Please finally fix Tank, DPS and Healer roles SE

Healing just isn't fun, when I play healer I want to be healing on every pull, tanks shouldn't have to wall to wall for a healer to need to heal, this is bad design, you figure square enix could properly balance this so that the healer should be healing on every pull but nope they didn't. Instead the company is lazy and doesn't want to make healers and tanks jobs fun, they want them to be braindead and boring and decided that if we want fun we gotta wall to wall which that itself isn't great. Healers shouldn't have to be green DPS, healers are healers not bloody dps. I dropped healing because it just isn't fun to play the way it is, if I play a healer I want to bloody well play a HEALER!

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I get that, but again: Having more on to do on Role A does not require removing tools from Role B and Role C. You can just deal with the bottleneck itself (raising the healing/mitigation required, by virtue of raising the base incoming damage).

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As the only reason Role A has so little to do is their niche being spread out to role B and C in ever increasing amounts, yes that is absolutely necessary.

Esp. As we are already at a point where a bad Tank+Healer have a surprisingly high Chance to not clear normal content,
While a good Tank will be a bore for every moderatly skilled Healer even in your daily expert Roulette.

If you blindly increase the dmg to the point a good tank and good Healer are not bored in normal content, passable ones will struggle to clear and the bad ones might not even be able to finish the dungeon with Trusts.


Imagine how playing tank would feel if Aggromanagement could be done by DPS just pressing a shirk clone on cd, while all the mitigation could be solved by healers putting a shield or regen on you.

Sure average groups would still want a Tank just in case or because they could be queued with a random DPS unwilling to press the shirk button. But any decent group could eoptimize the Tank away for an extra dps to speed up their daily Roulette.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

I'd say nerf it anyway. WARs are never going to have everything, and quite frankly, to hell with the fools who want it to. Drop those 400 potencies on Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash to 300, make their heal procs be per weaponskill use and not per hit, and remove the HoT on Shake It Off. There, we've dragged WAR's healing back down to a manageable level.

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Remove equilibrium.

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Originally Posted by Sani2341

As the only reason Role A has so little to do is their niche being spread out to role B and C in ever increasing amounts, yes that is absolutely necessary.

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The cheapest meal for three costs $15. You have $12. Your friend, Dee-pee-ess, has $3. Your other friend, Taenhk, has $5.

For whatever reason, you each feel like you must spend all of your money.

Is the most obvious solution, then, (A) to instead go to a nicer joint, where the price is nearer your collective limit ($20) or (B) to demand your friends bring less money so that you can better use up all of yours?

Now, of course, in this case, you're also asking them to lose gameplay, too, all so that you don't feel like your own options are made as redundant when going for content tuned too cheaply/easily for you/your available output.

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Imagine how playing tank would feel if Aggromanagement could be done by DPS just pressing a shirk clone on cd, while all the mitigation could be solved by healers putting a shield or regen on you.

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Except, again, aggro is relational; the more damage DPS do, the more aggro tanks must generate/have transferred to them. It's also a non-mechanic (and never has been a mechanic in XIV beyond a brief game of "The Price is Right" in guessing how much Enmity your lead-Enmity DPS will produce over the fight to determine at which GCD in your opener you'll turn your tank stance off for the rest of the whole fight -- a period in which, btw, DPS had aggro management, as they had since the start of the game.)

Healing requirements, on the other hand, is not relational. They do not go up as DPSs'_damage/Tank_enmity_and/or_mitigation goes up. Healing requirements are finite. That's why your tools are becoming redundant in content you have far more than the necessary output for.

Which doesn't mean you need to strip away gameplay. It just means you need content options that actually use up all your collectively available resources so they aren't rendered redundant.

Note that every Role does damage. Yes, you could replace the majority of tank's kits instead with 0-MP-cost Flash spam and remove all attacks from healers so they wouldn't step on the toes of DPS, but would that improve DPS gameplay?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Note that every Role does damage. Yes, you could replace the majority of tank's kits instead with 0-MP-cost Flash spam and remove all attacks from healers so they wouldn't step on the toes of DPS, but would that improve DPS gameplay?

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I agree that this wouldn't improve DPS gameplay, but that's because the problem that damage output solves isn't remotely as ephemeral as the problem that healing solves. By definition of the way that FF14 works, until a fight is over there is DPS that needs to be done. The same is simply not true for healing. If everyone is topped off and has shields or whatever, there is no longer a benefit to doing healing stuff until the situation changes. That's why over-healing is a concept but in all my years of FF14 I've never once heard anyone talk about over-DPSing, because DPS is always needed.

