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

<I am not asking what the player can do in present design to increase the breadth and/or depth of nuance in their gameplay. I am asking what changes to design can improve on that breadth and/or depth.>

Let me preface this by begging that this not turn into another healer-dps or tank-dps thread. This will all work off the assumption that by common sense, one spends only as much time as is necessary on any task that does not directly contribute to completing the encounter: in XIV's case, all encounters are ended through damage, thus damage is primary, and mitigation and restoration derivative. It also works off the observation that by the game's design, this means that relatively little/few of either one's (1) considerations or (2) globals are optimally spent in derivative tasks, which can annoy at least a significant portion of players, who would rather be healing or "tanking" (there's a vague term for you) more often and/or more significantly.

How can we adjust the game design, without relying on gimmicks or absurd scaling, to allow for a greater sense of "healing" or "tanking" within those "roles"? And what adjustments, compensatory or improvements in their own right, should DPS feel in order to make that vision cohesive? To put it another way, how can we better mechanically embody the idea of support — be it defensive, restorative, or offensive — and lend interest and urgency to team gameplay through short-term goals outside of just our own rotational windows, without having to overtune damage taken or undertune healing doable? How can we generate greater and more interesting value from/in derivative tasks (whatever doesn't directly contribute to finishing the encounter)?

:: To be clear, let's consider new content types as being a last resort to be used to create that design, e.g. only when two design concepts, philosophies, or paradigms are incompatible.

Go as ham on this as you like; this is just food for thought. If you have to re-engineer enemy behavioral scripts from scratch, that's fine. If you have to introduce new systems entirely, that, too, is fine.

Related Food for Thought questions, by way of example:
- Should there be synergy between healer DPS and healing, e.g. White Mages building up Essence of Earth/Wind/Water, spendable for support, self-buffing, or burst offense or restoration?
- Should almost all attacks be interceptable, as per T10's charge and mechanics repeating on it?
- Should enmity have more influence and nuance than just a target-determining value?
- Should there be some value system other than merely enmity than tanks would tend to have high outputs of, such as damage-based-suppression?
- Etc., etc.
<What kinds of systems can make our derivative toolkits more interesting and more deeply integrated into gameplay?>



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SOME IDEAS SHARED HEREIN SO FAR:



Without Conflict (yet):

1. Adjust damage inflow as to be less scripted, in the interest of creating greater frequency of consideration for derivative tasks (e.g. more adaptation, cautionary preemption, and reaction, and probably more globals viably or optimally spendable on derivative tasks).
   
   
2. Make adjustments to tank or healer kits themselves as to better blend in DPS from the start, allowing for greater flexibility but also impactful decision-making, and more integrated mitigation for tanks.
   
   
3. Create encounters for which DPS is not the primary output (e.g. an encounter won by healing a mob or object to full health, or simply through party survival).
   
   
4. Break from certain restrictive norms in boss design as to allow for (1) more interesting fights, all told, and (2) greater caps to derivative outputs, in more varied ways. If the dragon has three heads and four limbs... he's free to use, at whatever separation provides most interesting gameplay, all three heads and four limbs. Enemies do not necessarily target only the top of their enmity table. Tail-slaps can be about enmity rather than just CDs.
   
   
5. Create encounters in which healing or mitigation themselves can push fight times similarly to DPS.

   For example, in a fight with frequent add spawns that are not necessary to kill, being overwhelmed kills you, but killing more than necessary makes the fight take longer, which -- especially if these adds or the boss become increasingly powerful or mana runs out -- may also overwhelm you. Stronger healing throughput available, therefore, can increase the amount of damage doable to the boss by decreasing the number of adds that have to be killed, especially if your party is not the lone source of damage doable to those adds, such as by including periodic environmental mechanics, friendly fire damage, or fight-specific gimmicks.

6. [Fight-specific] Atrophy mechanics (whereby one's damage potential is reduced based on their percentage HP, making healing a more viable damage-support tool relative to continuing to dps until healing is urgent, given that the heal itself would otherwise be wasteful).
   
   
7. Create more active mitigation tools at resource costs shared with DPS, but made more broadly viable (than, say, TBN) without needing to rely on indirect damage-regeneration (so, again, not quite like TBN)?
   
   
8. Make certain tank mitigation tools, or install some new mechanic across them as to, allow for scaling with the tank's stats, rather than solely with the enemy's stats.

With Conflict:

1. Somewhat nerf tank enmity generation and/or base mitigation and healer throughput, forcing them to spend more globals or modification (e.g. through stances) away from direct contribution.
   [Noteable Conflicts: Would the increase in effective difficulty in casual play instill as great a value flexibility for or quality of later combat designs as it would cause frustration upon implementation for unskilled players?]
   
   
2. Increase the frailty of tank DPS stances (such as to the eHP or defense of your average melee).
   [Noteable Conflicts: Would merely delay the points at which a swap is possible, but also, in doing so, reduce the breadth of tank toolkits in many fights and the depth of their play.]
   
   
3. Universal Atrophy mechanics (whereby one's damage potential is reduced based on their percentage HP, making healing a more viable damage-support tool relative to continuing to dps until healing is urgent, given that the heal itself would otherwise be wasteful).
   [Noteable Conflicts: Overlying mechanics that seem to exist only to force role requirements tend to feel arbitrary and disempower the sense of natural choice in the surrounding game, making for a worse overall game experience, even if they may advantage certain role interactions.

Run non-PUG content. That's how. Not only do you have to perform your role more profoundly, but you have to utilize your class's strengths.

Game design is fine in the fact that it gives people of varying skill and cooperative ability content they can find challenging. You can't turn the roulette into needing hardcore tanking/healing. They're for the bottom rung of group content. Changing game design and class design would exclude thousands of players.

If I'm misunderstanding please feel free to call me out but I think what the OP is asking for isn't more "hardcore" content necessarily but just content in which tanks and healers have less time/freedom to DPS. Even in Savage/Ultimate tank and healer DPS is very much a thing that is expected, more difficult content doesn't necessarily mean more tanking and healing but just being more skilful with their application.

