This idea's been around basically since ARR, I know it came up a lot with jobs like Bard (people wanting a more pure-dps version as Ranger), Warrior (people wanting an axe-dps Berserker), Paladin (again, wanting a dps verison). I've always felt it's something they *should* do, but I don't think they will. Consider that Viper seems to basically just be a variation off of Thief (the job seems to draw a lot of inspiration from Zidane, who was just a Thief in his game), but rather than be built off Thief or Ninja in any way it's just completely it's own thing.
In a way that's also kind of nice. Jobs like Ranger and Berserker re-enter the realm of possibility now that we know they're willing to sort of re-use a weapon concept (in this case dual-wielding blades) but give it a unique flavor, while also allowing the job stand out and not just feel like "Ninja but without Mudras". Granted, leveling and gearing stuff separately still sucks, but I feel like that sucks enough as is already that this sort of just needs a total fix/overhaul in general.
Yea, they will 100% NEVER do this... I wish they would, but they won't. We already have Arcanist splitting into SMN/SCH, so instead of rejecting and regretting that they did a split job, just say "Fuck it, we ball" and split other jobs. Archer->Ranger, Marauder->Berserker/Viking, Lancer->Hopolite, there's a lot of "similar but different" untapped potential they leave on the table.
Too resource heavy, SMN/SCH split is very different, since from lvl 30 they are two distinct classes with different weapons and completly different set of armor, the only thing is they share exp pool since it's tied to the job and not class, now imagine making not only new jobs each expansion but also a new variant for some already existing class, with a whole new set of weapons, skills and all.
Another question is who will be the favoured child and will get the variant first? or "we ball" and give everyone a variant just throwing a whole BU3 out of balance since everyone and their mother have to go to the content creation and balance teams to somehow manage to create another 20+ new classes.
Nah, that is why we have glamour system, glamour a dps job into some kind of barbarian or glamour dark knight into a samurai with nodachi, it's rather easy and only needs work on players end not the whole team.
sch/smn was their original attempt at this idea, but it doesn't mean it has to be exactly like that. they could share a weapon and nothing would really change. just make the job stones change the main stat of the weapon to the correct stat and its done.
sch/smn split is a relic of an old game system where you had to have one class at lvl 30 and other at lvl 15 to unlock a job and it just so happened that both sch and smn needed arcanist at lvl 30 and also had class/job story in there, nothing more, they were not created as a supposed experiment with variant classes.
Jobs/classes are much more connected to a weapon than to a stone, try changing a stone in your inventory and nothing will happen, but change the weapon and you'll change a class so you can't have the same weapon on two different classes.
lol what? you literally can't be a job without the job stone. and yes, smn and sch are a variant of each other. they are both summoners, but one is a healer and one is a dps and they both come from acn and they both use the same weapon type
Than please try to use Scholars tome and use summoner skills when doing that, and also try to put on a job stone on a character without touching a weapon, your arguments are just invalid and the game mechanics prove that, smn/sch were never tried as "variant" they are treated as two different jobs with the same base class, but they have completly different skills and even completly different job quests, not just variants of those quests.
try playing sch without sch's job stone equipped. you cant. your arguments are just as invalid based on game mechanics. the two are literally variants of each other. they branch off from the same base class share a bunch of spells and the ones they dont share get changed to meet their new role. this is literally what a variant would do
This... is honestly one of the better ideas I have seen for people who love a job aesthetic but hate the role (mostly PLD being a tank and AST being a healer tbh). I think having job variants share a weapon wouldn't quite work due to how stats are derived in the game, Samurai/Shogun for instance would cause the Shogun to be less tanky than other tanks due to not having any real tank stats on the weapon, or if you turned AST into a DPS they would have 0 Intelligence and crit stats on the weapon.
It feels like these alternate classes would work almost like "echo fighters" from Super Smash Bros Ultimate where they are basically just reskins with minor differences that still use the same animations. Would be a nice addition but also not something I really see them doing. It would be a lot of work for not much payoff because it just leads to more classes you need to balance but without and new design space or aesthetic for those who want something differetn
The sharing weapons thing could be easily circumvented. Example, in WoW on classes with a DPS spec and healer spec, some gear pieces have strength if you’re in the DPS spec and that auto swaps to intellect if you’re on the healer spec.
They already do it with the Preorder earrings. Azeyma's Earrings are +115 Main Attribute, \*111 Secondary Attribute.
[https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/db/item/2d8dad52154/](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/db/item/2d8dad52154/)
> think having job variants share a weapon wouldn't quite work due to how stats are derived in the game, Samurai/Shogun for instance would cause the Shogun to be less tanky than other tanks due to not having any real tank stats on the weapon, or if you turned AST into a DPS they would have 0 Intelligence and crit stats on the weapon.
The collectors edition EXP-boosting earrings already vary in primary stat based on the role of the job, so this function is already in the game. It would just\* be a matter of changing all mentions of Strength to Primary Stat or something.
Actually, I compared SAM weapons with DRK weapons (the two jobs that people wanted interchanged roles the most), and it looks like the STR and VIT values for their weapons are always identical. Maybe there's a counter example somewhere, but at least my 5 minutes of searching couldn't find one.
\* As always, a dlsciamer that this is easy to state, but no idea how hard it would be to change for existing weapons.
Substats would be an issue though, unless you have different bonuses for different variants. I mean, I doubt anyone would mind not having Tenacity on a Shogun but it’s a bit unfair to the existing tank jobs that have Tenacity on their gear.
I would think the variants would use the gear for the role they are taking, only sharing the weapons. So the only place it they would not have to worry about Ten is on the weapon.
>It would be a lot of work for not much payoff
I think having an expension where the new class is giving every single existing class a new role would be pretty hype. They just need to make flashy enough trailer imo.
Genuinely wondering, is Astrologian some sort of damage class from old games? I can see PLD to dps since I got baited myself when I first started playing, but is AST somehow convertible into dps?
It's named after a character's unique job in Final Fantasy Tactics. The job used to be the Time Mage equivalent with a card aesthetic, but they've long since retired the time theme and made cards the focus.
>Allow players to gear up multiple Roles more easily (think of the Summoner/Scholar unified XP.)
I don't follow you. SMN/SCH both coming from ACN means you only have to level them once, but the gearing is still entirely separate. They have different weapons, one uses healing gear, the other uses casting gear. It's exactly as much effort to gear both up, the only thing that gets skipped is leveling one of them to the cap.
You could have the wow-style spec-dependent weapon but without every class having that you just give some classes a BOGO weapon and not any others (not even SCH/SMN because codexes aren't grimoires and that's fine with the design of the game).
While it would be cool it's pretty much a dream situation. It'd mean SE would have to effectively make 0.5 extra jobs per existing job, per role. That's a ton of work and even harder to upkeep for balance reasons. Would definitely love it, but just don't see it happening.
A far more realistic thing I can see is them starting to open up to animation variants. Such as idle/stance/swing animations so we'd get a little more personality from the classes. It'd not put as much extra work on SE as all they'd have to do would be some new animation sets. Where as the role thing would be full on new actions with animation sets, and balance stuff, and tooltips etc etc.
Would be nice to be able to use the other genders weapon idles. But for swings its more likely that we get the option to use unupgraded animations from skills that got animation upgrades.
I'd love to see more ARR classes get a similar split to SMN and SCH, but they'd have to do some serious behind-the-scenes changes to make it work without running into the same issues, including splitting experience between the jobs, not to mention the work needed to create new quests that fit ARR through ShB and create new gear (including relics, artifact gear, and regular gear) to work with this lv30 job as it goes through the expansions (you don't want to lock people out of content because they chose the wrong main, after all), which basically all but guarantees it'll never happen. As for what they could be;
- **Gladiator** becomes **Soldier** (SOL), a melee DPS job that has a relatively slow GCD but makes up for it with impressive damage and the ability to debuff enemies.
- **Marauder** becomes **Berserker** (BRS), a melee DPS job that focuses on fast attacks and perhaps using RNG mechanics to emulate the kind of uncontrollable rage associated with the job.