When non-healers do the healing or mitigate, that leaves healers with less of a job to do. There are lots of ways to design content and classes so that this isn't a problem, but it's an important dynamic to be aware of.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Now, of course, in this case, you're also asking them to lose gameplay, too, all so that you don't feel like your own options are made as redundant when going for content tuned too cheaply/easily for you/your available output.

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I suppose, but I would not consider healer really a major component of tank gameplay. I really dislike WAR's ability to self heal. It's too high and while it may feel fine for them, it's terrible for healers. I wouldn't mind if tanks lost all self healing. To you're point though, tanks could keep the healing and other changes could be made to balance it out. Yet even in that case I don't see a situation where a tank like WAR should ever exist in dungeons. If healers aren't going to be the exclusive source of healing, they should at least excel at it far beyond other roles.

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Yes, you could replace the majority of tank's kits instead with 0-MP-cost Flash spam and remove all attacks from healers so they wouldn't step on the toes of DPS, but would that improve DPS gameplay?

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It might. If party DPS is so high that a DPS can't even start their rotations before things die, then yes, cutting tank and healer DPS would help. It would also definitely very clearly shift the responsibility for clear time, at least via damage, on to the DPS since no one else would be able to contribute.

Anyway a partial solution to the role dilemma that I like is designing combat with more optional damage in mind. What I mean by that is include more sources of avoidable damage, but let there be a tradeoff involving damage done (or maybe something else) that comes with the damage inflicted on party. As an example, imagine a boss that has an AoE attack that is either right or left, but which ever side the AoE is on also opens a weakspot. To hit the weakspot you need to be standing in the AoE, and will take damage because of this. The party could choose to take the risk of attacking the weakpoint, or the safety of avoiding the AoE and doing the usual amount of damage. Something like that would add increased healing challenge that rewards skilled healers while also leaving an option for less skilled healers.

One potential problem with this is the expectations of the current playerbase. Most players have become accustomed to avoiding all AoE's. I can pile on massive shields in dungeons that boss attack cannot break and even mention it to the party and most people will still try to avoid AoE's. There are also some players that expect nothing but optimal play from everyone. To avoid these issues, the optional damage idea could be added initially to a new kind of content, possibly some kind of midcore content that the game is currently lacking. Or when queueing, there could be a checkbox for "playstyle" allowing players to separate themselves into casual and optimal.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

It [removing all-damage dealing from non-DPS] might [help DPS gameplay feel more engaging in itself]. If party DPS is so high that a DPS can't even start their rotations before things die, then yes, cutting tank and healer DPS would help.

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...Or, again... just increase the mobs' damned health?

In what world is "Gut half of all players' gameplay" a decent solution to "Things die too quickly"?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

...Or, again... just increase the mobs' damned health?

In what world is "Gut half of all players' gameplay" a decent solution to "Things die too quickly"?

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I guess I shouldn't have cut my reply a little short. I understood the point you were trying to make and I'm not totally arguing against it, but I don't think removing things from players is always a bad thing. In the case of tanks, healing is, or should be a bonus. We have healers. If tanks can heal too much there is a problem. You want to fix this by increasing damage to party and that's as reasonable as cutting tank healing, but I think it has its own downsides (both options do). The downside to removing tank healing is that tanks that like their self heal lose out while the downside to just raising damage and letting tanks have as much healing as they want is that balancing can become really tight. The damage to party needs to be scaled such that the lowest healing combination of tank and healer can clear. So that makes having one tank with high healing a problem, you can't scale damage for that tank plus a healer because other combos would die and if you scale for the other combos, the healing tank is too strong. You can give all the tanks the same amount of self healing, but if it's large compared to what healers output, you're diminishing the healer's input one healing. That's can still work, but then why not just have everyone self heal and replace the healer with a self healing DPS? Also, this might just be a me problem, but tanks with high healing capability can end up being annoying to heal. Look at WAR again. Healers have a lot of big heals that work best the tank has taken a lot of damage, but WAR can 100% heal in a couple of GCD's. So the WAR is going to want to use its heals just when the healer is going to want to use their heals. Often, one gets wasted. If tanks only had mitigation, that problem goes away.