From a healing standpoint I think a lot of my freedom to DPS comes from the scripted nature of a fight, especialy on SCH and AST but also on WHM to an extent. Adding randomness to an encounter could easily make certain bosses require more attention and specifically topping off health bars because as it stands right now there is a ton of time I'm happy to leave a full party under 50% because I know nothing awful is coming and I might as well wait the ten seconds for Thin Air to cone up to cast a Medica II and save myself 1600mp by casting Stone instead.

This sort of play is encouraged but wouldn't become possible if there was the potential for unscripted raidwide damage, though cast bars could still give a bit of warning.

There is very little else that I can think of to add healing necessity that wouldn't exclude the even-more-casual-than-me players without also being really arbitrary in nature like oneshot mechanics and consistant HP degradation that would force an HPS increase.

For tanking I have even less to say.... More enmity resets? Remove enmity mitigation from other roles?

Again there are certain things that could increase the necessary tankiness of a tank (stacking vuln up becoming really frequent, nerfing AoE enmity generators) but this feel like arbitrary difficulty increases that would just serve to force someone's hand instead of making tanking engaging. Maybe something where you can only hold an enemy for so long/have so much enmity on it before it hits a sort of tiny "enrage" and does big damage (think Temple Bees) or goes to poke someone else because it's bored of you?

I dunno, excuse my ramblings. I think these things could be fun though, thanks for making this thread.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

From a healing standpoint I think a lot of my freedom to DPS comes from the scripted nature of a fight, especialy on SCH and AST but also on WHM to an extent.

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This is so very true. And probably applies to tank too. You know that you can drop your stance for x amount of time because you'll always have a CD ready for the next big hit, and that, in the mean time, damage is only scrath compared to much the healer can heal you. Which also might show that healers are a bit too powerful.
If you take out enrage mechanics and imagine a healer with infinite MP, the party would survive indefinitely. For me, that's a problem.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

This is so very true. And probably applies to tank too. You know that you can drop your stance for x amount of time because you'll always have a CD ready for the next big hit, and that, in the mean time, damage is only scrath compared to much the healer can heal you. Which also might show that healers are a bit too powerful.
If you take out enrage mechanics and imagine a healer with infinite MP, the party would survive indefinitely. For me, that's a problem.

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I'm not sure I understand the last bit of your post - if you aren't being killed by enrage and you aren't being killed by your healer running out of MP then what is supposed to be killing you? I mean obviously mistakes happen but I don't think that's what you're referencing.

I guess I would just ask in a situation with a fight with no enrage, no MP issues and no grievous errors why shouldn't the party survive endlessly?

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

Run non-PUG content. That's how. Not only do you have to perform your role more profoundly, but you have to utilize your class's strengths.

Game design is fine in the fact that it gives people of varying skill and cooperative ability content they can find challenging. You can't turn the roulette into needing hardcore tanking/healing. They're for the bottom rung of group content. Changing game design and class design would exclude thousands of players.

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I'm not asking what the player can do to better experience additional nuances of play in the present game. I am asking your ideas as to design concepts that can allow for such nuances to be deeper and more widely available across play, especially as they apply to the strength of derivative outputs or "cross-role" play.

If you are under the opinion that any and all means of increasing derivative outputs' usefulness would be damaging, whether at cost of existing outputs or not (emphasis on not), then so be it — no improvements possible.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

If I'm misunderstanding please feel free to call me out but I think what the OP is asking for isn't more "hardcore" content necessarily but just content in which tanks and healers have less time/freedom to DPS.

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I'll revise the OP for clarity in a moment. Content needn't be the only change; it's not what's asked for if looking at the query directly. Rather, what new systems or concepts in design can allow for more than concerns than just DPS, or shaving off as much enmity or healing as possible as to be able to DPS.

Let me be very, very clear here: this is not some defense of "pure" healing or tanking, nor is it asking to jump content difficulty just so that the existent healing and mitigation toolkits can see more prominent use (given that virtually all mitigation is CD based, the latter is scarcely even possible). I am asking what systems can be implemented to make the decisions going through a healer's or tank's (or even DPS's) mind can make the considerations of support (defensive, offensive, or curative) feel deeper and more pervasive, in terms of decisions makeable and globals spent thereon.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

The real question in my humble opinion is 'how can the DPS role be made more broadly useful?' Tanks and healers are already plenty useful in both role specific and general ways.

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And that is one of the only two questions being asked (all others being restatements for clarification).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

How can we adjust the game design, without relying on gimmicks or absurd scaling, to allow for a greater sense of "healing" or "tanking" within those "roles"? And what adjustments, compensatory or improvements in their own right, should DPS feel in order to make that vision cohesive?

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So, any ideas?

I think it comes down to the nature of each fight. To where once you learn it, the fight becomes easy to the point where the tank knows when he can drop tank stance and go offensive before (insert mechanic here) happens. Same can be said for healers when there is a break in the damage in.

For them to make it where the roles are used more would possibly raise the skill required for those roles, which in turn could make people want to play those roles even less, especially if you were to make those adjustments in the casual areas of dungeons.


Tanks tank and healers heal and in-between that they are dpsing. Its simple.

What the OP is suggesting wouldnt necessarily want people to tank or heal more. Perhaps more individual tank or healer specific actions within an instance, or exclusive healer and tank action time events but even then that would be them just sitting there button mashing while a cool animation plays out.

Tanks are there to provide a target, take the hits, and deal damage.

Healers are there to keep everyone alive and deal damage.

DPS are there to deal damage.

The real question in my humble opinion is 'how can the DPS role be made more broadly useful?' Tanks and healers are already plenty useful in both role specific and general ways.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

The real question in my humble opinion is 'how can the DPS role be made more broadly useful?' Tanks and healers are already plenty useful in both role specific and general ways.

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That's a trick question because DPS are already the only truly "useful" role, because the win condition is entirely dependent on getting the enemy's HP to zero. Tanks and healers are not useful in their own right, they are artificially made useful (and mandatory) via un-avoidable damage. And because that damage is capped, being "useful" beyond that goes the way of DPS.

