Would you consider greedy DPS Mechanics on Tanks/Healers good or bad?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If we're honest, the "harder" jobs aren't played much. Take BLM's long history for example.

---

And I've thought it was reasonable for BLM to have dps rivaling Melees because of that, making its risks come with a return.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Since DT of the three that aren’t AST SCH tends to have the highest peaks but the lowest average (as it’s the hardest healer) but damage wasn’t really my original point in that anyway. SCH is the strongest healer because of everything else it offers

---

Ohh right, I probably should be caring more about the peaks in this context. I guess that variance is caused by how much its output can change based on how safe you plan to use it, and how much its kit can offer compared to the others.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azurarok

And I've thought it was reasonable for BLM to have dps rivaling Melees because of that, making its risks come with a return.



Ohh right, I probably should be caring more about the peaks in this context. I guess that variance is caused by how much its output can change based on how safe you plan to use it, and how much its kit can offer compared to the others.

---

Peaks and average are both important for healers as SCH/AST are quite dependent on party alignment for their buffs to actually get full value. A high peak and low average on SCH basically means in an optimised group SCH is the best but YOUR SCH probably isn’t the best

It’s just that SCH offers so much more than its damage that even if you have a relatively poor SCH damage wise they can still offer so much more than a SGE or a WHM

A knee-jerk thought is that while I think 'risk' does lead to interesting designs, I think there are better ways to incorporate risk/greed into jobs than just 'resource can be used on utility or damage.' My issue with 'damage or utility' choices is that they only really work when the game state is not known like not knowing a fight's timeline or when things are going wrong in a fight. The choice goes away after things get 'solved.' I would prefer actions that still feel risky even when game state has been 'solved.'

I hated (disliked? :p) cleric stance and tank stance dancing, that said I also said I don't think the immediate response to that is that it should be removed and suggested they might be brought into specific jobs (or to think about their functions without a complete purge).

For example cleric stance would be broken by a heal, you LOST damage by this choice (may even allow turning it off manually to 'protect' it, so you can dance in a way), but hey it would be way friendly than sending out a garbage heal (or 3) and watching your party fall apart. Or perhaps each heal cuts the stance timer down. Cleric stance was more annoying for me to see than play, but I disliked the actual play with tank stance dancing and felt it was annoying (especially as a Paladin main where it was quite bad, the oaths were GCD..... meanwhile warriors had enimity built into their basic damage combo so if you main tank you had to deal with that nonsense). I came up with a parity of that one too when I suggested a blue mage, where they would have gameplay around managing azure lion and eye, one buffing defense the other offense, and there being some interplay between the two (where you'd want to risk dropping stacks, or expending even- which would lead to a squishier experience, since at that point the stance impacted defense).

So A) I think obtuse mechanics don't HAVE to go if they can be argued interestingly obtuse but also B) I think it's possible to make them interesting but not insanely frustrating. For example the blue mage turtle shell could have been akin to the boss that uses it where tanking damage would allow you to fire back, or you can cancel it early (but a good timing use would not be a dps loss), or perhaps loom could be cast while turtled (adding interplay between spells).

Warrior used to self pacify themselves (couldn't use skills) with the rage. To be honest self stun anything is, imo, massive hot garbage and should never, ever, be used when you only control one character (go for it when you're controlling more). Yet the suggestion there was instead of pacify you got clouded rage which could be turned into unbridled rage by a healer esuna'ing it (or by you shaking it off / healing X% health, this healing NOT being an overheal), where instead of it being a self stun it was a buff.

Less significant but I've made minor suggestions on Dark Knight as well where skills above X% SELF (calculations ignore other player's applied shields) EHP (effective hp) cost health (but deal more damage), and create a portion of that lost health as a temporary and draining shield. Yet other skills would help the dark knight gain "armor" into that shield and regain health. So you would start out with some vanilla defense skills and once ready start to intentionally be dropping your HP all over while empowering your shields (which would honestly grant more EHP), yet.. if you messed up technically you just helped kill yourself lol.

Anyway, yes but if they're extremly strict they'll be very niche. If you polish it too much it'll be vanilla. SO... good luck :P. I would like enough that each job FEELS different mechanically (SCH especially in HW vs WHM might be a nice example), but not so much at the cost of introducing obtuse mechanics that I want to toss a job into the blender, either because I play them, or because I am playing with them. Like watching warriors cry in macro "PLEASE ESUNA ME, PLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASSEEEEEE" (even though it was only like 5 seconds lol). Or cleric which has definitely murdered a party or five, as I watch the healer drop a sweet 200 hp heal on my 10k max hp butt "thanks for the tickle, please bring out the water cannons...".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If we're honest, the "harder" jobs aren't played much. Take BLM's long history for example.

