Discuss a hypothetical 4th Role Class.

[Kaliesto]

Personally I always wondered what else could be done besides the traditional Fighter(DPS),Tank, and Healer classes. Personally this is kind of tricky because a lot of past final fantasy classes would fall under all three roles, and there is only a few classes that would be the odd ones out of the bunch.

Juggler, Mime, Blue Mage, Orator, Time Mage, Chemist.

Though maybe Time Mage might lean more toward being a Magical-Ranged DPS, Chemist would maybe technically be a jack of all trades but master of none, and Blue Mage might lean toward being a DPS class but the way they would have to get their abilities would be a unique thing only for this class.

Besides what is known officially, what type of idea would you have in mind to be a 4th role class? Any particular inspiration from other MMOs or your own personal idea?

[Kazrah]

So I'll go through the examples you have one by one:

Juggler, although it has brought support stuff, would wind up as either a melee or (in the case of this thread) a physical ranged DPS.

Mime....no. Just....no. Not even gonna dignify that one with an answer.

Blue Mage, if you look in the thread in my sig (#shamelessplug), I made it as a melee DPS, but there is a lot of controversy as to whether or not it could be a tank or a DPS. The most likely circumstance is that the baseline features of it would likely be incorporated into a new job exclusive to XIV.

Orator....our characters don't talk, so that job wouldn't work anyway. Also the setup for it meant it was really something that could ONLY work in Tactics and nothing beyond that.

Time Mage's support functions got baked into Astrologian, and anyone who has played the Astrologian story should know that a Time Mage is an empowered Astrologian. That being said, if it was released as something separate, it'd be either a caster DPS as you suggest or as a tank inspired by the Time Battlemage of XII.

Lastly, Chemist has always been demanded as a healer since the days after Astrologian came out (and maybe before that, who knows), and that's what it would probably be if it were to be released in XIV.

In fact, any job--even most of those jobs you list from Tactics--can easily be shaped to fall anywhere in the MMORPG trinity, meaning there's not really any reason to provide a fourth role due to support functions being the easiest thing spread across all the other roles.

[Reinha]

I can't figure out what the purpose of a 4th role would be in this game. Dps attack the enemy, tanks are attacked by the enemy and healers allow other roles to continue fighting. I guess another role could be support whose purpose is to provide the resources needed by other roles to cast their abilities, but in order for that to work the roles of the current trinity would have to be unable to sustain their own resources. A complete rebuilding of the combat system doesn't seem likely to happen.

[Celef]

Maybe a job based on debuff ? They could even bring back elemental system with that if we had a job that could remove Shiva's natural resistance to ice for example

[Tex_Mex]

What about a synergist/saboteur? Might be cool to have a class that focuses on extremely powerful party buffs and enemy debuffs. Right now, these types of rolls are provided by others in the trinity, but the effects are relatively minor. 5%/10% debuffs and slight damage increases are common, but adding a non-healing support class might be kind of fun. I dunno, I feel like adding a new role would just break a lot of the game design (like 4 man dungeons and such), but it is interesting to think about nonetheless.

[Vidu]

I doubt that a support-heavy class would work in the game or would be well accepted - look how most people, "even" healers and tanks, are focused on their damage output rather than using every support-skill they've got.

And I'm saying that as someone who enjoys playing bard with all those support effects.
But do you remember how those worked in ARR and HW? Ballad (MP-regen) and Hymn (TP-regen) ate up the bards mana (that could have been used to sing Foes instead) AND gave a damage-reduction (I think it was something between 10-20%). Most bards hated to sing those songs, would only use them during downtime and I even met some bards refusing to use any song (including Foes, that didnt gave any damage-reduction) because they were concerned about their personal dps.

This game got very dps-focused after all, so I dont think a support-class would be very appealing.
They'd also had to balance the content in a way that either outright required a support-class (which would most likely ramp up the queue-times for dps again - still the most played role in the game) or if the content would not require a support-class, it would be left out as soon as possible and switched for a job that deals more damage (why take a maschinist when you have a bard whos much better at support? If you can take a damage-heavy class like smn, blm or dragoon - for the bard - instead?)

[Zojha]

I can't figure out what the purpose of a 4th role would be in this game.

I would imagine the same as tanks and healers: To meet the demands of an arbitrary role mechanic.

