What if Support Role was Added to FFXIV?

[dspguy]

ARR BRD was probably the closest to a support class we've had - well, maybe include AST back when the cards had specific bonuses.

ARR BRD could debuff enemy magic defense, they could restore TP or MP as well as movement speed out of battle. With changes they made to the game over the last near-decade, all that's left is movement speed. Honestly, BRD's support kit was still bad, but it was possibly the "best" FFXIV had to offer.

The holy trinity of roles simply doesn't allow for true support classes in this game - I'm talking about FFXI BRD or EQ1 BRD and Enchanter. Classes that focused mostly on buffing, debuffing and crowd control.

[R041]

ARR BRD was probably the closest to a support class we've had - well, maybe include AST back when the cards had specific bonuses.

I'm still a salty AST.

[Avoidy]

I'm still a salty AST.

I missed the chance to play AST like this by about a month and it'll always make me sad.

[Gemina]

I missed the chance to play AST like this by about a month and it'll always make me sad.

Don't be sad. I fixed it:



What not many around here will tell you is that old AST cards were an illusion of choice. Your party did not care for any other card other than the Balance, and you used them only when your abilities used to mitigate the layers of RNG was still not enough to get an AoE Balance to throw out. IOW, the other five cards were compensation when luck was just not in your favor as you always strived to get a Balance drawn from your deck. Even back then, the other roles had their own abilities that function the same as these cards, and some like the Arrow could hinder the speed builds some players would achieve with their melds. They were at best situational, and very niche. It was a mess, but a mess some AST for whatever reason loved dealing with.

Now don't get me wrong. These cards provided strong buffs for the party. However, FFXIV's encounter design does not allow for for such abilities to be RNG based. Their availability needs to be on demand, and not tied to RNG. AST still isn't quite there yet, and the cards are getting yet another rework in 7.0. But it will never, ever revert back to the system it was prior to ShB. FFXIV is designed entirely around damage. The damage going out/received by both party and enemy. Support exists only through this path. AST accomplishes this by being able to give consistent and steady damage buffs to their party members, and is a major part of not only their identity, but also greatly helps make up for their low personal DPS.

[Raven2014]

Don't be sad. I fixed it:

Yeah, 3.0 AST seem to be a prime example of the rose-tinted class. It was changed because it was just a lot of fat nobody wanted. Party even willing to wait for the AST to keep re-drawing until they get a balance card before pull. The current system isn't great, but still a lot better than the old, and the old system would suck even more in the current design then it was back then. I mean ... I'm sure a lot of people know the "Balance" Discord. Think about the implication how relevant the meme was for it to be adopted as the name of such a DPS focus community.

It was a mess, but a mess some AST for whatever reason loved dealing with.

I have never personally speak with any AST "at that time" said they love the card system. That kind of talk has only popped up once enough time had past and nostalgia set in. If they ever bring back the 3.0 card system, I'm willing to bet my in game house the community will not stand for it pass the one month mark.


And I just want to say this: this is yet just another example of how much the game had lost when they remove the majority of utility management from the game and make everything about DPS and DPS only. People complain about AST card are just all damage buff now ... sure, I don't like it either ... but what else you want the card do beside buffing damage? TP is gone. Why do people need MP when they can maintain full MP even in zero piety gears? Outside of ultimate we have enough mitigatition that even if half of your party forgot to hit their mit (PF meme) it's still ok. We already have more healing potency than we ever know what to do with. With how strict raid buff window is most DPS ain't gonna risk having their rotation desyn or drift due to unexpected and unreliable GCD, so giving SPS/SkS card out randomly may even be considered griefing.

Yeah, every card doing the same thing sucks, but that's because there is nothing else that they can do meaningfully.

[R041]

I have never personally speak with any AST "at that time" said they love the card system.

I loved it and it's why it was my main in HW-SB but I no longer use is. But I can realize the system wasn't a good idea for high levels of play. We agree that it was bad for specific reasons, but it still had good to it. The bad was just RNG, doesn't mean we should have thrown all of the utility out just because their methods of obtaining the utility weren't liked.

That's been SE's stance anyway. "Oh, people don't like X? Remove it entirely!" - We act like the current card system is even remotely better, when it's just broken jank of an old system that people feel the need to fix with mods now. We'll see what the rework does in 7.0 I guess.

[ASkellington]

Yeah, every card doing the same thing sucks, but that's because there is nothing else that they can do meaningfully.

