Tank/Healer gear for DD? [Job(s) that breaks the mold]

[Shougun]

One of the interesting things I've seen discussed about tanks and healers is that when you want to get serious it kind of sucks to be a healer/tank, I mean you do get that sweet queue time for normal content but when it's to true end game content (savage, other highly group focused content) you're part of a select small group and that makes it bit of an issue to want to always maintain a strong tank when DD is a much larger wanted group. It basically becomes a wall of interest, you gear up and go quickly until all a sudden you're not desired at all and you need to go focus on something else instead. If a tank spot does open up it might be good, but that would happen far less often and since tanks seem to get to be leader of the content (at least in my WoW experience and the people I've talked to in FFXIV's experience, suggest they really don't like having tanks to cycle and want a fixed one).

Of course if you never do end content it's probably never going to appear to be an issue (fast queues times is your reward lol).

So just something I wanted to see what people thought about, is what if there is at least one or two jobs that broke the mold in gearing up - which would mean that for example a healer could be gearing out their DD /and/ their Healer at the same time (or tank). Leading to a few benefits, both in mold breaking (can be refreshing change of pace), and interlinking progress between two roles increasing movement between those two roles.

So if your group doesn't need another tank, you go DD no problem, if they need a tank omg there are three people who can be one (or healer).

Blue mage (tank) for example could be using some DD mage gear (or fill in whatever other light weight class). DD gear used for a specific tank job.

Dancer (healer) could use monk gear (I mean the monk on the SB trailer made everyone think it was a dancer, so pretty close already eh? add some good artifact armor just in case though lol). DD gear used for a specific healer job.

It can of course go the other direction - and this would make the move more general/easier for tanks and healers, like some may be familiar with Golbez who is a big hulking super mage - so you could make a new mage type and give it tank armor. Perhaps because we already have a BLM (which Golbez matches fairly closely to) instead you make a magitek / judge damage dealing job which wears heavy armor but is still actually a DD. Tank gear used for a specific DD job.

Golbez:


Inspiration for a new job/gunblade/soldier/magitek/judge DD that uses tank gear:
(yeah I know who that is lol)

Perhaps Geomancer uses healer robes but is actually DD. Healer gear used for a specific DD job. (Thought Geomancer since WHM has access to those elements and is healer, so there could be some lore/story referencing each other and WHM's gate into pure war or something.)

Now of course you could say what about gear with a tank healer relationship, which might be fun but I think part of the big bonus in the idea of breaking the mold is that you are gearing the large pool class (DD) when you gear the small pool class (healer/tank)... So gearing two small pools misses that benefit, but I'm not suggesting some people wouldn't find that interesting.

You could begin to argue that "what if tanks/healers could just queue as a DD instead" which may work, a special stance that locks you into a damage spec and your spells change a bit - but I think it adds more balance challenge than just making an extra job that breaks the equipment mold. The other thing is if the job breaks the mold it means you might encourage players who started out DD actually try healer/tank because they love a job that shares gear that is in a different role. Of course for loot rules you'll want to adjust the drop rates according to who is there, but as we've already heard/read SE is changing how loot drops already so that shouldn't be much of an issue.

May encourage the jobs greatly for a time because of the gear sharing cross role feature but in the end I believe not everyone wants to be a tank/healer and so you'd just boost the number of people willing but you'd reach a ceiling cap at some point still. So it wouldn't kill other jobs because a few could share cross a role, although it is a thing to think about.

I don't think the issue is end of the world/has to be fixed or whatever, but I found that the issue is a thing that might demote being a healer/tank more than they already are and that you could approach the issue with a solution that not only allows healers and tanks to phase into DD with balance (new job that uses their gear/or other way around), but also could be an interesting breath of expectation in the game. As at the moment having a DD in an out of role gear is unexpected, or the other way around and seeing while Blue Mage fits Tank thematically (gets hit to become stronger/learn) it doesn't really fit as well in visuals with other tank gears without perhaps just extremely relying on artifact armor (so blue mage then becomes a good example of how you could have a tank in mage gear, of course others have used other examples as well for mage tanks).

tl;dr: a job that uses out of role gear that allows healers or tanks a transit into DD, encouraging transit between the roles and freedom for people who main stay healer/tank but are not needed in their current raid environment but would like to be later.