Focusing specifically on FF14, tanks can keep some form of healing but it really shouldn't come close to what healers can output. Let WAR keep its skills but reduce all the healing potency to 20% or something. Likewise in the DPS example cited, tanks and healers can keep dealing DPS, but they shouldn't be the main DPS source in the party. HP and mob health should be balanced around DPS and DPS gameplay first.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

I guess I shouldn't have cut my reply a little short. I understood the point you were trying to make and I'm not totally arguing against it, but I don't think removing things from players is always a bad thing.

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Forenote: I will here use "sustain" to mean anything that keeps you alive. All sustain increases your eHP. Not all sustain will increase your maximum eHP. Sustain can be time/context-sensitive, as per %mitigation or healing for a % of damage recently taken, or "flat" (timing-insensitive).

I would agree with that. I just think there are oceans of difference between maintaining relevance within one's core kit and responsibilities and attempting to allot who is allowed what gameplay, especially without compensation.

Even in regard to that compensation, moreover, such as by replacing DPS's sustain utility and personal defensives with yet more damage actions... those kit additions have diminishing returns within a given capacity. Adding another couple buttons of damage-dealing to DPS in exchange for their Riddle of Earth and Mantra is going to matter a ton less than the couple buttons previous -- or is likely even to negatively impact that kit through apparent bloat. (Most already suffer from lackluster abilities within their primary responsibility through their so making each other either redundant, overly bundled, or through clearly depleted creativity.) That compensation, then, is going to be inherently insufficient. Not only is it removing a whole type of awareness and coordination from their gameplay, but what they get instead is as likely to hurt as to help given the state of their surrounding tools of that same type.

That's my issue with approaching maintained relevance through strict exclusivity on types of gameplay. We're playing this to have fun.

Tanks having sustain is not what is ruining your healer-type fun; it's the lack of shit to heal, which does not require removing their sustain (which has valuable gameplay for them) but rather merely requires adding more to the total sustain required.

That all being said, I do think tanks should tend to have less flat sustain (and, especially, flat healing) than they currently do, not because 'healing should belong only to healers', but simply because flat healing is, in itself, a less interesting and less iconic form of sustain than the likes of percentile mitigation. We want tanks to be preemptive and to reward fight knowledge. Simply taking the hit and then healing up some time before the next would-be lethal blow is not that, and since we want to keep tanks roughly in balance with each other and on an even keel with the other roles, the more sustain that is managed through dull means means the duller the kit is likely to be.

Now, for a couple kits we might be able to introduce mechanically-involved job traits that can actually make that self-healing interesting, and that'd be neat to see where thematically appropriate. But that interest should be the point, too, alongside balance. The kit needs to not be absurdly easier to get its near-maximal value out of than others, and it needs to be fun.

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So the WAR is going to want to use its heals just when the healer is going to want to use their heals. Often, one gets wasted. If tanks only had mitigation, that problem goes away.

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No. It's irrelevant. Whether the tank takes 50k less damage or heals back 50k health, there's still 50k less healing for you to do.

At most, by replacing flat sustain with contextual/timing-sensitive sustain, you just make it so healing requirements vary less with content, because contextual sustain will produce more sustain when incoming damage is high and less when damage incoming is low. There are some subtle advantages to that, in that you'd have maybe a GCD of healing to finally do during dungeon boss fights, but you'd have even less tank healing to do in Savage.

Unless, of course, you mean "just greatly reduce tank's personal sustain", in which case, again, you'd have the same difference from just increasing the healing required.

Again, I would like less of tank sustain to come from HoTs and per-hit actions, but let's not kid ourselves: the vast majority of tank's sustain still comes from mitigation.

• Less than 10% (~6% in top ranks) of DRK's self-sustain in Savage content comes from Souleater.
• The actual mitigation component of Shake It Off almost triples the maximum mitigation provided by the over-time healing, and is greater than the healing of Equilibrium, Equilibrium over time, Nascent Flash, and Bloodwhetting combined.
• Stem the Flow (%mitigation) does more than Stem the Tide (the flat shield).
• Reprisal produces more sustain than all of Paladin's healing per-action put together, and 50% more than the HoT attached to Holy Shelltron/Intervention.
• And, among DPS... the likes of Shield Samba is going to be more impactful than any 6 party members being healed by each use [self and [partner's] of Curing Waltz, and Waltz being used on CD. At 5 per hit, Dismantle can often outperform Curing Waltz.

