Class Trees

[Lyth]

Job trees are a better alternative to action bar bloat than randomly throwing out 5+ actions each expansion and hoping that the job still hobbles together with some semblance of functionality afterwards.

[Deslyxic]

People saying that people would only play the cookie cutter build because of dps is equivalent of saying that people only would play BLM and SAM because of dps too.
I like to think that XIV's players (unlike Wow's) understand that there is more to balance than raw dps, otherwise nobody would play DNC or RDM. Even is Wow's post Pandaria crippled talent system there was room to pick between the best dps or ease to use, I know I chosed the later more than once since I never intended to do mythic raid tiers.

Than being said, I wouldn't like that kind on system on XIV, because suddenly devs not only have to classes, they gonna need to balance abilities within the class and it would just clash with the jumping rope style of the encounters. Also ESO and GW1 exist and are living proof that give too much options to players can be a mess.

[Sqwall]

Would absolutely like not precisely skill trees, but talent trees, with 2 conditions:

1) they must be done so that each job always remains the same role. For example, for PLD there can be a choice in his tree between two talents:
A - "increases Sentinel duration by 5 seconds", and
B - "all healing recieved during Divine Veil is 10% stronger"
Both are corresponding to the idea of tanking. Vice versa, "increases Clemency potency by 100" would be a bad talent.

2) they must be balanced so that there is no meta implicitly forced by devs. Blizzard is infamous for doing that on purpose - no thanks. All builds must be equally good at least on mathematical level.

Apart from that, I see no cons and 1000's of pros to the idea. You would be able to make your job and your vision of it unique. Ain't that cool.
Of course, it implies a huge amount of work and sadly we won't see it most probably.

I would say this this most on point response I have seen so far. I agree with this small class tweaks and to the point of the OP. I would love to say i'm speced for sentinel when I MT. Or I'm speced for OT with stronger Divine Veil. You still have your identity but you are specialized to help out the party. Both tanks compliment each other for the whole party.

Good ideas I like it.

[Eliadil]

I would say this this most on point response I have seen so far. I agree with this small class tweaks and to the point of the OP. I would love to say i'm speced for sentinel when I MT. Or I'm speced for OT with stronger Divine Veil. You still have your identity but you are specialized to help out the party. Both tanks compliment each other for the whole party.

Good ideas I like it.

But it gets then really hard when you look at dps jobs. Specifically, jobs like Black Mage or Samurai, who only have raw damage to account for.
How do you balance this while not making an option better than the other when you know you cannot buff their raw damage. You can't also add something like "increase the healing received during Umbral Ice" or else, because it would be completely useless on jobs who aren't supposed to take damage in the first place.

[Sqwall]

But it gets then really hard when you look at dps jobs. Specifically, jobs like Black Mage or Samurai, who only have raw damage to account for.
How do you balance this while not making an option better than the other when you know you cannot buff their raw damage. You can't also add something like "increase the healing received during Umbral Ice" or else, because it would be completely useless on jobs who aren't supposed to take damage in the first place.

I like the idea of gaining a slight advantage to healing, dps, mitigation. This is already a thing with party build stat bonuses and the way that the limit break fills. If they can expand on that with making it fair to all builds then you would really tweak a raid team to help with your shortcomings if you had any. Have someone spec into Vit to help bring up your party stat bonuses if it's lacking, or have someone spec into STR tree to bring up your overall DPS. But this would only be in raids/trials and would cap at a certain percentage which would make others spec differently to fill in the gaps of what's left. Sort of a small echo if you will, but i'm talking VERY small numbers here by themselves, but in a raid they add up. A very seasoned raid group could just go full spec in DPS heavy idea to just clear the content, and let's face it they have probably done a 100 times.

I don't know maybe this is what could be done to help you feel like your contributing a little more the just whack 'da boss *goes joe pesci on the boss*

[oribu]

I support Class Trees. I really like the idea of people the same class having slightly varying playstyles/strengths. Especially if it allows for other jobs to play different roles, for example having a more defensive samurai or an evasion/resistance monk tanking. It could invite some creativity and much needed diversity.

[Eliadil]

I like the idea of gaining a slight advantage to healing, dps, mitigation. This is already a thing with party build stat bonuses and the way that the limit break fills. If they can expand on that with making it fair to all builds then you would really tweak a raid team to help with your shortcomings if you had any. Have someone spec into Vit to help bring up your party stat bonuses if it's lacking, or have someone spec into STR tree to bring up your overall DPS. But this would only be in raids/trials and would cap at a certain percentage which would make others spec differently to fill in the gaps of what's left. Sort of a small echo if you will, but i'm talking VERY small numbers here by themselves, but in a raid they add up. A very seasoned raid group could just go full spec in DPS heavy idea to just clear the content, and let's face it they have probably done a 100 times.

I don't know maybe this is what could be done to help you feel like your contributing a little more the just whack 'da boss *goes joe pesci on the boss*

While I get the idea, we then go against the balance philosophy of sam and black mage by doing this.
The reason why they're at the top of the scoreboard for rdps is because they don't have any kind of utility whatsoever for the party. No damage buffs, no defensive buffs/debuff apart from role action (feint/addle). Increasing the amount of support these jobs can give would then require a damage nerf to balance them out, otherwise everybody would just play them since they're the strict better choice for your party. While I also like your idea of boosting the party bonus a bit more, let's not forget that the reason this party bonus exists in the first place is to warrant peoples bringing every role in content. Now imagine what would happen if by bringing a black mage instead of a bard you could almost balance the loss of a ranged dps in your party bonus, AND have way more damage than the bard anyway with this job... This would just kill bard in any sort of content.

Balancing skill trees for jobs like these are what makes it tricky to implement a skill tree, not to mention that you also have to give peoples a decent alternative each time, an alternative that is not a trap or completely useless.