Idea: Armoury and Job System changes

[whoopeeragon]

As the "Why would you ever play ARC? I Hate the Class System." topic displays, many people are still divided over the usefulness of the armoury system with the job system now implemented. One concern is that certain jobs perform exactly the same as their class counterparts, rendering the appropriate class usefulness void. Therein lies the problem; classes were meant to be versatile, and yet, as jobs, they are equally as versatile? Hence my proposal for a later revision would be for a job to LOSE an ability from their corresponding class, to further specialise in one region of combat. I shall provide examples:

Note: I unfortunately am not confident with Gladiator/Paladin, Marauder/Warrior, and Pugilist/Monk, so I would skip these three disciplines and instead focus on the ones I do know and play.

LANCER AND DRAGOON
Dragoons alone with Monks are the DPS of the Discipline of War jobs. Dragoons deal greater critical damage, as well as having access to a couple more AoE weaponskills rather than Monk. Essentially, with PGL and ARC as Dragoon's sub-disciplines, they are already differentiated from Lancer by one major aspect - survivability. They lose the ability to heal, to buff, to withstand sudden attacks.

Thus, with that in mind, I propose removing "Life Surge" from the Dragoon's arsenal. Before you tear into me, about lowering the Dragoon's already lack of survivability, a Dragoon typically would not have Life Surge up when focusing on damage dealing – Power Surge should be their main focus.

Not to mention that there will typically be a White Mage to cover the healing aspects. As an addition, if you really wanted survivability, changing to Lancer and gaining access to Sentinel, Cure, Protect, Stoneskin, Bloodbath and other support skills will vastly improve survivability. Dragoon’s aren’t meant to be easily allowed to survive massive onslaughts; Life Surge basically is useless for Dragoons when put In regard with their job specialisations.

CONJURER AND WHITE MAGE
Take White Mage and Conjurer, for example. White Mage's main job is to heal, buff and support the party. Conjurer has that role, as well as being able to deal sufficient damage to off-set the lack of support spells that White Mages have.

However, I see many White Mages still capable for dishing out massive amounts of damage - even more so with Holy. This practically renders Conjurer void aside from the fact that Conjurer can equip Thunder, Fire, Fira and Sanguine Rite for more varieties of spell damage and MP regeneration - but those facts alone do not overpower the fact that WHM still has that role as a damage dealer.

To offset that, I propose removing "Cleric Stance" from the WHM's arsenal of abilities. This way, their damage-dealing prowess is removed - their main focus will be more suited towards healing rather than changing between healing, support, and then damage. You can still aid those doing damage by inflicting Magic Evasion down, or Aero bleed effect, but damage will no longer be a main specialisation for WHMs as many are doing for the current systems.

THAUMATURGE AND BLACK MAGE
Black Mages are like Dragoon and Monk rolled up in one bundle and tossed into the magical side of combat – specialised AoE damage, specialised critical damage, specialised debuffing damage, specialised nuking damage. Their role is probably the easiest to understand – damage damage damage is the key to their placement in a party. Again, it comes down to a matter of survivability for the differentiation between Thaumaturge and Black Mage.

Necrogenesis is the skill I propose be taken out of a Black Mage’s arsenal. Again with the same argument as Dragoon – survivability is NOT a role for a BLM. Second Wind from the Pugilist’s action slots already aids in that – having another ability would negate the loss of survivability skills to the point that it may as well be void.

As the same as Dragoon, Thaumaturges have been known to be interchange between Black Mages, solely for their ability to withstand attacks with a Sanguine Rite + Sacred Prism, as well as Sentinel and other defensive abilities from the Conjurer branch. As a side, having access to Stone and Aero can also be boon for other magic damage dealers in your party to exploit.

ARCHER AND BARD
Bard loses its ability to deal out damage as an Archer in order to gain support skills by singing. The job quest already reflects this – by choosing to put their comrades ahead of self-glory. Thus, Bard’s are specialised in the wild-card support range; having access to damage dealing abilities, and yet mainly focusing on songs that aid the party.

People argue that Bard is still capable of doing plenty of damage, however, which will again lock our ARC which ultimately is meant to be a heavier damage dealer. Bard still has access to Raging Strike and Barrage, which are two very heavy DD-specific skills for the Archer discipline.

