The new raiding meta is making me want to quit.

[SargentToughie]

snip.

That all sounds lovely but even if they do all that, gameplay in FF14 will remain exactly the same. Allow me to elaborate.

Every single fight since the very beginning of 2.0 follows the same forumula. Weak attacks, powerful skill, more weak attacks, TANK BUSTER!!!, weak attacks. You only ever need as much HP and defensive capabilities as is required to survive the buster, everything else is overkill and meaningless. High end raiding in FFXIV will ALWAYS be about seeing how much defensive capability that the tanks can strip off in order to make way for more damage as well. And if they somehow over tune a boss to the point where it takes tanks months of grinding in full tank gear to survive? Well, goodbye raiding scene. Savage has pretty much already demolished endgame raiding in this game to the point of no repair as it is already, and that would be even worse.


The fact that WAR got 3 damage skills in 3.0, PLD got 2, DRK got such massive potencies out of the gate, WHM got 3 damage skills, and SCH got Broil, also proves that Yoshida visions mastery in this game as being able to do your job, while maximizing the damage you deal as well. No damage forumla change is going to change that. As long as FF14 is a game, there will be DPSing tanks/healers, and it goes without saying that more damage is always greater than less damage, in every single instance in the game.

[Zumi]

As someone who plays tanks in almost every mmo I do not like the tanks should be doing high dps meta. I will gear for str and because it is required to clear endgame content but man I do not like it. Mainly because I did not sign up to be a dps. As a tank I like to focus on damage mitigation, having a lot of HP, positioning bosses, keeping aggro, knowing when to use defensive cooldowns. But the way FFXIV is now people care more about how much DPS you can do on tanks, and giving up a lot of your survivability.

I have hopes that 3.2 tank damage formula change will make tanks be more traditional tanks again. If the damage formula change was like 50% vit and 50% str for the tank attack like it was for warriors for 1.0 I would be much more happy because I wouldn't have to wear all this slaying stuff just to be able to do endgame content.

[Indiction]

I agree with so many points in this *-* As a healer, I've grown so just utterly tired of having to deal dps AND heal. Not for lack of skill, I do it perfectly fine, it's just I wish I had known I was signing up for a DPS/Healer hybrid role.

The one thing I absolutely friggin' love about Thordan EX, is that it actually turned away from the DPS meta and is actually emphasizing skill over just simple dps. I HAVE to know when to shield, who to shield, and who to top off during certain stages. I'm not off-healing to my faerie while dpsing, quite the opposite. I'm having to actually put my skills as a healer to the test, along with actual strategy, multitasking, and, honestly, it's so utterly satisfying to pull it off. Thordan EX is more balance, in my opinion, than we have had in a long while. DPS are focusing on dps/mechs, tanks on surviving, and healers on healing.

[Priya]

I really wish I understood what everybody's obsession was with trying to gimp DPSing tanks. When I don't have any of my friends online and I make the mistake of joining Duty Finder solo, I can say with absolute certainty that I ADORE the ability to pick up the slack of my team and throw out enough damage to beat all but the most sharp of DPS players. I'm reasonably certain that if that power of mastery was taken away from me, the ability to be so good at my role that I'm able to do my job AND THEN some, it would push me away from tanking.

And to be frank, Tanks and Healers have been able to DPS since the advent of 2.0, but NOW it's a huge problem and everybody wants it to change?

DF isn't really where it's a problem. The fact that raiding focuses so intently on healers and tanks DPS'ing is typically the issue. DF can still easily be done without tank/healer DPS (even though most healers will DPS low-man content to avoid boredom or carry bad DPS, which is perfectly fine; low-man is meant to be easy). Real raiding (aka savage) is where the problem tends to lie; healer and tank DPS is typically a must.

Perhaps if SE had mid-tier content where tanks/healers didn't have to push DPS to the absolute limits, it might be okay; however, they do not, and not everyone views "pump as much DPS out as humanly possible while doing the role I actually chose on the side" as a fun way to challenge themselves. Personally, I want to be challenged as a healer in raids, not as a DPS who heals.

[SargentToughie]

snips

That I can understand, there's a lot of people on the forums that have this 'brick wall' fantasy, or this 'health fountain' fantasy, where they want to be genuinely great at their roles and have checks specifically dedicated towards those roles. However, for every one person that has those desires, there's got to be at least 3, like myself, that only do the off jobs because they're able to contribute and pick up the slack. I was a Dragoon player from 2.0 all the way up until the end of the Heavensward story, but I switched to WAR because I wanted to raid with a group of friends. I've stuck with it because I love the authority and power I have, and the fact that my mastery over my job speeds up the dungeons while keeping them smooth for the rest of the party.

