What if Support Role was Added to FFXIV?

[Gemina]

They should just bake the support stuff into Healers if they aren't going to give them any meaningful DPS abilities for downtime.

This is quite literally what they have already done to healers. They are extremely powerful in FFXIV in terms of their supportive ability. Their downtime is another issue entirely.

[Rithy255]

I'd consider more: SMN, RDM, DNC, BRD supports or loosely fits a more supportive classes sometimes, Tanks/Healers are generally also can be considered "support Jobs" as they're not primarily DPS jobs but do DPS still, I get some jobs like Melees give out raid buffs but I don't think just Damage buffs make a actual support Job. It's kind of hard to balance Damage Vs Support, Because Damage is normally the most important thing. I think the Issue is theirs no real middle ground the closest thing you'll get to a good middle ground is Tanks because you have some responsibilities of a Healer with mitigation, sustain and party raid wides but you generally have a middle of the road dps rotation... I think healer goes too far into the support direction right now a lot of your healing support and gcd actions are generally more of something you don't want to do, so being a healer is cycling your CD's similar to a tank with more focus on party then self, but a lot of healer is just spamming one damage button. With "support or utility jobs" generally what I think is the issue is that giving up a big amount of "damage" for utilities that the Healer or even tanks have, Now it can come into use having that extra utility but it's something that's a nice bonus at best, if we had "Support Jobs" ontop of tanks/healers we'd really need to redesign the game from the ground up.


Generally what I'd like to see is:
Tanks, should have more stronger and Impactful raid wides, I feel like they've took aggro management from tanks and not given them too much inplace of it, I think tanks having a bit more stronger and likely a extra raid wide between each other or something and some more importance with what they can do to help the Healers, I think tanks can play this sort of "support role" with a good engaging DPS rotation with a few more changes, I want to see generally a bit more responsibility on tanks. Right now I think the EW short CD's feel really good and strong, but in general I'd like some more group responsibility with tanks.

Healers, should have more to do, they generally have nothing fun to do outside of "support the party" one button damage rotations and dots are generally really boring to a lot of people, Astro is my favourite healer because while I still have one damage button and a dot, I generally have to think more outside of healing support. Not every healer should be Astro though, some healers like white mage should have more interesting things inside it's rotation such as procs, I want it to feel like a Caster and a healer personally (doesn't need to have anything too overwhelming).

[Shurrikhan]

Each of AST's six cards has a place in the lore, and they would have to redo all the class quests from 30-50. They can't just remove them. Your other suggestion just reverts them. The seal system is tied to Astrodyne, and only benefits the AST. This is exactly how it needs to be since it is based on RNG, as unlucky draws will not hinder the party's dmg output.

If it hinders the AST's damage even indirectly, it's technically still hurting the party's DPS. It just doesn't hurt the member's individual meters (for all those are worth outside of... contributing to the party's DPS).

Again, encounter design of FFXIV removes the meaningfulness of these abilities, which is a big reason why they have been removed. Their removal has been staggered, and I would say a big part of that is because they wanted them to be meaningful during encounters. Just look at a skill like Repose/Sleep which players have been saying to just delete if skill/button bloat is a problem. They are still here though.

I think this touches on an interesting point, even if a tangential one: The actual design of the support tools matter also in relation to each other; clear-cut tools usable for every instance of some type of situation can easily stiffle the button efficiency or interest of other support tools that would otherwise take a more thematic bend.

Repose/Sleep, for example, could easily be made more interesting and broadly useful as, say, a typal cleanse/purge... if not for Esuna already denigrating all underlined debuffs into "solve by pressing this button." Or, imagine something akin to the old mob TP system, wherein mobs could change behaviors or perform [usually offensive] special abilities via a combination of enmity and TP. Repose/Sleep could be an interesting option by which to delay either.

(Yes, I think a non-dispellable random-target Doom, thereby forming or acting as a heal check, is more interesting in most contexts than a dispellable Doom, which typically manages only to be a check one's ability to look at their party frames after a particular cast and have predetermined which healer cleanses "top" or "bottom".)