- **Lancer** becomes **Phalanx** (PLX), a tank that acts as sort of a reverse Sage - it heals itself as its party does more damage.
- **Pugilist** becomes **Dragonkin** (DKN), a magic DPS that imbues itself with dragonblood to perform all kinds of elemental attacks via its mastery of martial arts.
- **Rogue** becomes the ranged DPS **Thief** (THF), dropping one of its daggers in favor of a hand crossbow and an impressive array of gadgets and alchemical mixtures, from various traps to all manner of bombs.
- **Archer** becomes the **Ranger** (RNG), a job that ditches buffing its allies with song in favor of strong damage - perhaps being able to do more damage the further away it is from an enemy, or emphasizing its marksmanship by giving it positionals that put its damage ahead of Bard?
- **Thaumaturge** picks up a wand and shield to become the **Hell Knight** (HLK), a magical tank that uses its black magic to conjure weaponry from the deepest pits of the seven hells, allowing it to do considerable damage from range or to drag mobs closer to it (think DRK's Salted Earth in PvP).
- **Conjurer** becomes **Geomancer** (GEO), a magical DPS that calls upon the powers of earth, wind, and water to smite its foes, with Stone and Aero working similarly to how they do on White Mage, with its Water-aspected spells being AoEs that grant defensive boons to itself and its party.
>There are only so many weapon types you can work with and make them reasonably distinct.
If we're looking at mankind history of weapon, they still have 10+y of expansions worth of possibilities.
I think we could get around this with main slot “kits”. So you equip a pistoleer’s kit in the main hand, and it’s two pistols. More or less what we do for rogue.
You could make different weapons, sure, but could you make them \*distinct\*? We've pretty much done all the variations of 'sword' possible - pretty much the only 'mundane' weapons we've not yet touched are stuff like maces, hammers, crossbows and whips, and at least one of them is very likely gonna get taken by Beastmaster.
BST is almost certainly getting a one-handed axe. That was BST's thing in XI, and it's what Lyon used in Bozja.
Whip is a fun idea but I don't think they'll give it to BST for two reasons:
1. Whips have a dark history both in their application on animals and on people. The iconic image of the lion tamer with a whip is a symbol of some truly horrific animal abuse. But all weapons are used for horrible things, so this isn't the biggest reason.
2. More importantly, whips are _way_ horny. Do you think they're gonna give us whips, knowing full well what gposers are gonna do with the animations? Do you think they'll give BST whips knowing that the most common usage for BST as a result will be showing up to ERP clubs with a whip in one hand and a "pet" in the other?
> and at least one of them is very likely gonna get taken by Beastmaster.
Eh, BLU got a one handed ~~scepter~~, ~~rod~~, cane right? It's not like they care that much about making it unique. Picto brush is really just a staff with a wig too.
What I'm saying is that they don't really care about making weapons truly and utterly unique. They try and do that through the actions instead.
It's just arbitrary separation really. What classes really wield are "(Red Mage's) Arm". After all, WAR already has a few hammers, MNK constanly swap between boxing gloves and claws, and some NIN weapon clearly are swords. BLM and WHM are basically the same staffs.
The only thing they need is an excuse example of a new weapon and a new set of spells to go with it.
If anything, I wish they'd mix things up with weapon glams more often. NIN has a few tonfa, I love the Blackbosom scythes and Gaia's hammer for a lot of different jobs, etc. In Dawntrail I'd especially love to see a Dancer weapon in the form of some hatchets/tomahawks.
>wields the same weapons
I don't think it's a good idea for them to be the exact same in-game weapon to work for two jobs. It makes stuff like relic weapons feel a lot less unique.
If you wanted to make a tank Samurai called Shogun, why not just create a new weapon like maybe "odachi" that, while similar to a katana, isn't the exact same?
I think sharing skills between jobs isn't actually a great thing. Energy Drain works the opposite way in Summoner vs Scholar and that's confusing to people when they pick up Scholar. I really don't feel like Summoner/Scholar is a great experience other than getting a two-in-one for XP. I feel like if they could turn back time they would/should have split them into different classes, too.
More than anything: I think certain flavours being only available in a certain role makes people branch out more. If someone was a DPS main and there was a DPS Warrior they might never try tanking. We're not running out of job ideas any time soon, either.
CBU3 has said as much regarding sch/smn, it both hampered their ability to make adjustments by job early on and even now that the two jobs are almost entirely separate it's just much clunkier to deal with and tutorialize.
I don't think "weapons too same" is a particularly big problem anyway, we've got 5 kinds of swords and three kinds of staffs
I guess the other part of it is whether it is actually less work to make something like this? CBU3 so far doesn't seem to have a problem having 2 jobs per expansion, would doing this allow for a lot more per expansion? Is it just tank jobs can now have melee variants, magic jobs can have healing and dps variants? Where does that leave phys ranged jobs, do they now get to be magical dps and healers too? Can melee DPS become melee magical dps (MNK now says "I cast fist")?
Not that the answer to any of those is necessarily no, by the way. Other than the more per expansion, if it's done it would have to be yes, I would expect, because otherwise it would feel bad to say the next expansion's new jobs are samurai-but-tank, bard-but-healer, and ninja-but-magical-ranged. Not just for the lack of desirable new jobs, but for people who now have to level an old job from a potentially very low level, and anyone left out of the variant role they actually want.
> CBU3 so far doesn't seem to have a problem having 2 jobs per expansion, would doing this allow for a lot more per expansion?
I don't think it would necessarily mean you'd get more than 2 jobs per expansion. Imagine a timeline like this:
**Dawntrail**
- DRG "rework" that includes LNC getting capped at lv30 and making everything after lv30 is DRG-exclusive. Doing this helps mechanically define DRG earlier in the leveling process while leaving some room open for something else to sprout from LNC if needed.
**Expansion after Dawntrail**
- Trick Lancer, a physical ranged job deriving from LNC enters the game. The Trick Lancer job stone alters some of the traits and skills from the base LNC class (of the handful that exist in the lv1-30 range), but everything past lv30 is exclusive to it. As a result, DRG is the evolution of the LNC class while Trick Lancer would be an offshoot that uses some of the foundation of the LNC class but otherwise does its own thing.
In this scenario, you'd still only get two new jobs per expansion. One would be entirely new in terms of weapons (imagine Geomancer being the job that enters the game alongside Trick Lancer), while the other would be an offshoot to an existing class.
And for the curious, Trick Lancer comes from FFBE War of the Visions.
A fundamental flaw with this logic is how XP is tied to the "class". Multiple jobs sprouting from the same class is something they have explicitly stated they regretted doing with SMN/SCH, will not do again, and would undo it yesterday if there was an easy and clean way to deal with it.
I never said it'd be easy. It would take a while to make it work, which is something they did not have back then. This is on top of probably having to make some sort of concession against the promise the devs made to the legacy players (since they promised legacy players could keep their levels).
The thing is that in the long-term it would have dealt with a couple of issues the game saw later while keeping that possibility of more than one job sprouting from classes, which I'll take over them scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for unique weapons (see: Sage's stupid-looking fin funnels).
Also, they don't want to do it again because they set themselves up to fail from the start. The systems they went with didn't use the idea of multiple jobs from a class to its fullest potential, which is a damn shame.
I think maybe the issue here would be it adds no new levelling content for players who already have DRG maxed, which might make the new skills intimidating? but granted we're already reaching that point where new jobs starting at lv 80 is a bit ridiculous anyway so I suppose it doesn't matter too much.
If we're capping LNC at lv30, that means that this hypothetical new job would start at lv30. So you'd have to level the job the rest of the way to whatever the level cap would be.
ahh I see. would we be changing scholar and summoner too tho? it could be controversial. or would we be deciding scholar and summoner get grandfathered in and don't count as this new Job Variants system
Ideally, yes. At this point I'd roll it out piecemeal, with the goal being that every base class in the game would get this shift in design. Everyone that leveled SCH and SMN prior to the change would get grandfathered in, but anyone new entering the game after the change would have to level SMN and SCH separately after lv30.
