State of the Game: Savage+ Dungeons and End Game Leves

[Paladinleeds]

With current end game gear progression. This just wont work. They need to rework on end game gear ilv and loot in order to make fair reward for those content.

Exactly. With this current loot distribution setup we have (which btw was added so we COULD help players. In Coils it was such that once you completed a turn for that week it became locked out completely until reset), it's impossible for us to help if people ask for 2 chests. And statics generally have rules about PUGs and loot (as in, you have to get the clears with the statics). Our static I believe had one of the more forgiving rulesets: Stuff we had on farm we did together as a static for 2 chests, stuff we were yet to get our first clear on, doesn't matter if your first clear is with a PUG and it reduces our chest count for that week (if we clear it). But as well, let's say we've not yet done our weekly O5S/6S clears, and I help someone with O7S, that's a chest gone for that week with the static, another reason why we have to wait to help. The loot system makes it awkward for us. And I get why they've done it given how the fights are structured, but it does actively hinder us at the same time.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

A strategy should be formed organically, not because "meta demands it", all the abusive green DPS fights pre-SB were a direct result of this. Even Yoshi-P said they don't design any content with the healer's DPS in mind. Content taking longer doesn't mean it's harder, content taking longer is because the players need to form their own strategy. By being told the "meta" for the most efficient strategy that was data mined out of parses, you deprive players who have not yet played the content any choice. You either play it that way or you get the booted because the raiders are hostile to anyone who doesn't parse at their level. That's toxic.

Those strategies are formed organically, and information is subsequently passed around to assist players who are less skilled. People then have the option to either progress blind or use that information provided. Welcome to have a community grows.

What Yoshida said is completely irrelevant if gameplay functionality allows it. While, yes, they do not account for healer DPS, there simply isn't any reason for healers not to contribute. This isn't meta speak but common courtesy. Why should tanks and DPS have to properly maintain their GCD yet healers choose whether to contribute or stand around doing nothing until damage finally occurs? If you elect not to DPS as a healer, you will spent upwards of 80% literally doing nothing because the content simply doesn't demand it.

No one said content taking longer makes it harder. It's merely wastes people's time for no reason. DPS refusing to aoe makes a ten minute dungeon into a twenty minute one. Why? Because they can't be bothered to press Doom Spike instead of Full Thrust.

Ultimately, it boils down to an easy solution. Come 5.0, make content have some teeth and reduce healer potency. Now healers have to focus more on healing. Considering I have seen how you play, would that not be preferable? Many healers want to heal more, but also recognize the game simply doesn't necessitate it.

Everyone that uses it seems to care more about their own score on a third party site called fflogs, rather than helping PUGs learn the content. All the raiders go off and cordon themselves off so they can farm the content. Meanwhile people who do want to learn the content will not since nobody is willing to play it knowing those raiders will kick them. Thus they push the content off to a later patch and have to clear it unsynced if they want the clear. That's why the EX content clear rates go from 1% at release to 25%-30% after the major content patch. Unsync party clear... there is no fun in unsync clears. Maybe if some of these EX contents had 10% clears that would tell the devs to make it harder. Instead I'm pretty sure 1% clear rate is either telling Yoshi-P that the content is too hard, or the content is too boring or both.

And yet learning parties not only exist but remain quite prevalent. If you're still learning content, you have no business joining a weekly two chest or Tsukiyomi farm. Raiders are not obligated to take time out of their day and get you clears because you want them. While I am perfectly happy to help some days, others I prefer a quick clear. Is it so much to ask others put forward a comparable effort to myself, especially in harder content? Curiously, for all your insistence of raiders being toxic, you seldom see kicks from average players who actually try.

Regardless, have you a source or are this statistics pulled from Narnia? Because current estimations based on players who have the Lunar Kamuy puts Tsukiyomi clears at 7%. Savage clears have ranged between 10-20% since Creator. And the unofficial census Lucky Bancho does purposely cuts off his calculations when a tier ends. Therefore, the highest level anyone can have clearing Sigmascape Savage is i370. That 1% applies only towards Ultimate.

[ko_]

True...however, it at least gives her room to actually talk and have a platform to stand on. As it is, her repeated claims is just white noise, driven by next to no knowledge aside from what she datamined on her PC. Oh, and experiences that she's had in Mabinogi, which honestly doesn't belong in discussion of the likes of FFXIV and WoW.

Yeah. That is true. Maybe it's my own lack of knowing showing but sometimes it does sound like she has a point. I really think someone burned her bad. I understand. I've been burned too. Only difference is I'm not blaming all of raiding or meters. Like I seen that ruin people, but it was on them. I do feel bad cause I can kindof see a point. But there's no back story so it's hard for anyone to relate. Plus you know. Labeling an entire group of players doesn't really give you cool points either.

