Potential Solution to Job Balance?

[ForsakenRoe]

As for a name for the role, I'd pull from FFXIII and name it 'Synergist' As the name implies Synergy with the rest of the party.

I think Support is fine as a role name. I used to play DOTA so what I see as Support duties includes:

-Pulling the neutrals into the creep wave, to disrupt the meeting point of the creeps to get it closer to our tower (safer for our carry)
-Harassing the enemy offlaner to stop them getting XP
-Setting up kills on either the offlaner or rotating Mid to help Mid secure a kill on enemy Mid
-Setting up Wards to give vision to the allied team
-Stacking creep camps by pulling neutrals out of the camp at the minute mark, tricking the game into thinking the camp is 'cleared'. This allows for big fast farm for the carry when they're strong enough to kill stacked camps
-Warding ENEMY territory to give vision of where the enemy is
-Buying items that help support the team, such as CC items (Rod of Atos, Scythe of Vyse if you're rich, Aghanim's Scepter if it's got a good effect), and consumables such as Smoke of Deceit or Dust of Appearance to counter invis boys

And finally, yes, some of the supports do have skills that heal, like Omniknight or Oracle. But those heals are absolutely not the focus of being a support in that game. Apex Legends has a 'support' role, and only ONE of those supports can heal (Lifeline). Support means a lot more than just 'is the heal bitch' and anyone who plays Supports like they are 'the heal bitch' is not playing them to their full potential. What are you doing in League as a Support, standing in lane and not attacking the enemy? Leeching XP from your Carry?

[XiroGear]

I think Support is fine as a role name. I used to play DOTA so what I see as Support duties includes:

-Pulling the neutrals into the creep wave, to disrupt the meeting point of the creeps to get it closer to our tower (safer for our carry)
-Harassing the enemy offlaner to stop them getting XP
-Setting up kills on either the offlaner or rotating Mid to help Mid secure a kill on enemy Mid
-Setting up Wards to give vision to the allied team
-Stacking creep camps by pulling neutrals out of the camp at the minute mark, tricking the game into thinking the camp is 'cleared'. This allows for big fast farm for the carry when they're strong enough to kill stacked camps
-Warding ENEMY territory to give vision of where the enemy is
-Buying items that help support the team, such as CC items (Rod of Atos, Scythe of Vyse if you're rich, Aghanim's Scepter if it's got a good effect), and consumables such as Smoke of Deceit or Dust of Appearance to counter invis boys

And finally, yes, some of the supports do have skills that heal, like Omniknight or Oracle. But those heals are absolutely not the focus of being a support in that game. Apex Legends has a 'support' role, and only ONE of those supports can heal (Lifeline). Support means a lot more than just 'is the heal bitch' and anyone who plays Supports like they are 'the heal bitch' is not playing them to their full potential. What are you doing in League as a Support, standing in lane and not attacking the enemy? Leeching XP from your Carry?

Alright so how would you translate that to FFXIV?

[Shurrikhan]

What would this possibly solve, though? You're just arbitrarily splitting one role (DPS) in two around a delineation that, unlike the melee distinction, has no actual impact in encounter design... all while increasing queue times by making matchmaking more stringent and forcing people onto what are, for many, duller jobs (Physical Ranged, especially).

You still have the exact same job performance and gameplay issues as before. You're just doubly obliged to take the hit and ignore them (by sub-roles being fully required instead of incentivized via a 1% stat bonus).

[Azuri]

Ah, yes, let's take all the already underperforming jobs and shove them into a second rate citizen category so we have a convinient excuse to just ignore their complaints.

"What do you mean you want to bring comptetitve damage and not feel bad about playing a job you enjoy?! Silly, you are a sUpPoRT, your damage is supposed to be garbage. You get that oh-so-cool gimmick that has a use in one fight once a year!!!11!!...maybe. Because we literally designed the game to make none of those things besides damage matter. We are so smart!"

Asinine.

[Payadopa]

The solution is simple. Design fun jobs first, then try to balance them, sure, but not into the ground. Perfect balance is unachievable. Don't cater to the people screaming the loudest about balance and inject some much needed fun/diversity back into the game. We tried it long enough. It's not worth the sacrifice.

[Shurrikhan]

The solution is simple. Design fun jobs first, then try to balance them, sure, but not into the ground. Perfect balance is unachievable. Don't cater to the people screaming the loudest about balance and inject some much needed fun/diversity back into the game. We tried it long enough. It's not worth the sacrifice.

