[Discussion and Feedback] Incoming damage vs. Utility

Something that's come to mind the last few weeks is "Is it really the amount of incoming damage that's the issue, or is it that we have too much potent utility at our disposal?".

I feel like there's been a very obvious notable increase in how much party-wide damage mitigation and healing these past couple expansions. So much so that we're invalidating raid-wides even on content launch.

The problem here is, that the incoming damage has NOT been tuned to account for this in casual content, not even the end-game on patch content.

When not using these tools, things feel like they hit much harder..what I'd normally consider the "healthy amount". Not enough to kill, but enough for it to actually matter.

So that brought to my attention just how much party-wide mitigation and healing we actually have. It easily overwhelms the damage we would normally receive.

Now I'm not saying we should go and remove every single one that we have outside of healers, but something has to give. We can't just have the damage increased too high because then it's unhealable, but we already feel the affects of it being too low due to us being able to negate it near completely.

So my thoughts here are, a couple routes could be taken:

• Party/Raid-wide mits can be reduced in kits that aren't healers
• Potent aoes are dished out by bosses more often. Essentially creating heal checks that happen way more often.
• both of the above

What are your thoughts on this?

Something you don't really see much anymore that we had back in ARR was enemies and bosses that would target random non tank party members with instant special attacks that would either deal a chunk of damage, apply debuffs, or both. An example being the gargoyle enemies. People know them for their Desolation line AoE, However they used to randomly throw swords at ppl further down the enmity list as well.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

Something that's come to mind the last few weeks is "Is it really the amount of incoming damage that's the issue, or is it that we have too much potent utility at our disposal?".

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What I can tell you, for certain, is that Thordan Extreme was way harder in Heavensward in large part because a Warrior couldn't just press Shake It Off and do the healer's job for them. This was true for the unreal trials that came before it as well, such as Sophia and Ultima, which are way more difficult at level 60/50 because of how reliant tanks are on the healers at that level.

At level 90 you just press Bloodwhetting and Shake It Off and the healers don't even need to worry so much.

We also didn't have so frequent mitigation back then. A short cooldown such as Bloodwhetting is a big one as it is, but the cooldown time of Sentinel, Vengeance, Nebula and Shadow Wall was reduced as well and we didn't have Reprisal on all tanks (Paladins could reduce physical damage and Dark Knights could reduce magic damage). So you had to really time your cooldowns right for the upcoming add phase.

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notable increase in how much party-wide damage mitigation and healing these past couple expansions. So much so that we're invalidating raid-wides even on content launch.

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I don't think this is true in Extreme and Savage. In the first Pandaemonium tier, I saw the entire party coordinating Addles, Feints, Reprisals, tank and healer mit, just to prevent wipes to simple raid-wides which were common without doing this. I've still seen how vitally important that is, even in the latest extreme trial, where I have seen a simple raid-wide dot wipe the party or simple phase changes wipe the party, prompting me to adjust my tank cooldown usage to help the healers out. The last phase can especially overwhelm the party if nobody gets the mitigation right.

I had not particularly felt like this was so important in the past. Sure I used Reprisal on aoes, especially aoe bleeds and sure healers were usually expected to have a shield up, but coordinating the mit to this extent with addles, feints and reprisals to prevent wipes felt ramped up to me and I am happy with this.

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The problem here is, that the incoming damage has NOT been tuned to account for this in casual content, not even the end-game on patch content.

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Raid-wides in casual content have never felt very threatening to be honest. The most threatening I have seen it is probably in normal raids on release day, but as soon everyone increased their item level, they became trivial.

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Party/Raid-wide mits can be reduced in kits that aren't healers

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I disagree with this. The job of a tank is to protect the party. Tanks should have the responsibility for putting up barriers and mitigation. The entire concept of a barrier healer steps on tanks' toes, but the concept of tanks having regens on Shake It Off and Divine Veil steps on healers' toes.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I disagree with this. The job of a tank is to protect the party. Tanks should have the responsibility for putting up barriers and mitigation. The entire concept of a barrier healer steps on tanks' toes, but the concept of tanks having regens on Shake It Off and Divine Veil steps on healers' toes.

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LOL
you cannot be serious, you have to be trolling

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I don't think this is true in Extreme and Savage. In the first Pandaemonium tier, I saw the entire party coordinating Addles, Feints, Reprisals, tank and healer mit, just to prevent wipes to simple raid-wides which were common without doing this. I've still seen how vitally important that is, even in the latest extreme trial, where I have seen a simple raid-wide dot wipe the party or simple phase changes wipe the party, prompting me to adjust my tank cooldown usage to help the healers out. The last phase can especially overwhelm the party if nobody gets the mitigation right.

I had not particularly felt like this was so important in the past. Sure I used Reprisal on aoes, especially aoe bleeds and sure healers were usually expected to have a shield up, but coordinating the mit to this extent with addles, feints and reprisals to prevent wipes felt ramped up to me and I am happy with this.

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I didn't put this in the OP, but I am talking about normal mode content.

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Raid-wides in casual content have never felt very threatening to be honest. The most threatening I have seen it is probably in normal raids on release day, but as soon everyone increased their item level, they became trivial.