[Yeol]

Some people have sub jobs. Like me for example, I main MCH/BRD and my sub roles are SCH/AST. Which can be handy.

Example:
Our tank could not make it, so one of our healers will tank in his place, and I will take the healers place. We can get a random DD from PF or a friend we trust.
I believe most statics prefer players than can play multiple roles for such cases.

But I don't want a specific role to change from DD to a healer or Tank based on the gear they equip. Just level another role and learn to play it.

The closest thing we have to this is ACN which can become SCH (Healer) or SMN (DD). The developers admitted that this was a mistake they made and we won't be seeing something like it again. They share the same base class abilities but different role abilities and gear.

[Shougun]

Some people have sub jobs. Like me for example, I main MCH/BRD and my sub roles are SCH/AST. Which can be handy.

Example:
Our tank could not make it, so one of our healers will tank in his place, and I will take the healers place. We can get a random DD from PF or a friend we trust.
I believe most statics prefer players than can play multiple roles for such cases.

But I don't want a specific role to change from DD to a healer or Tank based on the gear they equip. Just level another role and learn to play it.

The closest thing we have to this is ACN which can become SCH (Healer) or SMN (DD). The developers admitted that this was a mistake they made and we won't be seeing something like it again. They share the same base class abilities but different role abilities and gear.

There are many mechanics that get in the way of having a subjob cross a role (within a role you might get gear shared though), especially if you don't have loads of time (which added to the issue some tanks and healers may already face, having a get out of jail card may be very helpful to them). Although I am aware people may do that, and it is helpful for raid groups (bet your group loves you for holding two different roles up ;P - and I don't mean that sarcastically, I'm sure they appreciate your effort). Also having this on gateway from DD to healer/tank may act as a way for people to more comfortably be a tank/healer (which for normal queue circumstances would be nice - someone may be gearing up their DD by playing tank basically, you'd reduce queue times.. a little).

I would add to the summoner issue that you brought up that it has nothing to do with what I suggested here. The issues that summoner and scholar share are separate from what would happen with this, shouldn't be sharing the same allocate-able stat pools and abilities that are for different roles within the same structure. I'm saying build a whole job that uses the stats properly from the beginning, so if you had DD geomaner with healer gear it would gain damage from mind and all its abilities would be for itself. Everything would be balanced from the get go rather that the conjoined instance you're mentioning with smn/sch. Any DD with tank gear would get abilities, mechanics, or passives that lower the strength of the armor stat (damage reduction) but perhaps give more other stats - again balancing from the get go.

[Zojha]

Why not just allow people to gear up multiple jobs more efficiently and be done? >_>

Why make a handful of very specific jobs with convoluted extra adjustments to fix a problem that concerns everyone that plays more than one job to some degree? I don't get it. That sounds like Vermillion logic, making things far more complicated than it needs to be.

[Shougun]

Why not just allow people to gear up multiple jobs more efficiently and be done? >_>

Why make a handful of very specific jobs with convoluted extra adjustments to fix a problem that concerns everyone that plays more than one job to some degree? I don't get it. That sounds like Vermillion logic, making things far more complicated than it needs to be.

It wouldn't be convoluted, well at least for healer gear. Tanks gear would need self nerfing in the damage reduction (for DD).. but shouldn't be anywhere like vermilion (build the reason into the lore and be done with it). It's not hard to make stats work in a different build, we already have stuff like vit/str tank (and the stat changes can fit into the lore if you plan it right). I don't get the hyperbole example.