If you shift things further towards that mitigation, you are only going to get even less to heal in serious content, not more, all while using defensive abilities feels even less relevant in casual content. If you want that, sure advocate for it, but... I'm not seeing the big fix there.

Tl;dr:
The core factor is your party's total sustain vs. the fight's total sustain required, and you can deal with the latter falling short a whole lot easier and with fewer ill effects on gameplay by just increasing those requirements than by chipping away at what gameplay may fall outside your arbitrary lines of what forms of sustain tanks should be allowed or what utility each role should be allowed.

Time for the old man to talk about ye olden times.

Way back in the dark ages of MMOs I played a holy paladin in WoW. Now back then each of the healers had niches and holy paladins niche was single target healing. We achieved that by being extremely mana efficient, we had our flash of light that didn't heal much but didn't cost much, we had holy light which healed for a good amount but was costly, a cleanse, an instant use low healing ability, and a super long oh crud button in lay on hands and that was it. No HoTs, no party healing, no shields.

It was the most fun I've ever had as a healer. It was fast, it was frantic, it was HIGHLY dependent on your team not futzing up, and the only time you ever spent attacking was hitting the enemy with Judgement of Light/Wisdom because the entire kit revolved around flash of lights mana efficiency.

But more to the point, back in ye olden days each class had a niche. Druids were the masters of HoTs, Priests pure healing and shields, and shaman were a little bit of everything while having nice support in totems. A skilled player could make any healer work in any situation, I used to surprise people all the time because as the single target holy paladin I was still good at keeping groups alive.

I'm going a couple of places here. The first is that I feel like XIVs healers have an identity crisis. Their specialties are boiled down to shield and Regen and they have some fluff on the side. I'm not knocking the design team for that, healer homogenization started over a decade ago. I just wish each job felt more distinct but I know it can't because of my next point...

The players. Or rather, the player desire to min/max the snot out of everything. So developers are left in this zone where every healer has to be able to do everything otherwise the player base just won't take jobs that don't.

Healing design isn't great either but a lot of that boils down to the nature of the game. Outside of tank busters and party wide AoE most damage comes from completely avoidable mechanics which leaves healers in a feast or famine situation: either things have gone wrong and it's triage mode or you're just waiting on the next tank buster.

Unfortunately I don't think it's a simple fix. Redesigning encounters to have a better mix of unavoidable damage and mechanics would throw off a large portion of the player base.

I kinda think they've designed themselves into a corner.

"If tanks were OP everyone would play them"

That's just not true. Devs need to stop listening to people like this. There's only a certain type of player drawn to classes that are ez mode. Warrior is proof of that-- it's literally the ez mode class of the game but only people who really really love it stan the class. People don't flock to it. BLM has minimal utility, no healing and people still play BLM. The list goes on. Not everyone is a DPS nitpicker or wants to be invincible. That's a a tiny % of the playerbase.

Devs should stop listening to players who say "no one will play this class if", "my class isn't chosen for x", and start designing jobs how they want to. Every fight should be clearable with any class but the meta of the fight should depend on the fight, not the jobs imo.

Because that's how it is anyway-- we all know right now jobs are the same and balanced, yet there's still a meta for every prog and we know that. There's no fight where a RDM will outshine a SMN for example.

i started the game with white mage and stop because tank could self heal, everyone kept tell me to do dps all the time on my white mage . so i end up giving up on healer and just start playing monk

more they want to make tanks in to holy tanks , i will be there dps beside them

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Is the most obvious solution, then, (A) to instead go to a nicer joint, where the price is nearer your collective limit ($20) or (B) to demand your friends bring less money so that you can better use up all of yours?

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You really want to make everyone that currently already struggles leave the game huh?

Not only is your example fundamentaly flawed in that Tanks and DPS can already cover everything themselves without Healers if your execution is tight enough even in frikkin ultimates.
You also again completely ignore the worse than average players who could barely scrap by right now.

To stay with your example, if enough food to not starve is 15, just because jobs A B and C could scrape together 20 bucks between them, does not mean the average combo of A B and C manage more than 14.50.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That all being said, I do think tanks should tend to have less flat sustain (and, especially, flat healing) than they currently do, not because 'healing should belong only to healers', but simply because flat healing is, in itself, a less interesting and less iconic form of sustain than the likes of percentile mitigation. We want tanks to be preemptive and to reward fight knowledge. Simply taking the hit and then healing up some time before the next would-be lethal blow is not that, and since we want to keep tanks roughly in balance with each other and on an even keel with the other roles, the more sustain that is managed through dull means means the duller the kit is likely to be.