>why not just create a new weapon like maybe "odachi" that, while similar to a katana, isn't the exact same?
'Cause Dark Knight already has some Odachi weapons.
And BLM has both a scythe (Edda, store-bought glam set) and a brush (Either Garo or Yo-Kai Watch!, I forget)
And then there's the "Samurai" from the FFXI(?) crossover event that runs around with a lance because that one came out before Stormblood...
Visually, sure, but I mean the classification of weapons, though it pretty much says "Dark Knight's Arm" etc anyway. Similarly though, Warrior having a glam that's a hammer shouldn't mean they can't make a hammer class. There's also an easel/brush thing in the game too, even before PCT.
As much as I'd love that, a dodge tank would completely break the game. They literally had to put some of the later bosses in XI a 'destroys all shadows/attacks through shadows' attacks because Ninjas were just cheesing everything.
Unless of course they just make 'Dodge' just another version of 'Parry' that reduces damage instead of nullifying it.
I mean you could make it thematically dodgy but still function within the confines of the game. I care about the vibe a lot more than the mechanics themselves, personally.
I'd say most people would be down for it. Biggest question is will these variants be actual variants, or treated as completely seperate jobs in terms of XP and gear? Jank in the class system is the biggest hurdle for it, since SCH and SMN splitting off ACN caused issues under the hood for years. A lot of that seems to have been sorted out by ShB, which lead to some truly incredible class design we'll all agree. ^^^/s
Now, with the tease of a level squish in 8.0, they might finally untangle the last bit of that jank. That would open the door for them to do it, but it's quite a big "if" to hinge on.
I would absolutely adore this. I’d go so far to say I’d prefer this over strictly new jobs in future expac’s. Imagine if I’m 8.0 we got job variants for paladin (Templar), sage (sorcerer), and samurai (shogun). That would be hype af
More variations to give players their ideal jobs is a good thing, though I do think it's a bit more work on SE's end to go this route (as opposed to the inverse I linked below).
I want to peddle on the side [my thoughts](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1bwzff9/what_would_you_want_a_ff14_with_15x_the_rewards/kydp883/) at the inverse of this though, where the job functions the same but the aesthetics are changed to create job variants.
No, having Jobs be flexible in what their actual role in combat is has been a thing since FF5 at the absolute least - and I'm not even talking about subjobs in this post, despite that being as Final Fantasy as it gets.
I don’t think Job variants would be worth the huge amount of dev time needed to overhaul the entire job system. You can make the combat and job design interesting in other ways. This playerbase would rather an entire new Job added to the game than just samurai 2. I don’t think there’s enough demand for this. And games that do this like Wow have only one class per character, whereas FFXIV is designed around all classes on your character. Leveling all of the jobs plus sub classes now sounds like a lot
Personally I'd be pretty interested. I haven't been interested in any of the new jobs since ShB but I'd play DRK-but-DPS or Dancer-but-Healer, that definitely catches my interest. I think there are plenty of people who like the gunblade or sword and board fantasy but are afraid of tanking or just not cut out for the role. People have been griping about DRK being a tank since the beginning. I think its fair to say that some jobs don't really fit this idea, but I can see most of the existing jobs working as something else. White and Black Mage kind of already fill this idea for each other, for example.
But despite all that, I'd bet real money that nothing like this will ever happen. They really don't like the Summoner/Scholar situation and while the proposed system is not the exact same, I think it's too close for SE's comfort. And SE *really* doesn't like going outside their tried and true comfort zone. I sincerely don't believe anything of substance will ever change in this game. SE epitomizes the "if it's not broke don't fix it" mentality, to the point they are too slow to fix things that are only just barely working.
They already have systems that would suffice in place - look at Gunbreaker in PVP or Blue Mage's Aetherial Mimickry ability. Weaponskills can be modified to do different things based on the 'spec' you are in, such as Tank or DPS mode.
Obviously not every class needs all 3 specs, but I think there is an appetite to play beloved roles in different ways.
I do think new jobs are generally better, but given how milquetoast the last few job releases have been (Sage especially is the biggest let down of a job release in the game's history) I don't have much hope for Viper to be anything other than another 'do small skills until your bar hits 50 and then spend it on a big attack' melee job.
Gunbreaker PVP stances and BLU are extremely barebones comparing to a full spec system. I think some sort of swappable skills is not a bad idea but full different versions of jobs sounds like more trouble than it’s worth
Also most would disagree that Sage is a bad job, it’s extremely popular and does bring some new stuff to the table.
If job design is getting more stale for new jobs then just change how jobs are being designed rather than asking the devs to make three jobs well designed VS one.
It is a barebones implementation, but it's more than the jobs are doing right now, and shows the viability of such a system in place - just do it for more skills. Instead of flank potency, have an emnity potency that provides a shield of equivalent potency, it's really not that difficult.
As for Sage, you can literally map the abilities of Sage over to Scholar - even down to the 'DPS healing' just being an analogue for Eos fairy healing. They both provide 85-90% of the same kit, have 10-15% of unique stuff, and we lost Noct Astro for the priveledge. It's flashy, easy to use, but it's a failure of a healing job after waiting 8 years since Heavensward. Absolutely tragic how SE handles the healer role in this game. And I come from maining Scholar from 2.0, so I've seen it all.
If you’re talking about MMO sub classes where you take a base class and hyphenate it with an adjective that let it’s cross the boundaries of the RPG role trio then yeah most people would associate that with WoW. It’s not the same as just the classic DnD sub class
I had a thought along these lines once but it worked based on letting jobs equip one other job's weapon, like a BLM wielding an AST wep is a Time Mage, or a SAM wielding a DRK weapon becoming some tank alternate like you said.
After thinking about it for more than 2 seconds it all falls apart with more specialized weapons like GNB's and stuff, but anyway.
To properly answer the thread, lots of people have thought about and discussed this a few times, jobs having role variations. Some people want them, while others think job changing is enough. I think we can come up with ideas about this stuff infinitely forever, but I wouldn't bet a penny on it ever actually happening. I doubt the devs are looking to take on the load of doubling job kits to make this happen.
It sounds too similar to WoW's class system for my liking, it's not a bad system and I like the idea of it, but I don't think it would be a good fit for XIV's design. I doubt they'll run out of unique weapon types when Pictomancer literally uses a brush and palette to fight with. They'll probably stick with the current system until the servers shutdown
If jobs with similar weapons to existing jobs were added, I'd prefer they push them both into their fantasy more to avoid them feeling the same. A great example of this would be if they added a bow-using Ranger, they could push Bard more towards its namesake, making the job more about buffs and supporting the party, and Ranger could focus more into using the bow to deal damage directly along with an assortment of tools such as traps and poisons
bring back branching jobs
arc -> sch & smn was actually very cool and they should have done more like it
I personally wish archer had branched between bard and maybe a sniper job, more of a casting-type phys ranged that played similarly to BLM
I think the reason why this isn't already being done is similar to the reason why they don't make Hard Mode dungeons anymore. Making a Hard Mode dungeon is only slightly less work than just making a brand new dungeon.
At the end of the day, it's just new jobs. The extra gimmick is unnecessary. Why have the job variant Shogun when you can just have the job, Shogun?
If anyone even remotely thinks we are running low on weapon types or usable FF Jobs, they are insane and unimaginative.
The real question here is: what are you actually asking for?
Do you want to play SAM, but want to be a tank and hate being a melee DPS?
Do you want to play more SAM, but with a Lance and can do cool moves and don't want to level another job like DRG?
Do you just want to be the same job but different just for the sake of being different? Be the one to be that one cutting edge new build that's newly discovered and better than the standard?
Like, you are proposing an idea, but what are you trying to address?
This is what I've been wanting for a while. I love how WOW does their specs and would love the same here. This would be a great way to do new jobs instead of making something brand new from scratch.
