What if Support Role was Added to FFXIV?

[PredatoryCatgirl]

City of Heroes did this. Technically it didn't even have healers. The four roles were tank, DPS, support (not healer) and mezzer. And most classes could fill more than one role.

It was wildly unbalanced in a way that wouldn't fly in the post WoW era, even though it was a ton of fun to play. It was also designed from inception to be like this, rather than adding it in later.

[Raoabolic]

Weird, I always assumed the green dps had a support skill or two.

[Ishe-P]

Why offer support when doing more damage will do the trick?

[ForteNightshade]

Putting aside the likely impossibility of them overhauling the entire gameplay system to support another role. A pure support role in general just wouldn't work in this game.

Balancing it would be damn near impossible because you either have enough support to supplant a dedicated DPS, in which case you always want that job/role. Or the support isn't enough to supersede raw damage, in which case nobody would even think of bringing one. At best, they'd have to force its inclusion via the 5%. That doesn't exactly make for a worthwhile investment.

[Raven2014]

What exactly you want a support role to do?

- The only support DPS will care about is buffing their damage, of which the game already have plenty. Even PF has enough DPS to skip like 1/4 or 1/5 on several fights.
- Supporting tank and healer? I mean ... why would you? Their kit is so powerful already that their focus is not even on tanking or healing, but DPSing. "Please don't make your healer heal even less" is a meme.

[Derio]

Its called "physical ranged dps" thats the support class. Technically all jobs are considered support because they can support the party in buff of party members or debuff of enemies in at least 1 way.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Honestly just give more unique buffs/debuffs for both healers, ranged and casters and design boss encounters were stuff like that is actually useful like a MMMMHMPH and rpg should?

[Gemina]

Would it make sense to add a fourth role to the Trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS to help create a better balance between all the job classes?

What's a support role going to be tasked with in FFXIV?

This question doesn't even begin to compute for me.

[AnotherPerson]

We have "Support" but you wouldn't call it that because it doesn't even look like one. Healers are supposed to be "Support" but they can barely support outside of just healing/shielding. They're just 1-button DPS otherwise, and it sucks on so many levels.
AoE Esuna? Removed. Increased Skill speed & Spell speed? Removed. Restoring TP? Removed. Regenerate MP to party member? Removed. Knockback enemy? Removed and replaced with Bind. Where's Bind you ask? Removed.

Pretty much all semblance of support has been reduced to just DPS for the sake of balance and 'ease of use without stress on that party member to make a difference whether the party lives or wipes'.

Literally, the ONE support skill that isn't just a DPS buff is Expedient because it gave movement speed in combat, and that's only unlocked on SCH at level 90 and usable every 2 minutes. And even then, the movement speed effect got nerfed.

The one actual support skill all healers have is Rescue - the skill that so many players complain about. People don't use it much because every job has so much mobility, because it has a huge cooldown, and because of the pull delay that it's easier to make a mistake from using it. Not to mention, a lot of mechanics outright don't even allow the possibility of rescue from messing up a mechanic. You can't rescue someone from Down From the Count debuff (Holminister Switch Left/Right Knockout, P5 Devour), can't rescue a target that's chained to move them (Holminister Switch Chain Down, Battle in the Big Keep Enchain, Kugane Ohashi Hell's Gate), Can't rescue someone that's about to die from being eaten (World of Darkness Stepping into Slabber and being stuck). The skill has so many limitations to its usability. You only use it if you are sure you can pull someone to safety or to pull someone mid-LB animation to safety. Otherwise, you get blamed even if that person was going to die otherwise because you "interrupted them".

Ranged DPS are supposed to be "Support" but most of their support utility is just DPS, but you can literally count the number of support utility they provide. They have bind, heavy, and interrupt skills, but they rarely see usage. Peloton gets usage but mainly in dungeons and alliance raids, not in combat. Their individual shield mitigation? That's basically Feint/Addle, but applied to parties instead of a target. We have Warden's Paean, which is just a longer-lasting Esuna effect.

MCH? Is that even a support? Maybe during Heavensward, but not anymore. It's hard to call Physical Ranged DPS as the support class when MCH doesn't support the party outside of Tactician. Even MNK can be looked like a better support class than MCH (provides a DPS buff to the party, an AoE healing up buff, and Feint).
Physical range DPS is not so much of a support role because it has support utility, but because it supports the party by attacking from afar... which isn't even true anymore due to boss hitboxes getting big enough for melee uptime.

[Shurrikhan]

We have "Support" but you wouldn't call it that because it doesn't even look like one. Healers are supposed to be "Support" but they can barely support outside of just healing/shielding. They're just 1-button DPS otherwise, and it sucks on so many levels.
AoE Esuna? Removed. Increased Skill speed & Spell speed? Removed. Restoring TP? Removed. Regenerate MP to party member? Removed. Knockback enemy? Removed and replaced with Bind. Where's Bind you ask? Removed.

I think one of the main things to keep in mind alongside all this is that, once up and balanced, support is less about additions/features than it is about interdependence. The ability to make a significantly more pleasant experience or any other unique opportunity requires creating a baseline experience that is that comparatively that much more unpleasant or lacks those otherwise accessible opportunities, and will more than likely make what feels like it should be your gameplay deferable by others' errors.

Take granting Haste (SkS/SpS), for instance. If you already had a rotational speed you like, unless the particular percentage somehow coincidentally hits upon another pace that syncs up in itself and to your combo-progress when the buff is granted... it's just been screwed over. A healer Role Action to AoE immune a knockback mechanic? For that to be significant, the fight would have to offer X more knockbacks than would otherwise seem fitting.

That's not to say designing in support functionality is always going to be futile or a matter of... mechanical racketeering (wherein your problem exists only because it was designed in, without the usual concern for thematic or mechanical cohesion/alignment/etc., just to give those tools their place), but they create a fine line devs have to then walk between feeling like a bonus when they happen and making the baseline/normal feel like crap when they don't. Ideally, one ought to get a bigger dopamine spike, so to speak, from receiving that bonus than if it had come from their own kit, despite all the additional ways that could then go wrong (and all the massive balancing headaches it'd give in trying to make that support functionality worthwhile outside of just hivemind-ed statics).

There's also the matter of "fool-proofing" some of these potential Support skills. If Rescue extended melee range and allowed for casting while moving during and for some half-second after its use, people would complain a whole lot less about being Rescued. If players had specific control over their GCD speeds, or could allow Skill/Spell speed to be "junction"-ed to only increase GCD speed if able to hit certain thresholds (otherwise/thereafter spending it all on periodic potency increases), they wouldn't mind receiving Haste. Etc., etc.