If there are harder builds, they likely wouldn't be used by the majority of players, because they like it easy. Humans like to get any advantage they can. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist. They are useful when we're getting bored of fights and want something else to handicap them, which is one of the reasons people pick harder jobs when they're getting bored of content - to add a new challenge to overcome.

---

Of course they are, people take the path of least resistance in the modern XIV design (see SMN and DNC ratios last expansion, over half of their respective roles in savage). But that's also tied to the fact that the devs have decided to go full steam ahead on DDR mechanics and encounter exclusive design where jobs stop being the center of the gameplay experience in favor of the former. In essence players stop playing a job and solving encounter design with it, but instead focus on encounter mechanics while playing their simplified rotation on the side.

BLM for instance was played way more back before SB. If you don't believe me go look at the ratios from Creator, BLM stands next to 3 other DPS jobs, and is only overtaken by the big favorites of the meta: DRG and NIN back then.
HW BLM was also the most immobile turret job in the whole history of the game.

As much as people are going to hate it, I believe that both healers and tanks should sacrifice damage when doing healing/tanking responsibilities. Doing damage should be your reward for executing your job well, doing damage should not be the default state with role responsibilities as a distant afterthought.

Actions should come at a cost and both support roles should come with an expected damage cost which you reduce as you optimise and get better at the fight and your job. That would separate the support roles from the damage roles who are the ones that should have doing damage as their main gameplay with support abilities as a distant afterthought.

Greedy dps mechanics introduce opportunity cost, which means you have something to work towards and you eventually get rewarded for mastery over a fight. As you reduce the time you spend on your main responsibilities, you can spend more time and resources on helping on damage. I think that's just good design.

It's no big deal, you have mechanics that ensure you are on-point even with support damage. Like in chaotic every role can get the gaze so you have to watch out for the time and not be greedy with the GCD that it goes off otherwise you might murder people. We all seen a tank or healer go splat several times because someone was greedy to not look their gaze to the wall.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by technole

It's no big deal, you have mechanics that ensure you are on-point even with support damage. Like in chaotic every role can get the gaze so you have to watch out for the time and not be greedy with the GCD that it goes off otherwise you might murder people. We all seen a tank or healer go splat several times because someone was greedy to not look their gaze to the wall.

---

That’s really not what they are asking

They are asking about your opinions on “selfish mechanics” like energy drain

Personally I'm okay with them but there is an overemphasis on damage in this game that bugs me. I'd also like to see more randomized mechanics that force downtime on random players so that outputting damage isn't the end all be all of the game. We need to find a way to diversify gameplay so that people can't obsess over their score on a third party site.

For a game that doesn't allow plug ins it is crazy how it became consumed by balance and homogenization as well as uptime. All these are in service of players being able to enjoy a consistent experience and rank each other on a third party site. This has led to one of the most boring periods to be playing this game.

I have played healer for a few savage tiers and ultimates now and I can't tell you how annoying it is to have a cohealer not do their job and leaving the responsibility to me so they can get one more glare in there, because at the end of the day the only thing that matters to him is a higher number on their report card.

That being said, bad players shouldn't be the reason we don't allow jobs to have flavor. But I'm more supporting of the general idea to make jobs with diverse mechanics and caveats rather than supporting greedy mechanics outright.

-----------------------------
I didnt mind stance dancing
I enjoyed mana shift as a BLM - back when MP actually ran out if you misused it.
I enjoyed aggro management

The only thing I didn't enjoy was TP and goad - the concept of your player getting too physically tired to attack was a bit too much for me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

That’s really not what they are asking

They are asking about your opinions on “selfish mechanics” like energy drain

---

I do think there is somewhat a similar mindset at play though, it's just the greeding mechanic is on the content itself there, and is something everyone has to deal with.

The DPS classes encourage doing this sort of thing and also make mistakes all the time, but again, the party doesn't feel the penalty for it as quickly or strongly compared tanks/healers, especially in casual.

Maybe the tune could change a bit if enrage was easier to reach (i.e. less body checks, rezzes on a few more jobs, and better emergency tanking on some dps) while the dps checks were harsher? (or maybe that'll just cause more problems with the meta?)