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

[Reynhart]

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.

I don't know, I think it's very frustrated when you have a team with very good tanks and healers...that don't have any impact of the ultimate outcome of the fight because of the hard enrage.

[Singularity]

Perhaps make damage mitigation something with some actual play to it. I think skills like Sheltron and The Blackest Night are a step towards this, but it could go a lot further.

Say for example we get rid of autoattacks on enemies - instead make them attack in ways that you can see them winding up (either through animations like the Diresaur models or with AoE warnings). Make block/parry something you can do at will rather than an RNG chance. Maybe for single-target fights like bosses you have to block in the correct direction also (attack coming from the left, from the right etc.).
Perhaps even if you block/parry enough boss attacks in a row, you can get a little quicktime event where if you succeed you throw the boss off-balance and it takes increased damage from all sources for a short duration.

I don't know if the game's netcode could handle a system like this, but with some judicious client-siding it may be possible.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

I have to agree here. There's no reason that damage alone has to be the only direct contributor to encounter completion. Take the green dragon fight from ICC in WotLK, for instance: the encounter completes when you (nearly) top her off. This would simply be content with a different victor condition. Alternatively, if a Very Important Mob/Person's survival over a given time limit, or over a given escort distance, were a victory condition, it's likely that gimmicks may be necessary to make that encounter satisfying in its interactions, such as by creating more ways to provide mitigation for the mob (beyond current interception mechanics) where topping it off and curative-shielding it would otherwise be insufficient to prevent its being one-shot, but the victory conditions themselves still wouldn't be a gimmick, just an alternative to the most basic characteristic of the encounter.

Perhaps make damage mitigation something with some actual play to it. [1] I think skills like Sheltron and The Blackest Night are a step towards this, but it could go a lot further.

[2] Say for example we get rid of autoattacks on enemies - instead make them attack in ways that you can see them winding up (either through animations like the Diresaur models or with AoE warnings). [3]Make block/parry something you can do at will rather than an RNG chance. Maybe for single-target fights like bosses you have to block in the correct direction also (attack coming from the left, from the right etc.).
[4] Perhaps even if you block/parry enough boss attacks in a row, you can get a little quicktime event where if you succeed you throw the boss off-balance and it takes increased damage from all sources for a short duration.

I don't know if the game's netcode could handle a system like this, but with some judicious client-siding it may be possible.

[1] Shelltron was one of the mechanics that upon implementation had me begging for more of similar type -- albeit with slight revisions. More on this later, in all likelihood, as I feel they are relevant at least to increasing the usefulness of tank toolkits, which otherwise suffer, in a sense, reverse gear-scaling (relative, at least, to healing). And I definitely agree that these point out interesting directions that are yet barely, if at all, touched upon.

[2] If I recall correctly, from my HW days of tanking just way too many dungeons daily, there are actually many enemies that do follow strict rhythms to their specials, be it down to the second within uptime, down to the second regardless of uptime (which removes some advantage from kiting), or after a set number of auto-attacks. Additionally, some either strike immediately after a given auto-attack (or potentially simultaneously), or after a brief delay. I actually tried some old dungeons like Fractal solo on DRK to see if I could break TBN in Grit with my full gear's worth of HP, by slightly moving mobs about so that their next specials would overlap predictably. So, in a way, this is already kind of in XIV, but it remains painfully hidden, to the point that you could say that for the majority of players, these concepts are only latent in the game, rather than a real part of it.

The concern that pops into mind first though, is that this game is really rather particle-effect and animation-heavy, almost to the point of obscuring natural telegraphs — requiring our slightly gaudy hit-area indicators. When the majority of players are under the assumption that there's nothing they can do to better time their tools against these specials, they don't feel obliged to turn off their particle effects and dart their eyes about to see them, which to many — not all, of course — will be less enjoyable an experience. Similarly, audio cues (while solvable via visual sonar for deaf players) would be insufficient to differentiate between special wind-ups between two adjacent mobs of the same type. So as much as I want to make the sound of and vision over our enemies actual sources of information, there's currently a lot standing in the way. Maybe we'd need some sort of... post-processing (?) of our particle effects to allow for conditional reversed layering, as to allow enemies winding up or giving other visual tells to be visible to the player's camera through the particle effects. Maybe some more generalized sound-to-vision cues without needing visual sonar, specifically... I don't know. I do reeaaally want this though.