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It doesn't need to be, it just has to be threatening enough. A single raid-wide isn't a whole lot with just flat damage and no bleeds, but needing to keep the party up for 2-4 raid-wides that will kill without healers healing through it would be nice. I still think Zeromus handled it quite well in terms of single raid-wide damage with that one cast I forget the name of in phase 1

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I disagree with this. The job of a tank is to protect the party. Tanks should have the responsibility for putting up barriers and mitigation. The entire concept of a barrier healer steps on tanks' toes, but the concept of tanks having regens on Shake It Off and Divine Veil steps on healers' toes.

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..huh? Is this serious?

I didn't say they had to be removed, but how potent they are could be reduced.

I think the healing on Shake it Off and Divine Veil should go, yes...but tanks giving party-wide mitigation is not a mandatory feature. Party support of that nature should be on healers first and foremost lol.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

tanks giving party-wide mitigation is not a mandatory feature. Party support of that nature should be on healers first and foremost lol.

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It shouldn't, because as I said, the job of a tank is to protect the party. This is achieved primarily by drawing the attention of enemies, but also by reducing the incoming damage to the party, such as by using tank limit break, applying a single-target support buff to party members or to the party, or reducing the outgoing damage of the boss with something like Reprisal.

Meanwhile, a healer's job is to... heal.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It shouldn't, because as I said, the job of a tank is to protect the party. This is achieved primarily by drawing the attention of enemies, but also by reducing the incoming damage to the party, such as by using tank limit break, applying a single-target support buff to party members or to the party, or reducing the outgoing damage of the boss with something like Reprisal.

Meanwhile, a healer's job is to... heal.

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That is...incredibly one-noted. Different styles of healers have already existed for near a couple decades now. Pure Healer, Shield Healer, etc. Even in basic RPG's healers generally have spells for protection (such as protect and shell, for example). If there was only one style the population of healers would already be much, MUCH smaller than it already is.

Tanks are already protecting the party by being the ones taking the brunt of the damage and have cooldowns to soften the blows, healers are already supporting the party to keep them alive it just makes more sense for them to be able to give party/raid-wide mitigation as well.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

That is...incredibly one-noted. Different styles of healers have already existed for near a couple decades now. Pure Healer, Shield Healer, etc. Even in basic RPG's healers generally have spells for protection (such as protect and shell, for example). If there was only one style the population of healers would already be much, MUCH smaller than it already is.

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It's not too much of a problem that healers can cast barriers because it's a team effort, but ultimately, a big part of what I enjoy about tanking is reducing the incoming damage to the party. I could not count the amount of times I have saved party members or entire parties from dying due to timely Reprisals and tank mitigations, which reduced the damage just enough to save them because they had vuln stacks or weren't topped off.

What makes it a problem is when a tank blames the healer for not mitigating always. In parties today that is common thing I see and yet I am thinking, you know, tanks play a big role in this too...

The tank mitigation was never an issue either, because we even had Divine Veil in Heavensward. The issue was in Endwalker when they added a regen effect to it, because now I randomly decide to do a healer's job for them and heal the whole party.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's not too much of a problem that healers can cast barriers because it's a team effort, but ultimately, a big part of what I enjoy about tanking is reducing the incoming damage to the party. I could not count the amount of times I have saved party members or entire parties from dying due to timely Reprisals and tank mitigations, which reduced the damage just enough to save them because they had vuln stacks or weren't topped off.

What makes it a problem is when a tank blames the healer for not mitigating always. In parties today that is common thing I see and yet I am thinking, you know, tanks play a big role in this too...

The tank mitigation was never an issue either, because we even had Divine Veil in Heavensward. The issue was in Endwalker when they added a regen effect to it, because now I randomly decide to do a healer's job for them and heal the whole party.

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Like I said before, I don't think party mit needs to be necessarily removed from the tanks. I just think that the party mitigation as a whole needs to be dialed back a notch, because the only other solution to balance out normal mode content is to just make things hit harder to account for it, but that would mean balancing the damage to that extreme if we are to keep every ability that does it.

Now personally, I would like if they were to balance out to that extreme, but this is normal mode we're talking about.

I mean lets take a brief review of what we got this expansion(minus healers).

• Feint and Addle effect both types of damage, which means both can be applied for every aoe now. ([Physical/Magical:] 10%/5% and 5/10%, respectively)
• RDM got Magick Barrier (reduces damage by 10%, increases incoming healing by 5%)
• Warrior got Shake it Off buffed not once, but TWICE. (got healing, and then Regen on top of that)
• Paladin got a heal on top of Divine Veil

There's also (added before Endwalker but still exist today)

• Reprisal (10% mit)
• (PLD) Passage of Arms (15% mit), though this is a case by case basis if you aren't trying to snapshot
• Dark Missionary/Heart of Light (DRK/GNB| 10% Magic mit)

It's absolutely ridiculous how much we actually have at our disposal, what I listed doesn't even include what healers have at their disposal. While yes..it can indeed prevent players from dying if they have vuln stacks, the other end of "But if players don't have stacks" needs to be considered, because if you don't, even if you aren't geared it will barely even put a scratch on you, and with how infrequent raid-wides or heal checks happen just means player's will likely already have tools available for the next one.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

I just think that the party mitigation as a whole needs to be dialed back a notch

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I disagree. If the damage is being reduced due to everyone using their mitigations, then that is because everyone is doing their job.

