2.3+ Slowly coming in.Follow

Sadly this game doesn't support...support classes, which is why BRD isn't truly a support class lol (and why you can get away with not even touching songs in the majority of this game's content, it only comes into play in so few content that it was better off being a cross class skill.) Only time you see it used in a lot of content is if your DPS is so low you NEED Foe (if BLMs) and your healers have no clue what MP management is or constantly raising people who don't know how to dodge a train.



Edited, May 3rd 2014 11:53am by Theonehio

Except Yoshi P said they will add support/hybrid as its own role for a 2/2/2/2 setup so.....yeah. Like I predicted before, expect Bard to get changed at that time (some will of course say "nerfed" but meh).

"We" know your definition of a pet class is definitely... special.

I hope Yoshi-P doesn't ruin the meta by bringing in the support role, but now that you mention it I do remember him saying something similar. This game definitely doesn't need more irreplaceable class roles required for most contents.

There are times in Ex NMs that I really kind of wish I was on my XI WHM instead on XIV WHM. At least that way I could do stuff like make people hit faster.

Best part is, that actually wouldn't happen considering you already do as such now if you're a DPS. Unless you're on a magical server where you never, ever had to wait 17-70 minutes+ to get into content as a DPS, since the DF was put there to be used, and the PF most people tend to go with very specific setups and if you don't have that job leveled and geared..tough ******* Roulettes can help with queue times but you have no choice in what you want to do.

I don't see how adding depth would change that....but you did pretty much explain why the 4 man setup is heavily restrictive. We didn't have this problem when party size was 15, but only had a few choices, and when party size was scaled back to 8 you could have honestly any setup you wanted unless you wanted easy win button setup that was pretty popular with NA players (as they said content was "impossible" with anything other than THM/BLM.)



Edited, May 3rd 2014 3:27pm by Theonehio

The whole support class thing is more about variety than anything. As was mentioned earlier, bringing bard into that role and severly limiting their damage would probably **** some people off, but make others happy. Let them actually put those songs to work, you know? A bard isnt much of a bard if they don't do what bards are supposed to do. Take FFXI's bard for example. Now that's what I would personally like seeing implemented into 14's bard. Perhaps not -exactly- the same, but somewhere around there.. maybe give some more songs that increase phys/mag damage, etc - things like that.

And as for the 2nd role, they could easily do something like how RDM was in 11. I don't know how RDM is post seekers expansion, but back when the level cap was 75 (Last time I played it), RDM was excellent support. Enfeebles can help turn the tide of any battle. I see mobs all over Eorzea casting Paralyze and such on people, so why can't we do the same? Sure you have a PLD that can blind, DRG/MNK that can slow, and of course the master of DOT's SMN, but they could make it so that a RDM-ish type class, while also not big on dishing out damage, can certainly make things alot easier for everyone else in the party.

Finally, a support class LB. Personally, I think it's kind of silly giving BRD a healing LB. They could do something like... where tank has their damage mitigation LB for X seconds, support can increase all stats (STR/DEX/INT/MND) for X seconds. It's simple and useful.

Anywho, these are all just random ideas, but what im saying is... if they wanted to make it work, they certainly could. And do so in such a way that would be interesting and, more importantly, fun! ^^

I'll be "that guy" and state jobs like BRD and RDM were poorly designed in XI. I'd even put WHM in this category if you want to take Banish/Holy and their melee potential into consideration. Now, I know some people better perform if they can just hang back and focus on singular thing like healing, putting songs up, or (re)casting enfeebles (if they could even land...), but the general premise of functional hybrid should mean that all of its tools should be useful and rarely, if ever, a detriment to their overall performance if employed.

BRD was bad because it was basically the lazy man's support if you weren't pulling. Cast a couple songs and maybe play a wannabe back-up WHM for 2 minutes. Simplification? Perhaps, but gear requirements also weren't that terribly demanding. It certainly earned its label as princess job because despite how effective it was, especially when it came to 2 hour party rotations, it wasn't exactly a job many wanted to play for, lack of a better word, glory.

RDM pretty much contradicted itself because magic and melee did not play nice. Single-target everything made buffing up your party a chore. Time spent casting was time you couldn't literally swing with one of the game's poorest weapon categories. Enspells underperformed. Gear selection and skill ratings did not hold up for difficult content. Short supply of WHMs fueled a need for healers, shirking the duty off to the next class with high tier cures. People liked to EXP on weak mobs with moves that needed dispelled, too. MP regeneration was a pain in the *** in XI, both via resting and Refresh/Ballad. Nuking suffered most from accuracy, with the obvious caveat of picking a BLM or eventually a SCH if you needed magic damage with both greater accuracy and oomph. Then you had the enfeebling library, not only limited in variety, but so very often incapable of landing on endgame prey to the point other classes were just as effective with the floored rates if immunity wasn't a thing. SE did such a job in making sure the class remained (below) average that its eventual plummet into obscurity when WHM got the buffs it needed and the underwhelming gains of the level cap rise came at zero surprise to me. I spent probably far more years than I should've trying to bring up these deficiencies to SE as well as arguing with people who likely didn't have the betterment of the class/game in mind. In the end, at its peak, the job was just one of those people maybe wanted around, but never wanted to play. If **** hit the fan, it was always your fault.

Anyway, in seeing what we have of BLM, WHM, and other melee classes in XIV, I could formulate a concept of how a RDM would or should perform in Eorzea. It definitely wouldn't be the backline mage of XI, but it also wouldn't be the solo "god" some feared from there, either. Overall, all I can do is hope SE avoids implementing particularly passive classes/jobs. Reacting is one thing, but looking ahead and enacting plans toward a particular goal is another.