[Nixxe]

Yeah. That is true. Maybe it's my own lack of knowing showing but sometimes it does sound like she has a point. I really think someone burned her bad. I understand. I've been burned too. Only difference is I'm not blaming all of raiding or meters. Like I seen that ruin people, but it was on them. I do feel bad cause I can kindof see a point. But there's no back story so it's hard for anyone to relate. Plus you know. Labeling an entire group of players doesn't really give you cool points either.

There really isn't much of a point. All of the problems they're complaining about could be avoided by taking the initiative and forming a group of like-minded people (same as the people they're complaining about are doing), but they won't do that. They don't want to have to put in effort to get through the content. They're just trying to get carried. They probably don't see it that way, but it's what they're doing for all intents and purposes. There are a lot of players like that in MMORPGs these days, unfortunately. They're "solo" group players: players who do group content, but treat it like a solo experience. This is fine to a point, but as we can see in this thread, people take it too far and start to feel entitled to the time, effort, and resources of other players, even when they're offering nothing back in return. When they don't get that, rather than do anything at all to change their situation, they simply complain that it's those other players–players who are just minding their own business trying to have fun their way–that are the problem. If players don't line up to give them what they want, they'll turn to the developers and demand they change the game so those players are coerced into doing so.

[Remedi]

Exactly. With this current loot distribution setup we have (which btw was added so we COULD help players. In Coils it was such that once you completed a turn for that week it became locked out completely until reset), it's impossible for us to help if people ask for 2 chests. And statics generally have rules about PUGs and loot (as in, you have to get the clears with the statics). Our static I believe had one of the more forgiving rulesets: Stuff we had on farm we did together as a static for 2 chests, stuff we were yet to get our first clear on, doesn't matter if your first clear is with a PUG and it reduces our chest count for that week (if we clear it). But as well, let's say we've not yet done our weekly O5S/6S clears, and I help someone with O7S, that's a chest gone for that week with the static, another reason why we have to wait to help. The loot system makes it awkward for us. And I get why they've done it given how the fights are structured, but it does actively hinder us at the same time.

I would say that stats don't affect classes that much or offer enough of a variance too, just as I said that dungeon themselves offer not much of variance aside some optimizations.
Tbh there's also the problem that you can reach the wall quite easily and that is a problem in a progressive setting from my experience with D3 GR.
Wow kinda fixes it with titanforging and the chest, but I dunno if we want something like that here

That's why I say they need to rework their base to make it work, hopefully they won't halfass this.

Although a user on reddit says that Yoshida did talk of making challenging version of old content, but who knows what he meant

[Miste]

You either play it that way or you get the booted because the raiders are hostile to anyone who doesn't parse at their level. That's toxic.

Everyone that uses it seems to care more about their own score on a third party site called fflogs, rather than helping PUGs learn the content. All the raiders go off and cordon themselves off so they can farm the content.

If you want to see an improvement in participation rates for hard content, the entire attitude towards raiders and raiding behavior needs to be pushed towards helpful instead of selfish.

So...can you show us, with proof, all the many instances of raiders being hostile at everyone because they weren't parsing at their level?

You don't raid so where are you coming up with these scenarios? It can't be first hand information so where are you getting this idea that all raiders kick and be hostile to everyone like that?

I help people with savage all the time no matter what their skill or experience is. If they want help then I take the time to offer any advice I can and/or taking time to even go with them if I am not busy.

In fact I have two statics right now...one on my main and another on an alt. The alt I simply go with that group to help. I don't need to gear that character nor do I care to gear it or clear anything on it. I go with them solely because I figured I could be of help since I know all the fights and since they needed a permanent caster (my alt is a RDM) and the times were okay for me to squeeze into my schedule.

A lot of other raiders I know help others as well, as long as people show they are interested in learning and want to put in the effort required to learn savage level content then there is no issue.

So, where are all these meanie raiders you speak of? I haven't come across many at all.

There are rude and/or bad attitude players in every facet of this game so how come you only mention raiders as if the raid community is the only one that has players who behave badly? There are plenty of people of all types in this game who behave badly so how come you constantly generalize that all raiders are like this?

There are people who are rude no matter what content they do and it doesn't have anything to do with the raid community as a whole just because there are some bad apples. There are some bad apples in all areas of the game.

If any player takes the time to learn and clear a piece of content then they have the right to farm said content with others who also know the fight at farm status in order to have their fun and complete their own goals too. You are basically trying to demand that people must use their own time to help everyone else clear all the time...people will help when they have time to help or feel like helping....