Now, for a couple kits we might be able to introduce mechanically-involved job traits that can actually make that self-healing interesting, and that'd be neat to see where thematically appropriate. But that interest should be the point, too, alongside balance. The kit needs to not be absurdly easier to get its near-maximal value out of than others, and it needs to be fun.

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We have slightly different views, but I think we're both looking in the same direction. I support a lot of what you're saying above.

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No. It's irrelevant. Whether the tank takes 50k less damage or heals back 50k health, there's still 50k less healing for you to do.

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The conflict between tank and healer that I was pointing out isn't a balancing or class engagement issue. You're right in that mitigation is just as bad as healing if it's too strong or incoming damage is too little. However if, just for example, only the healer can heal then that removes the risk of overhealing due to a lack of coordination because it removes the possibility of two players using a heal at once when one heal was all that was needed. The total amount of damage is a factor in this problem as more damage makes it less likely to happen, but it doesn't totally eliminate the issue. This is most obvious with WHM and Benediction. Bene is a full heal, so it should never be combined with other healing. If a tank has a very large heal, then they probably won't want to use that heal until their HP is low, which is exactly what the WHM with Bene will be thinking. As the tank takes damage and gets to 10% HP they'll use their heal, but so will the WHM, and you end up with wasted healing. If tanks only had mitigation, then the WHM is free to use Bene at 10% HP without worry. I prefer the latter situation. My solution isn't to strip tanks of all healing abilities, though, it's to lower their healing output relative to healers.

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Tl;dr:
The core factor is your party's total sustain vs. the fight's total sustain required, and you can deal with the latter falling short a whole lot easier and with fewer ill effects on gameplay by just increasing those requirements than by chipping away at what gameplay may fall outside your arbitrary lines of what forms of sustain tanks should be allowed or what utility each role should be allowed.

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I agree that balancing incoming damage against the party's ability to heal is a significant factor in making tanking and healing feel engaging, fun, and rewarding. The separation of skills between the classes is arbitrary in terms of balancing, but there are also subjective factors at play, like job identity, which may still
push for some kind of separation of skills. I think it's important for each role to have a specialization and unique feel to set themselves as part. This doesn't mean that there has to be a rigid separation of abilities, it's fine for tanks to have healing, but a role built around healing (healers) should have the most healing ability and influence total party healing more than other roles.

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Originally Posted by Sani2341

You really want to make everyone that currently already struggles leave the game huh?

Not only is your example fundamentaly flawed in that Tanks and DPS can already cover everything themselves without Healers if your execution is tight enough even in frikkin ultimates.
You also again completely ignore the worse than average players who could barely scrap by right now.

To stay with your example, if enough food to not starve is 15, just because jobs A B and C could scrape together 20 bucks between them, does not mean the average combo of A B and C manage more than 14.50.

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In that example, though, the greatest chance of your starving is by concentrating ALL that resource into the one may-be-incapable player, instead of having any fallbacks.

What you'd be advocating for would also be what is most likely to cause the negative outcome you fear (and would use as a warrant to ax that portion of other roles' gameplay)...

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

We have slightly different views, but I think we're both looking in the same direction.

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I suspect the same.

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However if, just for example, only the healer can heal then that removes the risk of overhealing due to a lack of coordination because it removes the possibility of two players using a heal at once when one heal was all that was needed.

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Is that conflict really a bad thing, though? When two healers get in a rhythm with one another as not to accidentally heal the same target at the same time, wasting one oGCD or the other, we tend to call that skill expression and meaningful coordination. Why would that not be the case just because one of those heals doesn't come from a green-border job?

Once you hit any serious content (outside of Criterion Savage), you still have the remaining 90% of those conflicts to deal with just from healing alongside another healer. It seems strange to me, then, to worry about the single burst heal per minute that still only 2 tanks have (Equilibrium, Abyssal Drain [only relevant in AoE]).

* The rest are effectively HoTs or are shields. You are far more likely to waste your tank's healing than they are to waste yours.

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I agree that balancing incoming damage against the party's ability to heal is a significant factor in making tanking and healing feel engaging, fun, and rewarding. The separation of skills between the classes is arbitrary in terms of balancing, but there are also subjective factors at play, like job identity, which may still push for some kind of separation of skills.