This is quite literally what they have already done to healers. They are extremely powerful in FFXIV in terms of their supportive ability. Their downtime is another issue entirely.

1/8th uptime of a 5% raid damage increase, etc. (with only half the supports having any such tools) is "extremely powerful"?

Or, if you want to make the very reasonable case that Divination, modern Cards, and Chain Stratagem are "just rDPS"... do Rescue and Expedient somehow qualify as "extremely powerful"? Because that's all you'd really have left.

[ASkellington]

Each of AST's six cards has a place in the lore, and they would have to redo all the class quests from 30-50. They can't just remove them. Your other suggestion just reverts them. The seal system is tied to Astrodyne, and only benefits the AST. This is exactly how it needs to be since it is based on RNG, as unlucky draws will not hinder the party's dmg output.

Again, encounter design of FFXIV removes the meaningfulness of these abilities, which is a big reason why they have been removed. Their removal has been staggered, and I would say a big part of that is because they wanted them to be meaningful during encounters. Just look at a skill like Repose/Sleep which players have been saying to just delete if skill/button bloat is a problem. They are still here though.

The issue that remains with the card system is the fact that they just won't let go of the player's ability to mitigate the RNG. Undraw and Redraw are still skills they have to deal with an unwanted seal. This just leads to a higher APM for the AST, and the benefit isn't really all that worth the effort. The seal system really should just be you take what you get, period. Play and/or Draw should also be on the GCD. Weaving these damn abilities just makes me want to cry. Not kidding.

"Lore" didn't stop them from removing Nocturnal Sect. Or Time Dilation. And the lv30-50 quests are already meaningless because the cards don't even do what the NPC says they do.

Astrodyne is trash and should be removed. Its a self buff on a party buffing class. Divination which was what Astrodyne used to be is already fixed at maximum damage. There's no reason for the Seals to not be a separate Utility buffing option other than they didn't want to put in the effort. They could have LITERALLY made Bole, Ewer and Spire into the Seals system akin to what we have in PvP and it would have been better than the garbage we have now. Because it is garbage. We don't need Mana - we have Lucid Dreaming. Haste also means nothing when we have short recast timers on everything that isn't instant except Ascend and who the hells cares about a 6% increase on the lowest personal damage healer in the game?

As for Undraw? This ability should have been removed at the start of Shadowbringers. There is 0 reason to Undraw a card now, there was 0 reason to Undraw then.

And NO to Play/Draw being on the GCD. Ninja Mudras feel awkward I don't want that on AST. At all if you can make it feel smooth. In fact the reason WHY Ast has high APM is because of the Seals system. Remove it and install the cards somewhat to how they used to be and look at that, you only have to draw once every 30s if you get rid of the second charge.

[Gemina]

If it hinders the AST's damage even indirectly, it's technically still hurting the party's DPS. It just doesn't hurt the member's individual meters (for all those are worth outside of... contributing to the party's DPS).

You're missing the point. Especially considering that prior to the seal system the cards used to tie directly into the party's damage output. This continued even into ShB when Divination was still dependent on card draws. It wasn't until EW, and Divination was just made a button you press on the 2min CD that this was truly fixed. If you want to nickel and dime AST's personal DMG numbers because they can still get unlucky with the seals drawn for Astrodyne, it isn't going to hold a whole lot of water. There isn't a single encounter in this game that relies on an AST being granted HoM buff in order to clear it.

Repose/Sleep, for example, could easily be made more interesting and broadly useful as, say, a typal cleanse/purge... if not for Esuna already denigrating all underlined debuffs into "solve by pressing this button." Or, imagine something akin to the old mob TP system, wherein mobs could change behaviors or perform [usually offensive] special abilities via a combination of enmity and TP. Repose/Sleep could be an interesting option by which to delay either.