[3] This would be such a huge boon, imo, to the tanking experience. I'm not sure if pure manual manipulation is the best way to go about it, but I feel there definitely should be tools to allow for this. More on this later.

[4] I'm somehow who generally hates QTEs, and I still think some form of that could be awesome. Heck, I wouldn't even mind seeing it as a general mechanic of sorts, as long as its soft enough not to feel wholly tank-specific (just... "tanks do it best").

As for the netcode... I've no idea either. They seem to leave more than most games do server-side, yet they still have bots capable of teleporting about underground, so...?

Isn't there too many special effect going on to use a tell tell sign system like Tera?

I believe the original XIV had a shield system like Dark Souls if I am not mistaken. You had to hold the shield up to actually block things on gladiator or paladin.

Idk, I thought this game used GCD to compensate for it's servers. Are you saying XIV should have real time action based systems?

For a short time, there was a "Guard" ability on a very short cooldown, during which you could not attack, but could guarantee blocks for some total absorption amount. At that time though, it wasn't actually even part of Gladiator, but rather part of a side-class called Sentinel, which was usable by anyone who could use a shield, including casters. It was removed when Yoshida took over, leaving only Aegis Boon for burst-mitigation (converts a single strike's damage taken to healing, like an up-to-200% mitigation ability, on a 30s or 45s CD, I forget which).

Something like this wouldn't have any impact on or by the game's having or not having a GCD... which the netcode takes surprisingly little advantage from, considering the length of its animation locks. (We have a minimum true global cooldown, or "animation lock" of .5 seconds, generally around .7+ for oGCDs or .85+ for weaponskills, iirc, which should be enough in which to queue any ability without clipping even on a 240 ms ping connection, and yet at that same ping will delay a Suiton by as much as 2 additional seconds at a 2.35 GCD, when it should only delay it by ~.7.) Unless these were introduced as a weaponskill like 1.0 - 1.15's Guard skill — back when rate was determined more by Stamina and cast times, alone, than GCDs anyways — these could remain almost wholly fluid by simply being oGCDs as per Shelltron or TBN, or so I've read it. (Please correct me if I've misinterpreted, Singularity.) Even if made weaponskills, or psuedo-GCDs like the HW Empyreal Arrow, however (therefore coming at the more general cost of time, rather than specific resource or MP) their gameplay shouldn't feel in any way out of place or unsatisfactory in a GCD system. It just might mean that you would have to waste a bit of time to line up the active block occasionally, which wouldn't feel great in itself, but might even go so far as to help you feel like you're attacking something that isn't just a script dummy for your own memorized rotations.

[Javey]

Savage and extreme content make healing and tanking more challenging. Regular dungeons don't need to be as difficult because not everyone wants to wipe until everyone is coordinated like a static. Not everyone is interested in min maxing and perfecting rotations which harder regular content would require.

[Sandpark]

Say for example we get rid of autoattacks on enemies - instead make them attack in ways that you can see them winding up (either through animations like the Diresaur models or with AoE warnings). Make block/parry something you can do at will rather than an RNG chance. Maybe for single-target fights like bosses you have to block in the correct direction also (attack coming from the left, from the right etc.)

I don't know if the game's netcode could handle a system like this, but with some judicious client-siding it may be possible.

Isn't there too many special effect going on to use a tell tell sign system like Tera?

I believe the original XIV had a shield system like Dark Souls if I am not mistaken. You had to hold the shield up to actually block things on gladiator or paladin.

Idk, I thought this game used GCD to compensate for it's servers. Are you saying XIV should have real time action based systems?

[Hruodig]

I don't know, I think it's very frustrated when you have a team with very good tanks and healers...that don't have any impact of the ultimate outcome of the fight because of the hard enrage.

In this game, good tanks and healers can contribute a lot to hard enrage timers because of their ability to produce a non-insignificant amount of dps.

[Shurrikhan]

In this game, good tanks and healers can contribute a lot to hard enrage timers because of their ability to produce a non-insignificant amount of dps.

I think it was a more a concern that as tank's or healer's skill or gear increases, this never really shows in the (total amount of) "tanking" or healing done in the fight, as both end up capped by (essentially the requirements at minimum ilvl of) the content itself?