I'll say this in regards to the card system:

Either remove the other 5 because they're worthless and rebrand AST as a Time Mage because there's nothing fun in giving out the same card in "three different flavors" for a crappy Seals System

Or do what you (SE) should have done in Endwalker if not all the way back in Shadowbringers and make the Seals give some of the buffs the old cards had on a toggle that we could control.

Bole was too RNG? How about getting 2 moons = a Bole like buff you can hold until you need it?

No, SE could have made support meaningful by upping mana costs and giving P. Ranged ways to keep you from Lucid Dreaming on Cool Down along with AST and the other healers if they wanted. Thing is, if they wanted. Its very obvious they don't.

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah, 3.0 AST seem to be a prime example of the rose-tinted class. It was changed because it was just a lot of fat nobody wanted.

It was changed because any legitimate attempt, even, to balance it was apparently beyond the devs and because they axed the systems underpinning a third of its cards. As soon as it went from a nuetral to controversial fact that it was balanced around luck as much as it was about leveraging tools (in no small part simply due to the lack of synergetic features like a CD-less spread or second charge on Draw and a retroactive Royal Road).

Yeah, every card doing the same thing sucks, but that's because there is nothing else that they can do meaningfully.

Except that's only due to having screwed over the underpinnings of each. If the devs had actually tuned content, stance modifiers, and the opportunity costs in such a way that tank stances could actually be danced (outside of bardic legends of shitshow Savage PuG runs), then external mitigation tools, too, could retain relevance since that lever wouldn't have been made passive. If MP were an actual mechanic in this game, instead of a Rez-Meter, so would Ewer. Etc., etc.

_______________

Dude. Did you even play NIN when the mudras where off the global cooldown? Bunny Medium, bud. Bunny Medium all day, every day. Placing the cards/play on the GCD is just a suggestion. Don't lose any sleep over it.

I did, at 130+ ms ping and frequent packet loss. Bunny medium, very rarely. Bunny Medium maybe once per few hours of raiding, under lag spikes.

I don't particularly care one way or the other about Cards being moved to the GCD (so long as their duly empowered in compensation for the added opportunity cost), but we needn't pretend some vaguely similar system indicates that oGCD Cards (which are, right now, still working just fine outside of the same problems that plague the spot-usage of any and all oGCDs on controller-using healers) have been doomed all along, nor pretend that oGCD mudras were worse than they were.

(Moreover, none of that would have been a problem if the game had just flipped the switch, as done by plugins since late HW, to allow oGCDs to be queued. They'd had the ready and obvious solution all along. We needn't constrain our ideas to the most ass-backward approaches just because the devs' way out of a paper bag may be to eat the whole damn thing.)

[Raven2014]

It was changed because any legitimate attempt, even, to balance it was apparently beyond the devs and because they axed the systems underpinning a third of its cards. As soon as it went from a nuetral to controversial fact that it was balanced around luck as much as it was about leveraging tools (in no small part simply due to the lack of synergetic features like a CD-less spread or second charge on Draw and a retroactive Royal Road).


Except that's only due to having screwed over the underpinnings of each. If the devs had actually tuned content, stance modifiers, and the opportunity costs in such a way that tank stances could actually be danced (outside of bardic legends of shitshow Savage PuG runs), then external mitigation tools, too, could retain relevance since that lever wouldn't have been made passive. If MP were an actual mechanic in this game, instead of a Rez-Meter, so would Ewer. Etc., etc.

...
...
...

2 Months ago when I talked about this very same thing, I remember you dismissed and argued against me hard. No, we had 2 round, once at beginning of Nov and another in Dec, over the exact samething.

Remember someone talked about how MP and enmity management should have been refined instead of removed?

Remember someone used the example saying that when you decide to remove one color from the pallet, you lose not just that one color but all the combination of it?

Remember someone kept using the pennies saved up to dollar argument?


That someone ... was me.

And remember someone else argue against that ... ? Well, you weren't the only one, but definitely one of the most persistent of them all. You even asked for my idea of what I would considered a fix for AST ... and I obliged.


So yeah ... no argument with this particular quote ... after all that have been my point for months ... years even.

If MP were an actual mechanic in this game, instead of a Rez-Meter, so would Ewer. Etc., etc.

At some in the long distance past ... it could have been.

[dspguy]

I'm still a salty AST.

I played AST before the change. It was actually interesting. I don't know how they fared DPS-wise (which is the barometer everyone uses for everything in this game), but it was very enjoyable to play.