Red mage was at its peak back when 4k/hour was AWESOME exp. The job was great for enfeebling, crowd control and backup healing... even dropping nukes when MP permitted.

But, yeah, endgame... lol. SE forgot to give RDM a purpose there (beyond chainspell stun).

It only got worse from there, as rdm was turned into a refresh/haste bot to facilitate the WTFTPBURN parties.

Uh...

~30-40% is Garuda's damage not even including contagion
25-35% is SMN DoT
35-40% is fester/ruin

Edited, May 5th 2014 1:26am by HitomeOfBismarck

The elemental staves certainly didn't help RDM's cause, even if it was something as simple as the cure potency on light/apollo's and eventually magian's. Not using them effectively gimped your casting, which more or less ties into my earlier point that melee and magic didn't play nice in XI. That didn't have to be the case, but Tanaka and co. just refused to give a hybrid the tools it needed to actually be a hybrid. Calling it butthurt might be an incredibly passive aggressive way to blow off the issue, but RDM and the other more accepted hybrid classes like DRK, BLU, and PLD could've been better in their own ways.

As for BLM or even super situational gear, I know some really got their jollies out of such and maybe it artificially expanded the game's lifespan in some ways, but I'd also say staff swapping hurt BLM in the long haul, too. Sure, Claustrum sucked, their Mythic was out of reach for pretty much everyone, and Empy wasn't much better than Claustrum. The elemental staves were probably one of the biggest bonehead moves made for XI behind Utsusemi and maybe even allowing in-combat gear swaps on the mechanical end.

But this is all kind of veering off topic now with the closest relation really just being how one might handle new/revised jobs in the XIV sphere. Should probably feel silly I can still get so... passionate over a game I haven't really played in 2.5 years.

If they're going to really put in a 4th support role, maybe they could make it a 'stance' where you don't have to level up a whole new class. Like BRD could queue up as support in Minstrel Stance and be delegated to doing more buffing, or a Scholar could queue as Kineseology Stance and buff attack rates and defense or something.. idk...

Edited, May 5th 2014 7:42am by LebargeX

Well, part of RDM's issues weren't RDM's alone. Some were indeed where other classes fell into place. Others were abilities from other jobs synergizing perhaps a bit too well like Stun and Utsu. Global delay affected everyone. The rest is pretty much SE letting the solos persist and becoming a characteristic some came to use to define the class where all that was really achieved was bragging rights for those that didn't exploit pathing AI or move speed hacks *coughRogcough*. I also found a certain element of hypocrisy when it came to some people claiming MMOs are games meant to be played with others, but the RDM status was a-ok for whatever reason.

Right now, XIV really doesn't have some of those traps. Cross-class skills are more reigned in, much to the dismay of some. You can't pull mobs across the entire map to find the most desired location due to leashing. People can act on most things, which generally cuts down on the whole "Just stand there and watch someone take forever..." aspect. Select harder things are also timed, which puts a greater pressure on churning out the DPS. Reraising isn't as simple as slapping on a piece of gear or atma. Open world (H)NMs aren't really a thing, either. Thank god.

I know one of the common fears was that if RDM was good at everything, nobody would play anything else, but that simply wasn't true. Stepping away from the aesthetic for a moment, you'd still have different weapon types, overall gear selection, skill caps, spell categories, and non-subbable spells/abilities to do the trick. And if they didn't, then I'd say it's a pretty good case for that particular job to receive some attention of its own like WHM got. Fears of the superman status could also have been alleviated by better associating costs and consequences to a focused duty. Stances were an avenue they tried for some jobs, and I'd even theorycrafted a couple there at one point in the past. Newer spells with significantly higher MP costs were also another option, as upkeep could've meant not being able to single-heal a party or nuking aggressively. Or some effects just being aura-like. There's a bit of a running gag that arose amongst the RDM community, though, in that ideas we proposed for the job always seemed to wind up in new ones SE added later on. Stuff like Diffusion/Accession for AoEing buffs, GEO getting self/target auras, DNC getting melee-related debuffs, and so on.

Of course, I had times where some people wanted to swear up and down that some things couldn't be done because the code was too old, couldn't be changed, PS2 limitations, or whatever. Yet when you go on to point out actual additions, adjustments, and overcoming things like recast limits or spell library caps, it was all just ignored to persist a "you're wrong and you're stupid!" mentality, but in far more colorful words, that really made me wish SE banned in-game accounts for forum behavior. Some loved to throw the, "The job you want is Blue Mage!" line when "The job want is White Mage, Scholar, or Black Mage!" could generally be slung back if you could actually gauge intent. BLU, however, clashed egregiously on the aesthetic front. First being that utilizing monster abilities really wasn't RDM. Second in that RDM had more of that "three musketeers" feel to it while XI's carried more the middle eastern vibe. Both could still exist in similar, but different ways, as I frequently tried to urge. Though, for some, I think shutting people up about RDM became the goal more than actually helping the job out.

Can't speak much for WoW classes, myself. I want to say Rift is more hybrid-friendly, but at the same time, it's also pretty vulnerable to its own cookie cutter traps for builds and being balanced more around 20-man raids. PvP is also its own can of worms, which probably made hybrids more favorable in Aion because it was simply so easy to cure up damage if you weren't overwhelmed by numbers or caught off guard mid-fight.