If tank damage is now based on VIT, why do healers still have Cleric Stance?

[SpookyGhost]

If SE didn't intend for Cleric Stance to be used in instances then they have horrible playtesters - all they'd need to do was enter Sastasha as CNJ. We also had speedruns of WP that maximized healer DPS even when PLD's enmity generation was complete garbage (ty Cover). Small adjustments were made to healer DPS, but nothing that outright stopped you from doing it, and those adjustments were mainly AOE related such as the infamous Holy nerf(s). If SE did want to stop it, they had 2 years to do so. If it wasn't intended for 2.0 they were definitely okay with keeping it in.

[Alahra]

If SE did want to stop it, they had 2 years to do so. If it wasn't intended for 2.0 they were definitely okay with keeping it in.

I don't think anyone would argue that. They're fine with the way healers DPS now and aren't changing anything (whereas they are apparently not fine with the way tanks forgo Fending accessories and are making changes). That's ultimately what was meant by it being an "unintended, emergent" thing. They seem to have naively assumed that the playerbase wouldn't DPS much in content on healer—this is likely in part due to the fact that they seem to playtest material on jobs the testers do not normally play (they talked about this in a preview or interview regarding the dungeons added in 3.1), which is a rather way narrow way to do it, of course. They should ideally test both with career players for various roles and those who are uncomfortable.

I suspect they will always prefer for content to be tuned toward the lower end of the spectrum for tanks and healers, though, as that has the effect of lowering the barrier for entry for those classes in terms of player responsibility. Tanks and healers both generally have more to pay attention to than DPS do (though it does vary in some content), and I suspect that's part of the reason tank and healer shortages are not as bad as they are in other similar games such as WoW—which isn't to say there aren't shortages, of course, just that they could be worse.

With the way both roles are set up now, there's a fairly low-skill floor that needs to be met for most content (current Savage notwithstanding), but rather high skill ceilings that involve pushing DPS to the utmost, especially when both roles are pushing DPS in the same party. They're probably okay with that in general (and they assume world-first class players will be pushing as hard as they can to do that, too).

[Ultimatecalibur]

I don't think anyone would argue that. They're fine with the way healers DPS now and aren't changing anything (whereas they are apparently not fine with the way tanks forgo Fending accessories and are making changes). That's ultimately what was meant by it being an "unintended, emergent" thing.

Bingo! That is exactly what I meant.

My perspective is that Healer DpS is "Nice but not Necessary." Healers heal and any damage they put out is a bonus. I will never complain about a Healer DpSing unless I die. (and even then I will be asking what I did wrong as a tank first)

They seem to have naively assumed that the playerbase wouldn't DPS much on content in healer—this is likely in part due to the fact that they seem to playtest material on jobs the testers do not normally play (they talked about this in a preview or interview regarding the dungeons added in 3.1), which is a rather way narrow way to do it, of course. They should ideally test both with career players for various roles and those who are uncomfortable.

An incredibly large number of devs tend to get blinded by their own knowledge of how they intended things to work and can quite often miss how players do or see things. Even Devs very experienced with certain classes can miss possibilities and problems players catch since they know how everything is "supposed" to work and might miss how things "really" work.

The interview you are referring to was actually talking about how they were expanding/changing their playtesting methods. The example being "going in with a player who had not fully mastered tanking in non-perfect gear and having the DpS who was in perfect gear go full throttle." In many ways they were admitting they needed to change how they did things previously.

[Alahra]

An incredibly large number of devs tend to get blinded by their own knowledge of how they intended things to work and can quite often miss how players do or see things. Even Devs very experienced with certain classes can miss possibilities and problems players catch since they know how everything is "supposed" to work and might miss how things "really" work.

Square-Enix in particular was awful about this kind of thing in FFXI, so I'm not particularly surprised they haven't gotten better about it (since there is/was significant overlap between the teams for the two games). I've actually always been rather curious about how they intended NIN to play, as they came out and said we were doing things with it that they didn't anticipate (but for the life of me I can't figure out any other way it could have been played).

[Ultimatecalibur]

Square-Enix in particular was awful about this kind of thing in FFXI, so I'm not particularly surprised they haven't gotten better about it (since there is/was significant overlap between the teams for the two games). I've actually always been rather curious about how they intended NIN to play, as they came out and said we were doing things with it that they didn't anticipate (but for the life of me I can't figure out any other way it could have been played).

I think they were treating the Ninjutsu as a 2 second cast time pseudo-GCD action rather than the oGCD cooldown players use it as.

[Alahra]

I think they were treating the Ninjutsu as a 2 second cast time pseudo-GCD action rather than the oGCD cooldown players use it as.

I guess that would account for the difference, and it might also sort of explain why they completely missed the problem of Mudra lag. The 2-second pseudo-GCD thing does basically jive with three-steps but it's still strange to me that they wouldn't have assumed we'd do the other ones as fast as possible. I always do the best I can to understand how they arrive at the conclusions they do, but NIN's initial balance is one thing I just don't quite get.