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Agreed, as long as enjoyment and job identity is still the big goal instead of just arbitrary categorization and a vaguer sense of role identity.

To give this some concrete examples...

• I don't like Nascent Flash. It's silly to me, it only scarcely fits the WAR identity, and gives up opportunity for better tapping into that WAR identity. It's also fundamentally overpowered because of it being basically straight 50% stronger than Bloodwhetting through the heal-duplication.
  
  
• I don't like the per-hit healing from Bloodwhetting/NF. It fits the "in the thick of it" aspect of the "thrill of battle" but sacrifices all else. Removing the damage-based healing in favor of per-hit healing has added a tiny use case in two-target (sacrificing damage for healing), but in all else it has reduced the engagement possible through that ability. That change not only made WAR too strong in dungeons but also made it less fun.
  
  
• On the other hand, I do think external support is thematic for Paladin, even if it comes at-cost. I like Clemency being there. It makes sense. It makes sense not for all tanks, but for Paladin specifically.
  
  
• That said, I don't like the per-action healing from any but prepped Holy Spirit casts on PLD. It just outright lacks control and removes much of the affordance you could otherwise situationally have from those actions being usable at range. The bankable small heal per 7 GCDs is nice, but for Req spam, it's basically just a un-time-able HoT. As a tank, that's just not very fun/appealing, because there's no agency there beyond, when incoming damage is low, "I sure hope my healer doesn't top me off before Req phase, wasting its sustain."

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My solution isn't to strip tanks of all healing abilities, though, it's to lower their healing output relative to healers.

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That I am fine with.

I'd just recommend starting from a tank perspective rather than worrying first and foremost about (typal) output. Trim the things that --by taking up X% of the tank's sustain while being, themselves, uninteresting or carrying less agency / skill expression-- make tanking on those jobs that much less fun.

Thereafter, just make sure that their kits both seem worthwhile and competitive in situations both with low and high damage intake.

Once that's done, if tank sustain still seems excessive, don't specifically target any particular type of sustain for reduction (flat or percentile, preemptive or reactive), but just rein things back bit by bit as a whole -- thereby still keeping that kit's parts in balance against each other.

Too much of that sustain coming from percentile tools makes the kit lack apparently relevance when incoming damage is low. Too much coming from flat tools makes it feel less relevant when damage is high. Let the fun of the kit and basic parity/functionality determine the proportions of those tools in the tank's kit, and then just roll the excess back together.

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This doesn't mean that there has to be a rigid separation of abilities, it's fine for tanks to have healing, but a role built around healing (healers) should have the most healing ability and influence total party healing more than other roles.

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I'm wondering what you think is a good ratio there, then.

At present, even if we specifically seek out, say, a P10S top rank parse with a WAR, PLD, SMN, and DNC, less than 14% of total sustain comes from non-healer healing. Even that best-in-role-in-direct-healing lineup of tanks produce under a fifth the healing of what SGE+AST produce. Iirc, we've actually had higher ratios in earlier expansions, even, without issue.

* (And if we back up to Abyssos, we'll often see healer healing dwarf non-healer HPS even further, even among speedrun parties where both healers are 'grey' and both tanks 'pink' in their HPS.)

Again, I'm fine with reining back tanks' healing a bit where given in a way that may actually degrade the enjoyment of their kits (and for that reason), but... I'm not seeing anything in the numbers themselves to suggest that this is an issue beyond (A) the quality of tank kits and (B) the total amount of sustain required.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Is that conflict really a bad thing, though? When two healers get in a rhythm with one another as not to accidentally heal the same target at the same time, wasting one oGCD or the other, we tend to call that skill expression and meaningful coordination. Why would that not be the case just because one of those heals doesn't come from a green-border job?

Once you hit any serious content (outside of Criterion Savage), you still have the remaining 90% of those conflicts to deal with just from healing alongside another healer. It seems strange to me, then, to worry about the single burst heal per minute that still only 2 tanks have (Equilibrium, Abyssal Drain [only relevant in AoE]).

* The rest are effectively HoTs or are shields. You are far more likely to waste your tank's healing than they are to waste yours.

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It's not necessarily a negative no, and it can be fixed with more/better player coordination. I was thinking in more general situations than focusing on Savage and up though. Savage makes it less of an issue just because players will tend to cooperate and plan more and on top of that damage is dealt in a way that's different from large pulls in dungeons where the healing conflict is more likely (but also less serious).