As for why you don't make gearing easier- because I don't think you can make it that way. Although I understand that seeing it as the solution instead (just disagree that it's the easier solution). They can't get you gear faster because they have a treadmill pace they must follow. They are obviously not opposed to jobs sharing gear but not all jobs do (thankfully, the gear looks different and is great they make many designs), this would just open select situations to cross role sharing. So you may want it fixed in a general sense but I don't think it can or will be, only thing that might work is making all lockouts and gear max set for each job rather than the whole character.... but that makes having a geared subjob /massive/ work (cap three different tome stones a week, and run your lock out for each job etc etc) and this wouldn't address the raid issue of being part of the smaller class.

"Just use a subjob" doesn't really flow because of the treadmill pace (which if you could make subjob friendly as you suggest wouldn't be a problem then, but I don't think it can be fixed in a less convoluted way than what is suggested here already). You can main monk/samurai significantly easier than dancer (healer)/monk for example (unless they added gear sharing cross role). Because your lockouts and max currency per week is going to take a massive dump on that mission, at least until you wait a while. Sure if you are 8 weeks late to content you can bring two differing roles ready for the content (have to gear up separate item groups, under timed lockouts). The other option is to level an alt entirely but I shouldn't have to say why someone may be opposed to that.

And again this offers two benefits outside of the regular gearing two roles with one set of gear point, it lubricates the tank/healer transit from DD and it also allows gear that might make sense but normally hard to allow. Like dancer with monk clothes (as it fooled everyone in the trailer) or a mage tank in mage gear.

If you feel like you have the system change to loot that can fix gearing cross role/gear group (monk/samurai not an example of course) at an acceptable rate (that you can make them reasonably "mains") feel free to suggest it (although I would still say that having a job in out of role gear can be interesting like dancer). So feel free to slap that into the thread if you have one

[shao32]

they are large options to gear multiple jobs, if not with crafter gear, is with dungeon gearor pvp gear, you dont need be top gear in every job, thats only for raiding and the last extreme primal meaby, apart that affect you performance if you are all the time playing diferent jobs.

you are adding more dificulty to devs for no reason adding all this stuff, the fact why the roles have specific gear aka fending, aiming, healing, is for pure balance of stats and performance of the jobs in general, you dint think about looting gear either with this idea.
lets say samurai wear fending gear but is dps, you think is fair fight with the other 2 tanks for the loot? all tanks are wearing fending but you never go to have more than 2 tanks in party, same with healers, casters, bard/mch, and melees is the same they never go to fight more that 1 other player for they gear, melees in fact have they own unique gear so if a maining pieces are looted is for the dragoon of the party alone if they are one.

[Shougun]

they are large options to gear multiple jobs, if not with crafter gear, is with dungeon gearor pvp gear, you dont need be top gear in every job, thats only for raiding and the last extreme primal meaby, apart that affect you performance if you are all the time playing diferent jobs.

you are adding more dificulty to devs for no reason adding all this stuff, the fact why the roles have specific gear aka fending, aiming, healing, is for pure balance of stats and performance of the jobs in general, you dint think about looting gear either with this idea.
lets say samurai wear fending gear but is dps, you think is fair fight with the other 2 tanks for the loot? all tanks are wearing fending but you never go to have more than 2 tanks in party, same with healers, casters, bard/mch, and melees is the same they never go to fight against more of another player for they gear, melees in fact have they own unique gear so if a maining pieces are looted is for the dragoon of the party alone if they are one.

Part of the talk was with raid in mind, also we already have gear sharing - so the next time they add a new job they would just have it cross role share too. This isnt' some revolutionary idea that breaks "one job, one set of gear". We already have "one job, a group of gears". People already get to gear out multiple jobs with one set, its just never cross role. Making the stats work is not that hard, just pick out a group and we can make simple adjustments for it to happen - even ones that fit lore and theme (which is even better since these jobs wouldn't be the norm).