But I doubt it is really that everyone is doing their job in casual content, because usually people in casual content are not very good at playing their job, so the problem is more likely that the outgoing damage is too low, especially when you are even slightly above the minimum item level.

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Feint and Addle effect both types of damage, which means both can be applied for every aoe now. ([Physical/Magical:] 10%/5% and 5/10%, respectively)

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I don't feel like DPS used to use these as much. It was only when it was more important for clearing high-end duties in Endwalker and they were made to mitigate both types of damage that the prevalence of using them increased a lot.

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RDM got Magick Barrier (reduces damage by 10%, increases incoming healing by 5%)

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Alright, but many DPS have this. Bard, Machinist, Dancers and Monks have some of these effects.

I agree that the ranged physical mitigation steps on the toes of tanks a bit as well, but it is also usually just 10% mitigation so it's only significant mitigation if everyone uses it ie. 2 tanks use theirs, 2 healers use theirs, a RDM uses it and a ranged physical uses it. And this is contingent on them all being skilled and competent enough to do so, which many players are not, so we don't exactly have that 6x 10% mitigation + Reprisal + Addle + Feint in most parties, especially in casual content.

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Warrior got Shake it Off buffed not once, but TWICE. (got healing, and then Regen on top of that)
Paladin got a heal on top of Divine Veil

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These are the biggest issues, in my opinion. The ones that actually make content easier than it was in ARR and Heavensward.

But there are some other abilities that affect how easy the content is compared to then - such as Bloodwhetting, Blackest Night, Holy Sheltron, PLD spell heals and healers having an abundance of off-global heals so they don't have to cast heals anymore (to be fair, players pressured SE into this direction by always wanting to DPS and trying to heal with only abilities and pets where possible even in Heavensward).

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(PLD) Passage of Arms (15% mit)

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Since keeping this up long-term involves DPS loss, I think that it's fine. For example, when Ahk Morn was used in EX1, I used it briefly but I let it go the whole way through if a party member was dead and accepted the DPS loss, because this sustained 15% mit made up for the lost party member and allowed us to survive.

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Reprisal (10% mit)
Dark Missionary/Heart of Light (DRK/GNB| 10% Magic mit)

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No issue with these again. It's a tank's job and we've had things like this since the game began (PLD had STR down, DRK had INT down). It was never an issue until Endwalker.

I like the idea of the first option, but maybe to a lesser degree. It's a thing I've been thinking about for a while, too.

How would you feel about:

• Mitigation/damage-reduction tools being stripped from non-support oriented DPS jobs (so things like Feint, Addle, Crest of Time Returned, Tactician, etc. being removed from NIN, DRG, SAM, RPR, SMN, BLM, MCH.)

• Jobs like MNK, BRD, DNC, and RDM keeping their support tools, as well as their unique mitigation/healing-up abilities they already have, thus contributing more to their supportive identity (Yes, I view MNK as a supportive job, even if only in some identity that doesn't exist anymore. It just has that feel for me)

• WAR and GNB's party-wide tools (Shake it Off and Heart of Light) NOT being removed, but toned down a bit, maybe with Shake it Off's barrier effect being removed, OR have it apply ONLY to the WAR. This means tanks like PLD and DRK, which always had that sort of "protect the weak" identity from earlier in the game, get to keep their party-wide support as-is.

• All Tank's 'Reprisal' being adjusted to only effect damage done to the tank that applied it.

It might not be perfect...... and it isn't, but thoughts, adjustments?

I mentioned this in the 'boring dps rotations for healers' thread, but I wonder what it would be like if when a boss does an attack that also applies damage over time, that mitigation buffs/debuff no longer affect the damage over time component placing more responsibility on the healers. Overall I do think that mitigation buffs/debuffs are bit too strong/prevalent.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It shouldn't, because as I said, the job of a tank is to protect the party. This is achieved primarily by drawing the attention of enemies, but also by reducing the incoming damage to the party, such as by using tank limit break, applying a single-target support buff to party members or to the party, or reducing the outgoing damage of the boss with something like Reprisal.

Meanwhile, a healer's job is to... heal.

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Imo tanks defining feature is drawing enmity and boss positioning. Both of those responsibilities have been removed from the game. If they hadn't removed aggro management they wouldn't have had to give tanks healer gameplay [healing/mitigation] to compensate.

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Originally Posted by Mayhemmer

All Tank's 'Reprisal' being adjusted to only effect damage done to the tank that applied it.

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Reprisal is a major part of tank's identity. It's one of the things I love most about tanks. It's one of the most versatile abilities in the game.

