A big Problem that MAY come up with Stormblood...

[Belhi]

Flashiness AND potencys are my issue. And one thing: As a Warrior you wont be cleaving very much anymore if you are the Tank cause Stancedancing rips your Gauges to Shreads. Yes PLD got an Aoe attack wich has NO enmity increase and only 100? Potency ATM. Flash still does no Damage. Maybe they should have combined those 2 actions. Drk looks aexactly the Same to me Skillwise. The only thing that looks new is his spinning shlash thingy wichs name i dont know. Seemingly you can unly use it in Tankstance wich makes it useless for Damage.

Stance dancing uses up 50% of you beast gauge but the Release the Beast halves you Fel Cleave cost so that kind of offsets it somewhat. It will be harder for WAR to stance dance as much but it has very little impact to WAR when off tanking and in fact greatly increases the amount they can Fell cleave. The animation for Release the Beast is pretty epic too. The Charge greatly improves mobility and WARs now have access to Bulwark as mitigation. The Beast gauge also allows them to build up multiple Inner Beasts. You can also build up Beast gauge very quickly.

DRK's Bloodspitter scales up the damage it does when your in Grit. Its like a Fel Cleave you can use in tank stance. Blackest Night is like a more powerful stoneskin that scales off your own health, you can cast on other people making it a pretty useful tool for support mitigation. You loose Scourge but Darkside no longer consumes Mana and appears to have its DPS contribution buffed. Unleash has been somewhat nerfed but then again, quite a few Jobs have had AoE nerfs and frankly it sounds like it still isn't that bad. More than enough for threat. Plus DRK still has its other AoE options. DRK has had quite a lot of changes.

PLD is amazing. It has become a mitigation god. Its single target dps is still solid and now it has some AoE. Frankly the pot doesn't bother me much. At the end of the day a tank is still a tank and shouldn't be competing with damage output of dps. If your trying that you probably are in the wrong role. It is still decent and way better than what PLD had before. It does seem odd to have it and Flash separate but I can still work with that. We do already for most dps rotation. As for Flash, well, Pally's now have wings....

[KisaiTenshi]

I kind of wonder if longer queue times will change their minds. Honestly I think that is a big reason healer and tank numbers usually average out. People who don't mind those jobs and don't like waiting naturally migrate back to them. As it is SAM and RDM are going to spike the DPS queues early on.

What I feel is going to happen...

Early access: Everyone who has AST and WAR at level 60 will play that and ignore PLD, DRK, SCH and WHM for content and get it to level 70 first. No point waiting in a queue in early access.

Release: Everyone who got their healer/tanks to level 70 in early access will use it for tomes/duty roulette and switch to the new DPS roles and use existing gear they already have acquired.

Two weeks after release: Queues will stabilize.

First patch: Next Raid is released, all existing Raid content gets abandoned.

Second patch: Minor rebalances based on Raid completion.

[Blonde_Huntress]

Tank
I was disappointed greatly with DRK additions/changes. That was the only tank class I liked/played as I like a magical based tank concept. Congrats to PLD though, they needed some love and I'm glad they got it.

Healer
WHM....shew, I don't even want to discuss that. I'm glad AST got some love (a little TOO much imo). SCH seems the most balanced and got some nifty new tools, but WHM just...it's on a really different level now. AST will stay my main healer at this juncture, but I liked and played it BEFORE it got those big buffs in 3.x patches.

DPS
Looking forward to SAM, and definitely RDM. They both look like nice new additions.
BLM has me excited for their changes, nice new AoE Thunder and stronger Flare variant. Also, brb Ley Lines.
SMN has me on the fence. I do like that we actually get Bahamut now. Not a fan of losing Sustain and the overall utility SMN provided.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Yeah they really seem dead set on keeping DRK in Grit at all times

They do. But it won't happen, unless content hits hard enough. Just taking a quick glance, Bloodspiller looks like an ability you would want to stay in Grit for, however the buff to Darkside offsets the potency difference. The only thing that sucks is Blood Price being locked behind Grit, which makes it substantially less useful. At least if we presume difficulty remains the same.

[FallenWings]

Faster queue times into unrewarding and heavily simplified gameplay. (Tanks/Healers)

I'd rather wait the extra time whilst I craft/gather so I can atleast have an enjoyable, rewarding and impactful experience in battle content.

Stormblood is the DPS expansion right? Hahahaha...

[MomomiMomi]

Faster queue times into unrewarding and heavily simplified gameplay. (Tanks/Healers)

I'd rather wait the extra time whilst I craft/gather so I can atleast have an enjoyable, rewarding and impactful experience in battle content.

Stormblood is the DPS expansion right? Hahahaha...

But... AST. It's so good. It's going to become even more fun to play.

[Dyvid]

So.. a big chunck of Tanks and Healers i know are going to switch Dps. And no Not only because of Sam and Redmage, but also because of other DPS jobs wich got nice visual and skill upgrades.

People who want to tank, tank. People who want to heal, heal. I don't think nerfs are going to change that though they may switch jobs but will stay in the same role.

[Kazrah]

They do. But it won't happen, unless content hits hard enough. Just taking a quick glance, Bloodspiller looks like an ability you would want to stay in Grit for, however the buff to Darkside offsets the potency difference. The only thing that sucks is Blood Price being locked behind Grit, which makes it substantially less useful. At least if we presume difficulty remains the same.

So this might just be a crazy idea, and I might hurt some feelings here, but I'm convinced that devs don't want tanks stance dancing. I know, crazy, right? It's like they actually care about healers having to put up with tanks who fail miserably at it.

Think about it this way: they give a major cost for PLD and WAR to switch stances, DRK has more abilities locked behind Grit and even a nuke that does the same damage regardless of whether they're in Grit or not, and the reduction to damage dealt seems to have been reduced for all tank stances as well. How I see it, they want tanks staying in tank stance for MT'ing and dps stance for when they're questing or OT'ing, which is only a problem to either veteran tanks who know how to stance dance effectively or tank wanna-be's overly obsessed with their numbers on a damage meter (that they're technically not supposed to have).

[Odd2oul]

For people saying that the healer and tank population didn't change for Heavensward...you do realize that Heavensward launched with a healer and tank right? Like we had shiny new jobs to play with, even if they were under powered in the beginning. Once the balances were in place, AST and DRK turned out fine (and obv pushed out whm and pld). Launching with only 2 dps will be pretty concerning.

[Dualgunner]

For people saying that the healer and tank population didn't change for Heavensward...you do realize that Heavensward launched with a healer and tank right?

Uhm...that's actually the argument the devs had for not introducing more tanks and healers for the sake of making more tanks and healers. Making DRK, traditionally a DD class, into a tank was to draw in tons of players and make them want to tank, with the idea being that it would affect the overall population of tanks and healers.

Like we had shiny new jobs to play with, even if they were under powered in the beginning. Once the balances were in place, AST and DRK turned out fine (and obv pushed out whm and pld).

The question isn't "How many players like and play DRK/AST?" it's "How did that affect the Tank/Healer population?" Think of it like a pie. More of that pie is now DRK/AST, yes, but the pie is the same size as before DRK/AST.

Launching with only 2 dps will be pretty concerning.

People who want to DPS will DPS, just like people who want to tank will tank and so on and so forth. Hopefully we see some creative new tanks and healers in 5.0, rather than making SAM a tank because "It will make more people play tank and increase the tank population" which while not necessarily your argument, was the argument of a lot of people I saw arguing the point.