The difficulty I don't really agree with, since its all very expected numbers. You know that x group of gear is using y growth formula and z stats - therefore you look at healer gear and go "okay mind is now the damage stat, and let's make sure piety gives a bit of damage like tank's vit/str, just in case we decide to slap some onto healers for the fun of it" (or do other things). The major fact of the different gear groups is for looks and making it resource efficient to design for jobs, I disagree it's for stats because the stats we have are incredibly straight forward. Can make whatever arrangement you want dance to the tune you want. Stats are currently different colored piles of sand, and all you'd have to do is say for this job it's now this color - which is pretty simple (and already happens on tanks a bit). Also keep in mind SE said they are making gear even more simple in SB, so... probably even less than a non-issue than it is now.

You said I didn't mention loot but I did, so... that's incorrect ;/. I mentioned you'd need to have the game recognize when it's like that but seeing as they're already making loot drop changes to something like "for who is there" its already going in the right direction to be no issue at all. Three tank gear jobs? More tank gear. DD share their gear with other jobs, so I'm not sure why think they don't. Dragoon is unique at the moment but once they find a job that fits into that box they'll make it happen. Again stats are super easy to manipulate the reason why they're separate is because of visuals and efficient design (like "oh hey black mage and summoner gear fits close enough together visually, slap em together so we don't have to design for each of them - same thing with those rascally healers, one design three jobs - efficiency!". If our jobs had stats that were more specific more often it might be of higher consideration but that's not really a thing in FFXIV, gear is already pretty simple and likely to get simpler - thus easy to manipulate.

Maybe it would be too complicated for a normal person to comprehend, but I feel like it shouldn't be. You get the job the job tells you it has relation to the healing sense of mind (geomancer) and that your damage comes from mind and omg this other stat does this one thing too because balance.

It would be no more complicated than tanks who learn about Vit/Str, and warriors who also have to learn about spell speed sweet spots.

[shao32]

snip

the thing is you are complicated all in a hard way for no really reason, in loot the same, its not like you go to have secure the number of piece of tanks a boss loot, rng is there trolling, making giving a huge amount of tank gear or giving none making more that just 2 jobs have to wait more weeks.

the actual system is simple and easy to balance, i dont like the idea to delay my gearing progress even more thanks a nother dps use fending gear and see how rng start troll me the next weeks, jobs share they gears but you never go to have more that 2 of those jobs in a party composition.

looting apart you talk about glamout and golbez in general one of my favourite villians of ff, glamour is glamour, instead or going on complicated gear changes for this you can freely ask for more bulky armors for casters or add a full mage tank, in fact you have for example the new gobling chest we get from ultima weekly quest, have the rose armor set from ff2 how looks pretty tanky too.

easy solutions are better, just ask for more glamour type for all roles, i think is more easy than that, bcs in the end no one cares if you re healing with mind or with aiming, you are healing end.

[Shougun]

the thing is you are complicated all in a hard way for no really reason, in loot the same, its not like you go to have secure the number of piece of tanks a boss loot, rng is there trolling, making giving a huge amount of tank gear or giving none making more that just 2 jobs have to wait more weeks.

-transit from tank/healer to DD/other way around, encouraging DD to try tank/healer and letting them more easily keep it geared for further garnered interest
-unique jobs that would benefit from special case rather than being shoehorned into a gear set because we can't be creative (dancer, mage tank, etc)
-the current loot system forbids smoothly leveling multiple roles, while not two or so different jobs within the same item set (this would allievate that - however Zojha may have another suggestion)
-encouragement for tanks/healers to be mains even though in raid content they're the minority desired group

So there are reasons, even if you don't value them. Also again I /highly/ disagree that it's "in a hard way". Stats are so simple, it would be very simple to change their effects for a specific job. Like Geomancer again, mind is now a damage stat - that was easy. Piety could either be used for battery mechanics (perhaps geo is a mana heavy job) or seeing as Piety will be changing in SB it might be even easier, like if Piety becomes healer's Strength stat or something.