I propose removing Raging Strike from the Bard’s discipline. Barrage is given its cooldown time, so it is not as effective, yet removing Raging Strike lowers a Bard’s damage output consistently from light shot, further specialising Bard as a more support discipline.

~~~

These are all suggestions, and thus open to further discussions on the matter, but in a tl;dr, I propose having jobs lose an ability from their corresponding class that further specialises the job into their role.

Discuss the idea, yay or nay.

[Ryans]

A lot of dragoons choose to use life surge for Ifrit Extreme so they aren't draining too much the whm's attention.

Whm doesn't need to heal very much in a few events and they only have 4 rotational nuking spells, two of which are 30ish second cooldowns. Not really much damage output to begin with beyond a little bit of burst damage.

Blm already has one of worst combos in the game (in my opinion) and you want to make it even riskier? Having to convert and place yourself in red HP to make Burst do more damage than a thundara (even just convert in general) and then having to rely on someone else to get you out of red hp is stupid.

Bard is already the worst of the damage dealers and they are barely a "support" class. They use their songs once every 3 minutes and their two hour on a burn phase or primal two hour. The rest of time they are damage dealing. If you want to take away more of bards damage dealing, you have to give them a lot more support abilities to do.

Just a few arguments that I'm sure would come up. The reason classes aren't used right now is because they are geared more towards pvp. All the content we have now is party play, once people have to worry about keeping themselves alive against another player, classes will be valuable.

[Raubahn]

Thus, with that in mind, I propose removing "Life Surge" from the Dragoon's arsenal. Before you tear into me, about lowering the Dragoon's already lack of survivability, a Dragoon typically would not have Life Surge up when focusing on damage dealing – Power Surge should be their main focus.

Ok hold on lemme tell you somethings from a drg aspect. In a Party yes we dont use life surge because
1: it consumes tp to still be active
2:it doesnt effect ws so no drain from ws if u have life surge
3: power surge is more useful since its um power surge :P

BUT!!

its usefullness comes when soloing or farming imagine having to SB ur unfinshed Gae bolg u dont wanna use Power Surge since it decrease ur def in exchange with attack power. so basically if u are a soloing drg you probably want to stick to life surge and not power surge and since u have "Heavy Thrust" which is a long ass stun to a mob u can recover HP from life surge that way. And you seem to have forgoten Dread spikes which is a nice ability if u time it at the right time in a pinch against some bosses Physical WS when u know ur F***ed "100-tonze , Darnus ws's forgot its name, some skirmish bosses like the tree or the golem. <thats my view anyway>

and no am not saying "Hey we dont need classes to survive" i know that switching to LNC gives me more Survival chances.

[Sothis]

Big, big nay from me. I'll use Lancer when I'm going to get my ass kicked solo on DRG, but I still use DRG plenty solo too. And beyond that, I rely on Life Surge in groups as well, just so the healer can worry about keeping other people alive and less about me.

[whoopeeragon]

I see arguments against the removal of Life Surge - that's fine. It was a suggestion - it's more the idea that to specialise the jobs more, I propose removing an ability from the class arsenal that otherwise has no placement in how the jobs are meant to specialise in. It could be Dread Spike for all we know; it's the concept that I'm more focusing on rather than certain abilities.

@Ryans: Some of those ways you are mentioning are attempting to make the jobs more versatile, something classes already are. Jobs are meant to be specialised, hence that versatility shouldn't be allowed. Thus, they are retracting from the usefulness of classes. Of course, I can understand from that angle, especially with the relic requiring soloing for SB (though I do want to mention that even if WHM only has 4 nukes, Stone and Aero have short recast times as well. Not to mention they are used very regularly in, for example, moogle fight first phase.) I do appreciate the arguments though, and will try my best to explain, but I should make it more obvious that those abilities I chose are mere suggestions; any other ability could be taken out provided that it is not part of the particular job's specialisation.

BLMs shouldn't be even taking damage in the first place (ranged + enmity control) so the risk factor is slightly negated in that. Yea, the red HP would be a !!! alert, but Second Wind will take you out of that red range. And forgive me, but as far as I'm aware, a WHM is there to keep your HP up, haha.

I also feel that there are too little abilities in regards to Bard being a support role, hence why this is just a proposal for when they change or add more abilities. I'm not expecting them to change it NOW, but further along when the armoury and job systems are fleshed out more. One reason why I chose Raging Strike was because I'm expecting additional jobs to branch off the classes - Ranger is another likely job to branch off from Archer. I can see them losing Swiftsong as an ability, as they'll likely be the damage-dealing job of the disciplines branching from Archer, but that's just speculation. You can probably see why I would choose those abilities though. :P

tl;dr: the abilities I mentioned are just suggestions. What I'm aiming for though is discussion on the idea of removing an ability from the job's corresponding class which is not in line with that job's particular specialization.

[Renen]

How bout you wait till 2.0?
Because we already know they are changing the skills and such.
Why don't we see what they got there?

[Rhomagus]

I think people are confusing the OP's position. He's not asking for the removal of either system. He's asking for a method to divert the two to fit their proposed niches better.

I personally don't think it's absolutely necessary. Even in XI, where jobs were very specialized, I had wished there were some backup abilities to fall onto.

One thing this thread and the other thread mentioned in the OP aren't taking into account is the availability of new abilities once we see a level cap increase. I foresee a much greater divergence between classes and jobs once we're able to eventually level to 75 or 99.

The ideas OP offers though are certainly not game breaking. They would just require the same amount of group cohesion (in the case of party play with jobs) as XI did such as announcing via a macro that you are about to convert and that you'll need a heal in about 6 seconds.

While I don't agree with the OP wholeheartedly, I still liked his post because the changes proposed aren't too drastic and if the dev team were to implement such a system I do think it would help diversify jobs from classes a bit more in the short term.

This also opens up avenues for a traditional look at the Dark Knight job. As of now, if it were to branch from Gladiator, it seems like it would just end up being a blood tank of some sort.

[Mijin]

Like I already mentioned in my other thread I would just be a lot happier if they removed classes all together. If they don't do that, and it's pretty clear they probably wont, I guess anything would be better than what we have now to further separate the identity of jobs vs. their respective classes.