Two Jobs For Every Class

[bluecrest5]

I've been back into FFXIV for over 2 years now and I find it much better than when I first played back in 2013. The first character I tried, which is listed as my main, was a Summoner and I loved it. I am a bit upset at the pet changes, loved sending Topaz Carbuncle/Titan in to tank while I cast from a distance, but I'll give it a try when I go back to pick up with ShB on him. While playing I tried to play SCH for a bit to see if I could heal. While the first time was bad, actually got booted from the dungeon while trying to learn, I also bought and tried WHM. I eventually came to the realization after going through a few dungeons with friends and coworkers from outside the game, that I'm not very good at healing. I had also tried tanking a bit by buying PAL, the same as my first character Aragorn that I never finished before then, and was ok. I'm nervous about it but still want to play the character anyway. The reason I never finished the first Aragorn was leveling was much harder in 2013. I eventually just bought the ARR story finisher and level 60 PAL for him and that's where he'll sit.

That's a bit of a long intro to set up my suggestion, but I wanted to give a thorough background. I like that fact that the Arcanist class has two Jobs for it, the DPS Job Summoner and Healer Job Scholar. I think it would be nice if each of the eight other classes each had two jobs as well, one DPS and the other a Tank or Healer, but not all 3. That's what the extra jobs are for. As I'm nervous and worried I may be horrible at Tanking I thought it would be nice to have another Job to fall back on without having to worry about getting another class/job up to that same level or push through until I can get to level 50 and get Samurai. It might also entice people to try tanking or healing same as Arcanist. Everyone of the friends and coworkers that play that I've talked about this with like that idea.

I have a few examples and I will refrain from names so as to not make it harder on the developers from using those names. With four tank and three healer jobs already, I feel the five DPS classes that would be getting tanks or Healers should be two more tanks and three more healers to keep an even balance. The first is Lancer getting a tanking job since it already shares with the tanks anyway. It could also share Paladin's shields if that give a hint of the name I've thought of. The other two examples are Conjurer and Thaumaturge. I would suggest that it would help to have these two basically swap White Mage and Black Mage, except for their elemental triples. Conjurer with Earth, Wind, and Water to Thaumaturge's Fire, Ice, and Lightning. Also like SMN and RDM, Conjurer's DPS would be able to help heal, even if it's just themselves. This allows the Healer a little more time to help heal the tank in difficult battles. They could also help raise fallen allies in particularly hard dungeons as well.

[DrWho2010]

They will never being doing a split type job again. It's too difficult to balance. It's why SCH/SMN are so far apart from each other now.

[Stepjam]

Oddly enough, the balance issue was more of a thing when you actually leveled up your stats. Now that stats are pretty much 100% gear based, I doubt balance is that much of an issue.

They probably still don't wanna do it to increase the time it takes to level up all your roles/classes (which is understandable, they want as much reasons for people to keep playing indefinitely).

[Mhaeric]

Oddly enough, the balance issue was more of a thing when you actually leveled up your stats. Now that stats are pretty much 100% gear based, I doubt balance is that much of an issue.

This is categorically incorrect. The only issue that happened back when manual stat improvement was a thing was that you had to choose between 30 stat points going to INT to slightly boost your SMN dps or 30 points to MND to slightly boost your SCH heals. This was not a massive difference and definitely didn't affect balance in any meaningful way. It was annoying, and enterprising players could spend seals to switch between the two if they wanted, but it wasn't much of a balance thing.

The vast majority of one class two job balance issues came from the two jobs sharing skills. When two jobs share a large number of abilities, any change you make related to those abilities, even an indirect one, has to be considered for both jobs and that is hard to balance. In particular because the two jobs have completely different roles. E.g. Scholar having access to Bane, Shadowflare and Miasma 2 made them leaps and bounds ahead of any other healer in terms of DPS, but just reducing the DoT damage would penalize SMN. The fix was that they gradually gave SMN traits to improve their DoT damage, reduced the potency of the base DoT spells without upgrading them for SCH, removed multiple abilities like Bane from SCH, reworked basic mechanics like Aetherflow to function differently for each job, etc. In short, they have continually and gradually divorved the two jobs' skills over the last few expansions making them more and more independent from each other and thus easier to balance. This is also the reason why cross-class skills have gradually been tapered down into the much more limited role-skill system.

Another more extreme example of this is Guild Wars vs. Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars allowed subjobs with almost full access to all of the abilities from both your main and secondary profressions. They explicitly stated the main reason they didn't include any sort of subjob system in GW2 was because it was pretty much impossible to balance. Any change to even a single ability, even a minor change, had to be considered for not just the profession it belonged to but for all of them.

[bluecrest5]

If they have to basically treat it as a brand new job that's fine with me. As long as they are linked to the leveling of the base class and are a different role, that's good enough for me. Unlike the stand alone jobs though they wouldn't have to come up with a new weapon types and sprites for them, they could recycle the ones they for the classes' main jobs. They would also have a starting point thematically for the lore as well. Just looking at the Marauder and Gladiator DPS jobs, they'd have to remove anything that generates enmity from the tanking side anyway. Those two could also reuse the Dragoon unique armor sets. For example the Shire Gear, they would use the Pathfinder's set while Lancer's tank would use the same Custodian's set that all tanks use. Same for the Thaumaturge's Healer using the Preceptor's set like all healers do, while Conjurer's DPS uses Philosopher's set.

[Canadane]

I would welcome this. I’d really enjoy branching job stones. I though SCH and SMN were a great idea.
However I know to never expect it.

[Payadopa]

I also bought and tried WHM. I eventually came to the realization after going through a few dungeons with friends and coworkers from outside the game, that I'm not very good at healing.

Honestly, what were you expecting? Smh

[HeulGDarian]

Id also enjoy more branches to Jobs. Though they wont make them, cause it reqcuires too much work, especially in lore since theyd have to be like arcanist to branch off, not strict upgrades but specialists in different part of their kits and People already argue how that makes smn not smn. All in all i wish they did it but it would be wasted when all that people want is fancy particle effects over substansial game play.

[bluecrest5]

My goal was to see if it was just Scholar that wasn't working for me. I actually found white mage easier but only the in lower level dungeons. Higher level dungeons were just harder in general. I prefered how White Mage had more big heals than Scholar's single heal with pets doing a lot.

[MirronTulaxia]

I mean, as far as Scholar goes that changes a bit as time goes on. Each job plays a bit differently even if they can perform the same role. You can't just play one the same as the other and expect it to work. White Mage, as you pointed out, is very reactive, and has lots of big heals. Scholar is more proactive with the shields and such.

With regards to the proposal given you said that it's fine if they're new jobs what you're basically asking is that they double the number of jobs currently in existence. As neat as that might be hypothetically it isn't a practical request. I also feel like you'd want a third non-DPS role so every job could be a DPS/something else, and divide it a bit more evenly. But that's an aside as the core part, doubling up the number of jobs, isn't reasonable.