I've always disliked this kind of statement, but I don't think that FF14 is going to change based on what we've seen from 3.0... Maybe it's just not the game for you? There must be other MMOs out there that push the healers harder than FF does...

[Priya]

I've always disliked this kind of statement, but I don't think that FF14 is going to change based on what we've seen from 3.0... Maybe it's just not the game for you? There must be other MMOs out there that push the healers harder than FF does...

Most of them do, really, and I have played endgame in many an MMO. I can more easily understand pushing tanks to DPS while tanking since their focus is already on the enemies; even WoW has this meta. The healer DPS focus is what's odd for me as friendlies are the usual focus of a healer; TERA did put some emphasis on healer DPS, but I don't think it was nearly to the extent FFXIV does. WoW had some healer DPS focus with Disc priests and Mistweaver monks; even Resto shamans tossed out Lightning Bolts for mana. However, Disc Priest and Mistweaver monks had smart heals attached to their damage in as similar way to how Eos/Selene is attached to SCH. Disc's smart heals were lower potency than pure heals, but for Mistweaver their damage was their healing.

And the game can change, though I agree that it's not like to during Heavensward. Games tend to evolve with new xpacks rather than in the middle of a current one.

[No2631]

I'm more frustrated with the following.

After Savage release, I took a hiatus from the game for various reasons, including being a bit bored with the game (and being unimpressed with Alexander 1 Savage in terms of difficulty). I've recently come back due to the 3.1 patch, and have thought about getting back into raiding... only to find out that the various item level requirements as well as experience demands make it impossible to get into the raiding scene. It's actually more than a little frustrating to be part of the group that took down T13 as the first group on the server, but then to find that you are not welcome in raids for "lack of experience". If it took one week to learn T13 mechanics, and it's taken me two hours to get the hang of Alexander 1 Savage, I'm fairly confident I can grasp the rest but... It's frustrating.

The very idea, though, that tanks and healers must optimise their DPS as much as possible─rather, that the burden of DPS is now laid on shoulders that aren't DPS─isn't very appealing to me and doesn't really make me want to get back into hardcore raiding all that much. I'm a firm believer that DPS should carry the burden of DPS, and a clear should rely on whether or not your four DPS classes were able to play their jobs effectively. Note: effectively, not to maximum effectiveness. It should not rely on your healers and tanks supplementing DPS in addition to their other responsibilities.

[Ashkendor]

Aside from that, I quit raiding because Savage was beyond boring. They hit a sweet spot with Second and (arguably) Final Coil but they just completely dropped the ball with Savage Alexander.

I can't blame you. I can really see why A3S has broken a lot of statics and made a lot of raiders quit. SCoB and FCoB were truly engaging raid content. Sure the world-firsters were planting flags over T9 and T13 within a week of release, but who the hell cares? A1S and A2S weren't too bad, but I'm seriously already disliking A3S. A crapload of punishing mechanics overlaying an equally punishing DPS check just isn't my idea of a good time. My static isn't quitting and we aren't breaking up, but we are taking A3S slowly. It's actually on a back burner right now in favor of Thordan EX, simply because the i205 weapons will help across the board.

Well the current FFXIV definition of a 'tank' doesn't even remotely resemble the normal definition of a tank in gaming, that's for sure...

On FFXIV, you're either a DPS with defensive cooldowns or you're a Paladin. >.>

[Ultima]

And the game can change, though I agree that it's not like to during Heavensward. Games tend to evolve with new xpacks rather than in the middle of a current one.

People didn't like the idea of DPSing in 2.0-2.55 as Healer or Tank. Heavensward only made it worse. In fact, Heavensward repeated the mistakes of A Realm Reborn. FF 14 probably won't change even in 4.0, they still have to drop the PS3 to expand their gameplay options and they're not sure if they'll drop the PS3 until 5.0! I'm not optimistic that the dev team is aware of people's desires for different gameplay beyond DPS checks.

[SargentToughie]

People didn't like the idea of DPSing in 2.0-2.55 as Healer or Tank. Heavensward only made it worse. In fact, Heavensward repeated the mistakes of A Realm Reborn. FF 14 probably won't change even in 4.0, they still have to drop the PS3 to expand their gameplay options and they're not sure if they'll drop the PS3 until 5.0! I'm not optimistic that the dev team is aware of people's desires for different gameplay beyond DPS checks.

not only that, didn't Yoshida deliberately nerf one of the new EX dungeons because it was too taxing on the healers? I seriously think that he doesn't have a proper grasp on the difficulty of healing in this game, since my healer friend is able to do the new EXR while texting.