• You can use it to mitigate a raid-wide AoE.
• You can use it to mitigate AoE markers that every party member has.
• You can use it to mitigate double tank busters that affect both tanks.
• You can use it to mitigate raid-wide DoTs.
• You can use it to mitigate a tank buster on yourself.
• You can use it to mitigate heavy-hitting auto attacks by the boss.
• You can use it to reduce the damage the boss is dealing to non-players, such as an NPC or object that you are meant to protect ie. Estinien before the Aery revamp or pillars in A11S.
• You can use it on trash packs or multiple bosses since it was changed into an AoE mit.

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

Imo tanks defining feature is drawing enmity and boss positioning.

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That's how new tanks see it (minus the boss positioning because many tanks never learned that), because they don't use any of their mitigations or other abilities, but once they learn to use their full kit and protect the party, it is a very fulfilling role and you see how versatile abilities such as Blackest Night, Intervention, Nascent Flash or Reprisal are.

Let's consult SE for their definitions.

• Tank: These classes and jobs utilize various defensive and enmity-gaining abilities to keep the enemy's attention, preventing other party members from taking damage.
• Healer: These classes and jobs utilize various curative abilities to restore the HP of party members and remove status ailments.
• DPS: These classes and jobs utilize various offensive abilities to dispatch enemies as quickly as possible.

So even by SE's definition, defensive abilities to prevent party members taking damage are indeed one of the responsibilities of a tank. It only mentions that healers should heal and use Esuna and that DPS should use offensive abilities to attack; it does not mention that healers or DPS should use defensive abilities at all.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Reprisal is a major part of tank's identity.

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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...8d081bc367095&

Do you do this on purpose?

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Originally Posted by Mayhemmer

Do you do this on purpose?

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Use Reprisal? Yes.

I think some people don't know where Reprisal came from. Originally it was a Dark Knight ability in Heavensward, but the intention of it becoming a Role Action in Stormblood was actually to replace the STR down on PLD's Rage of Halone combo and the INT down on Dark Knight's Delirium combo. So tanks did always have this and it was always part of what they did.

I can understand that many people won't know that history or use Reprisal as much, but to me, it is a big part of what I enjoy about tanking and I've been happy since it was turned into an ability I can use when I actually need it, rather than part of a combo.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I mentioned this in the 'boring dps rotations for healers' thread, but I wonder what it would be like if when a boss does an attack that also applies damage over time, that mitigation buffs/debuff no longer affect the damage over time component placing more responsibility on the healers. Overall I do think that mitigation buffs/debuffs are bit too strong/prevalent.

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Problem with that is tools like Shake it Off + Overtime, Veil still exist and still deal with that in a pretty effective way.
I think all that would do is further unbalance the game by making Shield HP and Regen significantly better than mitigation. Jobs like GNB and DRK would suffer for it as they dont have equivlants to it.

Personally I think the issue is more of fight design, way back when fights used to have a lot more depth to them in terms of managing outgoing damage onto the tanks.
Thordan UR is a good example of this, his Auto attacks are scarier than almost every savage fight you'll find this tier baring P8SP2's double tank buster auto gimmick.

Now fights are less about mitigating damage and restoring health, rather they're wipe or fail fights with a heavy focus on body checks, the actual daamge outgoing isn't as high as it used to be.
Because of this tools like Shake it Off's Regen, Nascent Flash, Veil,Intervention (ect) end up being enough to get people back up to max, and ready for the next mandantory raidwide damage.

Its not that these jobs are out healing healers, its that fights don't really demand all that much from healers outside of key moments, and we're tetering on the edge of powercreep where tools that heal less like the tank moves I listed earler are becoming enough to cover that. Theres a reason all the big contents cleared healer-less were stacking up on PLD and WAR, some even doubling on both.

Just make all DPS greedy.

Tanks gain all mitigation (maybe shields)

Healers gain all raid buffs and utility after combining some of the bloat together.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

That's how new tanks see it (minus the boss positioning because many tanks never learned that), because they don't use any of their mitigations or other abilities, but once they learn to use their full kit and protect the party, it is a very fulfilling role and you see how versatile abilities such as Blackest Night, Intervention, Nascent Flash or Reprisal are.

Let's consult SE for their definitions.

• Tank: These classes and jobs utilize various defensive and enmity-gaining abilities to keep the enemy's attention, preventing other party members from taking damage.
• Healer: These classes and jobs utilize various curative abilities to restore the HP of party members and remove status ailments.
• DPS: These classes and jobs utilize various offensive abilities to dispatch enemies as quickly as possible.

So even by SE's definition, defensive abilities to prevent party members taking damage are indeed one of the responsibilities of a tank. It only mentions that healers should heal and use Esuna and that DPS should use offensive abilities to attack; it does not mention that healers or DPS should use defensive abilities at all.

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Yeah and that would be fine if tanks still actually had the responsibility of aggro management or boss positioning but they largely don't. It's all been dialled back so much and even then gen pop tanks still struggle with grouping or splitting adds [or even picking them up in the first place] and their aggro management is non existent. I'm not arguing that tanks shouldn't have any mit but the way things are the moment they are encroaching too much on healers role/responsibilities because their own unique responsibilities have been culled. I don't wanna just derail and go on a tirade about bad tanks but in my experience the general level of competence of tanks has plummeted and it's because they've had the parts of the job that actually help the entire group overlooked in favour of being overloaded with survivability. It makes bad tanks careless and less aware of the fight at large and means good tanks are stepping on the toes of their healers because they have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to utility. and DPS. and survivability.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

Something that's come to mind the last few weeks is "Is it really the amount of incoming damage that's the issue, or is it that we have too much potent utility at our disposal?".