You can of course pull the same trick with any other role and have for example a dedicated CC role that exists solely to cancel out casts that only they can cancel that will wipe the group if you don't - Same principle, you get your mandatory role gimmick and then DPS the rest of the time. And then make another dedicated De/Buff role that provides protection against another guaranteed wipe mechanic that you introduce based on those de/buffs - Think +70% shadow/fire/water resistance or similar. Same thing, mandatory role gimmick, rest DPS. Or you can make a gardener role that exists to plant flowers in the duty and the duty fails if not enough of them bloom. Same thing, mandatory role gimmick, rest DPS.

And because of that, DPS don't really need anything else. They are already at the "Rest" stage by default. And for tanks and healers, that means that the only way to make them more useful outside of DPS is to either create additional gimmicks, or increase the demands of the gimmicks they already have - everything else is gonna boil down to "More Damage", whether directly or indirectly.

Healing and tanking has been handled very differently here than in WoW (which I'll use as an example), and I think the key to making tanking and healing less about dps is making them less overpowered in their own role and having less predictable encounters. Fights could have a degree of randomness regarding damage taken, damage could keep coming between mechanics and healing/tanking toolkits could be more limited and require active usage.

In WoW there are random damage hits on party members, heavier boss autoattacks, boss crits with a bigger impact, short cooldowns and random targets for aoe heals (consider a 10-15 second cooldown for Medica and Medica II hitting only 4 random targets), short cooldowns for basic tank mitigation (consider Inner Beast or The Blackest Night replacing tank stance and having to hit it every 10-15 seconds to survive basic damage) and less powerful tank buster cooldowns (shorter duration, less damage reduction). Tank swaps occur more often and the cooldown on Taunt (Provoke) is shorter. Healing in WoW is much less powerful than here and you actually use your single target heals on people, because aoe healing targets random people or eats a quarter of your MP and you don't have the means to recover MP as well as here. Heals are less powerful and Medica II equivalents are considered "raid cooldowns" (usually a 3 min cooldown) which get coordinated with other healers for certain mechanics. Having a raid wide cooldown on resurrections makes it more punishing to die in raids, so healers have to be on their toes for people's mistakes (small mistakes are often recoverable with some healer attention).

Healers in WoW can do damage but they lack powerful damage tools like Holy. Tanks do a decent amount of damage with their regular rotation (mitigation and damage are not mutually exclusive), but can increase damage with talent choices and gearing. Slowing multiple enemies and kiting them is also a thing which can be done to survive big pulls and make tanking more engaging.

What keeps the roles accessible to less than average players are the lack of near-death damage spikes and the focus on sustained mitigation and healing, and also the not very demanding dungeons and raids at the easiest difficulty. Danger in this game occurs when people aren't topped off in time for a big hitter, but in WoW danger occurs when people get lower and lower on health as the healers can't keep up with incoming (random and unavoidable) damage because they didn't find the balance between mana-heavy strong heals and cheap single target heals. I find that the latter approach can give a gradual increase in difficulty across different content and train people for end game, whereas the former kind of danger is either deadly for the unprepared or totally insignificant (like a dungeon tank buster which can be taken without mitigation and no damage follows it).

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

I'm not sure I understand the last bit of your post - if you aren't being killed by enrage and you aren't being killed by your healer running out of MP then what is supposed to be killing you?

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The fact that the boss' DPS should be higher than your healers' max HPS.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And what adjustments, compensatory or improvements in their own right, should DPS feel in order to make that vision cohesive?

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DPS should do much more damage, thus gain more enmity, to the point that enmity management is a real concern for the tank if DPS go full power. But, with a good tank, it would be very satisfying to unleash everything you can as a DPS. Like how tanks could manage Sneak Attack/Trick Attack or Ancient Magic Burst in FFXI.

I am on my phone for now, so I can't write much. I like this thread idea, though.

My biggest beef with healing, as a healer main, is that it's too much about memorizing raid damage patterns and not enough about adaptive healing. Having to adapt only happens when something unscripted happens though, so in order to increase this we would need:

**More randomized damage output by the boss.**

This can include:

a) Boss attacks that are actually hard to dodge (so that people actually get hit more often). RNG spawns help here.

b) Bosses are less scripted and instead roll on which move will be used next, out of a selection based on some structure.

c) More stuff that I can edit in when I am not on my phone.

I do think one of the major problems is that every fight follows a script.

So you know at certain parts of the fight the boss pattern changes. And as long as you know the pattern, nothing will require your role to really shine.

Even in situations where adds appear you know where they spawn, etc.

Bottom line they need to put RNG in the scripts to where some fights you cant predict the pattern. That would possibly open up more engaging fights rather than pattern memorization

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

The fact that the boss' DPS should be higher than your healers' max HPS.

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But when that happens you wipe. Like, that is the definition of a wipe - more damage dealt than can be healed through. I don't see how being able to heal through incoming damage is an issue. At best here you're describing a soft enrage, like in Lakshmi EX when if you get to that last Chanchala phase people don't have the vril to mitigate and therefor die.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

But when that happens you wipe. Like, that is the definition of a wipe - more damage dealt than can be healed through.

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Little math, then. If the boss deals 50 more DPS than your healer's max HPS and you have 50k HP, what time on average do you have before the boss kills you (and the rest of the team shortly after) ?

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Originally Posted by Derio

So you know at certain parts of the fight the boss pattern changes. And as long as you know the pattern, nothing will require your role to really shine.

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Like just before the 1st Charybdis on O1S, where healers purposefuly let the whole group very low on HP after two big AoEs.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

That's a trick question because DPS are already the only truly "useful" role, because the win condition is entirely dependent on getting the enemy's HP to zero. Tanks and healers are not useful in their own right, they are artificially made useful (and mandatory) via un-avoidable damage. And because that damage is capped, being "useful" beyond that goes the way of DPS.

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You're conflating damage and the DPS role. DPS is the least truly useful role because they bring nothing that the other roles don't already bring, Tanks and healers do damage as well.

You say tanks and healers are artificially made useful but that's true for the DPS role as well, 'do X amount of damage in X seconds or die' is just as artificial a game mechanic as unavoidable damage and it's the only reason DPS are required at all. Without enrage timers bringing any DPS jobs would ultimately be entirely optional.