Without a doubt, cross-role damage-dealing is strong in this game — borderline overpowered, even, relative to many another MMO, be it by per-global efficiency or total amounts doable over a typical progression or difficult but on-farm encounter — but whereas another game's tank may be able to mitigate more with an increase in gear, everything here is scaling, and unlike many others, once healing is doable even with the most expensive healing options, any additional healing potential is excess where many other games would require you to cut back on mana-expense if you're going to hold out through the whole fight.

Call the percentage of globals spent on non-role-specific tasks (and I'm sure how you can glean how I feel about "roles" from the OP) a difference for the better or for the worse as you will, but I can see why the fact that beyond decently high skill at the minimum ilvl for any given encounter only direct contribution then benefits from additional gear or skill can be annoying to players who place more thematic significance on the overarching categorical labels for their toolkits, especially since there are other examples in very similar MMOs that show that such doesn't need to occur — that tanking can see scaling benefits, too, or that healing can scale beyond simply the ability to spend less time healing.

[Reinha]

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.

Please don't assume people haven't tried content harder than Expert Roulette when discussing these things. A tank getting one shot by a mechanic doesn't remove the fact that he/she was probably sitting in dps stance for most of the fight prior to that and after that, and this thread is for expressing solutions to the current dps-centric design.

An example to my post on the first page:

WoW's normal mode raid (there are 2 harder difficulties in the game). Notice how unavoidable damage keeps hitting everyone for a big part of the fight and how the tanks are taking some pretty heavy hits quite often. And still healers manage it quite well because the rate of damage is not too high. Deaths happen slowly which gives healers a better chance to prevent them.

Lakshmi Ex (there are savage and ultimate modes above this difficulty). Notice how damage comes from predictable mechanics, everyone is topped up in a couple of seconds and then everyone is literally at full health for multiple GCDs until another predictable mechanic cuts off some HP. Every player is hit for the same amount of damage at the same time and healed up at the same time. There is no ongoing unavoidable damage in any phase. Deaths happen instantly after failed mechanics and healers have very little room to correct mistakes.

These are different design philosophies and the slow sustained damage type is rarely present in FFXIV content. Aurum Vale comes to mind, but that is not end game content.

Sorry to bug you guys with this, but can anyone think of some gradually increasing unavoidable damage waves or similar soft enrages aside from Rafflasia in T6? I could have sworn there were at least a couple more, but I'm having a brain fart at the moment.

Replying here to save post count. I haven't done difficult content before Stormblood so unfortunately I can't answer you. There is this I guess. I would welcome such soft enrages in more casual content too, scaled to the intended difficulty of course.

[Shurrikhan]

These are different design philosophies and the slow sustained damage type is rarely present in FFXIV content. Aurum Vale comes to mind, but that is not end game content.

Sorry to bug you guys with this, but can anyone think of some gradually increasing unavoidable damage waves or similar soft enrages aside from Rafflasia in T6? I could have sworn there were at least a couple more, but I'm having a brain fart at the moment.

Edit: Thanks, Deathgiver!

Does ShinEx P1 also have a soft enrage via platforms dropping out, or is it only the hard enrage at the end that matters?

_______________________________________

And one more question anyone with a preference one way or the other:

Would you prefer that when a soft enrage is already present, that no hard enrage be added, or do you think that would result in unintended (or more importantly, less fun) gameplay, as per the T2 enrage strat, etc.?

[Deathgiver]

Sorry to bug you guys with this, but can anyone think of some gradually increasing unavoidable damage waves or similar soft enrages aside from Rafflasia in T6? I could have sworn there were at least a couple more, but I'm having a brain fart at the moment.

Titan hard (increasing number of stomps each cycle)
A8S J Wave
O4S Neverwhere is soft enrage followed by a hard enrage
Bismark is a sort of soft enrage as well from the adds hitting the island, though there is a hard enrage based on how many times bismark himself hits the island as well.
Nidhogg ahk morn is a soft enrage (increasing this per cycle) followed by a hard enrage.
A10s I would also call soft enrage with the platform shrinking and the boss gaining damage up every death.

Also pretty much all of first coil, 1 has the damage up stacks on boss eventually making the fight take too much healing to win, 2 is pretty well known since half the groups intentionally enraged to avoid other mechanics, and 4 was manageable for a short period to heal through the enrage.