LNC concept change?

[JGwinters]

Hello everyone. I don't often post but the recent class revisions list made me think. I for one have always treated my Lancer as a half-support half-DD class. In fact, the support capabilities of the class were the only reason I picked up a DD class at all, I play tanks and support jobs commonly.

What I'd like to ask is how have you all viewed your Lancer as? What's your playstyle? Have you just gone down the common dime-a-dozen DD route or have you taken advantage of the support capabilities that are now being removed entirely from the game?

I guess what I most would like to know is if it's just me that's feeling let down after this concept change, even after we were specifically told that class concepts don't change. Although I guess it wouldn't be much of a concept change if most people have never used/realized that LNC is a capable support/tactical class instead of just DD...

[Belial]

Lancer was never a support class, it was always a DD. The "support" abilities are self-support, which can be argued each class has support for itself in various abilities. The four somewhat support related skills are the two Surge skills (Life being useless), Comrade in Arms (useless on trash, debatable on boss mobs) & Collusion (re-direct emnity, which I would not really consider a support skill since tanking is not really hard to keep control over at this point.)

So I don't believe the concept for Lancer has changed at all. The only real concept changes that I see, would be Conjurer, Thaumaturge & Archer.

Personally, I like the plans for Lancer and think it will be a more interesting and fun class post-1.21.

[JGwinters]

I may have used support to mean something else than it's generally used to mean in this community. I guess debuffer/support/DD then? A tactical class. Managing enemy speed (I don't care count how many times Heavy has saved me on the leves where enemy runs from you), your own attack speed, enemy and player TP, stunning things when necessary, using various little tricks to position enemies just so that you can deal more damage... All I see left after the class revisions is management of player TP and exchanging HP for higher damage, which makes the class infinitely less interesting and enjoyable to me.

[Belial]

I understand what you're saying, but I've always seen Lancer as a strict DD. From launch 'til now, Lancer has always been a "DD" to me.

As far as what you're worried about, with the class revisions the only thing from your list I see Lancer losing is a very, very small amount of haste, and enemy tp generation. Still manage our own TP, still have the ability to stun, position still matters. The all-around concept is still the same in my eyes, we will just be moving more towards less accuracy and more crit. You have to keep in mind not all this stuff is set in stone, and there are level cap increases, some of the abilities they pull from us now very well could come back the moment they bump cap, which I can see happening at least once pre 2.0.

[Volsung]

I've always played LNC as a DD that just so happened to be able to add a draining effect and lower enemy evasion (life surge) I rarely used speed surge.

We're still getting drain on attack abilities. And if you choose not to use the job there are tons of things you can cross class to enhance low group/soloability.

lnc has drains or increased attack if you arent tanking and still has increased tp generation

tons of cure things to be cross classed pug heal, mrd heal on your next ws, cures

MRD ws 6 will let you apply heavy form the back

pgl ws 2 will inflict blind from right or left



If that will help you still play support role. I'm not too bothered by it personally.

[Krausus]

Well we still have stuns, actually we will have 2 stuns now one being a chance to stun when attacked, we do loose heavy but that can be easily picked up with a MRD weapon skills or ARC weapon skill. We loose our enemy TP management, which though useful in some scenarios it is much less useful since the twisting vice nerfs. Though with focusing on damage more and I'm sure we will be doing a lot more damage come the changes the mobs will die faster meaning you wont really need to manage their TP. It seems like SE wants to move away from the enemy TP management and more toward the CC abilities to avoid TP moves from mobs.

[Fated]

The idealized visions of what the classes would be back before the game was released are long gone. Yoshida has stated recently that he envisions Lancer as being a critical hit damage dealer, so that's what we are going to go on until someone changes it.

If anything, it seems Archer has become the support DD, especially once Bard is released in 1.21.

[JGwinters]

The idealized visions of what the classes would be back before the game was released are long gone. Yoshida has stated recently that he envisions Lancer as being a critical hit damage dealer, so that's what we are going to go on until someone changes it.

Really? All I'd read from him so far was that playing style wouldn't be changing, which is obviously false in my case. Well, if that's the route he's dedicatedly going for I guess I really do have to start looking at other classes now. Sucks to be me I guess.

Thank you everyone for your responses, it's been most enlightening.

[Denton]

I'm also saddened by the loss of support abilities, just because some LNC didn't use them (meaning didn't play the class fully) doesn't mean that that they were somehow unintentionally applied to the class. This is not a fix it's a gimp. lancer is currently pretty good at regulating enemies enmity and TP, and using it's positioning and distance to achieve the best performance the surges are a nice bonus when leveling and make the class distinctive. I like these features and wish they would focus more on those strengths in development, I'm worried about every fight being structured like ifrit where I just end up spamming spike WS and trying not to get killed for it. that's so cookie cutter.

[Krausus]

I'm also saddened by the loss of support abilities, just because some LNC didn't use them (meaning didn't play the class fully) doesn't mean that that they were somehow unintentionally applied to the class. This is not a fix it's a gimp. lancer is currently pretty good at regulating enemies enmity and TP, and using it's positioning and distance to achieve the best performance the surges are a nice bonus when leveling and make the class distinctive. I like these features and wish they would focus more on those strengths in development, I'm worried about every fight being structured like ifrit where I just end up spamming spike WS and trying not to get killed for it. that's so cookie cutter.

Has nothing to do with how fully you play a class, it has everything to do with understanding the mechanics of some fights. whats the point of using Moonrise or Twisting vice to prolong a fight when you could just kill them and be on your way? especially since they nerfed Twisting vice to being much less useful. Lancer moved away from being a support class quite some time ago. And though I enjoyed being a DD support class, I personally like the direction LNC is moving to. And lets be honest we where only semi support we had more CCs or Damage abilities then enemy TP management abilities.