We cannot achieve balance while DPS jobs have utilities

[Bobby66]

Been playing FFXI with some friends since it came out before my time. I have been having fun with BARD, and CORSAIR. They remind me of old AST to a degree I really do miss that style of play and wish FFXIV would add it back and not be so afraid of certain jobs not being meta.

[Tunda]

Even if we could only achieve balance by further homogenizing the game's classes, it's not worth the cost. The degree of radical balance that some people want will stifle the ability for classes to be distinct and interesting. I would rather have an unbalanced game with a variety of meaningfully different options.

There is no homonization bro

It is just a role

If you are tank you should expect somekind of tankiness
If you are healer you should expect some type of healing
Also fot dps

This is not homogenizing it is a role that can fit to the game philosophy

Support role is a joker role

Who can be any shape of dps but with less dps button and more utilities

It is like tank which is dps role that can tank damage

[Tunda]

This is the path that turns the game into a snooze fest
I'd rather have some imbalance to have classes bring unique fun things to gameplay, like scholars expedience.

As if the current scholar identity is perfect?

Now we have angel form for faries bet job
Scholar is taking white mage identity

Not only that but whole pure sheild and pure healer is the worst in the game

[Tunda]

End game problems in FFXIV largely boil down to gut decisions made by the developers ages ago that just ended up making the entire thing worse.

1) Making it so that top end content requires a specific group composition based on category of role rather than the actual role. Thus, shield healers, pure healers, melee dps, ranged dps, magic dps, and tanks are the FFXIV roles rather than healers, tanks, and DPS. This is implicitly enforced by the bonus system so if someone wants to be cheeky, they can say "sure you can go four melee dps", but you'll never see anyone do it.

2) Having lockouts based on group rather than the character. It should be a character lockout and per job so it is possible to run savage on more than just a Tuesday. The fact they had to add an option for "rewards unclaimed" is kind of silly.

3) The change to make the final book convert into other books sort of pushed out mid to late season prog in PF outside of a static. A good analogy to the scenario is printing money and sending it out as aid to give short term relief, but then having inflation occur making things less affordable later. Because it lets people get gear faster in savage, people soon don't want to run those fights anymore since they have no benefit and only do them to get to the last one, and it isn't like those people are going to go help others trying to clear earlier fights if they need to reach m4s with the herd that includes most of the competent healers and tanks.

I agree.. but developer choose this way and design

At least they should implemented right

Now we have 2 type of dps
Selfish
Utility

100% utility jobs are better in every shape and form because they have both worlds

[Tunda]

Dancer's gameplay is no more that of a Support than is, say, Monk. Unless playing in a composition where it's optimal to swap your Closed Position partner about, you just set your stance pre-combat and the rest is automatic. Heck, if outside of those comps you don't count what can be used precombat anyways, Monk has more support tools (AoE heal, AoE healing taken increase, AoE damage increase, personal damage increased from party attacks) and consideration therearound.

Bard? Same number of support abilities, just trading the direct heal for a dispel. The songs are used simply for their contribution to Soul Voice and their Repertoire bonuses.

Support makes up a small portion of either's numeric performance and a far, far smaller portion of the player's skill's influence on that performance. Neither is a Support. They're just DPS with a few random support skills (far less than a HW NIN, Stormblood Summoner, and no more, arguably, than even an ARR BLM, etc.).



At most, because --given how much of the healer kit is a waste already-- if the "Support" can then meet healing requirements more precisely (i.e., with less excess) while having higher damage, it will be harder to even find a party as a healer.

Any effective cure potency per minute that you are balanced around but locked into makes you a worse choice when it goes to waste, such that if you offer a category of healing-capable jobs that have a lower hps ceiling but higher damage, you simply go from their being inferior when requirements are too high for them to superior when healers' cp output is too high for the content (under typical player familiarity and gear at that time).

To me, the solution then is to simply make healers more flexible so that their maximum theoretical DPS is quite a bit nearer that of DPS but comes at greater cost to healing potential and heals at greater cost to DPS (to about the same result when using a couple at-cost heals per minute, but higher dps otherwise for having converted the would-be excessive oGCD healing into something of use), but alas, what's a solution without systemic convolution (creating new roles out of what should simply be a spectrum, therefore greatly splitting and thereby constraining thematic options for each job)?

There are instances when we don't require healer in dawntrail
This issue exist and there is no salvation to it

But we have clear issue and clear solution

Supports dps jobs are just better in all cases

Just see parties who kill savage first
All the jobs they take are support some of parties have 4 rez jobs
That means it is optimal to play 2 support 2 healer 2 dps 2 tank
This is the truth

[LilyPendragon]

Been playing FFXI with some friends since it came out before my time. I have been having fun with BARD, and CORSAIR. They remind me of old AST to a degree I really do miss that style of play and wish FFXIV would add it back and not be so afraid of certain jobs not being meta.

FFXI Bard is definitely what I think of when I think of a true support class

[Shurrikhan]

There are instances when we don't require healer in dawntrail
This issue exist and there is no salvation to it

I'm aware. But someone bleeding isn't a reason to shoot them.

Supports dps jobs are just better in all cases

No. They're better than an alternative when the possible average clear speed with an otherwise optimal party is better with them than the alternative. For short, though, without any utility*, a job with "support" is better than jobs without support when it produces more rDPS+aDPS, and non-redundant rHPS+aHPS than its competing option(s). I.e., when its straight-up more powerful.

