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.

[FIDOISHERE]

I'm not sure necro from ArchAge is the best example. In my experience, that role was very niche. If you went the DPS route with it, you could get lucky and CC people to death, but most good players would only see a necro DPS as a minor annoyance. Not to mention the DPS the necro puts out is subpar at best. You would have to get basically every CC skill from witchcraft, and I just don't see a necro DPS as viable build. If you were good enough of a player to make it work, than more power to you; but the necro DPS in ArchAge is really a trash build for the average player. So for those reasons, I really don't see that example as proving the point of support role working well in action RPG genre.

Subpar? Maybe. Not viable dps? Oof try again.. and powerful healing.

Yes it had its own niche. But dosent mean it wasn't strong. Even without the double pets.

Average player would play CC lock, and Mana drain and kill them with bubble fall damage in pvp.

PvE it was a hard lockdown healer, and if you had good enough gear Mana stars actually did okay dps before they got the changes to vitalism for attack spells. Not only that the buffs they got from their Cc trees augmented their heals to work a lil differently.

Support: crowd control healer.

This however was an example in another game of a support type class that actually was viable in that type of game. And how it is viable. As I've said again before in one of my other posts. This would require some changes.

And yes they would have to take a different approach based on how FFXIV works.


Now if you would like to talk about other examples of support classes from that game that can dish out the deeps.

Shaman, cabalist, Animist, blood arrow, Hexwarden, hex ranger, spellbow, soul bow, poxbane.

Ranged, tanks, buff tanks, CC ranged, healing CC and ranged, magic tank, Mage and healer. List goes on. They all brought their own dps in and brought their own type of support.

Niche as they are. They still counted as support classes even more so when the gear was in the same level as others any of these support niche classes can kill the main 5 classes easily. Not to mention the PvE was decent enough.

Point being. Support is worth it given there is a use for it and a mechanic. Being huffing the group of debuffin while doing it's own thing. It's another rewarding playstyle that people love to play. Im still on the yeah it's unlikely for us to get this type of role and stuff swapped around to begin with. But make the mechanics and content for it.. it's just adds more to the fight rather the combo combo combo telegraph's incoming.

IMO though

[HumanNinjaToo]

Subpar? Maybe. Not viable dps? Oof try again.. and powerful healing.

Yes it had its own niche. But dosent mean it wasn't strong. Even without the double pets.

Average player would play CC lock, and Mana drain and kill them with bubble fall damage in pvp.

PvE it was a hard lockdown healer, and if you had good enough gear Mana stars actually did okay dps before they got the changes to vitalism for attack spells. Not only that the buffs they got from their Cc trees augmented their heals to work a lil differently.

Support: crowd control healer.

This however was an example in another game of a support type class that actually was viable in that type of game. And how it is viable. As I've said again before in one of my other posts. This would require some changes.

And yes they would have to take a different approach based on how FFXIV works.


Now if you would like to talk about other examples of support classes from that game that can dish out the deeps.

Shaman, cabalist, Animist, blood arrow, Hexwarden, hex ranger, spellbow, soul bow, poxbane.

Ranged, tanks, buff tanks, CC ranged, healing CC and ranged, magic tank, Mage and healer. List goes on. They all brought their own dps in and brought their own type of support.

Niche as they are. They still counted as support classes even more so when the gear was in the same level as others any of these support niche classes can kill the main 5 classes easily. Not to mention the PvE was decent enough.

Point being. Support is worth it given there is a use for it and a mechanic. Being huffing the group of debuffin while doing it's own thing. It's another rewarding playstyle that people love to play. Im still on the yeah it's unlikely for us to get this type of role and stuff swapped around to begin with. But make the mechanics and content for it.. it's just adds more to the fight rather the combo combo combo telegraph's incoming.

IMO though

I guess we really need to define what "support" means then, because I am thinking your definition and mine are different. By the example you're providing, from this one other game, it sounds like you think support means a dps job with CC skills. We already have that in FF14. So what's the point of this thread?

[Kaiserdrache]

I had this idea before of the OP also already a while ago, actually with adding two more roles - Supporter and Preventer/Interrupter

But I kind of scrapped it, because I realized, that this game's combat system and balance sadly is way too deeptly hardcoded into the game, that SE basically would have to overwork and rebalance the whole game, especiallythe instanced features ( Dungeons, Raids, Trials) which are relying currently by design on it, that there exists only the classical holy ancient old trinity of DPS, Tank and Healer

I think also too, that this games combat system would become more fun with new roles, but then you have on the other sid enemy designs, which are completely immune to interrupts and debuffs, making in theory then thise roles absolutely useless and pointless, when battles are so extreme hardcode, that the game gives the player no room for interrupts, or where supports basically gets removed, example Protes, because it just got integrated into combat balance, instead of turning this nostalgic spell into a Whitemage Spell that grants barriers /facepalm

Plus it would also mean that SE would have to rework and rearrange the rolles of all other Classes, turning eventually existing Classes into the new role(s), or they would need to add new classes for the new role(s)


Basically I thought of something like that:

DPS
- Samurai
- Blackmage
- Ninja
- Machinist
- Summoner

Tank
- Paladin
- Dark Knight
- Warrior

Healer
- Whitemage
- Scholar
- Dancer

Supporter
- Astrologist
- Bard
- Red Mage

Preventer
- Monk
- Dragoon
- Gunbreaker

With maximum 2 Healer, 2 Preventer, 2 Tank and 2 Supporter missing for 5 Classes per role, to max this game out with 25 full classes (not counting Blue Mage)

Filling these gaps would I with:

Exorcist > Support against Magic Attacks.
Scientist > Support with Potions, Elixiers ect in combat, removing completely these junk buff items from the game, turning this into a playable Combat Alchemist basically
Chronomancer > Healer
Shaman > Healer
Crusader > Tank with Dual Swords!!
Necromancer > Tank by tanking via lots of undead adds
Green Mage > Preventer, and by this reworking the Summoner
Beasttamer > Preventer


But however, just impossible with this game's six year old hardcoded combat and content design, unless SE makes basically with the game a ARR 2.0 treatment and that will never happen

[Rivinhal]

I honestly do not think the way battle works in this game that a true support role would work. We have so few buffs and debuffs that its just not really necessary. How many times can you cast "attack up"? Without hastes, sleeps, refreshes, slows, gravity, resistances and so on a true support class would be very dull and needless since it would be more worthwhile to just bring another dps.

Support jobs are great, in XI bard was phenomenal and was highly sought after due to the way combat works. But really dnc is as close to a true support this game can really handle without a complete redesign of the combat system and since Yoshida was eager to remove stats, elemental wheels, debuffs and what not because he feels its just too complicated for today's gamers, its clear that will never happen. And frankly it would confuse the sticks outta ppl who never really played a game with true support class.

I kind of agree, but for a different reason...

Even ignoring everything you said, adding a "support" role could really screw up queue times. Consider this:

Right now, if you queue for a normal dungeon, any DPS can fill those 2 slots. But if there was only 1 "DPS" slot and 1 "Support" slot, If you had a NIN and a DNC (or a SAM and DRG, etc. etc.), that party wouldn't work.
It very well might make for more balanced and enjoyable parties, but I'd wager they'd take much longer to pop too.

[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).

[AnimaAnimus]

snip.

No, if they added true support they would have to make pts 5 man minimum because of how true support roles work, but again the way battle works in this game true support would not fit as about 95% of the things a support job can do, simply doesn't exist in this game. Dnc is as close as we can get tbh without a complete rework of every fight in this game. And since they refuse to touch old content to bring them up to continue to meet the challenge as our lvls and ilvls raise, there is no way they are going to redo them to fit a new system.

I think a lot of this argument stems from the fact that many people wanting a full support role, have never played a game with actual pure support role since they went extinct about a decade ago. I true support and cc job rarely engages the enemies. They buff, debuff, sleep, dot, etc. but really don't pick up a sword and charge into battle.

So lets look at bard in ffxi, a full support class in a standard lvling pt.
First you would be sure your party has whatever buffs they needed and were ready
Then you would pull a mob and bring them to your party.
Then you would slow it, dot it and apply any other appropriate debuffs (str down, acc down, def down etc)
Then you would make sure your pt buffs where still active, haste, refresh, str up, dex up, acc up, macc up, etc
then you would pull another mob and sleep it so the pt can grab it when they are ready.

In a boss a lot was the same, sometimes even the pulling part, your job was to keep buffs and debuffs going and control any adds or links, maybe throwing a dot or 2 on the boss.

Now you see there is no real fighting going on, its all crowd control and support. Also why it wouldn't work here, battle doesn't work even remotely in this way. But in ffxi they were a major boon to any party in nearly any content and could easily replace a full dps job because their role worked so well with the system. And you had enough to do that you were almost always busy even without actually dpsing.

[Enkidoh]

I suspect SE actually did consider having a support role in the game at an early stage as early Alpha images publically released officially by SE show ARC's class logo in yellow not the 'DPS role' colour of red that it has in the final game, so whether that was to denote a 'support' role or 'ranged DPS' role is unclear. Either way, at some point they probably decided it was better and easier to just maintain the 'trinity' and scrapped that idea (hell, even earlier mock-ups for the game just recycled 1.0's style of Job icons where the Job icon's colour was whatever colour their Soul Crystal was), and thus from the Beta test into actual launch ARC's logo is in red denoting 'DPS'.

The problem with support type roles is they usually end up being rolled into another role anyway and so it was perhaps easier on SE's part to just have classes and Jobs that are technically support as 'DPS' or 'healer'. FFXI was a very good example of showing how this normally ends up: certain Jobs were meant to be such 'support' roles but usually also had to function more often in different roles based on their abilities - RDM, COR and BRD not only buffing but also serving as 'mana batteries' for healers and, in RDM's case at least, healing too. COR and BRD were also more often invited into parties simply for their abilities that boosted EXP gained which, back in the old days at least where EXP for each enemy killed was miniscule and so players had to try and wring every last EXP out of a fight any way they could, this was only natural. Making them more just EXP amplifiers.

Something that is not needed here in FFXIV with EXP pretty much freely given away like candy and FFXI style EXP parties being well.... non existant.