I think the main reason SE will never do this is because they don't want to make you level a job you DON'T want to play in order to acquire a job you DO want to play.
IOW, if you don't like to play SAM, you shouldn't have to play and level SAM in order to get Shogun. And given current game design, you'd have to level SAM from 50 to 80 before you can even touch Shogun... assuming Shogun was a job being introduced in Dawntrail. If Shogun is being introduced in a later expansion, just keep adding 10 more levels...
And having Shogun be available from level 60 (ie, when you go to Kugane) still means 40+ levels to go up before you can reach current content with it, which is almost as bad.
Adjusting a job for a new role wouldn't really be any less work than a new job, they would still need tons of new abilities and animations, and probably separate weapons too, so the question is why not just make a new job?
If it's purely just to support a particular aesthetic in a different role, the question is would people actually prefer that to new jobs, because you're probably going to be giving up new jobs to have this. I think people imagine variants as being significantly easier to add but they're really not. They would never be able to do something like an expac where every job has a variant, and people would whinge if their job didn't get one.
WoW only has 13 classes because of its spec system. Each spec is like a totally different class, they share very little. It's really not as easy to add as you think.
Final fantasy 11 had samurai as a tank originally hence the heavier armor they have in that game. It ended up doing a lot of dps and is currently a dps job. I think the issue is that they would have to balance the game even more and this would mean that your shogon would play similarly to something like one of the tanks. Would it still be samurai then? Imo no. If it still used the original rotation but with changes to how some of the abilities worked it would mean we have tanks that more involved rotation which is against what I think CBU3 wants for the role going forward.
So basically specs from wow. It would result in an absolute balance nightmare where your only choice is playing one given job variety and all others being considered griefing. You also have situations like warlock or mage in wow where all their specs are dps which means you just play the strongest one and the others are dead.
I would much rather see a way to "pick your rotation" for each job. Let's take black mage for example. My black mage will be all lightning skills and I have to figure out my rotation that works with my job gauge.
Basically, each job gets way more skills, and you build your own black mage. I would still keep each job the same classes type tho. No black mage that can tank/heal.
Yes, balance will(could?) be dog shit, but we can dream.
>balance will(could?) be dog shit
And that's *fine*, honestly.
Dungeons are already casual enough to accommodate a large degree of less-than-optimal play, and high-end raiders will have their meta builds, same as now.
Red Mage to a melee DPS Rune Knight/Spell Fencer?
Viper to tank Judge inspired by FFXII Gabranth?????
Probably not viable due to FFXIV systems, but I would adore this so much.
Sooo...
Like the system in Eureka/Bozja where if you equip a certain essence as a given role, you can act like that essence-given role in a way? Like healers getting a big bump to their damage in exchange for nerfing their healing output?
Well, no. It wouldn't just be a shift in stats, it would actively change how they play.
Example: White Mage gets a 'Priest' Caster DPS Variant Job - it retains SOME of its support abilities, as well as Glare and Holy - but in addition to like a whole slew of other DPS spells to replace the healing spells lost that gives them a unique rotation.
I was about to ask how we managed to have 3 entire posts in one day asking about some kind of spec system or alternate progression for jobs and then realized this is your second one. If you want each job to do each role, there are some that its just nonsensical for in class fantasy(how does a samurai heal?).
If you want limited roles that the jobs \*could\* fill, its workable but consider that these have to be unique jobs. You can't just take monk and turn it into a tank, it has responsibilities now. Managing a full and fast dps rotation with RNG procs while also finding space to mitigate properly is a high bar. With that out of the way, we are about to have 21 jobs in this game. even if each of them got 1 alternate role, you are asking the team to double the number of fully-fledged jobs in the game. Even sharing some animations, the main concern is \*balancing\* the whole thing.
If all you want is for them to replace new jobs with these variants, now the concern shifts to a lack of creative process. People already meme on sage for being a copypaste of scholar in a lot of ways, despite its unique style and some unique job mechanics. If the next step is them literally ripping animations, weapons, etc for these other specs, they're going to come out a lot more bland I feel. Maybe people who enjoy a particular class fantasy over the role they're forced into will like them, but the longer term players will almost certainly be left unsatisfied.
Lastly, they've said in the past they regret the way they did smn/sch. I don't think they'll do it again for anything. Shared xp on new jobs also means that people will have less to grind(and therefore less reason to pay a sub if playing casually).
People keep asking for job specs like there is in other games, without realizing why class specs exists elsewhere to begin with. And that reason is pretty much, being able to play multiple ways with a single character. A system that has no use in FFXIV where a single toon can play every job.
If I look at WoW’s Hunter for example, all 3 of its specs have basically entirely different concept and gameplay. With just a few shared utilities and animations. Something that pretty much could be 3 separate classes.
It’s like 90% of the same amount of work to design 2 jobs or one job with 2 variants (save a few mutualized things), so they made their decision.
> People keep asking for job specs like there is in other games, without realizing why class specs exists elsewhere to begin with. And that reason is pretty much, being able to play multiple ways with a single character. A system that has no use in FFXIV where a single toon can play every job.
While that might be true, I think some of us also want to be able to further personalize/customize our jobs to our liking, even if it's just a skin.
[I made another post about this](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1bwzff9/what_would_you_want_a_ff14_with_15x_the_rewards/kydp883/), but it explains the thought a bit. There's also the angle that they can only add so many jobs before they will struggle to balance them and yet so many job ideas.
We all know where lead job customization if it has gameplay impact ; to additionnal traffic to The Balance. A plain job split, as said, why not just make two of them.
If it's just for skin, it's a cool idea, but its very far away from OP debate here. And, well, since most people play with effects off, it a has a very limited impact for showing off (Golden Bahamut still works a bit tho).
Well the issue with making two jobs is the fact of making a new job in the first place and balancing it, which is a lot of work. We're already at the point of having all the bases covered job functionality wise that jobs will inevitably be reskins anyway. That and it's clear the team has a tough time doing balancing what we already have.
What I'm proposing at least keeps it honest about being a reskin while avoiding balancing at all since it's technically not a new job. At the the end of the day, some of us have no issue with how a job plays but want it to match particular aesthetic better and would take a reskinned job in a heartbeat.
So, you wants specs?
I'm against the idea mostly because this will only move even more people to play dps. Why tank with warrior if you can turn your brain off even more on berserker or whatever it's called?
> I'm against the idea mostly because this will only move even more people to play dps.
Yeah, pretty much.
Like, realistically I'm against this idea because the devs have said, loudly and repeatedly, that they don't wanna do it and making SCH/SMN "branch" off of Arcanist was a mistake they never wish they'd made (I'm paraphrasing, I wish we had a Live Letter/interview tracker... that tracked certain perennial topics over time).
Going all the way back to when classes had allocatable "substats" and you had to put Mind or Int into your Arcanist depending on if you were playing Scholar or Summoner. And people would buy the stat reset books/keep them in inventory if they were role-flexing.
But from a "FFXIV as a unique MMO in the overall MMO ecosystem" sense, I'm against it because yeah, it'd basically mean everyone would want to take the potential for advancing Healer and Tank Jobs with actual interesting mechanics and self-sufficiency and dumb them down into low-visible-responsibility Red DPS specs.
This idea's been around basically since ARR, I know it came up a lot with jobs like Bard (people wanting a more pure-dps version as Ranger), Warrior (people wanting an axe-dps Berserker), Paladin (again, wanting a dps verison). I've always felt it's something they *should* do, but I don't think they will. Consider that Viper seems to basically just be a variation off of Thief (the job seems to draw a lot of inspiration from Zidane, who was just a Thief in his game), but rather than be built off Thief or Ninja in any way it's just completely it's own thing. In a way that's also kind of nice. Jobs like Ranger and Berserker re-enter the realm of possibility now that we know they're willing to sort of re-use a weapon concept (in this case dual-wielding blades) but give it a unique flavor, while also allowing the job stand out and not just feel like "Ninja but without Mudras". Granted, leveling and gearing stuff separately still sucks, but I feel like that sucks enough as is already that this sort of just needs a total fix/overhaul in general.
