quick solution towards the mage balance issue

[kingskye]

create an 8th gearset just for red mage and (new caster job) and let them keep the casting set, then for black mage and summoner let then scale on a new set called sorcery...lol

[Llugen]

So like... a new role?

I think it could be interesting, but I doubt they would move forward on that front, there are lots of logistical things that wouldn't make sense... how does the "role" party buff apply, are groups now expected to take 6 roles for maximum party buff? What do they do about previous expacs casting gear, just make it worn by both and split it at DT? And anecdotally now we're back to having only 2 options to choose from within TWO roles (caster and sorcerer), which places strain on job selection and party comp.

As far as I can tell it's looking like the new caster is likely to be Green Mage, and will likely be "the Dancer of casters" providing lots of party damage buffs but low personal damage output (if I were them I would also probably change up RDM to be more "shield support" focus by replacing embolden with some other kind of shield/heal/damage reduction), and considering how successful Dancer has been I expect LOTS of people to be interested in the job. The question will remain though if it has access to raise or not.

My general solution to the raise role issue would be remove raise from casters entirely and make Phoenix Down a duty action with a 120-180s cooldown split between all members. That way, anyone in the party can use the duty action to raise, but then it gets put on CD for everyone. Or if that doesn't strike fancy, maybe a Phoenix Down "charge" gets generated with every LB bar segment. This would also greatly benefit DF parties that don't end up with a caster at all, so they at least have the chance to save their healer(s) from a wipe.

[vetch]

On the one hand, it does suck having to compete with three, possibly soon four, jobs for glam and gear drops. On the other hand, glamour dresser space is limited. They already screwed up with the jewelry split and the restriction of DoH/DoL gear.

I think it could be interesting, but I doubt they would move forward on that front, there are lots of logistical things that wouldn't make sense... how does the "role" party buff apply, are groups now expected to take 6 roles for maximum party buff?

We have three different types of melee armor already without splitting the melee role, why would caster armor need to be different?

My general solution to the raise role issue would be remove raise from casters entirely and make Phoenix Down a duty action with a 120-180s cooldown split between all members. That way, anyone in the party can use the duty action to raise, but then it gets put on CD for everyone. Or if that doesn't strike fancy, maybe a Phoenix Down "charge" gets generated with every LB bar segment. This would also greatly benefit DF parties that don't end up with a caster at all, so they at least have the chance to save their healer(s) from a wipe.

Just change the existing Phoenix Down item to be stackable with a 5 minute cooldown and leave the Duty Action buttons free for special encounter mechanics.

[Llugen]

I suppose I must have misread OPs original intention, because in my opinion the ONLY thing unbalanced about the caster role is access to raise. Making good BIS stat allocations with the current/usual gearsets has never really been a problem... or if it has, it could be argued that it is the same for most jobs (like tank raid ring rn having sks instead of crit/det so no one wants to use it blah blah).


As far as phoenix down is concerned, I think it is their intention that people shouldn't be expected/required to carry and use items, though, especially in more casual content (They already don't like it that people expect others to carry food/pots at times, but that is the nature of MMO). Also that would mean A LOT of raises per group, unless they also tie the cooldown for the item amongst the members, which I'm guessing they wouldn't want to do.

Obviously this is all fanfic anyway, but I would foresee them wanting to maintain their stance that "raise should be costly" and therefore not want to do something like this.

[vetch]

Raising isn't costly now. Raising can't be costly, because costly raises don't fit with the FF14 Endwalker encounter design of 'kill you if you do the mechanic wrong'. We have near-infinite raises per group as long as a healer lives, because all healers are heavily MP-positive or have equivalent tools like Thin Air. This dev team really does just say whatever without checking.

As it stands now, if a healer is alive, all is well, and if the healer is dead, then depending on party comp we vacillate between the two extremes of 'healer death is meaningless because we have a tank and DPS that can all off-heal' and 'we don't have enough off-heals so healer is the most important party member and we wipe if they die but we're not given the tools to save or protect them'. Both of those situations suck.

Having Phoenix Downs to allow other jobs to occasionally slowrez a healer (if the AoE patterns allow it) changes nothing about the generic 'cost' of a death -- the Weakness and loss of MP/job gauge -- it just brings the cost of healer death specifically more in line with that of other deaths. This fixes the second extremity, which then allows them to make sustaining entire fights a bit harder than tanks and DPS can handle, which fixes the first.

Or I guess they could just throw more bodychecks in to prevent rezzing altogether, making the game feel worse and worse.