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To add to this, another facet of this issue is that damage spikes are typically much more choreographed now. Go back to Coil and you had bosses with cleaves, mini tank busters and so forth that critically were on short timers with no cast bar whatsoever. Couple this with modern bosses routinely spending so much more time casting which in turn means far fewer auto attacks going out and you pretty much have one side of the coin right there.

Then of course as you say, we also have much stronger mitigation tools as well.

It's not one or the other, it's a bit of both.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I mentioned this in the 'boring dps rotations for healers' thread, but I wonder what it would be like if when a boss does an attack that also applies damage over time, that mitigation buffs/debuff no longer affect the damage over time component placing more responsibility on the healers. Overall I do think that mitigation buffs/debuffs are bit too strong/prevalent.

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Cloud of Darkness actually applies a DoT to the tank with it's basic attacks. This seems to cause the majority of tank deaths I see during that fight since shield mitigation is limited at that lvl range and normal mitigation doesn't help with it. So if the healers lapse in paying attention the person tanking hits the floor due to being punched and DoT tic'ed at the same time.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Cloud of Darkness actually applies a DoT to the tank with it's basic attacks. This seems to cause the majority of tank deaths I see during that fight since shield mitigation is limited at that lvl range and normal mitigation doesn't help with it. So if the healers lapse in paying attention the person tanking hits the floor due to being punched and DoT tic'ed at the same time.

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When I've done the alliance raid minimum item level, we actually had to do tank swaps for it. I vaguely remember this happening when I did it back in ARR or Heavensward too.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

When I've done the alliance raid minimum item level, we actually had to do tank swaps for it. I vaguely remember this happening when I did it back in ARR or Heavensward too.

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Swapping was one way to deal with it. Trials back then also created a necessity for tank swapping as well due to stacking debuffs generated by the boss.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I mentioned this in the 'boring dps rotations for healers' thread, but I wonder what it would be like if when a boss does an attack that also applies damage over time, that mitigation buffs/debuff no longer affect the damage over time component placing more responsibility on the healers. Overall I do think that mitigation buffs/debuffs are bit too strong/prevalent.

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This is also a good point, regarding bleeds (or DoT in general), more bosses could use that imo. Doing that while reducing how potent our party mit(or debuffs) could serve to make healers more engaged with healing GCDs..maybe. Depends on the tuning.


Regarding the topic of tank swaps, not to derail the subject of the OP, but I do wish we had to tank swap more in normal mode content..I have fond memories of learning to do that via Ex-death back in Deltascape as a New player.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Swapping was one way to deal with it. Trials back then also created a necessity for tank swapping as well due to stacking debuffs generated by the boss.

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Not just trials back then. I remember tank swapping simply because my co-tank still had all their defensives, and I would've had to either swap to Defiance or pray, as late as Stormblood.

It was really only with Shadowbringers that this started to shift heavily. Bosses started doing so little tank damage and busters were so spaced out that the "main" tank could cover every attack with just their own cooldowns.
Which is why a lot of bosses nowadays either give a vuln up debuff to force a swap or put a buster on both tanks, because otherwise the "off" tank would just be sitting on their defensives the entire fight.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

This is also a good point, regarding bleeds (or DoT in general), more bosses could use that imo. Doing that while reducing how potent our party mit(or debuffs) could serve to make healers more engaged with healing GCDs..maybe. Depends on the tuning.

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They did do that with Abyssos Savage at least so there is some evidence of what happens there.

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Regarding the topic of tank swaps, not to derail the subject of the OP, but I do wish we had to tank swap more in normal mode content..I have fond memories of learning to do that via Ex-death back in Deltascape as a New player.

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That was never actually necessary, but a lot of tanks did it anyway. PLDs could simply use Cover to take one of them. Tanks were meant to stack together in Deltascape 1 as well, but nobody remembers that now.

It continued in Shadowbringers. E4 normal has a vulnerability that you get from the tank buster and at minimum item level it is rough, but overall, not impossible to survive if you don't swap. Same happens in E10 normal and people did try to swap there but it was not required on release if you were good at tanking.

We could go backwards instead and look at alex, which has A6 with the cuff mechanic, which was particularly rough if there weren't swaps either for the TBs or when vuln stacks got high which continued into the next boss, but I do remember finding ways to get through the fights if I used my cooldowns well and had good healers. There was also A7 where people used to swap because the vulns made it rough, but once again this wasn't absolutely essential. There was also A8, where you stack with the other tank for the double tank buster, but using the power of tank mitigation you can make up for the lack of a co-tank. Oh A5 also had that big boss attack that applies vulns then hits hard if you don't swap, but this one you could prepare for by combining lots of mits ahead of the stun. Overall this was the tier where it probably mattered most in normal content.