(Yes, I think a non-dispellable random-target Doom, thereby forming or acting as a heal check, is more interesting in most contexts than a dispellable Doom, which typically manages only to be a check of one's ability to check party frames after a particular cast.)

You're talking about changing encounter design in order to make these abilities useful. That is neither here or there. Again, encounter design is based entirely on damage, making such abilities entirely redundant. There is no point sleeping a mob when you can just kill it. Crowd control was a valid reason to have such abilities in mmos like FFXI, wherein adds needed to be slept, and sometimes even kited because they were too powerful to take on alongside the main target. They needed to be controlled. This does not exist in FFXIV.

As for esuna-able Doom, I am not quite sure where you're getting at. A heavy bleed status effect essentially works the same way, and a GCD is required to save a players life. The penalty for failure is a huge loss to rDPS, especially if it's a heavy hitter who is good at their job. I can't even begin to tell you how many times a healer has just left me to die, and then proceeds to DPS instead of focusing on raising myself, or other downed players. Even in a situation of annoyance like CT where players are easily inflected with Disease among all the trash mobs will not dispel it, and it takes the inflicted players 8-10 seconds to catch up to the rest of the group, which could be negated by simply casting Esuna. And you want to make it "more interesting"?

1/8th uptime of a 5% raid damage increase, etc. (with only half the supports having any such tools) is "extremely powerful"?

Or, if you want to make the very reasonable case that Divination, modern Cards, and Chain Stratagem are "just rDPS"... do Rescue and Expedient somehow qualify as "extremely powerful"? Because that's all you'd really have left.

Healers have the strongest ability out of all the roles to erase mistakes and prevent death. What's the longest you've been down before a healer or DPS with rez raised you? 10 seconds? 20 seconds? Half a minute or more? Have you ever been rescued where you would have died otherwise? Are you familiar with your own DPS? If so, I shouldn't have to explain or spell out how much damage is lost every, single, second you are down. If you ever played a racing game, and just take your finger off the accelerator that is essentially the same thing when you die in this game.

Do you still want to question the supportive ability of the game's healers, or should I continue to elaborate?

[Shurrikhan]

You're talking about changing encounter design in order to make these abilities useful.

Sure (though primarily through easily spread undermechanics). Why not? Encounter design, at present, can be unnecessarily restricted and thereby dull.

Moreover, content design and kit design are equal partners in any feedback cycle; content won't have any more to it than what a kit can leverage, and a kit have any more to it than what content allows to the kit feature.

If either is shallowed out until doldrum, though, that doesn't necessitate that the other be, too. And even when both are so shallowed, both ought then to just be reinvigorated together, so long as that state would be seen as better for the game.

That is neither here or there. Again, encounter design is based entirely on damage, making such abilities entirely redundant.

Not letting a game spiral into needless reductions is always here, there, and everywhere. There's a difference between noting what support functions were mere bloat or smoke and mirrors and refusing the whole concept wholesale on the basis that it wouldn't fit the current (more than arguably already problematic) context.

Healers have the strongest ability out of all the roles to erase mistakes and prevent death.

So you're arguing that healers specifically also have "extremely powerful... supportive abilities" just because their healing is strong... in a thread that explicitly differentiates "Support" tools apart from mere healing, and as a reply to a post that likewise clearly separated "healing" from "Support" functionality?

I can't tell if you're just really not reading the room or are making a purposeful conflation in order to move goalposts here...

[Gemina]

"Lore" didn't stop them from removing Nocturnal Sect. Or Time Dilation. And the lv30-50 quests are already meaningless because the cards don't even do what the NPC says they do.

Noct Sect and Time Dilation do not have the same significance in the lore. The Bole, Ewer, Spire, Arrow, etc. are constellations, and the cards are representative of them. There are staples in the lore surrounding all jobs in this game, and if that is tied to an ability, or abilities, chances are it will never leave the game. Are you suggesting to remove the cards? Because that would be like removing SCH's fairy, MNK's forbidden chakra, WAR's inner release and so forth. The cards, and the card system will always be part of AST in some form or another.