I think predictabilty is a big part of the problem. Everything follows a set pattern, so there are few surprises. As such, everyone can fall into pattern. There is no margin of error, no holding onto MP, or holding back just in case something unexpected hits. No frantically hawking an enemy cast bar dreading a sudden tankbuster. It's not so much reacting as it is playing through what is, in essense, one giant rotation.

That's what honestly turned me off from Savage. I finally got the courage to dip my toes in, clearing O1S and O2S. But...it wasn't fun. It was wall to wall patterns/mechanics. It didn't test my abilities as an astrologian, it tested my memorization. I was hoping for a tense, epic fight and instead got a glorified coriographed dance number. Death was not a result of bad healer play, but rather because someone missed a dance step. And in Savage, one missed step is death.

I am very good at adaptive play. It's why I normally play healer/support classes. I am also terrible at memorization and recitition. DPS rotations are poison to me. That's why I main AST, and choose DPS like RDM or MCH where there is a random element to adapt to. But this game follows predictable patterns far too often. Once learned, it allows tanks and healers to do their jobs with extreme ease, offering up a lot of downtime. The only thing that can be done in the downtime is DPS, leading to the current meta. The only way to push more tanking/healing is to take tanks/healers out of that comfort zone by removing the predictability.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

DPS should do much more damage, thus gain more enmity, to the point that enmity management is a real concern for the tank if DPS go full power. But, with a good tank, it would be very satisfying to unleash everything you can as a DPS. Like how tanks could manage Sneak Attack/Trick Attack or Ancient Magic Burst in FFXI.

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This, The DPS in my group was so bad yesterday that I just did 1 rage of halone combo on boss in Shield Oath and then I did Sword oath the reminder of the fight.

And I already open the fight with DPS (Goring Blade) and well I do shield throw while running to boss but that alone is already enough to allow me to open with that DPS combo.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

<I am not asking what the player can do in present design to increase the breadth and/or depth of nuance in their gameplay. I am asking what changes to design can improve on that breadth and/or depth.>

Let me preface this by begging that this not turn into another healer-dps or tank-dps thread. This will all work off the assumption that by common sense, one spends only as much time as is necessary on any task that does not directly contribute to completing the encounter: in XIV's case, all encounters are ended through damage, thus damage is primary, and mitigation and restoration derivative. It also works off the observation that by the game's design, this means that relatively little/few of either one's (1) considerations or (2) globals are optimally spent in derivative tasks, which can annoy at least a significant portion of players, who would rather be healing or "tanking" (there's a vague term for you) more often and/or more significantly.

How can we adjust the game design, without relying on gimmicks or absurd scaling, to allow for a greater sense of "healing" or "tanking" within those "roles"? And what adjustments, compensatory or improvements in their own right, should DPS feel in order to make that vision cohesive? To put it another way, how can we better mechanically embody the idea of support — be it defensive, restorative, or offensive — and lend interest and urgency to team gameplay through short-term goals outside of just our own rotational windows, without having to overtune damage taken or undertune healing doable? How can we generate greater and more interesting value from/in derivative tasks (whatever doesn't directly contribute to finishing the encounter)?

:: To be clear, let's consider new content types as being a last resort to be used to create that design, e.g. only when two design concepts, philosophies, or paradigms are incompatible.

Go as ham on this as you like; this is just food for thought. If you have to re-engineer enemy behavioral scripts from scratch, that's fine. If you have to introduce new systems entirely, that, too, is fine.

Related Food for Thought questions, by way of example:
- Should there be synergy between healer DPS and healing, e.g. White Mages building up Essence of Earth/Wind/Water, spendable for support, self-buffing, or burst offense or restoration?
- Should almost all attacks be interceptable, as per T10's charge and mechanics repeating on it?
- Should enmity have more influence and nuance than just a target-determining value?
- Should there be some value system other than merely enmity than tanks would tend to have high outputs of, such as damage-based-suppression?
- Etc., etc.
<What kinds of systems can make our derivative toolkits more interesting and more deeply integrated into gameplay?>

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Excellent post - here are my ideas/opinions speaking strictly from a tanking POV.

Combat Revamp/More Organic gameplay

1) Get rid of tank stances completely.

2) Change combo structure. I.e. Not all combo's need to be 3 hits. I.e. Shift some of those buttons into oGCDs. I'd even take shorter GCD inside combos (i.e. Press Fast Blade -> incur 1.5s GCD -> Press Riot Blade -> Incur 1.5s GCD -> Press Royal Authority -> Incur 2.5s GCD. This makes a combo feel like an actual combo and not a super long sequence. It gives the crowd who wants more frequent presses some love, while still maintaining that long GCD between presses for those who like the existing playstyle. I think this is a fair compromise.

3) More oGCDs with actual effects. These should be your more situational presses and not pressed mindlessly on cooldown for DPS.

I.e. Shield Swipe should be more than just damage. Maybe on successful block Shield Swipe becomes active and can be used within say 10s that can be activated to deal damage knocking an enemy off balance triggering additional enmity gain and letting you cast a combo ender instantly. Different combo enders could give threat/DPS/mitigation.

Another example could be having an oGCD that transforms threat to DPS/mitigation. Circle of Scorn costs reduces current threat by x% and deal AOE damage/DoT. While inside the Circle of Scorn area you take y% less damage.

4) Tune damage to be more frequent, but less dangerous. Ideally I envision a paradigm where an encounter is a moderate bleed that the healer massages. When the bleed ramps up (via someone taking avoidable damage, tankbuster, or failing a mechanic induces raid damage, etc.) healers have cooldowns to recover. If those cooldowns aren't available there is still room for them to ramp up and recover, but it won't be free or easy. I don't want huge big staggering hits, and I don't want inconsequential hits. It needs to add up and increase based on mechanics/enemies, etc.