The point here is most of these normal mode swaps only slightly matter at minimum item level and at release people are not usually minimum item level anyway. But that takes us to the discussion of how story content is designed for a minimum item level that is far below what any active player that does more than just MSQ would have.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Not just trials back then. I remember tank swapping simply because my co-tank still had all their defensives, and I would've had to either swap to Defiance or pray, as late as Stormblood.

It was really only with Shadowbringers that this started to shift heavily. Bosses started doing so little tank damage and busters were so spaced out that the "main" tank could cover every attack with just their own cooldowns.
Which is why a lot of bosses nowadays either give a vuln up debuff to force a swap or put a buster on both tanks, because otherwise the "off" tank would just be sitting on their defensives the entire fight.

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IMO the overall gameplay was far more engaging back then. Tank stance wasn't just an aggro on/off button, positioning mattered because various trash mobs and bosses had instant AoE or splash attacks, Knowing the proper time and place to use things like cleric stance or blood for blood (which many DRG never figured out hence the floor tank meme), Many bosses had more involved mechanics, some duties and boss fights had environmental mechanics, etc...

Duties weren't as much of a homogenized cookie cutter like they are now where every enemy and boss now declares and telegraphs it's special attacks 10 seconds before actually doing them.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

So my thoughts here are, a couple routes could be taken:

• Party/Raid-wide mits can be reduced in kits that aren't healers
• Potent aoes are dished out by bosses more often. Essentially creating heal checks that happen way more often.
• both of the above

What are your thoughts on this?

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Barely any DPS Jobs (outside role actions) have "party mits" in the first place, I like party mits and utility personally not every DPS should offer them outside role actions, Tanks? It's already kind of their job to provide support and utility outside of taking hits, tanks are already "boring DPS" as it is, I think they need to actually focus more on tanks utility while also making their combat less stale.

Your second point here is the actual issue, Theirs not enough damage in fights in general, but more then that healers have too much OGCD's, both Healers for one shouldn't be able to keep 100% DPS uptime, The Trade off on DPS having utility advantages should be A: Makes the healers life easier B: can save healer GCD's for attacks, Obviously in current design Utility isn't that useful as it should be, but that's down to healer design, DPS higher actually doesn't matter as much as people make it out It only really matters in Speed clears of in situations where the DPS check is harsh, The problem is DPS wins by default with how little you really need utility currently. I'd argue making it so healers having to GCD heal also helps healers quite a lot gameplay wise, because it would be cool to actually fit in DPS while you have to make a choice when to heal and when to damage.

Even if you took all the "raid" wides out, Healers would have still way too much OGCD options. Personally I want to play a game where Jobs actually help each other... a team based game. But that can only really happen if we focus on fixing healers first, If almost every DPS became a selfish job then no DPS would be a selfish job which just sort of makes the game bland when we're already in a very bland state currently.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Barely any DPS Jobs (outside role actions) have "party mits" in the first place, I like party mits and utility personally not every DPS should offer them outside role actions, Tanks? It's already kind of their job to provide support and utility outside of taking hits, tanks are already "boring DPS" as it is, I think they need to actually focus more on tanks utility while also making their combat less stale.

Your second point here is the actual issue, Theirs not enough damage in fights in general, but more then that healers have too much OGCD's, both Healers for one shouldn't be able to keep 100% DPS uptime, The Trade off on DPS having utility advantages should be A: Makes the healers life easier B: can save healer GCD's for attacks, Obviously in current design Utility isn't that useful as it should be, but that's down to healer design, DPS higher actually doesn't matter as much as people make it out It only really matters in Speed clears of in situations where the DPS check is harsh, The problem is DPS wins by default with how little you really need utility currently. I'd argue making it so healers having to GCD heal also helps healers quite a lot gameplay wise, because it would be cool to actually fit in DPS while you have to make a choice when to heal and when to damage.

Even if you took all the "raid" wides out, Healers would have still way too much OGCD options. Personally I want to play a game where Jobs actually help each other... a team based game. But that can only really happen if we focus on fixing healers first, If almost every DPS became a selfish job then no DPS would be a selfish job which just sort of makes the game bland when we're already in a very bland state currently.

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As I'd mentioned in other threads, the majority of issues with the healer role aren't from the jobs themselves and are more a compounded result of numerous changes they've done to the game claiming to make it more "accessible" paired with oversimplification done intentionally to make the role easier to play because they apparently thought at some point that people didn't play healer role jobs because it was hard. Almost like they never did any research into MMORPGs in general including the 2 other SE entries FFXI and DQX and realize that Tank and Healer jobs/classes are always minorities in the player base unless said job is found to be horrendously OP like the Accretian Mercenary in RF Online which upon kitting out top tier gear I could tank 400 players + a pile of support NPCs during their big 3 faction war events and not die once during the entire thing even when they dropped a tactical nuke on my head.

I think considering the 1 Tank, 1 Healer in dungeons, 2 DPS / 2 Tank / 2 Healer / 4 DPS raids shows that they're aware that DPS is just generally going to be more popular. I think it's a pretty fair spread for games, Ranged jobs are actually in a pretty similar boat to tanks/healers as they're more rare then melee, considering how much melee options we got (and we're getting more lol) It's no wonder why DPS is heavily favoured even though we got twice as much.