People are saying its hard but with how absolutely simple stats are in this game, the only way this stuff is "hard" is if you were lacking the creativity to make a new interesting job in the first place (new mechanics, not copy pasting the monk or something). Perhaps people might argue that's SE but I don't believe they are incapable of making new ideas. Again you'd only cross role when the stars were perfect, don't cram something that makes no sense, but going back to geomancer with healer gear healers use a lot of stats that would make it super simple to fit into. Just check bis as a lot of times they get stats (minus their main like mind) that fit incredibly well into a damage scenario. People are making stats sound more complicated than they are.

Don't let your dreams be dreams, just do it! lol. But really, stats are super limited and simple in this game.. this being a hard thing to fix is scary to consider (I'd say unless they hard coded stat effects, but I doubt they did, especially since we've seen tanks with their str/vit).

Edit: to preemptively talk about "set bonuses", if they're generic stats again no issue because generic stats are massively simple. If they're unique effects then it would require a little thought, although I recommend any unique effects are unique to each job that wears them. Because you might give a job that has super low cooldowns due to mechanics and value in spell speed using an effect to a much higher degree than a job that is slower paced (on hit effects for example).

So making each set sort of mutate depending on who uses it, for the unique bonuses at least, would be the best balance EVEN IF you don't use the idea in this thread (just as a general suggestion, it would be better). When you look at the item in a specific job it will show the change, and you can right click examine it for better details if you desire - it wouldn't be that strange, I guess a bit like the talent gems WoW has that change based on who is holding them. (Adds +1 talent, depending on what job that talent changes).

If SE adds unique effects and refuses to mutate them, it might actually be a problem (depends on how they're made) - but again I think it would be a problem for general balance too (since different jobs would approach effects differently). A non-problem non-mutating example might be for example on healer on hit effect gain X mind for Y duration after Z requirements have been met, healers get more healing and a DD that uses mind would get more DD - works for everyone (but this limits what kind of neat stuff you can do, not the best). The final benefit of making mutating effects on sets to a job beyond balance is that you could also make them relate to your abilities too, so like Paladin getting a neat change to clemency meanwhile Dark Knight getting a bloodpact change (but both get this change from the same raid tier set- again just make the pertinent version show up when you examine it unless you go click for more info, this way its still simple on the eyes and mind). Also we can consider that perhaps sets are job specific already, rather than a "maiming set" its just Dragoon's set - like you might think of class sets in WoW.

I imagine they're going to do simple set bonuses like the GC stuff though (+15 det), which is not an issue but less exciting as a whole too lol.

the actual system is simple and easy to balance, i dont like the idea to delay my gearing progress even more thanks a nother dps use fending gear and see how rng start troll me the next weeks, jobs share they gears but you never go to have more that 2 of those jobs in a party composition.

You have some interesting perception on loot and I fear the RNG has haunted you - I had that happen with primal loot in 1.0 lol. Anyway, if you changed the loot to the jobs present as SE already intends to do then whatever happens will happen with RNG. Doing this or not is not going to add "extra" screwing to you. If no one shares the armor you use, no one shares the armor you use. It would be a mistake to thing that three jobs sharing the same gear are lucky, you still have to consider that is three people rolling for the same gear - it might be better to be that one person all alone that shares nothing, anything you need is 100% yours.

There will be no more or less screwing than normal. Also tank and healers have three job sharing, and mages will have three in SB (BLM, SMN, RDM). So its not true there are only two jobs per item group, also we have one job with one group ;P. Again it isn't relevant how many jobs are per item role so long as you change the drop rates based on who is present, which SE is going to do.. so.. I think you're afraid of RNG having it out for you more than usual but there is no new math that will change how much it hates you from now, in fact it might be better for your main jobs because of the change (worse for side jobs that don't share loot though, but that is a loot system issue separate of this thread's suggestion since it's something that might already be happening).

