Quote Originally Posted by Avoidy View Post
First post best post.

People say they want support, but there's nothing to support in this game now that it's been totally streamlined down to this. For example, other games will have mana (MP) actually be used by everyone, for everything, and when you run out you're literally out of options. Some support jobs will exist to feed you more mana, so that you don't run out of options. Can you imagine if tomorrow, every ability and weaponskill in the game cost mp, and melee jobs that lacked lucid dreaming were suddenly reliant on healers to cast a mana battery spell every 30 seconds or something? I bet most of you here would hate it. The whole party system is simultaneously interconnected (everyone standardized on a 2m system) but also feels incredibly isolated and independent compared to other games I've played. You just do your rotation while barely thinking about others around you (from a skill-use context, not necessarily a positioning context) until your 2 minute egg timer pops. People would be absolutely livid if their performance were directly tied to another person's ability to feed them resources so they could perform. We'll never have a rewarding support option in this game, because rewarding support options necessitates having something extremely valuable to support in the first place, and being able to fail and take others down with you if you fail; the devs don't have the courage to bring that style of play into all content by baking it into a skill kit. And it makes me sad, because I loved playing support in better mmos that got it right.
The thing is, we did have something like this back in Stormblood. Bard and Machinist had 2 actions, Tactician and the MP one which I forgot the name of. Do you know how annoying it was, as a melee, to run out of TP before the end of a fight, despite optimal usage of Invigorate? I'm happiny doing my rotation and suddenly, I have to stop because the ranged is either sleeping or there doesn't happen to be one in the party and it was even worse for tanks, well, mainly DRK. PLD could delay running out of TP because magic phase and Warrior did have Deliverance Equilibrium, but they could still run out. It would be a similar situation for casters and healers, with healers having the additional benefit of, if the ranged wasn't sleeping, you could have a ton of MP meaning raises weren't really hitting your MP management (though, if they were sleeping, RIP MP).

So the question becomes, should your ability to perform your rotation be tied to someone else? I would personally say no.