the fact that folks wanted to play Dark Knight, even if they had to tank to do it. If the job is cool or iconic enough, a lot of people will get over their hangups about tanks and play it anyway.

There's no shortage of tanks problem to begin with.

I can't imagine you saying this with a straight face. The shortage of tanks is beyond easy to prove. Queue up Duty Finder as Tank, Healer, and DPS. Which one gets in immediately? Which one has to wait longest? Tanks get their instant queues for a reason; there are many healers and many many DPS looking for parties, but not nearly as many tanks. So as soon as one queues, they're instantly matched with the DPS and healers that are waiting.

[Zojha]

There was a notable increase in the number of tanks when DRK came out[...]

Was there...? The 2014 official census lists 19% tanks, 13% healers and 68% DPS for the role breakdown (30+) (Note: Ninja was not included in any of the figures). The 2015 official census lists 19% tanks, 19% healers and 62% DPS 30+. And that's with 2 DPS, 1 tank and 1 healer released in the meantime. Seems odd - you release 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 DPS, yet the relative amount of DPS goes down?

Now, there could be bloat in that due to people picking up the job at 30 (thus entering the statistic) but never actually playing it, which would relatively impact tanks and healers far more - 1/3rd of the Tanks/Healers start at 30, only 1/6th of the DPS do. That cannot explain however why healer relatively shot up while tank relatively remained the same and it's doubly odd because DRK is the iconic FF job, not Astrologian.

Now...these are pretty cool numbers, right? Unfortunately, they don't say much, because they only say how the distribution looks like in levels - that means it shows the potential, not the actual participation. I have all jobs at 60, so my personal distribution is like 54/23/23. Yay, I'm pushing the statistic! Shame I play like 85% as DPS. For actual participation, we unfortunately lack data.

Since people dislike logic and deduction, I'll leave the interpretation to you guys. Make of that what you will.