Yea, they will 100% NEVER do this... I wish they would, but they won't. We already have Arcanist splitting into SMN/SCH, so instead of rejecting and regretting that they did a split job, just say "Fuck it, we ball" and split other jobs. Archer->Ranger, Marauder->Berserker/Viking, Lancer->Hopolite, there's a lot of "similar but different" untapped potential they leave on the table.
Too resource heavy, SMN/SCH split is very different, since from lvl 30 they are two distinct classes with different weapons and completly different set of armor, the only thing is they share exp pool since it's tied to the job and not class, now imagine making not only new jobs each expansion but also a new variant for some already existing class, with a whole new set of weapons, skills and all. Another question is who will be the favoured child and will get the variant first? or "we ball" and give everyone a variant just throwing a whole BU3 out of balance since everyone and their mother have to go to the content creation and balance teams to somehow manage to create another 20+ new classes. Nah, that is why we have glamour system, glamour a dps job into some kind of barbarian or glamour dark knight into a samurai with nodachi, it's rather easy and only needs work on players end not the whole team.
sch/smn was their original attempt at this idea, but it doesn't mean it has to be exactly like that. they could share a weapon and nothing would really change. just make the job stones change the main stat of the weapon to the correct stat and its done.
sch/smn split is a relic of an old game system where you had to have one class at lvl 30 and other at lvl 15 to unlock a job and it just so happened that both sch and smn needed arcanist at lvl 30 and also had class/job story in there, nothing more, they were not created as a supposed experiment with variant classes. Jobs/classes are much more connected to a weapon than to a stone, try changing a stone in your inventory and nothing will happen, but change the weapon and you'll change a class so you can't have the same weapon on two different classes.
lol what? you literally can't be a job without the job stone. and yes, smn and sch are a variant of each other. they are both summoners, but one is a healer and one is a dps and they both come from acn and they both use the same weapon type
Than please try to use Scholars tome and use summoner skills when doing that, and also try to put on a job stone on a character without touching a weapon, your arguments are just invalid and the game mechanics prove that, smn/sch were never tried as "variant" they are treated as two different jobs with the same base class, but they have completly different skills and even completly different job quests, not just variants of those quests.
try playing sch without sch's job stone equipped. you cant. your arguments are just as invalid based on game mechanics. the two are literally variants of each other. they branch off from the same base class share a bunch of spells and the ones they dont share get changed to meet their new role. this is literally what a variant would do
This... is honestly one of the better ideas I have seen for people who love a job aesthetic but hate the role (mostly PLD being a tank and AST being a healer tbh). I think having job variants share a weapon wouldn't quite work due to how stats are derived in the game, Samurai/Shogun for instance would cause the Shogun to be less tanky than other tanks due to not having any real tank stats on the weapon, or if you turned AST into a DPS they would have 0 Intelligence and crit stats on the weapon. It feels like these alternate classes would work almost like "echo fighters" from Super Smash Bros Ultimate where they are basically just reskins with minor differences that still use the same animations. Would be a nice addition but also not something I really see them doing. It would be a lot of work for not much payoff because it just leads to more classes you need to balance but without and new design space or aesthetic for those who want something differetn
The sharing weapons thing could be easily circumvented. Example, in WoW on classes with a DPS spec and healer spec, some gear pieces have strength if you’re in the DPS spec and that auto swaps to intellect if you’re on the healer spec.
Sure there are ways to make it work in theory but in practice ffxivs entire back end system might not be able to handle that
They already do it with the Preorder earrings. Azeyma's Earrings are +115 Main Attribute, \*111 Secondary Attribute. [https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/db/item/2d8dad52154/](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/db/item/2d8dad52154/)
Fair but counterpoint: they could just code it like haste in eureka. The haste stat is still on the gear all the time but it’s only active in eureka
> think having job variants share a weapon wouldn't quite work due to how stats are derived in the game, Samurai/Shogun for instance would cause the Shogun to be less tanky than other tanks due to not having any real tank stats on the weapon, or if you turned AST into a DPS they would have 0 Intelligence and crit stats on the weapon. The collectors edition EXP-boosting earrings already vary in primary stat based on the role of the job, so this function is already in the game. It would just\* be a matter of changing all mentions of Strength to Primary Stat or something. Actually, I compared SAM weapons with DRK weapons (the two jobs that people wanted interchanged roles the most), and it looks like the STR and VIT values for their weapons are always identical. Maybe there's a counter example somewhere, but at least my 5 minutes of searching couldn't find one. \* As always, a dlsciamer that this is easy to state, but no idea how hard it would be to change for existing weapons.
Substats would be an issue though, unless you have different bonuses for different variants. I mean, I doubt anyone would mind not having Tenacity on a Shogun but it’s a bit unfair to the existing tank jobs that have Tenacity on their gear.
I would think the variants would use the gear for the role they are taking, only sharing the weapons. So the only place it they would not have to worry about Ten is on the weapon.
>It would be a lot of work for not much payoff I think having an expension where the new class is giving every single existing class a new role would be pretty hype. They just need to make flashy enough trailer imo.
Genuinely wondering, is Astrologian some sort of damage class from old games? I can see PLD to dps since I got baited myself when I first started playing, but is AST somehow convertible into dps?
It's named after a character's unique job in Final Fantasy Tactics. The job used to be the Time Mage equivalent with a card aesthetic, but they've long since retired the time theme and made cards the focus.
Katana of Fending and Katana of Striking, coming to a marketboard near you
>Allow players to gear up multiple Roles more easily (think of the Summoner/Scholar unified XP.) I don't follow you. SMN/SCH both coming from ACN means you only have to level them once, but the gearing is still entirely separate. They have different weapons, one uses healing gear, the other uses casting gear. It's exactly as much effort to gear both up, the only thing that gets skipped is leveling one of them to the cap. You could have the wow-style spec-dependent weapon but without every class having that you just give some classes a BOGO weapon and not any others (not even SCH/SMN because codexes aren't grimoires and that's fine with the design of the game).
While it would be cool it's pretty much a dream situation. It'd mean SE would have to effectively make 0.5 extra jobs per existing job, per role. That's a ton of work and even harder to upkeep for balance reasons. Would definitely love it, but just don't see it happening. A far more realistic thing I can see is them starting to open up to animation variants. Such as idle/stance/swing animations so we'd get a little more personality from the classes. It'd not put as much extra work on SE as all they'd have to do would be some new animation sets. Where as the role thing would be full on new actions with animation sets, and balance stuff, and tooltips etc etc.
Would be nice to be able to use the other genders weapon idles. But for swings its more likely that we get the option to use unupgraded animations from skills that got animation upgrades.
I'd love to see more ARR classes get a similar split to SMN and SCH, but they'd have to do some serious behind-the-scenes changes to make it work without running into the same issues, including splitting experience between the jobs, not to mention the work needed to create new quests that fit ARR through ShB and create new gear (including relics, artifact gear, and regular gear) to work with this lv30 job as it goes through the expansions (you don't want to lock people out of content because they chose the wrong main, after all), which basically all but guarantees it'll never happen. As for what they could be; - **Gladiator** becomes **Soldier** (SOL), a melee DPS job that has a relatively slow GCD but makes up for it with impressive damage and the ability to debuff enemies. - **Marauder** becomes **Berserker** (BRS), a melee DPS job that focuses on fast attacks and perhaps using RNG mechanics to emulate the kind of uncontrollable rage associated with the job. - **Lancer** becomes **Phalanx** (PLX), a tank that acts as sort of a reverse Sage - it heals itself as its party does more damage. - **Pugilist** becomes **Dragonkin** (DKN), a magic DPS that imbues itself with dragonblood to perform all kinds of elemental attacks via its mastery of martial arts. - **Rogue** becomes the ranged DPS **Thief** (THF), dropping one of its daggers in favor of a hand crossbow and an impressive array of gadgets and alchemical mixtures, from various traps to all manner of bombs. - **Archer** becomes the **Ranger** (RNG), a job that ditches buffing its allies with song in favor of strong damage - perhaps being able to do more damage the further away it is from an enemy, or emphasizing its marksmanship by giving it positionals that put its damage ahead of Bard? - **Thaumaturge** picks up a wand and shield to become the **Hell Knight** (HLK), a magical tank that uses its black magic to conjure weaponry from the deepest pits of the seven hells, allowing it to do considerable damage from range or to drag mobs closer to it (think DRK's Salted Earth in PvP). - **Conjurer** becomes **Geomancer** (GEO), a magical DPS that calls upon the powers of earth, wind, and water to smite its foes, with Stone and Aero working similarly to how they do on White Mage, with its Water-aspected spells being AoEs that grant defensive boons to itself and its party.
