New Role?

[Mhaeric]

A DPS cannot have a GCD buff ability, because even if it’s useful it’ll be avoided at all costs due to DPS loss. Bard 2.0 - 3.0 kinda made this apparent with old songs, using anything other than Requiem any time the party wasn’t just raised was ‘bad’ because of the DPS loss. Without a DPS loss it’s severely overpowered.

Dancer has two buff abilities that take multiple GCD to execute. A dancer literally shuts off all of their damage output for roughly 2-3 GCD while they execute them, and they balanced it by giving it a large potency damage effect at the end based on how well you execute it.

[Connor]

Dancer has two buff abilities that take multiple GCD to execute. A dancer literally shuts off all of their damage output for roughly 2-3 GCD while they execute them, and they balanced it by giving it a large potency damage effect at the end based on how well you execute it.

True, but they also have a 30 second and 120 second cooldown. I mean a fully on-the-gcd skill that wouldn’t have that restriction

I mean, they’re definitely a good example of how a GCD buff skill could work . Nobody wants to use an ability that just buffs a party member or heals them. But if it comes with some kind of damage mechanic, suddenly it’s much more attractive. But at the same time, an ability that just buffs a party member with no other effect that you have to use actual GCDs to use and without a cooldown would either never get touched because the GCD could be used for damage or the effect would be so strong that it makes the job compulsory in raids.

And because of that, this unfortunately means that a new ‘support’ Role wouldn’t be able to work because of the whole ‘it’s either overpowered or useless. That said, Dancer is perfect example of the kind of style a ‘support’ oriented job should have, and I’m bitter they couldn’t have also made Bard as fulfilling to play as another kind of ‘support’ oriented job like it was supposed to be.

I mean, personally I’d die for a support role in ffxiv (not that I’d enjoy it much if I was dead lol). I feel like it would really benefit the game in the long run, both in terms of giving the community more playstyle options and opening up more paths for new jobs in future. Of course, the most apparent issue is that it’s take so much rebalancing we’d have to like, forgo an entire expansion for it to happen, which obviously wouldn’t be a fair exchange.

Best example using current abilities I can think of is Vercure. Since all it does is heal the target, it’s not useful in a lot of situations because those GCDs are better spent on damage. But if it done something like, deals some damage to targets attacking the party member that was healed, or has a chance to proc Verfire/Veraero or something, it would feel more attractive to use (though obviously the damage would still have to be lower than any standard gcd attack). I know sacrificing personal DPS to help the party is part of the Red Mage identity for FFXIV (since the identity is about the combination of traditional magic with sword fighting techniques to create a versatile and well-rounded fighter). This is putting aside the whole ‘stepping on the healers toes’ part of the Vercure/Verraise argument. But if they add some kind of ‘damage compensation’ to skills that exist just to support the party, then that support becomes a lot less of a ‘gimmick’ you don’t really get to use(or at least feels like it)

While I would love a support role that actually did spend its GCDs using buffs on the party, rebuffing enemies, healing with healing/utility or doing low amounts of damage between party support GCDs. But at the same time, it shouldn’t happen at the expense of other aspects of the game, which unfortunately means it likely won’t ever happen (because of the work involved).