Am I the only one fed up with DPS obsession?

[AriaEnia]

I thought SE mentioned that before they release contents, first the devs are testing them clearing the contents with the lowest ilvl required and without any healers' dps taken into consideration.

[justinjarjar]

Idk about lowest ilvl, but more of standard ilvl for clearing it (prob 200 or 210 for Alex Savage). People doing it under that ilvl ,need not only top dps from well the dps, but also need help from tanks and healers. Very few people are asking for drg level dps beyond maybe monk (who is so close that many times monks do out dps drgs). The big thing is within the role how much dps can you push while still doing your intended job. I am not sure PLDs are completely not being taken (a few are even in the first few runs) just many groups are finding that drk/war pushes more dam than the other two combos of tanks. Healing on the other hand is seeing next to no ASTs (the card buff/AST dps is just not as good dps as the other two healers who also have stronger healing) on clear parties and the SCH/WHM rule supreme. This all comes from clear groups thou so you are looking at ilvl 185-190 right now when the majority of people will complete or try savage at ilvl 200 where the moderate to slight dps difference matters less. PF is where you see more of the problem most statics that are more on the casual side (not clear groups) are less likely to make someone play a different job unless it is holding them back (or they believe it is) from clearing. Any content but savage should not even look at the dps difference, since all jobs are more than capable of clear RAV. EX or expert roulette. However good balance should be made with the highest skill level taken into account which is the current clear groups, if a job is under performing, and yes that includes healer/tank dps (they design with no healer dps, but in no way are against healer dps), then it should be adjusted so.

With this knowledge people do have some real and valid concern, however nothing is impossible and if you want to push a class to it's limits people/the community should not be against you trying. Most players suck, lets face it I myself am not top dps in the world by a long shot and most of the rest of us are not either (we would be putting in the time of clear groups if we where), but that does not mean you cannot not be damn good at the class you like. I mentioned that while on dummy technically drg is out dpsing monk, but even in clear groups monk players have shown that they can out dps great drg players.

[Reynhart]

The game is about killing bosses.

Technically wrong, or, rather, incomplete.
The game is about killing bosses fast.

If there wasn't so much DPS check, we could try a lot of different party setups.

Look at Alex Savage. Every feedback we see is "Big DPS check".
Apparently, the mechanics are almost the same, although they deal more damage, and the bosses have more HP.

It means that when everyone will drown under i200 gear (or higher, comes 3.2), Alex Savage will be a joke. I'm sure people will eventually clear the first floors of Alex Savage before learning how to properly manage Turn 9.

[Bovinity]

Technically wrong, or, rather, incomplete.
The game is about killing bosses fast.

Well, there's some MMO design history in play there.

Way back when, raids in MMOs had tanking and healing checks, but no DPS checks. As long as people lived, the boss would go down eventually. This led to some degenerate strategies like "just bring a ton of healers to trivialize the fights" and it also made DPS boing since you really had no performance incentives. (Not to mention that it caused a lot of role elitism, because everyone saw DPS classes as being unimportant and not needing to perform.)

So designers started to place DPS checks - similar to the tanking and healing checks - into fights so that the DPS roles were not only needed, but actually had to perform well.

The design intent isn't to force you into "speedrunning raids" but rather to place value on - and require performance from - all three roles.

[Reynhart]

But now, eveything is a DPS check.

Look back at the first days of XIV, we had primal fights. Sure Titan's heart was a DPS check, but it was far from the most difficult part of the fight.
The same was true for Caduceus...

[Kabooa]

Titan was a DPS check. The longer he lived, the harder it became to survive. Before people were outgearing it severely, getting 4-5 tumults was a death knell to most parties. Adding in hard enrages also prevents stupid things like Turn2's 'let it enrage'.

If people are just going to ignore mechanics, might as well make the mechanic "Hit it as hard as you can because otherwise you'll die"

[Enthy]

You're not gonna heal things to death

FFXI you could 'cure' undead to defeat them... but that was back when the elemental wheal mattered... :'(

[pandabearcat]

1. Healing is boring because there is no mana management, and very little difference between classes. Take a look at how different healing is in WoW to have an idea of how healing should be.

2. Tanking is boring because there is no such thing as active tanking. All tanks have a very similar playstyle. Take a look at how different tanks are in WoW to have an idea of how tanking should be.

Both of these have the added caveat of "the boss dies when enough dps has been applied". The whole point of the game is to kill bosses. Because of the very fact that Cleric stance exists healers will ALWAYS optimize for dps simply because they can. And similarly, because tanking stances exist.

As long as these exist you will have this dps race for both healers and tanks. Is this a bad thing? Shrug. I believe it is more of a laziness in design thing, rather than a playstyle issue.

This game is extremely bland mechanicswise. There is simply no other place to optimize except for dps.

[Bovinity]

This game is extremely bland mechanicswise. There is simply no other place to optimize except for dps.

Unfortunately there's a lot of truth to this. I don't want to get too deep into game comparisons, but you're right that comparing WoW healing specs with FFXIV healing classes is a good way to get an idea of the problem.

It's also part of the issue with the new 3.0 classes. The game has a simple class/ability structure and small 8-man raids. The 2.0 classes pretty much filled all the roles that the game made available, there's little room for anything different. So the 3.0 classes come along - and because they brought no real new ideas or mechanics - they are, in many ways, just poor clones or mashups of some 2.0 classes.

[Reynhart]

If people are just going to ignore mechanics, might as well make the mechanic "Hit it as hard as you can because otherwise you'll die"

Keep mechanics that you can't ignore.
Like T6 and T7 were before the nerf.