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I'd just recommend starting from a tank perspective rather than worrying first and foremost about (typal) output. Trim the things that --by taking up X% of the tank's sustain while being, themselves, uninteresting or carrying less agency / skill expression-- make tanking on those jobs that much less fun.

Thereafter, just make sure that their kits both seem worthwhile and competitive in situations both with low and high damage intake.

Once that's done, if tank sustain still seems excessive, don't specifically target any particular type of sustain for reduction (flat or percentile, preemptive or reactive), but just rein things back bit by bit as a whole -- thereby still keeping that kit's parts in balance against each other.

Too much of that sustain coming from percentile tools makes the kit lack apparently relevance when incoming damage is low. Too much coming from flat tools makes it feel less relevant when damage is high. Let the fun of the kit and basic parity/functionality determine the proportions of those tools in the tank's kit, and then just roll the excess back together.

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I can agree with that.

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I'm wondering what you think is a good ratio there, then.

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I don't have an exact answer, and again I wasn't focused specifically on Savage. In 8 player content, healer since the tank isn't the only one taking damage, healing from healers doesn't suffer as much. If I'm understanding your numbers, the % is just coming from the total healing in the entire fight, so AoE healing is being reflected in that. It's one area where healers do outperform tanks (and DPS) and it feels relatively good. If we limit the measured healing to that aimed at the tank, the % should change. Likewise since dungeon pulls are purely about healing the tank, that is where overpowered tank healing is more noticeable.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

If I'm understanding your numbers, the % is just coming from the total healing in the entire fight, so AoE healing is being reflected in that.

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Yes, but so is the tanks', which is the majority of the healing of the most healing-heavy tanks.

And if the problem is with tanks self-healing specifically... again, the healing forums have had an answer to that for years: just increase the damage dealt to tanks, or remove the awkward bloat that is Tank Mastery and nerf only the most lethal of tankbusters in compensation (not the white damage).

8-man content is... 8-man content. Yes, tanks should probably see warrant for at least a couple GCD heals per minute from their actual healers, but healers have to heal everyone while not every tank even can heal others (can provide sustain, but not actual healing), so what I've given is already the most apples-to-apples comparison possible. Looking only at the portion of tank damage taken restored through healing... would be far less so (and would vary wildly between healers, as some are more mitigation-heavy instead).

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Likewise since dungeon pulls are purely about healing the tank, that is where overpowered tank healing is more noticeable.

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I'll agree, but at the same... dungeons are scarcely even designed as combat content, so I don't recommend trying to design a many-tiers-of-difficulty game off of just that single lowest possible difficulty.

Now, if you wanted to up the ante on endgame dungeons so that there was more constant healing to be done while still being manageable to Cammy Casual off just GCD heals and 25% of time spent idle (i.e., making them at least nearly as threatening as leveling dungeons), capping their gear ceilings at barely over the ilvl they drop, and/or by making MinILvl runs proportionately more rewarding and doable through matchmaking, I'd be totally there for that. Heck yes. I would love for endgame dungeons not to be a pathetic joke.

I see no reason why bosses need to barely tickle tanks nor that every full pull should be easily doable; it'd be fine if single pulls were the norm and dungeons just gave that much more tomes for their time, keeping their reward efficiency equal (or heck, nerfing its efficiency and that of Hunts so that people go to more than just those two places for tomes).

But, risking gameplay degradation over an explicitly bottom-rung content experience... does not seem a good bet.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Now, if you wanted to up the ante on endgame dungeons

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Definitely. The dungeon problem is much more than class skills, they're way undertuned.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

Definitely. The dungeon problem is much more than class skills, they're way undertuned.

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Aye.

Tentative list of suggested changes then:

1. Reduce the maximum item level of endgame content to a little over the item levels they grant but increase the %chance of each drop (including, therefore, a chance at bonus drops) based on the expected time increase due to stat loss.

   For instance, if your party averages i650 but has been synced down to i600 (5 over the reward ilvl) for Endsinger Extreme where they are doing mount farms, you'd have 1/(1-X)%, where X% is the difference in total stat value without counting Materia.
   
   Let's say the product of that equation is 1.5, for example's sake. You'd therefore have a 50% chance twice over at an extra chest (2*1.5), a 50% chance that everyone gets an extra totem, and any 1% drop rate mounts, minions, etc. would become a 1.5% drop rate.