5) Mitigation and Threat and DPS are driven by what choices you make in combo's and oGCDs. Have much less "big cooldowns", but the few that are left cut the cooldowns so they can be used more frequently. The idea would be that you threat would be organic over the fight. You always need to be #1 as the tank, but you don't need enormous threat, sometimes you will need DPS and sometimes you'll need more mitigation. The idea would be that you need mitigation up more often (i.e. using combos/oGCD's to keep a buff up or to raise defense etc.) if the healers are struggling to massage the bleeding I mentioned above. I.e. if you're consistently at 50%HP, and a big hit is coming soon, focus on mitigation effects/combos to allow the healer some time to catch up, and then supplement with a cooldown.

5) Encounter design needs to bring back CC. Not like mass sleeping enemies, but enemies need to cast things that are dangerous and should be CC'd/interrupted. Make that a tanks responsibility and a mDPS responsibility. I wouldn't be opposed to random threat drops on mobs/bosses (since they don't 1 shot) requiring quick threat gain, etc.

It also needs to utilize space control better and less hard pass/fail mechanics. Failing a DPS check or mechanic shouldn't restart the fight. Maybe it ramps up the outgoing damage, or a part of the area becomes a void zone, spawns an add, etc.

It also needs to utilize add phases that aren't intermissions. Have jobs have actual AOE abilities and adds that need to be tanked during a boss fight, not an intermission. Have DPS make decisions between 2 target, 3 target or full AOE kind of ability usage (wow does a good job at this).

Tank swaps need to be more organic. I.e. swap out when hp is getting too low and damage is too high etc or out of coodowns. I'm really tired of taunt at X or for Y tankbuster.

I'll leave these notes here. I have probably a dozen more, but I want people to read it and not TLDR. OBVIOUSLY these paradigms would never work with existing systems design, please keep that in mind when responding. Try to envision the statements and how you would feel playing.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Little math, then. If the boss deals 50 more DPS than your healer's max HPS and you have 50k HP, what time on average do you have before the boss kills you (and the rest of the team shortly after)?

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Not to disrupt the theoretical, but I doubt you'd run into a healer who'd find that slow descent satisfying, nor any tank who'd enjoy needing to gradually lose enmity to their dps, and each dps to each other in turn, each just before dying.

But from the same theoretical, following the pretext that your healers have to put out their fixed maximal output (and mana is a non-concern), I'm wondering how this differs in any way from a typical enrage timer, except that the impact of individual mistakes must somehow be softened for this to work. In either case, damage is your primary form of survival, all else just multipliers (derivatives) thereon, by extending the maximal encounter time. I guess I, too, am just missing the point, still.

Problem: DPS winning fights.
Solution: Non-DPS'ing winning fights.
Explanation: A battle where survival ends up winning it. This can be done in two ways. One, where the party surviving for a specific amount of time wins. How they survive doesn't matter, but deaths would increase the time while the enemy would do a lot of off-aggro or AoE attacks, hence it would be healer-centric. Only tank can significantly mitigate damage, so healers role would be more important.
It could also depend on the amount of damage completely negated (by doing a mechanic correctly thus canceling skill, moving out of AoE's properly, using damage-mitigation skills etc.). This would be more tank-centric, as their damage mitigation is superior, but healer would still need to be present to keep the tanks in health, and prevent the DPS from dying. Dying means less dodges, after all. Adds can be used to occupy the DPS's, with adds being normal "DPS wins" mobs, so that high DPS would still be necessary.
These can be mixed and matched, even making a boss that can be won against with either of the three or select two.

Story-wise, it is caused by the boss noticing that no matter how much he tries, he cannot win, hence he surrenders. A reasonable thing and most people don't want a deathmatch just for the sake of having a deathmatch, with no chance of victory...


Problem: Healers and tanks having little reason to go out of their regularly scheduled heals/mitigation skills, as the ratio of DPS to healing/mitigation is more important.
Solution: Make having high health more important.
Explanation: With decrease in HP, comes decrease in damage output. The character gets held back by wounds and the like. Keeping a tank at 50% could cut its damage by 40%, for example, even more at lower levels than that, so "brute-forcing" their way through avoidable attacks would not be a good idea for tanks, while healers doing heavy DPS while keeping the party at low HP until a scripted "nuke" comes would be a horrid idea, as well.


Both of these would be better suited as selectively-used mechanics, for some bosses/mobs, rather wide-spread thing. It would be one thing if the game was made like that from the start, but as it is now, it would cause quite an exodus, I guess. Especially since going by a thread I made in the past, majority of people really don't want to put even a sliver of thought into this game.

Lack of triage and the absurdly high healing potencies play a huge factor into why healers have so little engagement with their actual role. When you can set up at 10k regen tick, it crosses far into ridiculous categories. Likewise, the predictability of fights impacts them both. Nothing can truly be addressed until the devs embrace less scripted, high triage based fight design. I'll go one better and argue tank immunities are also part of the issue. I suspect their intent had been for emergency use, but we don't run content like that. All immunities have become is removing an annoying mechanic from the fight. Unfortunately, I can't say how well received high triage would be, especially at the lower levels. On the one hand, it would go a long way in forcing players to actually improve at their main role. On the other, well, whenever I let my co-healer solo in DF they tend to panic.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Lack of triage and the absurdly high healing potencies play a huge factor into why healers have so little engagement with their actual role. When you can set up at 10k regen tick, it crosses far into ridiculous categories. Likewise, the predictability of fights impacts them both. Nothing can truly be addressed until the devs embrace less scripted, high triage based fight design. I'll go one better and argue tank immunities are also part of the issue. I suspect their intent had been for emergency use, but we don't run content like that. All immunities have become is removing an annoying mechanic from the fight. Unfortunately, I can't say how well received high triage would be, especially at the lower levels. On the one hand, it would go a long way in forcing players to actually improve at their main role. On the other, well, whenever I let my co-healer solo in DF they tend to panic.

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By "triage" here, do you mean something like staving or cautionary heals (i.e. for an incoming damage of unknown proximity or strength), as opposed to known requirements or exacted heals, or is it just being used as another word for healing? (Just trying to be sure before I tally the idea.)

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Problem: Healers and tanks having little reason to go out of their regularly scheduled heals/mitigation skills, as the ratio of DPS to healing/mitigation is more important.
Solution: Make having high health more important.
Explanation: With decrease in HP, comes decrease in damage output. The character gets held back by wounds and the like. Keeping a tank at 50% could cut its damage by 40%, for example, even more at lower levels than that, so "brute-forcing" their way through avoidable attacks would not be a good idea for tanks, while healers doing heavy DPS while keeping the party at low HP until a scripted "nuke" comes would be a horrid idea, as well.

