Thread: What is the Caster Role for 5.0 Going Forward and Where is balance?

With the introduction of Stormsblood, we layed a foundation for actual Role responsibilities and strengths. To me, these responsibilities and strengths in 4.0 were:

Tanks- Tanks have a very controlling role set, focused on interrupts, damage reduction and enmity management.

Healers- healer role skills are transitional from the old class system and were already considered part of their toolkit. They provide the main mp restore of the class, access to instant cast and a party wide defense buff.


Melee- Close combat physical DPS have a sturdier role set with a focus on helping their fellow melee/physical party members.


Ranged Physical- BRD and MCH have very supportive role actions. Access to enfeeblements, party wide resource regain and a physical defensive buff for the tank. As a whole most of their skills work their intended purpose. Their role is supporting everyone with resources and tanks with defensive utility.

Ranged Magical- Casters are supportive towards their healers, helping to mitigate magical damage and provide MP to their healers or bard. They are glass cannons and have heavy access to enmity management.

Breaking down how I feel the roles have changed focusing on their role skills and common utility:

Tanks, I feel stayed true to their role completely from STB to SHB. Arm's length has added a duality in its use, antiknockback for raid situations to complement gap closers, and a 20% slow for trash.

Healers traded protect for players having higher natural HP. More role skills moved from WHM to share via repose.

Ranged Physical moved towards more controlled AOE mitigation. They lost their ability to help with recovering TP after death (which is now irrelevant) and powerful MP sustain. MP is taking a hit this expansion from the loss of this skill alone. They still have their enfeeblements for possible raid contributions (y tho) and a working interrupt. Best of all they have an antiknocback this time around too. Its also nice for accidental aggro pulls in trash.

Melee have pretty much stayed the same. The removal of TP and Emnity cleaned their role skills down to 7. Crutch was removed, ( a neat idea, but not frequent enough or rewarding to use) focusing melee more on its own survival with feint for physical mitigation.

Casters are where it changed the most for me. We went from supporting the healer with manashift/Erase/Apocastasis to melee level focus on itself, while providing no self healing/mitigation tools. Down to 4 role skills, compared to tanks and other roles at 7 and 6 each respectively. We bring addle, just as melee brings feint. Black mage can't even use Lucid, so it essentially has 3 role skills.

Is Progression vs Farm a viable class balance?

Casters can also be broken down into two groups:

Those who are True Damage Dealers:
Black Mage

Those who can Raise:
Red Mage
Summoner

With the two distinctions we have this maximum upper tier Damage Dealer with two smaller safety net classes. This safety net balance does not exist in any other role. Balancing Each other role is "Personal DPS + DPS Raid Utility vs Personal DPS + DPS Raid Utility" and "Defensive Support/Self Mitigation vs Defensive Support/Self Mitigation" with each role having an answer for these balances. ["Shield Samba vs Tactician vs Troubadour" as an example.]

How can the caster role exist and be balanced when it can be divided into Progression tier Caster, Flexible Caster and Farm Caster? This again, isn't an issue with any other role.

With the MP changes, SMN and Red Mage are in a much less powerful position in terms of raiding. Refresh isn't there to help with deaths. SMN and RDM (especially for its easy dualcast access) are both punished for the capability to raise even when its not in use, just because its there. [This time around SMN/RDM are much closer than they were in StB relative to BLM, with SMN probably needing a slight DPS buff to compete with a 2 melee, 1 ranged Embolden. This is fine, so long as Personal DPS vs RDPS is balanced out, between the two classes.] Over Buffing SMN/RDM though would put BLM in a "Why should I try hard to be the best possible DPS, when I can do just a little less and have much more control over deaths." Its a bad situation.

Support and Consequences:

Raise in general just does not feel good. It is powerful and it gives us something to be useful, but by doing it, we are again, doing what no other DPS class does, lowering our DPS in support of the party, when our DPS is the focus of our class. We have little mitigation/support, especially compared to STB caster, but have a direct punishment for death amongst our party.

Leveling Dancer with Shield Samba and Curing Waltz really helped me to appreciate its class design, if only in flavor. A Dancer's job is to deal a lower portion of damage than the other ranged physical classes, making up most of their DPS via their RDPS contributions. Curing Waltz's main use in my eyes, isn't about Raid wide healing so much as it is about making sure your DPS partner stays alive and healthy. Esprit and their RDPS create a direct incentive to look out for your partner's well being, stacking on them specifically as probably the most mobile class in game, to trigger a decentish heal for yourself and your partner.

Just wanna hear general thoughts and opinions on where people feel RDM/SMN/BLM would be balanced/if they are balanced or what changes would need to be made to balance them. I didn't mention any specific changes (I don't think.) Also, do you feel casters have any truly defining role qualities anymore? I feel like in general, we are moving to a more selfish playstyle amongst all roles, and it just happened to hit casters especially hard. We can't be both the iconic highest DPS role in the game, while also being the safety net [In my opinion at least.]