Item loot is not an issue, so long as they adjust according to presence - which they are. (Also tokens get around this too, but of course not all content uses tokens).

looting apart you talk about glamout and golbez in general one of my favourite villians of ff, glamour is glamour, instead or going on complicated gear changes for this you can freely ask for more bulky armors for casters or add a full mage tank, in fact you have for example the new gobling chest we get from ultima weekly quest, have the rose armor set from ff2 how looks pretty tanky too.

easy solutions are better, just ask for more glamour type for all roles, i think is more easy than that, bcs in the end no one cares if you re healing with mind or with aiming, you are healing end.

Gear that is glamour is pretty simple sure, but I don't want to see the glamour system become unrestricted I strongly believe in theme and so I've specifically suggested jobs where the theme would match the unique circumstance. Like a specific mage tank in mage gear, or a specific DD in tank gear. Although a random aside: even monk/ninja gear might fit a blue mage due to some of the eastern flair on some gear, although the lore of blue magic would have to be more primal and less magic based then - since the gear would be more primal. On Golbez it could be a unique veteran / fan reward, doesn't have to be locked into some sort of artifact armor for a specific unique class (but again in general I don't want to see complete unlock of the system, I do like the visual themes to stay relatively consistent with special exceptions made not complete flood gate destruction :P).

If I was suggesting it /only/ for lore I might say yeah we should go the most simple route (glamour as you suggested), but it is a large pool of reasons and not just one singular reason. Like that we already have gear sharing but it locks you into a role, and it would be helpful to encourage people to both be able to join the smaller pool roles as well as helpful for the smaller pool roles to leave when they're not needed at high end content. All sort of depending on which direction you go though, like DD to Tank or Tank to DD (blue mage using DD gear would encourage DD to try tanks for example, meanwhile a Judge/Garlean job would encourage tanks to be able to become DD when they need).

[elemental10]

The main reason of categorization of equipment is because there are primary stats that dictate how much damage each role do.

For example, tanks use VIT for damage scaling as oppose to STR for both MNKs and DRGs. This is the reason why there are restrictive rules concerning the changing of roles within jobs. As these primary stats contribute greatly to the damage you deal (i.e. the ONLY hard requirement for content), in order to change this according to your suggestion, they would have to remove primary stats from each role and let ONE stat be the decider of damage dealt.

Or, you could make a "stance" to switch a primary stat to another secondary stat, so that the damage dealt will now scale on the secondary stat. Ring a bell? It's called Cleric stance. It dumps all your MND to your INT, and vice versa. Therefore, effectively changing your primary to a secondary stat, and a secondary to a primary stat.

Some of you might have just stopped at the point where I talk about damage (But what about dancers that want to be healers?), and when I say that its the only real hard requirement for content. I can justify this using levels and item levels, and how they interact with the game's mechanics. First of is the obvious rage mechanic where you NEED to deal this amount of damage in this amount of time before wipe. It's really obvious that all of your teammates need to have a certain DPS. Second of all, I talk about the damage of enemies that they deal to you. Tanks need a minimum requirement of this much health to pass a certain tank buster and a healer needs to have this much healing capacity to be able to heal that tank buster (before another one comes) and raid-wide damages. All of these points to primary stat.

Another special case is the transformation of the ARC class to either SMN or SCH. You can clearly see there is a role-change when you transform from an ARC to a SCH. This is achievable by restricting the SCH job to only wear equipment with MND in them, or they can't heal as much as a mechanic needs. If you have done this before (going from ARC to SCH), you can see my point about primary stat.

In conclusion, there are two ways to make role-change possible in jobs. One is to remove primary stats restriction for each role, and let one stat dictate all roles. Two is to give a stance to specific jobs to switch their primary stat to a secondary stat, like Cleric Stance.

Other stances like WAR's Deliverance, MNK's fist of earth, and DRK's Darkside are not stances to switch primary stats, but rather to improve a certain aspect of a role.