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So like a raid-wide Atrophy (or, Reverse Vigor) mechanic? While as a gimmick that'd do little for healing or tanking, that would definitely be interesting to see some time. I just worry that it would change little in the aspects of "maintain HoTs / ensure Fairy's existance; DPS between".

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

But from the same theoretical, following the pretext that your healers have to put out their fixed maximal output (and mana is a non-concern), I'm wondering how this differs in any way from a typical enrage timer, except that the impact of individual mistakes must somehow be softened for this to work. In either case, damage is your primary form of survival, all else just multipliers (derivatives) thereon, by extending the maximal encounter time.

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Extending the maximal encounter time, that's the big difference. On the old STR vs VIT debate, wearing VIT accessories would give a much easier time beating the "enrage" by giving below average DPS more time to do damage as a tradeoff for what you personally lose, as is using your tank stance. Right now, if your DPS are below average, by being more tanky, you actually reduce your chances of winning because of a totally arbitrary time limit that doesn't goes with the flow and always makes you wonder why the monster deosn't use its "kill'em all" attack right at the beginning...

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Solution: Non-DPS'ing winning fights.

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We can fights like this, but they would be gimmicky like that boss in Bardam. I doubt we could apply this to lots of fights

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Explanation: With decrease in HP, comes decrease in damage output.

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That would actually have the opposite effect. Having more HP doesn't make you easier to heal. So, you'd want enough HP to survive but not too much HP so that healers would have to use several spells to put you out of the debuff window. Unless you tie the damage to the actual max value instead of the ratio of HP, which would be very weird after reverting back to STR for AP.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

By "triage" here, do you mean something like staving or cautionary heals (i.e. for an incoming damage of unknown proximity or strength), as opposed to known requirements or exacted heals, or is it just being used as another word for healing? (Just trying to be sure before I tally the idea.)

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A little of both. Initially, I meant it more towards consistent out going damage that necessitated more frequent healing. Coupling it with a degree of unpredictability (i.e., cautionary heals) would add another layer of gameplay because now abilities like Assize are valued more for their healing. You may actually want to hold it back instead of blowing it off CD. Of course, how much damage would need to be adjusted based on any healer potency changes.

Forgive the perhaps unrelated introspection, but I've come to the realization that, after reading many of the responses on this thread, some of my own previous (and often controversial) arguments have been clarified.

Why am I so "obsessed" (as some people have called it) with unconventional gameplay?
Why am I so frustrated by the DPS-centric mindset?
Why do I think that the old Spear card was the best AST card in the game?

The answer to all of those really just comes down to my disdain for the predictability of FF14:

Much of the reason I run old content on MinIL is because a) I don't know the fights, so it feels more unpredictable, and b) most other people don't know the fights, so they get hit more, making my job as healer more adaptive.

I run content with freeform comps because I have adapt to the situation. If I'm healing, the aggro is often going all over the place as well, again making it unpredictable.

I dislike the DPS-centric mindset because it is essentially the product of the predictable nature of the game. "Why save your cooldowns for the sake of safety when you know everything that is coming? Just use it all to increase your DPS."

"Faster clears are always better." Except that the longer the run takes, the more chances there are for the unpredictable to happen.

Why am I so obsessed with 4-player Royal Menagerie? Because it's one of the few fights with a fairly hefty amount of randomness.

Mathematically, the old Spear is proven useless, from a DPS perspective; however I always argued that math could not account for unpredictability. Ultimately, when battles become very unpredictable, the question of safe versus aggressive healers becomes far more pronounced. And reducing cooldowns becomes a very potent tool for raising the odds of being prepared when in a very unpredictable situation.
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Annnnnnnyways, to try to pull this introspection a bit more on topic, the question of pursuing a less predictable form of gameplay I think depends largely on how the playerbase will respond to it. While players are quick to complain that things are too easy, and suggest that elements of randomness could alleviate this problem, I'm not sure how popular it would be, overall. How many players are prepared for the inevitable excess of wipes the introduction of randomness would create? It seems to me that the playerbase is strongly centered on predictability now, after so many years of it. The addition of randomization would certainly prove to be a challenge, especially for players with stronger memory, but weaker decisive reactions. Perhaps such bosses could be introduced as a new type of dungeon. Or perhaps trials could become the more randomized battles, while raids remain predictable. That in turn could cause a serious split in the playerbase, though.

In terms of ideas for new approaches, I'll throw another upvote on the Bardam's Mettle system, which was mentioned earlier. I very much enjoyed the second boss. However, it was still very scripted. Throwing in randomization would make it a lot harder. As kikix12 said, you can also do

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A battle where survival ends up winning it.

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. Memories of Cromm Cruiach from Vindictus spring to mind...

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Healers in WoW can do damage but they lack powerful damage tools like Holy.

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WoW is a bad example. In PUG content I was easily able to be 2nd on damage (Tank being first) as a Holy Paladin, doing a healing rotation. I was like a mini Ret Paladin in Legion.


Back to the subject though. Like I said before. Run some of the harder content like Savages and Extremes in SB. You'll see a more profound use for Healing and Tanking roles. The PUG content is easy because you're throwing 4 random people together with varying amounts of experience and aptitude.

You can't make healing and tanking more intensive because the vast majority of our playerbase can't handle it. DF healers could barely handle a11 normal Eternal Darkness. And when DF tanks try to into positioning, you end up with Calofisteti 99.9% field cleaves. And that's not even mentioning both roles vs. Hashmal.

Until we kill the "Expert roulette is endgame" mentality, nothing will change.

I would say get rid of tank stances, or do SOMETHING to kill the terrible "Tank boss only in dps stance" meta.

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Originally Posted by NolLacnala

You can't make healing and tanking more intensive because the vast majority of our playerbase can't handle it.

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If we had that mentality in real life, we'd still be using training wheels on our bicycles. Yes, people will fall...and then they'll learn.