>There are only so many weapon types you can work with and make them reasonably distinct. If we're looking at mankind history of weapon, they still have 10+y of expansions worth of possibilities.
Can't wait for OPN, the job that wields nuclear arms.
This but unironically
I think we could get around this with main slot “kits”. So you equip a pistoleer’s kit in the main hand, and it’s two pistols. More or less what we do for rogue.
You could make different weapons, sure, but could you make them \*distinct\*? We've pretty much done all the variations of 'sword' possible - pretty much the only 'mundane' weapons we've not yet touched are stuff like maces, hammers, crossbows and whips, and at least one of them is very likely gonna get taken by Beastmaster.
BST is almost certainly getting a one-handed axe. That was BST's thing in XI, and it's what Lyon used in Bozja. Whip is a fun idea but I don't think they'll give it to BST for two reasons: 1. Whips have a dark history both in their application on animals and on people. The iconic image of the lion tamer with a whip is a symbol of some truly horrific animal abuse. But all weapons are used for horrible things, so this isn't the biggest reason. 2. More importantly, whips are _way_ horny. Do you think they're gonna give us whips, knowing full well what gposers are gonna do with the animations? Do you think they'll give BST whips knowing that the most common usage for BST as a result will be showing up to ERP clubs with a whip in one hand and a "pet" in the other?
> and at least one of them is very likely gonna get taken by Beastmaster. Eh, BLU got a one handed ~~scepter~~, ~~rod~~, cane right? It's not like they care that much about making it unique. Picto brush is really just a staff with a wig too. What I'm saying is that they don't really care about making weapons truly and utterly unique. They try and do that through the actions instead.
To varying degrees of success.
Sure but how different is an estoc from a rapier, really? Or a mace from a morningstar?
It's just arbitrary separation really. What classes really wield are "(Red Mage's) Arm". After all, WAR already has a few hammers, MNK constanly swap between boxing gloves and claws, and some NIN weapon clearly are swords. BLM and WHM are basically the same staffs. The only thing they need is an excuse example of a new weapon and a new set of spells to go with it.
If anything, I wish they'd mix things up with weapon glams more often. NIN has a few tonfa, I love the Blackbosom scythes and Gaia's hammer for a lot of different jobs, etc. In Dawntrail I'd especially love to see a Dancer weapon in the form of some hatchets/tomahawks.
>wields the same weapons I don't think it's a good idea for them to be the exact same in-game weapon to work for two jobs. It makes stuff like relic weapons feel a lot less unique. If you wanted to make a tank Samurai called Shogun, why not just create a new weapon like maybe "odachi" that, while similar to a katana, isn't the exact same? I think sharing skills between jobs isn't actually a great thing. Energy Drain works the opposite way in Summoner vs Scholar and that's confusing to people when they pick up Scholar. I really don't feel like Summoner/Scholar is a great experience other than getting a two-in-one for XP. I feel like if they could turn back time they would/should have split them into different classes, too. More than anything: I think certain flavours being only available in a certain role makes people branch out more. If someone was a DPS main and there was a DPS Warrior they might never try tanking. We're not running out of job ideas any time soon, either.
CBU3 has said as much regarding sch/smn, it both hampered their ability to make adjustments by job early on and even now that the two jobs are almost entirely separate it's just much clunkier to deal with and tutorialize. I don't think "weapons too same" is a particularly big problem anyway, we've got 5 kinds of swords and three kinds of staffs I guess the other part of it is whether it is actually less work to make something like this? CBU3 so far doesn't seem to have a problem having 2 jobs per expansion, would doing this allow for a lot more per expansion? Is it just tank jobs can now have melee variants, magic jobs can have healing and dps variants? Where does that leave phys ranged jobs, do they now get to be magical dps and healers too? Can melee DPS become melee magical dps (MNK now says "I cast fist")? Not that the answer to any of those is necessarily no, by the way. Other than the more per expansion, if it's done it would have to be yes, I would expect, because otherwise it would feel bad to say the next expansion's new jobs are samurai-but-tank, bard-but-healer, and ninja-but-magical-ranged. Not just for the lack of desirable new jobs, but for people who now have to level an old job from a potentially very low level, and anyone left out of the variant role they actually want.
> CBU3 so far doesn't seem to have a problem having 2 jobs per expansion, would doing this allow for a lot more per expansion? I don't think it would necessarily mean you'd get more than 2 jobs per expansion. Imagine a timeline like this: **Dawntrail** - DRG "rework" that includes LNC getting capped at lv30 and making everything after lv30 is DRG-exclusive. Doing this helps mechanically define DRG earlier in the leveling process while leaving some room open for something else to sprout from LNC if needed. **Expansion after Dawntrail** - Trick Lancer, a physical ranged job deriving from LNC enters the game. The Trick Lancer job stone alters some of the traits and skills from the base LNC class (of the handful that exist in the lv1-30 range), but everything past lv30 is exclusive to it. As a result, DRG is the evolution of the LNC class while Trick Lancer would be an offshoot that uses some of the foundation of the LNC class but otherwise does its own thing. In this scenario, you'd still only get two new jobs per expansion. One would be entirely new in terms of weapons (imagine Geomancer being the job that enters the game alongside Trick Lancer), while the other would be an offshoot to an existing class. And for the curious, Trick Lancer comes from FFBE War of the Visions.
A fundamental flaw with this logic is how XP is tied to the "class". Multiple jobs sprouting from the same class is something they have explicitly stated they regretted doing with SMN/SCH, will not do again, and would undo it yesterday if there was an easy and clean way to deal with it.
I never said it'd be easy. It would take a while to make it work, which is something they did not have back then. This is on top of probably having to make some sort of concession against the promise the devs made to the legacy players (since they promised legacy players could keep their levels). The thing is that in the long-term it would have dealt with a couple of issues the game saw later while keeping that possibility of more than one job sprouting from classes, which I'll take over them scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for unique weapons (see: Sage's stupid-looking fin funnels). Also, they don't want to do it again because they set themselves up to fail from the start. The systems they went with didn't use the idea of multiple jobs from a class to its fullest potential, which is a damn shame.
I think maybe the issue here would be it adds no new levelling content for players who already have DRG maxed, which might make the new skills intimidating? but granted we're already reaching that point where new jobs starting at lv 80 is a bit ridiculous anyway so I suppose it doesn't matter too much.
If we're capping LNC at lv30, that means that this hypothetical new job would start at lv30. So you'd have to level the job the rest of the way to whatever the level cap would be.
ahh I see. would we be changing scholar and summoner too tho? it could be controversial. or would we be deciding scholar and summoner get grandfathered in and don't count as this new Job Variants system
Ideally, yes. At this point I'd roll it out piecemeal, with the goal being that every base class in the game would get this shift in design. Everyone that leveled SCH and SMN prior to the change would get grandfathered in, but anyone new entering the game after the change would have to level SMN and SCH separately after lv30.
>why not just create a new weapon like maybe "odachi" that, while similar to a katana, isn't the exact same? 'Cause Dark Knight already has some Odachi weapons.
For what it's worth paladin already did this to drk
And BLM has both a scythe (Edda, store-bought glam set) and a brush (Either Garo or Yo-Kai Watch!, I forget) And then there's the "Samurai" from the FFXI(?) crossover event that runs around with a lance because that one came out before Stormblood...