In DT If you combine tank and healer it's a ratio of 8 Support Jobs vs 13 Dps Jobs, So of course DPS is going to be played more theirs just more playstyles (literally aswell tanks/healers bassically have the same playstyle at this point), a lot of people want to level a Few DPS most likely even if you main tank/healer esp considering theirs three different DPS categories.

Honestly though this is a Lose/Lose situation, because if anything the current state of healers drives away more people then not, from other games I've seen tank is usually a even less popular role then healer but In ff14 it seems more common then healer, is that because tank is well designed? No It's because tank is semi tolerable but even tank has it's own issues.

Healer needs to appeal to healer players, Tank needs to appeal to Tank players at the of the day, The solution of making them "dps" doesn't fix that because DPS players want to play DPS not boring slow DPS, I'm obviously not saying healers/tank's shouldn't DPS (I actually like that they contribute a good amount of damage) but what makes doing DPS fun on tank/healer is that you're meant to be doing other things while also dpsing, with healers people can argue that you have to still heal sometimes, but throwing out a ogcd here and there isn't really cutting it for healer, what I'd find fun is having some DPS procs and extra skills but also having to actually make a choice between gcd healing or not, Tanks aggro management, stances can go, but the replacement being a even easier dps rotation? being super tanky and kitchen sinking all CDs on tank buster just isn't fun, I can only hope they give tanks more interactive abilities with the party, beyond just having different rotations to make that more fun.

This even effects DPS players, "phys ranged" on the job page says they're meant to provide support (when they don't really offer that much outside of raid buffs or one extra party mit), Beyond that they're so common that they have to switch to tank/healer a lot just so they dont have to wait 20 minutes for a single duty (I do this myself when I want to play something like BLM but it's just too much of a hassle to wait).

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Tank and Healer jobs/classes are always minorities in the player base

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That's true, but I think the reason they feel pressured to make tanks and healers simpler is because if people want to play them for aesthetic or lore reasons, they are forced to be a tank or healer. There are no role specs in this game like there are in others. If there were role specs, then all the people not confident at tanking and healing could potentially just pick the DPS role instead and accept tanking and healing being more sophisticated.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

healers have too much OGCD's, both Healers for one shouldn't be able to keep 100% DPS uptime

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I actually don't think 100% DPS uptime is necessarily a problem. Using your attacks 100% of the time and heals being something that you weave is fine as a concept, but if it's going to be that way then SE should go 100% through with it and put Cure, Cure II and Medica as OGCDs with a short cooldown time and then increase the healing requirements in duties that lack significant heal checks or add some other attacks similar to the Summoner rotation to make it a little more exciting than 1 button.

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I'd argue making it so healers having to GCD heal also helps healers quite a lot gameplay wise, because it would be cool to actually fit in DPS while you have to make a choice when to heal and when to damage.

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It was a lot like that in ARR and Heavensward, but there was a certain behaviour among players to try and do as little healing as possible so that they could DPS. On White Mage for example, you could apply regens (if needed) and then DPS while Scholar just let their pet and Whispering Dawn heal. If you left Cleric Stance, your DPS was useless anyway so you may as well have GCD heal before re-entering it. Once they removed Cleric Stance, the focus on DPS over healing sort of pressured SE to go in the OGCD direction so that players weren't fighting against the system and using the few OGCDs they had available, leading to now where all the healer cast times were reduced to 1.5 seconds so we can weave all our heals and attacks properly.

You can argue that this DPS healer mindset was "because there was a lack of things to heal" but things really did hurt more in the past, healers (including myself) just really pushed it to the limit and you'd often see people complaining about healers doing DPS too much. I can't say I've seen such complaints in recent memory with how the game is now.

No matter what SE does, there will always be healers trying to get 100% DPS uptime tbh, so allowing them to do that while just weaving heals could work. Cleric Stance is a good alternative though, because it forces you into a choice: tank dies so you can DPS, or you heal and cannot DPS. But obviously SE decided that solution is too difficult for some players.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

from other games I've seen tank is usually a even less popular role then healer but In ff14 it seems more common then healer, is that because tank is well designed? No

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Tanks used to be less popular than healers (so they added tank mount achievements), but what happened was in Shadowbringers, tanks were made less complicated to play (no enmity combos or stance dancing, just doing DPS gains the attention of enemies), while healers had many of their attacks (particularly DoTs) removed causing a shift. On top of that, the new job in Shadowbringers was Gunbreaker, which many people wanted to play (but did not want to be a tank), so it caused people to learn to tank.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You can argue that this DPS healer mindset was "because there was a lack of things to heal" but things really did hurt more in the past, healers (including myself) just really pushed it to the limit and you'd often see people complaining about healers doing DPS too much. I can't say I've seen such complaints in recent memory with how the game is now.

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To back this point up, it's actually pretty crazy when you look back at fights like Clownka and just how hard he used to smack tanks down with auto attacks alone during the floor intermissions.