The Diabolos Hollow fight in Dun Scaith uses several mechanics to put a definite focus on survival over dps. DpS is good but surviving the fight is more important.

At the start of the fight the Auto-Crit Shield will let Diabolos flatten tanks quickly if they are not in tank stance and don't use cooldowns. If the tanks fall others are usually quick to fall soon after and wiping was very possible.

During the final phase when Diabolos gets the Double-Edge buff that allows for more damage dealt but at the cost of taking massive amounts from the attached DoT so the fight becomes more about the alliance surviving long enough for Diabolos to kill himself once the phase begins.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Extending the maximal encounter time, that's the big difference.

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Sorry, what I meant to ask is what's then changed as to a healer's purpose? You can have an arbitrary time limit creating a set maxima, wherein healers increase maximum encounter time, or a slow descent which produces a scaling maxima, wherein healers increase maximum encounter time. I'm just trying to figure out where the actual change is occurring to how a healer would fit in, in its own feeling of play or as a piece of the larger puzzle, so I can list it.

Would I be correct in thinking that the idea here is that then healing, too, can contribute against DPS checks (by extending the window), in an equitable but distinct way from dealing damage?

If so, on paper that seems pretty neat, pretty solid, but in actuality, I feel like to judge or envision the idea fairly I'd need to know where's the threshold, and what does progression by skill, over the given fight, or over gear look like? Or, more importantly, what healer "throughput", exactly, would the boss be gradually overwhelming? Cure II spam? Cure I? Highest possible burst? HoT maintenance + C1 + periodic Benison? And how would avoid the same issues of "any healing beyond what's necessary to kill it in time is excessive", or gear turning a highest direct heal global + HoT maintenance into alternating highest direct heal with best filler attack + HoT and DoT maintenance? Wouldn't that actually allow for healing to be devalued even more quickly than now? No matter how I run this through my head — and this is probably just my idiocy, but I really can't imagine otherwise — it just feels like the same, but where you spend a long time ramping up to and a long time exceeding what would feel like the intended pace of a fight (or, its healing or mitigation requirements, assuming mitigation were ever on demand rather than just on cooldown/counter), with less interaction with the fight itself.

Sorry, I'm just trying to understand this better.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Little math, then. If the boss deals 50 more DPS than your healer's max HPS and you have 50k HP, what time on average do you have before the boss kills you (and the rest of the team shortly after) ?

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Sorry for my late response, irl things.

That is, in essence, a soft enrage. I feel like this presents some issues though, particularly under the umbrella of all healers being able to heal all content. As it stands now WHM has amazing burst and sustained HPS if it was ever necessary - there is nothing other healers have that can compete with Cure III much less a PoM+Largresse'd Cure III spam while under Thin Air.

Either encounters would be tuned to fit WHM's throughput potential (and WHM is necessary) or they're tuned to AST/SCH (and WHM is still necessary because it can trivialize these healchecks and open a DPS window.)

The solution then becomes giving all healers and healer comps roughly the same sustained HPS, but then we're facing issues with homogenization which a huge portion of the playerbase is against and rightly so.

I just can't see this being a thing personally, nothing without some huge changes to the game which I do not want.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

The Diabolos Hollow fight in Dun Scaith uses several mechanics to put a definite focus on survival over dps. DpS is good but surviving the fight is more important.

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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.

These mechanics everyone is asking for exist:

Lakshmi Extreme
Susanoo Extreme
Shinryu Extreme
Deltascape Savage, all four versions.
and I assume Ultimate Coil has it too.

Do that content, people. As someone else said, Expert Roulette is not the endgame.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

We can fights like this, but they would be gimmicky like that boss in Bardam. I doubt we could apply this to lots of fights

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Why?! There is nothing preventing this from being the only way the game goes, so having it apply to, lets say, one boss in every dungeon and every third one-boss content (trials) would in no way be a stretch, while it would make a significant difference.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

That would actually have the opposite effect. Having more HP doesn't make you easier to heal. So, you'd want enough HP to survive but not too much HP so that healers would have to use several spells to put you out of the debuff window. Unless you tie the damage to the actual max value instead of the ratio of HP, which would be very weird after reverting back to STR for AP.

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I have no idea what your argument here is. This suggestion is not about making healing easier or anything. It's about making healers focus more on healing instead of DPS. And the only way to do that without completely changing the healers is to die their healing to the party DPS in a reverse manner than currently, as in have healing increase overall DPS rather than decrease.

The debuff wouldn't have any window. I honestly don't know where you got that from. After a single attack, the player would already have -1% to their damage. A near-death character would have virtually no damage to offer. The penalty would go from 0% to, let's say, 90% based on the amount of life the player have left, so a healer would want to keep ALL members of the group at high HP consistently, instead of going into bursts here or there. Right now, if a group of mobs goes down reasonably fast, there is never a reason to use Cure/Benefic in trash fights, as spamming Cure II/Benefic II once the tank is low will give more opportunity to deal damage. If the mobs die fast, mana is not a problem after all. If the players health would be tied to their damage, it could be more important for the healers to keep the tanks health at high value consistently, thus casting weaker spells (as overhealing is still pointless) when they get smaller damage.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Sorry, what I meant to ask is what's then changed as to a healer's purpose? You can have an arbitrary time limit creating a set maxima

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If the "time limit" is based on how much damage people can take and how much the healer can heal, it's not really "arbitrary". As I said, right now, you can be the best healer/tank in the world, it won't change anything about the enrage. Either you DPS enough, of you die in XX minutes.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Would I be correct in thinking that the idea here is that then healing, too, can contribute against DPS checks (by extending the window), in an equitable but distinct way from dealing damage?

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Yes. You see, if you look at adds like Sin Of Meracydia or that add I forgot the name in Singularity Reactor, the more HP they have the more damage they do. But, if they don't "die" it's not an automatic wipe. So, ig you have a good healer, you can survive even if the DPS checked is technically failed.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Or, more importantly, what healer "throughput", exactly, would the boss be gradually overwhelming?

