How can tanking and healing be made more broadly useful in more "role-specific" ways?

Thordan, Shiva and Nael (3rd-4th phase) all cast abilities that give them damage-up stacks. Cruise Chaser gains a stack each time he uses Limit Cut. Ravana gains one each time he uses one of his "Liberation" abilities (? Not 100% sure if this is what gives him the stacks)

Caduceus gains stacks over time, though the party can reduce them by spawning slime adds and feeding them to him.

Damage from Phoenix's Flames of Rebirth is based on how many stacks he has. He has multiple ways of gaining stacks and also gains them gradually on his own.

Bahamut's (& Nidhogg's and Shinryu's) Akh Morn hits one additional time each time it's used, as does Manipulator's Perpetual Ray (in last phase only).

Quickthinx gains a (used to be permanent) stacking damage buff any time someone dies during the fight, and gains four stacks instantly if a Pure Heart is allowed to reach him. People will start dying to unavoidable damage (giving him more stacks) around 3+ stacks.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

When everybody has HP and the main reason we even face foes is to kill them, winning a battle through killing things is not a gimmick. You'd have to create a whole new explnation on why we don't kill them anymore. The kind of explantion that works in PvP where the goal is generally not to kill.

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Honestly, I don't even know where to start here. Generally you've been giving some arguments. That I mostly disagreed with them is another matter. But here?!

Who on earth ever told you that the fact you have HP means you need to kill stuff?! And there are many examples of people NOT WANTING to kill their enemies. The fact that the warrior of light kills everything and everyone on their way is ABNORMAL and completely RIDICULOUS. Only a true and blue idiot would kill the guy/gal that would be better off interrogated. And even then, I'm pretty sure that there are examples of NPC's not dying when their HP goes to zero. I can think of two off the top of my head simply from Kojin quests, then there's one or two in Amalja. There are even cases in story (for paladin, for example, where you fight that Elezen and that Roe at lvl60, but also in main story). Heck, Fordola is a recent major example...

The only reason why the game is all about killing is because it's MADE like that. There is zero reason, story-wise or anything, to not take advantage of that.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

It's not, but this is exactly hte kind things we want to fix.

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And that fixes it, as healing would have a direct effect on damage, hence the timing of the healing matters as well, as well as the total amount of HP, instead of "heal when it's near-death".

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Healers also do not want to spam heal all the time because they will simply over heal and burn through their MP much faster.

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If a healer overheals then they are the ones at fault. Casting a heal when the tank have only 2%-3% penalty is pointless, when a single Stone would do more. However, standard heals (which are CHEAPER than currently-used big heals) would be used more often and players would start being more efficient with healing. Ultimately, you still need to heal the same amount of HP, just timed differently and in smaller chunks.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

And each time someone dies they will also suffer an additionnal damage penalty until the healers uses more GCD to bring them back to full.

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How is that relevant if the healer would try to keep everyone at/near full at all times...Even now if people die healers can run out of mana...but now they provoke such situations by not topping people.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Please don't assume people haven't tried content harder than Expert Roulette when discussing these things.

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The majority of the forums does not go above that difficulty. So I'm just stating simple fact.

Let's go over some other facts. Players who run content above Roulette are doing so in FC and Statics, with an occasional pick up from PF. Which means you can have a tank only tank, or healer only heal if you desire, or not. Decision is up to the one who forms the group.

So that means the friction is coming from Duty Finder. A set of content that is made to be easy, but you have small time scrubs who think they're elite (but their not, since they aren't running harder stuff) who 'abuse' some not so elite players. They're really the same skill level, but one thinks they're beyond that, and the other just wants to have fun. Unfortunately for the latter type, they get heat, or even perceive it. Then run to the forums with the have a dozen threads about this subject.

The FFXIV community is some of the most over-sensitive, socially awkward, and self-victiming group I have ever played with. You can't parse them, you can't tell them to pick it up, you can't do anything that hurts someone's feelings. They want DF to form their groups and they want SE to ensure to them that everyone plays nicely. But they don't want to take responsibility for their own time spent on the game.

Some of the best players don't let these little things bother them. They form their own groups and clear content without any complaint. They don't believe content should be simplified into roles over classes, or that we need reduction in Tanks, or that roles should be simplified into only doing what the role says.

As I said, the content itself is fine. Just move up. Unless you're going to tell me your routinely clearing Ultimate Coil every week? Anyone here doing that?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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Alternatively, if a Very Important Mob/Person's survival over a given time limit, or over a given escort distance, were a victory condition, it's likely that gimmicks may be necessary to make that encounter satisfying in its interactions, such as by creating more ways to provide mitigation for the mob (beyond current interception mechanics) where topping it off and curative-shielding it would otherwise be insufficient to prevent its being one-shot, but the victory conditions themselves still wouldn't be a gimmick, just an alternative to the most basic characteristic of the encounter.

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There was a fight with this idea in it...

The Aery.
You had to keep Estinien alive, or else!

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

I saw a Tank get one-shot last night in an extreme because they used a cooldown at the wrong time. Thought a tank buster was an AOE. A simple mistake that a veteran player can make if they haven't done a fight in a minute. But a mistake that dropped him to the floor. That was in the easier extreme, Lakshmi. We recovered, but it served to get everyone's attention.

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There is a bit of difference between a tank buster and a survival check.