   And, of course, if they wanted to use the Minimum Item Level option to make it even harder on themselves, it'd have that much more impact. Syncing down from 650 to 580 instead of just 600 would mean even more of a bonus to drop rates.
   
   * Might actually remove the effect on rare drops except via the Minimum Item Level option, since it could otherwise encourage saving all farming of rare drops for end of expansion.
   
   At any rate, with that, content wouldn't be so trivialized with time that latecomers can hardly even experience the fights without having 7 friends willing to "waste" time with them on a Min Item Level, and catch-up potential would naturally increase over time for those who join late but want to actually some collect things before the expansion is over.
   
   
2. Allow Minimum Item Level runs to be queued for with matchmaking, instead of only with premades. Once the option is selected within the additional options menu, a second column of check boxes will appear, allowing you to queue separately but simultaneously for Regular, Minimum Item Level, or both versions of any given piece of content or of a single Roulette.
   

   Now those who want an extra challenge in dungeons can actually get a bit more, all before even needing the development cost of dungeon rebalancing or providing a new difficulty tier therein.

3. Slightly retweak tanks' sustain profiles, by trading out less controllable / flexibly timeable elements of sustain that offer comparatively low skill expression for more controllable/timeable forms that offer more skill expression and would fit more iconically with the given job.
   

   For instance... Bloodwhetting would go back to being based on %HP, Shake it Off would heal for considerably less, and Equilibrium would gain a second charge instead of gaining a HoT. Aurora would have a chance to consume an extra tick (3s duration) for further healing each tick based on the recipient's %HP at the time of that tick and would gain its second charge much sooner but the Excog effect on Heart of Corundom would be replaced with something more timing-sensitive. Instead of (lv82+) Intervention and Holy Shelltron being largely the same skill, PLD would have to more strictly choose between flat and percentile sustain via, say, Inspirit vs. Aegis Boon, and your spells would no longer provide bonus healing to self except under Divine Might. Etc., etc.

4. Slightly reshape dungeons' damage and HP profiles. Reduce trash mob HP slightly, but create about a dozen additional attacks with little or no prior indication that trash mobs and bosses can throw out (though by different names) in order to add some random damage (i.e., not on just the tank) and additional tank pressure both.
   

   These can be the likes of tethers, baitables (melee should play the edge of the AoE stack once focused, dropping the AOE far enough out not to cost their co-melee uptime before swapping to the other side and maintaining their radial AoEs / ranged should aim linear AoEs out, away from others, or take proximity-damage radial AoEs completely out / etc.), quick conal or linear cleaves (to encourage tanks' being mindful of others' positioning), or cast-timed busters without AoE indicators nonetheless worth stunning to avoid their burst damage or afflictions, etc.
   
   These can even be the occasional bit of CC that'd cause one to want to cleave their Stupor-ed ally, the occasional bit of forced aggro loss, fixate mechanics, etc. Just whatever helps shake things up and adds a bit more tank pressure and random damage, both.

5. Do similar to the above for trial and raid boss fights, too. Sprinkle some additional mechanics here and there for minor random damage and some slightly chaotic extra pressure.

• As a bit of added QoL (via simplifying calculation bloat) and to further offer a bit more pressure between set/scripted attacks, remove the Tank Mastery (-20% Damage Taken) and Maim and Mend (+30% Damage/Healing) traits from Tanks and Healers, respectively, but, to also reshape relative healing requirements, do not compensate these fully.
  

  Reduce only the damage of lethal tankbusters (those that would kill if not for mitigation) and slightly reduce those just below them in damage dealt, squishing that higher end down / effectively raising previously less significant damage up. Additionally, decrease the damage only of the most bursty of raid-wides and random-target attacks (ones that would need stacked GCD and oGCD healing to be dealt with), effectively raising the relative healing requirements of all else.

• Finally, reduce all enemy damage and player HP, both, while decreasing healing potencies, all by the same portion, so that we don't have these oddities of 300 potency spammable attacks but 800 potency spammable heals.
  

  This just keeps things altogether simpler and seemingly in balance (and would future-proof new types of buffs or customizations if we so pleased).

Would those kinds of things appeal to you, Pyur?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Would those kinds of things appeal to you, Pyur?

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Yes, those ideas are all worth considering. I'd love to have some kind of easy to queue into content that was still engaging. Reducing the effect of ilvl bloat would also help a lot in increasing the lifespan of some content.