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That's a much trickier question, and I admit that it would require heavy changes in how the game is currently designed. And it would probably involve less MP regeneration tools.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

That is, in essence, a soft enrage. I feel like this presents some issues though, particularly under the umbrella of all healers being able to heal all content.

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Sure, healers would still be able to heal all content...but not for the same duration. Technicaly, fights like these are a race, to see who kills the other first. Healer jobs who focus heavily on healing would be like slowing down the boss, while healers with more offensive buffs or personal DPS would take a bigger part in the party's side of the race. The thing is that, again, by healing more, you can't extend the duration of the fight, so a "healing focused" healer is kind of a liability. If there was no hard enrage, apart from speedrunning with DPS that can perfecty hold their own on a very short duration, you could take any type of healer you want.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Why?! There is nothing preventing this from being the only way the game goes, so having it apply to, lets say, one boss in every dungeon and every third one-boss content (trials) would in no way be a stretch, while it would make a significant difference.

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Because I feel this would only be a gimmick to make people think that what they do matters more. Exacly like Gordias made DRK mandatory and PLD near useless just by focusing on magic damage.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

The debuff wouldn't have any window. I honestly don't know where you got that from.

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If I always have to be at full health, as long as the healer can make up for what damage I take, I don't need more HP. And let's take situations like Holmgang, Living Dead, or attacks like Charybdis. Let's suppose a healer than can heal me for 10k with each GCD. If I'm at 1HP with a max HP of 50k, it will require 5 GCD to take me up to full health (and thus, no damage penalty). If I have 30k HP max, only 3GCD will be required to take me back to full damage.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Because I feel this would only be a gimmick to make people think that what they do matters more. Exacly like Gordias made DRK mandatory and PLD near useless just by focusing on magic damage.

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This is entirely different way of calculating a "victor" that is entirely based on players abilities. Sorry, but if you think this is a gimmick, then you are effectively calling winning a battle through DPS a gimmick. And that it clearly is not.

What is a gimmick and what is not depends entirely on how often it is used. If used on a single boss in the game, it would be a gimmick, yes, but if used regularly, it would be a part of the system. Just like stacking mechanics are not gimmicks, cause many bosses across the game use them.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

If I always have to be at full health, as long as the healer can make up for what damage I take, I don't need more HP.

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How is that different from now?! Unless you are one-hitted, larger HP pool matters only for two things. When the healer needs to heal and for HP-based skills like Benediction (100% HP) or The Blackest Night (20% or 10% of max HP shield).

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

And let's take situations like Holmgang, Living Dead, or attacks like Charybdis.

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Irrelevant, as mitigating damage loss would be part of making the most out of the system. Using these as arguments is like arguing that making a DPS based meta have some troubles because it makes players want to use skills look Blood for Blood.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Let's suppose a healer than can heal me for 10k with each GCD. If I'm at 1HP with a max HP of 50k, it will require 5 GCD to take me up to full health (and thus, no damage penalty). If I have 30k HP max, only 3GCD will be required to take me back to full damage.

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Irrelevant, because that's exactly what this prevents. Healers will not WANT to wait until you are low on HP to heal you. Quite the opposite, the less health you have (with the same defense) the bigger your penalty will be with the same 10000HP hit you get, because it will be a bigger chunk of your HP. That means that the healer will want to heal you even more often.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Sure, healers would still be able to heal all content...but not for the same duration. Technicaly, fights like these are a race, to see who kills the other first. Healer jobs who focus heavily on healing would be like slowing down the boss, while healers with more offensive buffs or personal DPS would take a bigger part in the party's side of the race. The thing is that, again, by healing more, you can't extend the duration of the fight, so a "healing focused" healer is kind of a liability. If there was no hard enrage, apart from speedrunning with DPS that can perfecty hold their own on a very short duration, you could take any type of healer you want.

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This sounds a lot like the current meta now, you even used the phrase "a healing focused healer is kind of a liability" which is very much the overarching concept which defines the meta right now. I see your idea of replacing healer DPS with buffs but the one other MMO I've played (eso) does this and while I'm sure it could be more fun in FFXIV this kind of play stagnates quickly in pug content.

Right now on WHM if I get a group with slow DPS I can turn on the afterburners (PoM, Cleric) and in an AoE situation I can outdps most other classes anyways. Even single target I can do reasonable dps. The issue with swapping that for buffs is that there are a ton of really poor players out there in almost all content who would basically invalidate any benefit those buffs conferred. Almost everyone AST main has a story of throwing Balance on themselves or a WAR because the actual DPSers in a dungeon were so bad there was no point buffing them. Imagine that but without tank and healer DPS being impressive enough to pick up the slack.

I don't mean to play devil's advocate with your idea its just as a healer main I can't see enjoying this playstyle. Its taking away healer utility but not giving anything back.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

This is entirely different way of calculating a "victor" that is entirely based on players abilities. Sorry, but if you think this is a gimmick, then you are effectively calling winning a battle through DPS a gimmick. And that it clearly is not.

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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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Originally Posted by kikix12

How is that different from now?!

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

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Irrelevant, because that's exactly what this prevents. Healers will not WANT to wait until you are low on HP to heal you.

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

This sounds a lot like the current meta now, you even used the phrase "a healing focused healer is kind of a liability" which is very much the overarching concept which defines the meta right now.

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I was describing the current type of enrage :p

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

Right now on WHM if I get a group with slow DPS I can turn on the afterburners (PoM, Cleric) and in an AoE situation I can outdps most other classes anyways.

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But your personal DPS throughout the fight has a lesser chance of saving the run than if your healing capacities would allow the whole party to deal damage for one more minute. Keep in mind that I don't want to remove all DPS capacites from healers, just to give them a way to contribute in winning even by focusing on healing.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

But your personal DPS throughout the fight has a lesser chance of saving the run than if your healing capacities would allow the whole party to deal damage for one more minute. Keep in mind that I don't want to remove all DPS capacites from healers, just to give them a way to contribute in winning even by focusing on healing.

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Oh I totally get what you're headed for, I mean that's basically why we're all here in this thread after all :)

I just see way too many awful DPS players to be alright with this sort of playstyle. I don't think it fits in with the hypercasual playerbase and I specifically believe it to be a disservice to healers.