A "tank buster" is an attack that checks the tank's current eHP (effective HP, based on current HP, buffs, debuffs, shields and parry/blocks) at the time it hits. Pretty much all content in FFXIV that requires a tank has one or more of these and almost all are short enough and rare enough that being in tank stance isn't needed for most of the fight and you only really need to use a short cooldown. Short term mitigation (Inner Beast, TBN, Shelltron, Sentinel, Hollowed Ground, Holmgang, Reprisal, etc) thrives against these.

A "survival check" is usually a series of attacks that asks "can the target(s) survive the stream of damage until it ends?" and are more rare in FFXIV. Long term mitigation (tank stances, Rampart, Convalescence, Bulwark, Anticipation, etc) thrive in these. Diabolos Hollow is one of the rare fights in FFXIV that has tankcentric survival checks that test how long the tank can survive. Most of the others (Such as Nid EX's Akh Morns) are party survival checks that mostly test if the healers can keep everyone alive trough them.

Does Ultimate Coil have any of these? I've not been in there yet, so I don't know.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Who on earth ever told you that the fact you have HP means you need to kill stuff?!

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All of our stats are designed for killing or not be killed, all of our skills are designed with for killing or not be killed. If you want winning without killing to be a major part, you'd have to change a lot of things in the game to adjust to this new goal. There is currently a gameplay where your skills are not used to kill, it's called "crafting".

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Originally Posted by kikix12

And even then, I'm pretty sure that there are examples of NPC's not dying when their HP goes to zero. I can think of two off the top of my head simply from Kojin quests, then there's one or two in Amalja. There are even cases in story (for paladin, for example, where you fight that Elezen and that Roe at lvl60, but also in main story). Heck, Fordola is a recent major example...

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Since you seem to like that word : Irrelevant. Even if we don't "kill" them lorewise, the goal is still to deplete their HP bar. Especially with Fordola, in case you didn't realize we were at war.
And if we remove that goal of "Depleting the HP bar", suddenly, DPS jobs lose their purpose.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

The only reason why the game is all about killing is because it's MADE like that. There is zero reason, story-wise or anything, to not take advantage of that.

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The gameplay is made like that, the story is made like that. To change all of this, you'd have to make real core modifications far above what could make tanking and healing more interesting.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Since you seem to like that word : Irrelevant. Even if we don't "kill" them lorewise, the goal is still to deplete their HP bar. Especially with Fordola, in case you didn't realize we were at war.
And if we remove that goal of "Depleting the HP bar", suddenly, DPS jobs lose their purpose.

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Again, this is very unlikely to be true. If it were, then tanks and healers are already without any purpose in regular content.

Consider a wave-by-wave survival encounter. You don't need to kill everything, or technically even anything, but if you do not, the damage becomes overwhelming, not to mention whatever utilities the enemies are throwing your way or onto their allies. Killing, then, allows you to better stay alive, which is in turn the point of the encounter. Now, the issue remains that healing and tanking face an enemy- and party-dependent cap, whereas DPS only faces a cap based on the eHP spawn rate of the enemies, but so long as being able to survive more than two minutes of a trial that would still be longer than two minutes even with 8 DPS is important, then so too would DPS be here.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Consider a wave-by-wave survival encounter. You don't need to kill everything, or technically even anything, but if you do not, the damage becomes overwhelming, not to mention whatever utilities the enemies are throwing your way or onto their allies.

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This is the same mentality as "killing ennemies is the best mitgation" and would probably still end with tanks and healers having to do the most DPS available to quickly kill each wave.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

This is the same mentality as "killing ennemies is the best mitgation" and would probably still end with tanks and healers having to do the most DPS available to quickly kill each wave.

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It's less a "mentality" than a state of design. "Mentality" implies an ability for errant logic or fixation, rather than a natural, uncomplicated outcome from what is optimal given the design fundamentals in place.

And yes, it would of course maintain that state. But, consider your suggested overwhelming damage model — differing only in that it retains the limit of encounter clearance condition to damage dealt (enemies slain) — by that same logic: what is changed?

Now, I can't say at this time that it is impossible to change that, but it's because I cannot say, either, that it is possible, that this was never a condition I tried to introduce in the thread. Personally, I'd be satisfied with just allowing for more consistent scalability between roles as to delay the point at which direct output (damage beyond what is embedded in tanking or healing) will necessarily outweigh indirect output (in XIV's case, any non-damage-integrated or -necessary inclusion of mitigation or healing). To me, the bigger issue is how support generated from positions of healing or tanking feel, ideally in a way that can move that conversation away from the fixated bimodal of "Did I (A) heal/enmity-stack or (B) do anything other than heal/enmity-stack this last GCD?"

Your overwhelming damage model provides a ready example of where healing can extend the total damage dealt in a way that scales with gear, rather than being cut off after a certain point, simply because the damage is likewise increasing. I worry, however, that it would better fit a game model wherein completion can be more granular, such as making it to x phase or wave where only up to 5 or so is required for technical "completion". Otherwise, you're looking at the exact same issue as the current hard enrage systems. More than sufficient is excess. Now, that will always be the case. To my knowledge it can only be escaped, and only in part, by moving the goal posts in a way that seeks to indirectly delimit what can be done through derivative outputs, essentially extending their caps at that same rates by which one would expect primary outputs would accelerate with gear or would need to accelerate to reach the point or degree of progress at which one reaches that shifted goal post.