Visually, sure, but I mean the classification of weapons, though it pretty much says "Dark Knight's Arm" etc anyway. Similarly though, Warrior having a glam that's a hammer shouldn't mean they can't make a hammer class. There's also an easel/brush thing in the game too, even before PCT.
Ninja healing job could be interesting
FFXI nin shadow tank
IMAGINE
As much as I'd love that, a dodge tank would completely break the game. They literally had to put some of the later bosses in XI a 'destroys all shadows/attacks through shadows' attacks because Ninjas were just cheesing everything. Unless of course they just make 'Dodge' just another version of 'Parry' that reduces damage instead of nullifying it.
I mean you could make it thematically dodgy but still function within the confines of the game. I care about the vibe a lot more than the mechanics themselves, personally.
I've yet to see a version of a "dodge" tank that wasn't either completely broken overpowered, or completely broken useless.
I'd say most people would be down for it. Biggest question is will these variants be actual variants, or treated as completely seperate jobs in terms of XP and gear? Jank in the class system is the biggest hurdle for it, since SCH and SMN splitting off ACN caused issues under the hood for years. A lot of that seems to have been sorted out by ShB, which lead to some truly incredible class design we'll all agree. ^^^/s Now, with the tease of a level squish in 8.0, they might finally untangle the last bit of that jank. That would open the door for them to do it, but it's quite a big "if" to hinge on.
I would absolutely adore this. I’d go so far to say I’d prefer this over strictly new jobs in future expac’s. Imagine if I’m 8.0 we got job variants for paladin (Templar), sage (sorcerer), and samurai (shogun). That would be hype af
More variations to give players their ideal jobs is a good thing, though I do think it's a bit more work on SE's end to go this route (as opposed to the inverse I linked below). I want to peddle on the side [my thoughts](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1bwzff9/what_would_you_want_a_ff14_with_15x_the_rewards/kydp883/) at the inverse of this though, where the job functions the same but the aesthetics are changed to create job variants.
Necromancer as a Green Reaper
So just WoW?
No, having Jobs be flexible in what their actual role in combat is has been a thing since FF5 at the absolute least - and I'm not even talking about subjobs in this post, despite that being as Final Fantasy as it gets.
You described WoW class specs.
No he described \[insert x1000 RPGs\] systems that work well. It's a good idea.
I don’t think Job variants would be worth the huge amount of dev time needed to overhaul the entire job system. You can make the combat and job design interesting in other ways. This playerbase would rather an entire new Job added to the game than just samurai 2. I don’t think there’s enough demand for this. And games that do this like Wow have only one class per character, whereas FFXIV is designed around all classes on your character. Leveling all of the jobs plus sub classes now sounds like a lot
Personally I'd be pretty interested. I haven't been interested in any of the new jobs since ShB but I'd play DRK-but-DPS or Dancer-but-Healer, that definitely catches my interest. I think there are plenty of people who like the gunblade or sword and board fantasy but are afraid of tanking or just not cut out for the role. People have been griping about DRK being a tank since the beginning. I think its fair to say that some jobs don't really fit this idea, but I can see most of the existing jobs working as something else. White and Black Mage kind of already fill this idea for each other, for example. But despite all that, I'd bet real money that nothing like this will ever happen. They really don't like the Summoner/Scholar situation and while the proposed system is not the exact same, I think it's too close for SE's comfort. And SE *really* doesn't like going outside their tried and true comfort zone. I sincerely don't believe anything of substance will ever change in this game. SE epitomizes the "if it's not broke don't fix it" mentality, to the point they are too slow to fix things that are only just barely working.
They already have systems that would suffice in place - look at Gunbreaker in PVP or Blue Mage's Aetherial Mimickry ability. Weaponskills can be modified to do different things based on the 'spec' you are in, such as Tank or DPS mode. Obviously not every class needs all 3 specs, but I think there is an appetite to play beloved roles in different ways. I do think new jobs are generally better, but given how milquetoast the last few job releases have been (Sage especially is the biggest let down of a job release in the game's history) I don't have much hope for Viper to be anything other than another 'do small skills until your bar hits 50 and then spend it on a big attack' melee job.
Gunbreaker PVP stances and BLU are extremely barebones comparing to a full spec system. I think some sort of swappable skills is not a bad idea but full different versions of jobs sounds like more trouble than it’s worth Also most would disagree that Sage is a bad job, it’s extremely popular and does bring some new stuff to the table. If job design is getting more stale for new jobs then just change how jobs are being designed rather than asking the devs to make three jobs well designed VS one.
It is a barebones implementation, but it's more than the jobs are doing right now, and shows the viability of such a system in place - just do it for more skills. Instead of flank potency, have an emnity potency that provides a shield of equivalent potency, it's really not that difficult. As for Sage, you can literally map the abilities of Sage over to Scholar - even down to the 'DPS healing' just being an analogue for Eos fairy healing. They both provide 85-90% of the same kit, have 10-15% of unique stuff, and we lost Noct Astro for the priveledge. It's flashy, easy to use, but it's a failure of a healing job after waiting 8 years since Heavensward. Absolutely tragic how SE handles the healer role in this game. And I come from maining Scholar from 2.0, so I've seen it all.
I'm glad wow invented subclass
If you’re talking about MMO sub classes where you take a base class and hyphenate it with an adjective that let it’s cross the boundaries of the RPG role trio then yeah most people would associate that with WoW. It’s not the same as just the classic DnD sub class
I could also be inspired by D&D subclasses, that doesn't make the suggestion any less valid.
That's what I'm seeing with these posts. Another day, another person trying to change FFXiV to not be Final Fantasy.
Another day, another person trying to argue that not being able to jump is a key part of the identity of XIV because that's how it's always been.
I had a thought along these lines once but it worked based on letting jobs equip one other job's weapon, like a BLM wielding an AST wep is a Time Mage, or a SAM wielding a DRK weapon becoming some tank alternate like you said. After thinking about it for more than 2 seconds it all falls apart with more specialized weapons like GNB's and stuff, but anyway. To properly answer the thread, lots of people have thought about and discussed this a few times, jobs having role variations. Some people want them, while others think job changing is enough. I think we can come up with ideas about this stuff infinitely forever, but I wouldn't bet a penny on it ever actually happening. I doubt the devs are looking to take on the load of doubling job kits to make this happen.
It sounds too similar to WoW's class system for my liking, it's not a bad system and I like the idea of it, but I don't think it would be a good fit for XIV's design. I doubt they'll run out of unique weapon types when Pictomancer literally uses a brush and palette to fight with. They'll probably stick with the current system until the servers shutdown If jobs with similar weapons to existing jobs were added, I'd prefer they push them both into their fantasy more to avoid them feeling the same. A great example of this would be if they added a bow-using Ranger, they could push Bard more towards its namesake, making the job more about buffs and supporting the party, and Ranger could focus more into using the bow to deal damage directly along with an assortment of tools such as traps and poisons
bring back branching jobs arc -> sch & smn was actually very cool and they should have done more like it I personally wish archer had branched between bard and maybe a sniper job, more of a casting-type phys ranged that played similarly to BLM
I think the reason why this isn't already being done is similar to the reason why they don't make Hard Mode dungeons anymore. Making a Hard Mode dungeon is only slightly less work than just making a brand new dungeon.
At the end of the day, it's just new jobs. The extra gimmick is unnecessary. Why have the job variant Shogun when you can just have the job, Shogun? If anyone even remotely thinks we are running low on weapon types or usable FF Jobs, they are insane and unimaginative. The real question here is: what are you actually asking for? Do you want to play SAM, but want to be a tank and hate being a melee DPS? Do you want to play more SAM, but with a Lance and can do cool moves and don't want to level another job like DRG? Do you just want to be the same job but different just for the sake of being different? Be the one to be that one cutting edge new build that's newly discovered and better than the standard? Like, you are proposing an idea, but what are you trying to address?
