Has SE screwed itself?

[Sinaloa]

tldr al posts

There are tons of posibilities to make a tank class dps viable. Thought 10 secs about it and the neatest system I would like to see is the dps doing damage equal to his %+10 on the aggrometer capped at 100. He got aggro he does 100% damage. He´s at 85% of the tank he does 95% damage. That way he had to work for his aggro with tankskills to do highdamage with his classskills.

Would be a strong singletarget DD but able to smash through trash by moves like taunting the third add and focusing on the second to stay up in aggroranges ....

Actually I want that class - Now!

[Kitru]

Thought 10 secs about it and the neatest system I would like to see is the dps doing damage equal to his %+10 on the aggrometer capped at 100. He got aggro he does 100% damage. He´s at 85% of the tank he does 95% damage. That way he had to work for his aggro with tankskills to do highdamage with his classskills.

Problems with this idea abound.

First off, it would be the only class where the DPS *would not* want the tank to actually maintain a strong threat cushion while simultaneously making it *harder* for the tank to keep aggro when the tank is struggling. Running with a *good* tank would end up completely and utterly destroying their DPS; running with a bad tank would end up having the tank itself never tanking a single thing.

Secondly, if the class ever died and had to be raised, they would have utterly abysmal DPS for the remainder of the fight. Enmity doesn't degrade over time so, the longer a fight goes on, the less a single attack matters as it relates to the percentage of total enmity. The only mechanical way for them to get a decent enmity cushion back would be for them to have Provoke, which would exacerbate the first problem, and, if they ever decided to join a FATE, unless they were amongst the very first to hit a target, they wouldn't be able to generate *any* real amount of enmity because Provoke doesn't work when someone outside of your party currently has enmity.

Third, it would require a lot more processing for each attack for the potency on every single target to go through another calculation of total enmity on every single target, which means more lag. On top of that, there wouldn't be a reliable way to determine your own comparative performance if someone outside of your group is tanking since the threat meters only provide information for your own party. Just as a backend consideration, it's more of a hassle than it's worth.

Enmity affecting anything other than who is currently being attacked is just a bad idea.

Of course, I doubt it will ever come up since Yoshi-P has already stated that, if they ever wanted to turn a tank class into a DPS job, they could just have that job remove all of the "additional enmity" benefits from the attacks and replace them with other stuff. The problem, as I see it, with turning a tank class into a DPS class is less about solving the damage/enmity problem and more about creating a compelling DPS rotation/priority since both WAR and PLD have really simple rotations (PLD is just "Halone combo spam!" and WAR is "BB>BB>SE").

[Ehayte]

Problems with this idea abound.

1) A bad tank is just going to suck no matter what, and running with a good tank would mean that the Healer and traditional DPS would be @ 40% of enmity, while the enmity based DPS would be around 80, and they would need to manage their own enmity. Have you ever done an 8-man with another tank and noticed that their enmity was significantly higher than the other characters? It would apply much the same way. Interesting that, inn'it?

2) They would just get a skill that is similar to Provoke, but puts them at, say, 75% of the highest enmity and works in FATEs? Seems pretty simple to me. OR, you could realized that they would build enmity VERY VERY quickly since they are basically multiplying their enmity generation every time they increase their damage through an enmity boosted attack, which would allow them to grab a bunch of enmity quickly, then need to back off or us utility or enmity decreasing skills to stay below the top spot.

3) Don't know about the processing, but you also have the Green/Yellow/Red idicators, and if the class gets a de-aggro ability you could shift off the top spot once you take aggro and cool your dps for a second.

This is actually a super fun idea because the class's dps would be capped by your skill on how well you can manage your enmity, and not by potency and spamming.

However, this would be iffy because it would be single most overpowered solo class EVER, lol. It might be viable with some tweaking - its a super fun idea though : D

[Sluce]

I feel like Square Enix is going to have to have to make some changes to the current system before they create more classes. With FFXI as one class you could use multiple weapons depending on play style and barrow skills from sub-jobs that augmented shared skills. This allowed them to give jobs a unrestricted number of skills and carry spells to new jobs. However, with the current UI system and such there is limiting factors with what you can do. Already my hotbars are almost filled with skills. Therefore, I don't see how they can implement more jobs as well as more skills for each job without flooding hotbars and having no where to put the new skills. I feel like it may turn out to be a really big problem later on. I think they need to re-figure out what they are doing with the amoury/job combo before they can even contemplate moving forward. Like maybe dropping the armoury and just keeping the job theme to start.

[Nonlinear314]

Cecil from FFIV was a sword and board DK tank-ish character.

[Regis]

Would you really be that disappointed in not being able to do sastasha? :P

[Klutz64]

The real corner SE has found themselves in is sticking so strictly with the trinity roles.

I don't even want to see jobs like Red Mage and Dancer in the game, because they're just going to be forced into pure DPS or pure Healing roles and completely ruin the original feel of the job.

[Starfox71rt]

The real corner SE has found themselves in is sticking so strictly with the trinity roles.

I don't even want to see jobs like Red Mage and Dancer in the game, because they're just going to be forced into pure DPS or pure Healing roles and completely ruin the original feel of the job.

This. Or even worse, they try and create a hybrid job that does both dps and healing which will either be undesired because they're not good enough at either or insanely overpowered. (LF3M RDM ONRY)

Further, the issue with this trinity is that for a support class to truly shine, it would end up being restricted to 8/24 man content because there is nowhere to put a support class in 4man groups.