Additionally, much of the balancing to be done without reduction-to-the-lowest-common-denominator can be done through encounter design, starting with undermechanical depth. Give us stagger and armor/part break; give us a Z-axis and flying enemies and Dragoons able to leap to said flying enemies. Give fights things worth Cover-ing to the benefit of uptime (be that for damage or securing a difficult heal-check). Create a place for snap aggro, to the benefit of NIN and/or, say, a more old-school Warrior. Etc., etc.

Finally, extend content scaling, granular difficulty levels, and perhaps offer small additions, while giving further incentive to find value on less meta jobs. Where a more defensive job would otherwise quickly lose value as people outgear the content of a small number of difficulty levels, that's not the case as the difficulty continues to scale onward. Similarly, a Warrior and Monk on a fight with a bunch of flying enemies would sound absurd... right up until the Warrior, say, takes up a glyph that allows Holmgang to grapple multiple enemies and reduces its CD if little damage is taken over its duration and the Monk pumps enough stagger out of Phantom Rush to crash the whole flock to the ground as it blitzes across each.

That shit would, to me at least, actually be quite fun. Simple? Gods no. But probably worthwhile nonetheless for a 7.0-onward course of redesign for decent strategic and playmaking depth with more distinctly kit-ed jobs. And that starts, as Dzian put it, with "deep and engaging systems to interact with."

[Dzian]

The problem with support jobs in this game is it lacks any systems that support jobs can interact with or control.. they've stripped away nearly everything that did exist and any support that remains is basically a direct modifier of damage +/- x%.

if resources like tp still existed and were actually finite then supportive roles could be beneficial. a minor tweak to jobs where you could have lower power but higher cost combos and higher power but higher cost combos. making management more important. and a question of balancing those combos.. something akin to very early monk iterations where they could effectively do 2 true strikes to 1 twin snakes for increased damage but at increased tp cost. whcih could see them tp starved without support from a goad or bards paeon..

then you could have the final fantasy iconic elemental wheel assign monsters types elelments allow a support job to enchant those elements to dps that found they were resisted. a mob might be weak to blunt resist piercing, but succeptible to wind. so while a monk could punch a way happily without support a drg could benefit from an elemental enchantment.

i'm not going to write a book but there's literally hundreds if not thousands of things they could do just looking at past games in the final fantasy franchise,. but the issue is they've stripped everything away so much that all that matters is damage... it doesnt even matter where that damage comes from or how. just as long as its damage. whether its a blm a monk or a brd.. all that matters is damage and who brings most..

you cant have a deep and engaging combat system without deep and engaging systems to interact with.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem with support jobs in this game is it lacks any systems that support jobs can interact with or control.. they've stripped away nearly everything that did exist and any support that remains is basically a direct modifier of damage +/- x%.

Aye, at which point it just becomes a matter of "Here, take my buffs, for which you sacrificed direct DPS in taking me instead of a "Damage" job, in order to carry my rDPS through your exploitation of said buffs. Oh, also, we're inherently more fragile now, because we're more dependent on the multiplicity of stacked buffs to be viable and any death means desync, causing us to underperform relative to a more independent (e.g., SAM/BLM/MCH/etc.) comp."

[Dzian]

I'm like 99% sure the reason they removed the stuff they did like Shadewalker, Smokescreen, mits from healers like Disable or Virus, was because people didnt bother to use them.

That's because in the vast majority of content they made zero difference and had zero impact. Same goes with many skills even today.

But for example when a raid wide hits you for 5k health and can effectively be healed with a single aoe tht will heal for like 6k health. in most cases a small mitigation does nothing. You take 4500 damage instead of 5k but when that single aoe heal is 6k. What did pressing that mitigation actually achieve? Zilch!.

It's why so many people don't bother with role skills because they're just bloat buttons that don't really do anything..

Interject for example. Is it the kitasa dungeon where you can silence the last boss casting bravery on himself. But if you don't silence it it really doesn't matter thus it carries no weight or impact..

[Shurrikhan]

Interject for example. Is it the kitasa dungeon where you can silence the last boss casting bravery on himself. But if you don't silence it it really doesn't matter thus it carries no weight or impact..

Interject really needs at least a DR-less 1.5s silence + pacify, instead of just an interrupt, so you can use it for managing mob positioning instead of solely for once-per-blue-moon spell casts.