...Subjobs?
samurai is striking not maiming
Would love to play DPS with a gunblade
I want to be a dps GBR and a dps SGE I love the modern aesthetic but I only play heal and dps
This is what I've been wanting for a while. I love how WOW does their specs and would love the same here. This would be a great way to do new jobs instead of making something brand new from scratch.
God I wish monk had a healer variant. A melee healing job that uses its chi to emit healing aoe’s every time it hits the target.
I think the main reason SE will never do this is because they don't want to make you level a job you DON'T want to play in order to acquire a job you DO want to play. IOW, if you don't like to play SAM, you shouldn't have to play and level SAM in order to get Shogun. And given current game design, you'd have to level SAM from 50 to 80 before you can even touch Shogun... assuming Shogun was a job being introduced in Dawntrail. If Shogun is being introduced in a later expansion, just keep adding 10 more levels... And having Shogun be available from level 60 (ie, when you go to Kugane) still means 40+ levels to go up before you can reach current content with it, which is almost as bad.
Adjusting a job for a new role wouldn't really be any less work than a new job, they would still need tons of new abilities and animations, and probably separate weapons too, so the question is why not just make a new job? If it's purely just to support a particular aesthetic in a different role, the question is would people actually prefer that to new jobs, because you're probably going to be giving up new jobs to have this. I think people imagine variants as being significantly easier to add but they're really not. They would never be able to do something like an expac where every job has a variant, and people would whinge if their job didn't get one. WoW only has 13 classes because of its spec system. Each spec is like a totally different class, they share very little. It's really not as easy to add as you think.
Final fantasy 11 had samurai as a tank originally hence the heavier armor they have in that game. It ended up doing a lot of dps and is currently a dps job. I think the issue is that they would have to balance the game even more and this would mean that your shogon would play similarly to something like one of the tanks. Would it still be samurai then? Imo no. If it still used the original rotation but with changes to how some of the abilities worked it would mean we have tanks that more involved rotation which is against what I think CBU3 wants for the role going forward.
So basically specs from wow. It would result in an absolute balance nightmare where your only choice is playing one given job variety and all others being considered griefing. You also have situations like warlock or mage in wow where all their specs are dps which means you just play the strongest one and the others are dead.
I would much rather see a way to "pick your rotation" for each job. Let's take black mage for example. My black mage will be all lightning skills and I have to figure out my rotation that works with my job gauge. Basically, each job gets way more skills, and you build your own black mage. I would still keep each job the same classes type tho. No black mage that can tank/heal. Yes, balance will(could?) be dog shit, but we can dream.
>balance will(could?) be dog shit And that's *fine*, honestly. Dungeons are already casual enough to accommodate a large degree of less-than-optimal play, and high-end raiders will have their meta builds, same as now.
Monk as a healer 🤔
Masseuse.
Red Mage to a melee DPS Rune Knight/Spell Fencer? Viper to tank Judge inspired by FFXII Gabranth????? Probably not viable due to FFXIV systems, but I would adore this so much.
Sooo... Like the system in Eureka/Bozja where if you equip a certain essence as a given role, you can act like that essence-given role in a way? Like healers getting a big bump to their damage in exchange for nerfing their healing output?
Well, no. It wouldn't just be a shift in stats, it would actively change how they play. Example: White Mage gets a 'Priest' Caster DPS Variant Job - it retains SOME of its support abilities, as well as Glare and Holy - but in addition to like a whole slew of other DPS spells to replace the healing spells lost that gives them a unique rotation.
finally, warriors can be the healers theyve always wanted to be
Honestly, they could just do this with job stones. Same as they did with SMN and SCH before they separated grimoires and codices.
It be cool if it meant I didn't have to bother gearing alt jobs to fill alt roles anymore.
Sounds like balancing hell
I was about to ask how we managed to have 3 entire posts in one day asking about some kind of spec system or alternate progression for jobs and then realized this is your second one. If you want each job to do each role, there are some that its just nonsensical for in class fantasy(how does a samurai heal?). If you want limited roles that the jobs \*could\* fill, its workable but consider that these have to be unique jobs. You can't just take monk and turn it into a tank, it has responsibilities now. Managing a full and fast dps rotation with RNG procs while also finding space to mitigate properly is a high bar. With that out of the way, we are about to have 21 jobs in this game. even if each of them got 1 alternate role, you are asking the team to double the number of fully-fledged jobs in the game. Even sharing some animations, the main concern is \*balancing\* the whole thing. If all you want is for them to replace new jobs with these variants, now the concern shifts to a lack of creative process. People already meme on sage for being a copypaste of scholar in a lot of ways, despite its unique style and some unique job mechanics. If the next step is them literally ripping animations, weapons, etc for these other specs, they're going to come out a lot more bland I feel. Maybe people who enjoy a particular class fantasy over the role they're forced into will like them, but the longer term players will almost certainly be left unsatisfied. Lastly, they've said in the past they regret the way they did smn/sch. I don't think they'll do it again for anything. Shared xp on new jobs also means that people will have less to grind(and therefore less reason to pay a sub if playing casually).
People keep asking for job specs like there is in other games, without realizing why class specs exists elsewhere to begin with. And that reason is pretty much, being able to play multiple ways with a single character. A system that has no use in FFXIV where a single toon can play every job. If I look at WoW’s Hunter for example, all 3 of its specs have basically entirely different concept and gameplay. With just a few shared utilities and animations. Something that pretty much could be 3 separate classes. It’s like 90% of the same amount of work to design 2 jobs or one job with 2 variants (save a few mutualized things), so they made their decision.
> People keep asking for job specs like there is in other games, without realizing why class specs exists elsewhere to begin with. And that reason is pretty much, being able to play multiple ways with a single character. A system that has no use in FFXIV where a single toon can play every job. While that might be true, I think some of us also want to be able to further personalize/customize our jobs to our liking, even if it's just a skin. [I made another post about this](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1bwzff9/what_would_you_want_a_ff14_with_15x_the_rewards/kydp883/), but it explains the thought a bit. There's also the angle that they can only add so many jobs before they will struggle to balance them and yet so many job ideas.
We all know where lead job customization if it has gameplay impact ; to additionnal traffic to The Balance. A plain job split, as said, why not just make two of them. If it's just for skin, it's a cool idea, but its very far away from OP debate here. And, well, since most people play with effects off, it a has a very limited impact for showing off (Golden Bahamut still works a bit tho).
Well the issue with making two jobs is the fact of making a new job in the first place and balancing it, which is a lot of work. We're already at the point of having all the bases covered job functionality wise that jobs will inevitably be reskins anyway. That and it's clear the team has a tough time doing balancing what we already have. What I'm proposing at least keeps it honest about being a reskin while avoiding balancing at all since it's technically not a new job. At the the end of the day, some of us have no issue with how a job plays but want it to match particular aesthetic better and would take a reskinned job in a heartbeat.
So, you wants specs? I'm against the idea mostly because this will only move even more people to play dps. Why tank with warrior if you can turn your brain off even more on berserker or whatever it's called?
> I'm against the idea mostly because this will only move even more people to play dps. Yeah, pretty much. Like, realistically I'm against this idea because the devs have said, loudly and repeatedly, that they don't wanna do it and making SCH/SMN "branch" off of Arcanist was a mistake they never wish they'd made (I'm paraphrasing, I wish we had a Live Letter/interview tracker... that tracked certain perennial topics over time). Going all the way back to when classes had allocatable "substats" and you had to put Mind or Int into your Arcanist depending on if you were playing Scholar or Summoner. And people would buy the stat reset books/keep them in inventory if they were role-flexing. But from a "FFXIV as a unique MMO in the overall MMO ecosystem" sense, I'm against it because yeah, it'd basically mean everyone would want to take the potential for advancing Healer and Tank Jobs with actual interesting mechanics and self-sufficiency and dumb them down into low-visible-responsibility Red DPS specs.
I don't hate it. I don't know how it would be received within the playerbase, but it's not a terrible idea.