Astrodyne is trash and should be removed. Its a self buff on a party buffing class. Divination which was what Astrodyne used to be is already fixed at maximum damage. There's no reason for the Seals to not be a separate Utility buffing option other than they didn't want to put in the effort. They could have LITERALLY made Bole, Ewer and Spire into the Seals system akin to what we have in PvP and it would have been better than the garbage we have now. Because it is garbage. We don't need Mana - we have Lucid Dreaming. Haste also means nothing when we have short recast timers on everything that isn't instant except Ascend and who the hells cares about a 6% increase on the lowest personal damage healer in the game?

Ok. this is just a rant. But ok.

As for Undraw? This ability should have been removed at the start of Shadowbringers. There is 0 reason to Undraw a card now, there was 0 reason to Undraw then.

And NO to Play/Draw being on the GCD. Ninja Mudras feel awkward I don't want that on AST. At all if you can make it feel smooth. In fact the reason WHY Ast has high APM is because of the Seals system. Remove it and install the cards somewhat to how they used to be and look at that, you only have to draw once every 30s if you get rid of the second charge.

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.

[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.)

[Gemina]

Sure (though primarily through easily spread undermechanics). Why not? Encounter design, at present, can be unnecessarily restricted and thereby dull.

Simple. It's not the direction the game has gone or is going. If you find encounter design dull, hackneyed, or boring; it is not a feeling that is shared across the entire playerbase. You talk about reinvigorating the game, but what exactly is and needs to be invigorated? Most people seem to want to revert FFXIV back to a state it was in. That's not reinvigorating. That's reviving/reverting. Trust me, I know all about how this issue is felt all over the gaming industry. Not just FFXIV. Many echo your thoughts, and I am not dismissing them. My indifference comes from a mindset that recognizes how impossible it is to make an entire mmo community happy, yet still putting in considerable effort to do so anyway.

So you're arguing that healers specifically also have "extremely powerful... supportive abilities" just because their healing is strong... in a thread that explicitly differentiates "Support" tools apart from mere healing, and as a reply to a conversation that likewise clearly separated "healing" from "Support" functionality?

I can't tell if you're just really not reading the room or are making an purposeful conflation in order to move goalposts here...

I wasn't arguing about how powerful healers are. That would be you. I didn't move any goalposts. I merely elaborated my point since you forced me to defend it. Do you have a problem with that?

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.

Congratulations.

[Shurrikhan]

Simple. It's not the direction the game has gone or is going. If you find encounter design dull, hackneyed, or boring; it is not a feeling that is shared across the entire playerbase.

Neither is your love for the present state of healing. Admittedly, we're therefore probably not going to see eye to eye on much that surrounds it.

Alas, this is about support tools anyways. The person you initially quoted asked for healers to have more of them (the intersection here), to which you responded that the addition was already made (despite its only ever having being reduced since Stormblood)... because healing. (?)

You talk about reinvigorating the game, but what exactly is and needs to be invigorated? Most people seem to want to revert FFXIV back to a state it was in.

Which is it, then? Do you want my opinion, or that of some ambiguous camp of "others"?

Many echo your thoughts, and I am not dismissing them. My indifference comes from a mindset that recognizes how impossible it is to make an entire mmo community happy, yet still putting in considerable effort to do so anyway.

You realize, though, that conflating critiques necessarily with some fatalistic extreme of "the MMO community is utterly unappeasable"... is dismissive, right?

I'm not asking to appease the entire MMO community at large across its every game. I'm noting that when development reduces things to its least common denominator alone, by taking the easy way time after time (repeatedly pulling the plug on an area of design instead of rectifying the particular issues behind some given attempt), the result is more often barren than polished.

I wasn't arguing about how powerful healers are. That would be you.

I haven't argued anything to do with the power of healers. My focus has been solely on gameplay, specifically in what can be done with/around Support tools.