New Role?

[FIDOISHERE]

Probably not going to happen. But had a thought of making an actual support role. Not healing. Not Ranged Damage dealing actual Support buffs and debuffs with their own heals or damage dealing skills.

I'm not sure how this would honestly work other then the HOURS I possible revamping dungeons or number adjustments depending on how it would be made.

I thought at first hey 5 man dungeons! But then I thought of the above lol. So thinking it over what about replacing 1 Dps role with a support role for 4 man, then 8 man 2.

Not much revamping would have to be done to the dungeons themselves. Just jobs now.

So what jobs would fit this? Honestly. None right now with how they are made. Examples though would be Scholar, Sam, Bard, Dancer and Red mage and possibly Summoner.

Why these? Besides Samurai. The rest have Group utility. And also the reason as to why they are tuned for lower Damage while other DD jobs are higher. Then we haven't the constant adjusting until everyone feels okay with their "numbers".

What would this add to the game? The current jobs getting a slight rework to their damage and healing as well as their supportive game play.

Now it dosent need to be this way exactly with these jobs there just the best examples to go off of honestly.

Why Sam though? Samurai has been an off tank or a literal tank in other games. I feel that tuning it's damage and other abilites. And giving it it's own trait for tanking with half the % and it's own tank stance while also giving it 2 tank cooldowns to off tank for a bit to partially take over. But still able to dish out dps would be awesome.

Same goes for the other jobs in terms of tuning for their respective heals, damage and buffs.

Again I know this more then unlikely to happen but freeing up the que times and adding more jobs to list of possibilities and adding new team play would be a cool thing to see.

[YusiKha]

Would they be buffing every GCD? If so, what difference is there between buffing the damage of a dps and actually dpsing?
If not, then why not just make them a dps or healer class?

[Connor]

Would they be buffing every GCD? If so, what difference is there between buffing the damage of a dps and actually dpsing?
If not, then why not just make them a dps or healer class?

Isn’t that the whole point? It’s a different means to the same end which lets them implement different playstyles.

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.

Healers can’t have GCD buff abilities because they have to contribute damage and wouldn’t be able to do that if they also had to heal and buff on top of it. Healers would have to contribute game breaking amounts of rDPS to justify ever using a support GCD over direct damage

Tanks can’t have GCD buff abilities because - you guessed it - it would get in the way of their damage output.

For a ‘buffer’ that uses all of its GCDs to support it would really have to be able to contribute nearly as much as a DPS, or at least a healer. Even if ‘support’ was a required role, nobody would take it over another DPS if it didn’t come close. Though sadly this also makes them impossible to balance

I wouldn’t expect it to happen either like OP says, but a new role is the only way we’ll ever get a buffer type job that uses actual GCDs to support the party. Because unfortunately they simply can’t work on any other role, mostly because of how important personal DPS is to every role.

I’d love a true buffer type class but I wouldn’t expect to ever see one in FFXIV. It would require an amount of the work that the developers just aren’t willing to put in when they could be focusing on new content

[FIDOISHERE]

Would they be buffing every GCD? If so, what difference is there between buffing the damage of a dps and actually dpsing?
If not, then why not just make them a dps or healer class?

As Connor said it's a different playstyle to add.

Ah yes the Holy Trinity of Tank, healer, Damage Dealer.

Don't get me wrong it's about the same but it's just different I suppose in terms of how you do it. Rather then the same old 123, 1 maybe 2 maybe 3 "omfg I get an OGCD!"

Tanks. Healers and damage dealers relatively play the same with just added in different mechanics to make them feel a bit more unique. But a healer is a healer, a tank is a tank and Damage Dealer is a damage dealer.

Some poeple don't like the "extra roles" that we used to have in other MMOs back in the day. Where there was literally people being a buff bot non stop and a Crowd Control.

Don't see that too often anymore adding a supportive role to add some of these features in FFXIV would be pretty neat and would make for interesting time in future content and old content.

However some don't see it this way. They want straight to the point. ease of access per say. instead of being helped to do so.

Miss the old days I suppose where there was a dedicated buffer role and a Crowd control role. But eh. a new role wouldn't hurt FFXIV too much if they did it within their own style. Sure some might be like what.. is.. this!?!? But at the same time it's adding another playstyle to change it up and feel rewarding in it's own way and also frees us the other 3 roles of some actions to have newely added ones to compensate and prepare for content changes depending the route they would take if it happened.

It's wishful thinking though. I like FFXIV alot and I think it's fine currently. But with more and more jobs being added and more focus on their actual role I think adding a new one might help a bit. Long as it's done right.. which.. might be a lot of reworking lol. So mostly likely still off the table and into the bin.

[HumanNinjaToo]

The more I think about support roles, the less I think they will work in an MMO. Support works great when it's turn-based combat. Games like DoS2 come to mind.

But when it comes to the action rpg genre, DPS reigns supreme. The best damage mitigation is to deal insanely high amounts of it yourself and kill off everything before you need support.

[FIDOISHERE]

The more I think about support roles, the less I think they will work in an MMO. Support works great when it's turn-based combat. Games like DoS2 come to mind.

But when it comes to the action rpg genre, DPS reigns supreme. The best damage mitigation is to deal insanely high amounts of it yourself and kill off everything before you need support.

I used to think that too. Ever heard of a game called ArcheAge? P2w trash but really fun with over 150ish class combinations based on the 3 ancient school trees you picked.

I was one of the very few on NA to play the "Necromancer" class with consisted of both Crowd control schools and the healing school.

The class clashed with itself because healing and magic damage was split from each other so I'd had to weapon swap if I wanted the full effects of the lil magic damage I got from the CC schools or the 3 damage skills I got from the healing school.

Both in pvp and PvE...

I locked down and killed people beyond my gear level. And in dungeons or open world boss raids.. the damage was so ridiculously high you needed those slows, fears, lock downs. And this was an action rpg.

As for buffing. People used the tanking school. The utility school and the Song buff school. Kept up on playing their 5 songs. While keeping themselves within range of most people. Sounds boring? You literally gave your entire raid and edge in pvp and never did to mechanics in dungeons cause your half tank and your buffs pushed your defense way up. And no matter what.. everyone and everything wanted to kill you first to take down everyone else lol.

The combat was a lot more faster too.

So it's entirely possible. But with how FFXIV is currently designed might be lil difficult to implement. But 4 tanks, 3 healers that can't be balanced cause of their owns issues, and how many DD's? We're most likely to get 5 more Damage dealers before we get a healer and if the others actually being balanced THEN we might get another tank.

I'm just thinking that it might help with job and roles designs later. But it's not really needed as of now and if they can continue to balanced without making everything the same because people are unhappy with their jobs. Then yeah this idea out the window. I mean it's probably already on a thread hanging out the windows cause if this was a thing a while ago it might've been a role to add but now? Zzz only if a ton of people start talking about it and SE is like " OMG why didn't we think of that!?"

[HumanNinjaToo]

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.

[Marc-Vigar]

I like the idea of full support role, but I can't really see it's viability without being a copy of healers (1 ST spell, 1 AoE, 1 DoT) but with support spells instead of healing ones.

[AnimaAnimus]

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.

[HumanNinjaToo]

The only way I can really see a support role being viable in FF14 is as either a DPS job (like DNC) or as a healer job (like AST). Since DPS is so important, buffs/debuffs would probably need to have damage associated with them. For instance, an AOE that buffs PC's ~and~ adds DoT/DMG to mobs at the same time. But I think when you get into abilities like that, you are straying away from the support role and possibly moving toward an overpowered DPS job.

I really can't wrap my head around making a viable support job in FF14 the way the game currently plays.