[Ehayte]

The real corner SE has found themselves in is sticking so strictly with the trinity roles.

I think Tank and Healer are pretty much set and forget here, but you can really say that about any MMO to a certain degree. I disagree on the support/DPS portion, further explained below.

Further, the issue with this trinity is that for a support class to truly shine, it would end up being restricted to 8/24 man content because there is nowhere to put a support class in 4man groups.

So, I would disagree here on the simple premise that a support role would simply need to enhance the dps of the group proportionately to make up for the loss of one DPS character, less whatever value you assign to whatever "extras" they bring in. I.E. a Time Mage could have extremely powerful crowd control, being able to Stop and slow mobs (powerful slow, not 20%, simply make big bosses immune), and then their Demi spell could enhance damage done in its radius by 30% or whatever to make up for the lost dps.

The more powerful they make the CC, the less powerful the damage increase. Or it could increase damage done by 100%, but that divides between the number of people in the circle. So if you are in a 4 man, the tank get his DPS increased by 50%, and the DRG gets his DPS increased by 50%, if your are in an 8man and there are 4 DPS in the circle, each get a 25% bonus. If people need to move in and out, it could scale on a per tick basis.

For a dancer, it could give static buffs to healing, dps, total HP, defense, etc, and the Dancer would have to pick which one is most useful, or it could "stack" like 2-3 of the dances together, kind of how an Everquest 1 Bard works. Dungeons would hopefully go just as fast because they could do a combo of something like MP regen, melee crit%/deter buff, and an AE defense buff to the mobs. All marginal increases, but combined they would make up for the missing dps char. Alternatively, they could play defense debuff on mob, HP buff on party, and increased healing % on party in a tough boss fight, increasing survivability at the cost of DPS.

No need to change the way DF works, as they would get dances to enhance casters, tanks, healers, and melee dps. I know those are kind of specific, but you get what I mean in terms of being able to work around the "there is no room for support classes" argument.

[Kitru]

No need to change the way DF works, as they would get dances to enhance casters, tanks, healers, and melee dps. I know those are kind of specific, but you get what I mean in terms of being able to work around the "there is no room for support classes" argument.

The problem with the idea of "support as replacement for DPS" exists both on the back end and the front end. On the back end, you're dealing with the programmatic complexity of diluting the effects based upon the number of targets and even the roles present (imagine the annoyance a "support" would have if a tank was standing in the buff patch that increased damage but diluted it across all people standing in it; you'd be cutting the real DPS contribution by 25% and that's outside of the control of the support player). On the front end, there are all kinds of issues. You're dealing with the problem of support not being able to solo effectively (notice that healers get Cleric Stance because healing and DPS have completely separate stats; on top of that, healer DPS in Cleric Stance is low enough that they often have to resort to healing themselves while solo) unless you make the support a purely group oriented role, wherein you have the problem of group play being *completely* different than solo play. You're dealing with the problem of your performance being completely or largely contingent upon the performance and behavior of other people, plus you can't really have the buffs/debuffs operate upon percentage gains and instead must make them operate upon additive/subtractive gains to make sure gear progression has some value (i.e. debuffs reduce values by a flat number like 50 rather than 10% and that flat number is determined by your mainstat/weapon).

Support as a replacement for DPS rather than a completely discrete role that the game is built around has *all* kinds of problems, which is why ARR has turned "support" into a secondary role that a job adopts as a side benefit to its existing functionality. You can only really have support as an explicit role if the game is designed around it (i.e. group comp is 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS, 1 support), and, even then, you get a *lot* of balance problems unless you drastically limit the cumulative benefits of multiple support characters being present lest you run into the problems that City of Heroes/Villains experienced wherein the optimal composition was 8 support characters because force multipliers acting upon force multipliers ends up with exponentially improved performance.

The trinity works because you have well defined roles that create predictable compositions that content can be balanced around while preserving both solo and group play in a balanced manner. Support as an explicit a focused role (that isn't just "healing") works in solo games where force multiplication turning a fight into a complete and utter joke isn't really going to create issues (hell, that's a lot of the fun of games like FFT where you can force multiply yourself into unkillability in about 100 different ways). It works in sandbox multiplayers where balance isn't a major concern because that's not really the point of the game. In a combat focused multiplayer MMO, support as primary functionality for a role doesn't work because force multiplication creates a crapton of problems that you actually have to address because you *can't* ignore balance, especially when you want to add it after the fact.

"Support as real role" for a game like ARR is something that has to be built into the game from the start with explicit controls implemented to limit the potency of that force multiplication while not making it a mindnumbingly boring chore that *someone* has to submit to doing for the good of the group. Even so, loads of games have tried to go that route, and I've yet to see a case where it hasn't bitten the developers in the ass. It's one of those things that's *theoretically* possible but presents substantial enough problems to implement practically that it's effectively impossible without more work than could be done cost effectively.

Honestly, I don't expect "support" to become a true role. If they do DNC, I see it as either a DPS/support class, like a melee version of BRD, or a straight up healer. I expect that, rather than trying to create a support role and redo the entire balance structure, they'll go the route of just tweaking the vision of the class to fulfill a role within the trinity: it's simpler, just as effective for bringing the class into game, and doesn't require a reworking of so many other things.