My suggestion would be a stepmania role: When the combat starts, music starts to play and you need to press the right notes, i.e. abilities as they show up. If you fail, you/your party takes increasing amounts of damage (up to insta-kill). In the breaks, you can deal damage yourself as filler. Dancer is predestined for that role.

Sure, one might ask oneself "But why take such a role with you into a group?" and the answer is simple: Because you have to. Same as with tanks and healers. You'll just wipe from the music damage if you don't, just as you wipe from the unavoidable damage if you don't take tanks/healers with you. Maybe you can skip it if you outgear stuff. It's literally the same concept as behind tanks/healers, even using the same unavoidable damage gimmick to do the job.

Using this template, you can create a nigh infinite amount of roles. Sure, they exist only for their own sake - but so do tanks and healers. It's part of the trinity, so it shouldn't disturb anyone. Go nuts on the concepts!

[KisaiTenshi]

Personally I always wondered what else could be done besides the traditional Fighter(DPS),Tank, and Healer classes. Personally this is kind of tricky because a lot of past final fantasy classes would fall under all three roles, and there is only a few classes that would be the odd ones out of the bunch.

Juggler, Mime, Blue Mage, Orator, Time Mage, Chemist.

Though maybe Time Mage might lean more toward being a Magical-Ranged DPS, Chemist would maybe technically be a jack of all trades but master of none, and Blue Mage might lean toward being a DPS class but the way they would have to get their abilities would be a unique thing only for this class.

Besides what is known officially, what type of idea would you have in mind to be a 4th role class? Any particular inspiration from other MMOs or your own personal idea?

The most obvious "4th" role of any kind is simply a "buff/debuff" role to begin with. However that doesn't even fit with the current system.

The existing setup is "Rock Paper Scissors", when you add a 4th, you basically have to de-balance something. So rock-paper-scissors-dynamite adds dynamite, which blows up rock, burns paper, but is only defeated by scissors cutting the fuse.

So for this context, Rock is Tank, Paper is Healer, and DPS is Scissors. Tank's damage is healed by healer, healer generates enmity that attracts enemies, DPS kill enemies, tank attracts adds by generating enmity on purpose (thus takes damage.)

To slot in a 4th role, results in either being too powerful or too weak. So to use the dynamite analogy in RPS, this 4th role ends up being redundant for two roles (eg DPS and Tank) and results in not being healable. Or if it's redundant for DPS and Healer, they end up being glass-cannons. Or redundant for Healer and tank, being unable to do any damage at all.

So Healer+Tank = Sentinel (only has shields, and uses only self-healing) , DPS+Healer Chemist (that makes bombs or medicine buffs), DPS+Tank Power Armor (Think D.Va or Samus, where they can sacrifice the tanky armor with a large hitbox for single-use heavy DPS for a few minutes before the armor can be summoned again, but until, then, they do weaker DPS, but have a smaller hit box.)

As you can see, for most content this would require a rebalance, as the Sentinel would replace the tank and healer, so no need of a healer, so they can have 3 DPS in the party. The Chemist would replace the healer or a DPS for a "green DPS", and the Power armor role would replace the Tank role, or a DPS role.

Rebalancing would simply not be doable since the preferred setup would be Sentinel+3 DPS. At least for content that you've out-geared. The other two "4th roles" would be little more than rebranded DPS.

Unless 5.0 came out with a new "required" mechanic to deal with that can only be dealt with by this 4th role, it's still really just redundant with something that a job already does. Really the thing to do in 5.0 would be to make the existing roles more rigid so that players can not simply outgear a duty, they have to focus on playing their role, not numbers.

[ManuelBravo]

Juggler; hmmm no

Mime? Do you mean a mimic skill like GoGo in FFIII? otherwise no

Blue Mage; is still a a mage class so DPS?

Orator; yay lets talk to enemies to death...no

Time Mage; a mage never the less as a support type class. Their spells have been known in Whm and Sum so why not just add those spells instead?

Chemist; is a DoH already, how would it become a forth class?

Now if they were strictly support with no DPS/Tank/Healing attributes I might buy that. Either way you look at it it would fall under the three main roles for the most part.

[Brightshadow]

This far into the life cycle of a game a fourth role would be a catastrophe. And unnecessary complexity.