You see the intermission and next floor coming, no mechanics for a moment? Sweet time to slurp some coffee, but then reality came crashing down like Kefka's boot on your tank and you're having to Bene them out of oblivion as they are screaming over TS.

Good times

Coffees are ideally not used on the GCD outside of pre-pull opener for this reason. Treat them like tinctures and single weave them in where possible.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

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Healers pushing their limits with dps in "high end" is how I think healing should work in my eyes, walking the rope of enough healing and enough DPS is actually fun, "new" healers can just GCD heal for the most part it wouldn't even be a difficult thing for them either.

Thing is people will complain either way if they have to gcd heal or not, I think healers are at their best when they're making active choices instead of just being "dps who throw out a heal" if you disagree with that, that's fine. People are always going to disagree with design choices, I just believe in a world where we actively have gcd healing more often it makes the game a lot more fun for every role not just healers.

At the end of the day I think healers should be actively gcd healing and while balancing doing Damage, Risk vs reward is actually good for higher end duties, It's good that healers would be challenging themselves more then they are today, This again goes back to making tanking more fun as you should actively use your CD's and utility on DPS jobs would actually matter way more.

The issue is that raid wide damage is effectively useless in ff14

It’s not really about the mit or healing.

Essentially unless it sits you to 1hp and forces a heal it’s all but meaningless

If you look at like wow it’ll do a raid wide then spawn like a ton of swirly boys so you could get punished after.

In ff14 typically there’s no more dmg going out to anyone not a tank afterwards. So as long as you didn’t die from the hit you often have ages between the next one so as long as you’re not eating dirt there’s really no risk

Once you reach like savage or ultimate raid wides are kinda like filler mechanics giving you a reason to even justify having the mit and healing to begin with.

If anything raid wides should be like set through the fight at X times say like every 15 seconds of the fight regardless of what’s going down bam a 30 to 50% dmg raid wide goes off you’d bet your ass people start respecting it, but with how they are now it’s kinda whatever it’s not really a problem it’s just there

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Originally Posted by EverQuest

If you look at like wow it’ll do a raid wide then spawn like a ton of swirly boys so you could get punished after.

In ff14 typically there’s no more dmg going out to anyone not a tank afterwards.

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That's not true. SE very specifically builds up fights to where it will teach you what each cast does, then do them one after the other to test the party, such as reducing people to 1 HP or doing aoe markers and then doing a raid-wide. But the reason that is never a threat is because all you have to do is press 1 heal and it's sorted and at level 90 a Warrior can just press Shake It Off so the healer doesn't need to.

This happens in normal content, especially normal raids and trials, but again it just isn't much of a threat because they are easy and often the combination of a raid-wide followed by aoe markers wouldn't wipe the party just due to item level increases and DPS having enough health.

But it is something that gets people in high-end content, especially the latest extreme trial where I've flat out seen raid-wide aoes wipe the party because the healers did not top everyone off from the previous mechanics and I've had to shift around my Reprisal and Shake It Off depending on the healers' healing habits and what gets the party most often.

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If anything raid wides should be like set through the fight at X times say like every 15 seconds of the fight regardless of what’s going down bam a 30 to 50% dmg raid wide

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I'd love if all bosses got Counter Stance from the S rank Pale Rider. All the damage dealt to the boss is countered with the same damage back to the player, so players have to take damage in order to deal damage. That's great and it led to dead players everywhere because they are not used to healing that sort of damage. It would mean we would be able to strategically stop DPS if healers needed an easier time at a certain point in the fight.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

That's not true. SE very specifically builds up fights to where it will teach you what each cast does, then do them one after the other to test the party, such as reducing people to 1 HP or doing aoe markers and then doing a raid-wide. But the reason that is never a threat is because all you have to do is press 1 heal and it's sorted and at level 90 a Warrior can just press Shake It Off so the healer doesn't need to.

This happens in normal content, especially normal raids and trials, but again it just isn't much of a threat because they are easy and often the combination of a raid-wide followed by aoe markers wouldn't wipe the party just due to item level increases and DPS having enough health.

But it is something that gets people in high-end content, especially the latest extreme trial where I've flat out seen raid-wide aoes wipe the party because the healers did not top everyone off from the previous mechanics and I've had to shift around my Reprisal and Shake It Off depending on the healers' healing habits and what gets the party most often.

I'd love if all bosses got Counter Stance from the S rank Pale Rider. All the damage dealt to the boss is countered with the same damage back to the player, so players have to take damage in order to deal damage. That's great and it led to dead players everywhere because they are not used to healing that sort of damage. It would mean we would be able to strategically stop DPS if healers needed an easier time at a certain point in the fight.

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I still see people fairly often struggle with directional shields that result in counter attacks if you attack from the wrong side of the enemy resulting in heal spam and deaths.

Healer in the past IMO felt like a sort of breath of fresh air after playing DPS and Tank jobs for awhile because the healer role gameplay was noticeably different from the other 2 roles. It still is to a certain degree however the overall changes to the game make it feel unnecessary at times or leave you feeling like a playground monitor in a schoolyard during recess. This I feel is the main cause of people constantly trying to push the idea of turning healers into green DPS jobs. However I feel like that would just cause more damage to the overall state of the game.