No, raid buffs should not even be thought of as utility; if anything they further constrain the party, therefore creating a loss to utility (difficult-to-quantify contribution towards an encounter's ultimate goal), in this case by reducing opportunities to push out a bit more relative potency over the fight as compared to less constrained means of reaching the same rDPS).

If neither its likely nor theoretical value in offensive or sustain is difficult to quantify for a given composition, there is no more reason to call it "utility" than to call Heavy Swing or Cure "utility"; it's just damage or sustain, respectively.

A final note: rDPS alone never tells you something's full strength. If something completely lacks any indirect contribution, then aDPS will give you a basically full picture, but rDPS will never do so, since it completely (and purposely) removes how well that job makes use of others' buffs.

But we have clear issue and clear solution

Your "clear issue" is, judging from your discussion of it, poorly understood, and your "clear solution" would require mangle the identities of a handful of jobs, constraining job identity around an arbitrary and unnecessary bimodal (degree of indirect contribution), and a tremendous amount of developer work for... more than likely a worse result for each issue you've used as reason to make said suggestion.

That means it is optimal to play 2 support 2 healer 2 dps 2 tank
This is the truth

You're both somewhat misunderstanding and overcomplicating the matter.

A job that contributes a portion of its rDPS through a single other player will always pair best with the best possible exploiter of its finite (highest 20s per 120s burst) and constant (highest would-be aDPS overall) buffs. Because that's just math.
Apart from that, you're just following Role stat bonuses, whoever's generally strongest, and equilibrium (the more relative potency per minute there is to buff, the more each scalar is worth, but --assuming balance-- the more jobs with scalars you have, the less original potency you can bring).

We tend to take Viper because it's OP. Because Viper is OP, or if for whatever reason the static has a SAM or BLM, Dancer is competitive for the single Ranger we're forced to take, but otherwise we take Bard... because, atop any extra utility, it's simply brings more total damage than MCH. Etc., etc.

That said, the 2/2/2/2 assumption you have isn't particularly accurate right now, let alone historically:

• 4 support-heavy DPS has at times been stronger (old NIN/DRG/MCH/BRD). Taking just 1 support-heavy DPS job has, at other times, been strongest.
• Even now, unless you consider both MNK and PIC "support" jobs, we don't tend towards 2/2/2/2 for the fastest runs at time of writing.

There is no hard 2/2/2/2 rule, just the wax and wane of balance and some basic math, ultimately bounded by bonuses to primary stat and Limit Gauge generation.

[Connor]

At most, because --given how much of the healer kit is a waste already-- if the "Support" can then meet healing requirements more precisely (i.e., with less excess) while having higher damage, it will be harder to even find a party as a healer.

Isn’t the main reason people give for healer kits to actually be anything other than a waste usually, “that’s too hard for casuals!!!”. Surely that argument can’t be made if there are more jobs that can support the healers in emergencies in whatever way? Therefore giving the developers more leeway to make healing itself more interesting and engaging, more involved healing mechanics or whatever.

I mean, obviously giving any job more heals in the current design would be stupid because as you say most things can be solo healed by like, a Warrior lol. But if they done so with the intention of making healing/damage output actually threatening then I think it could work. Obviously that would require like, a rework of the combat system in its entirety, but idk maybe Yoshi-P will do it just for me (He’s gotta listen to someone eventually lol)

And frankly, I think making healing cost more dps is pretty much going to condemn any player that ever makes a mistake to certain death lol. I mean, we already have Scholars who refuse to use Aetherflow heals in any way because its 1 less energy drain. FFXIV really isn’t designed for a ‘heal/dps sacrifice’ style healing any more than it is for pure support jobs. Because ultimately (and sadly) players will work out the optimised dps rotation / timeline and just expect everyone to conform to that. I.E ‘you used [heal] when you could’ve used your resources on [powerful attack]! How dare you! Take them away GMs!’. Either you make the sacrifice and adjust, or you just suck lol. There can’t really be any nuance to it unfortunately. Though really that applies to the majority of the game design, including support. And based on previous evidence I’d say they very much do seem to balance around ‘is this going to make players aggro each other’, at least in theory (not that they wouldn’t cause it entirely by accident lol)

If anything they’re more likely to just slap a dps potency on literally every heal then act like they somehow fixed the problem. ‘Now every healer can dps when they heal! This is totally what you guys wanted , right?’. It’s like a sacrosanct law that feedback on ffxiv will be interpreted in a bizarre and misguided fashion at this point lol

[Payadopa]

Even if we could only achieve balance by further homogenizing the game's classes, it's not worth the cost. The degree of radical balance that some people want will stifle the ability for classes to be distinct and interesting. I would rather have an unbalanced game with a variety of meaningfully different options.

I agree. It's been terrible since ShB. It's not worth it.

[Shurrikhan]

Isn’t main reason people give for healer kits to actually be anything other than a waste usually, “that’s too hard for casuals!!!”.

I'm not sure it's worth thinking about those complaints. The moment they're addressed, given reasonable context, etc., they vault to another distant goalpost.

One need only look at when relative healing requirements were higher ATOP more involved DPS kits, see that healers' portion of active population was HIGHER, and... No, that's it, actually. That's really about the end of it.