You can't DEMAND charity from people and then call them selfish when they don't give you what you want, that's not even how it works in real life, let alone MMOs. The fact that this is so obviously not how life works ...the fact that you sat there and typed this out without realizing what you were saying confuses the heck out of me. I don't know how you can sit there and say people are selfish if they don't offer their personal time to everyone who needs help clearing savage.

I mean it is completely hypocritical anyway. Hello? You're calling people selfish for not giving in to your demands for help, but your demands are blatantly selfish. You want raiders to always give up their personal time to help you and anyone else who needs it so that you all can get something you want.

Again, you don't raid, which means you don't play with raiders at all. Where are you getting this idea that they all kick everyone and don't help people learn savage at all? I help and I know plenty of others who help, but not everyone has extra time to offer since everyone here all have lives to live outside of the game. You aren't entitled to help from other players all the time in a MMO. People who do help are common anyway in my experience though, and people help when they have time to, but you cannot DEMAND it.

Also it is funny how you quoted Bourne asking you "You have yet to explain how a parse makes content easier.", because this response you gave still has nothing in it explaining how parsing makes content easier. All you did was complain about raiders (again, but was anyone really surprised at this point?) for, in your opinion, not giving enough of their personal lives and time to helping strangers clear content on a MMO.

[Sebazy]

Don't you think if SE wanted this, they would have made the leaderboards themselves?

Why when someone else is going to invariably do it better and for free? Again, you seem to have overlooked my point where the fact that it is effectively a 3rd party tool gives SE much freer reign on clamping down on any potential abuse that revolves around it.

Everyone that uses it seems to care more about their own score on a third party site called fflogs, rather than helping PUGs learn the content. All the raiders go off and cordon themselves off so they can farm the content. Meanwhile people who do want to learn the content will not since nobody is willing to play it knowing those raiders will kick them.

Honestly, it's pretty clear at this stage that you're blinded by your hatred of the raid scene. We debunk one angle, you just change to another without so much of a passing mention about the prior points where you may indeed stand corrected. It's an endless game of whack-a-mole against misinformation and exaggerated vitriol and frankly I doubt you have any interest in the discussion here. Rather you only seem to want to decry and discredit those that you appear to have so much hate for.

But to add some actual worthwhile content to this post, I'll carry on entertaining you:

All the raiders go off and cordon themselves off so they can farm the content.

False - Google various coil turns and DF. There are examples all over reddit, gamefaqs and here of people clearing T5, T9 and T13 in DF prior to Party Finder becoming popular, and yes, I'm referring to examples on the NA and EU data centres. It's also worth noting that a lot of raiders join what's lovingly referred to as Trap Parties. If a bunch of people can't make a raid day, or you've got half a group looking for something to do, it's pretty common place to just jump into the ropiest clear for a friend group that you can find in PF and see what you can do. Success rates vary but it's a popular pass time and one that I've done since 2.0. Lastly, it's surprisingly common for some raiders to have multiple characters in multiple raid teams. Sometimes even across multiple data centres. - Sure, some raiders will isolate themselves into a box with their own static, but to assume that all raiders do that is patently untrue.

By being told the "meta" for the most efficient strategy that was data mined out of parses, you deprive players who have not yet played the content any choice.

False - By proxy of the above point, it's common place for raider with multiple characters to join a more casual team with their alt whilst their main team is on hiatus till the next content patch. I do this myself, my discord is full of various groups, teams and FCs that I help out. I'll give them pointers if they get stuck but for the most part, I just hop in and fit myself into their strategies. And trust me when I say, I've seen plenty of strategies that are wildly off piste. - You only have to look as far as TsukyEX to see that you are absolutely wrong on this point, there are multiple strategies used, many of which most certainly weren't the most efficient.

If you want to see an improvement in participation rates for hard content, the entire attitude towards raiders and raiding behavior needs to be pushed towards helpful instead of selfish.

False - Stat weights, early clear videos, boss timelines, detailed written guides, youtube guides, word of mouth tips and info passing down from raiders to their more casual friends, groups of raiders joining trap parties, raiders asking their group to help a friend get a clear. - I could go until the post count stops me, I agree 100% that the participation rate in hard content isn't great, but the attitude of raiders isn't the real problem here.

All fflogs does is sample the players cherry picked runs. This is useless data. It's like looking at report cards that were graded on a curve of 96% to 99%. Nobody will upload an embarassing run, that's why people need to hide parses because people upload parses where only they look good.

False - Are you sure about that? Are you really sure about that? - Again, you're letting yourself be blinded by your own opinions and prejudices. 2 out of 2 guesses on friend's characters were similarly stacked and also most certainly not cherry picked either. I'm far from unique or special here.

The issue, that some of you still don't get, is that you DO NOT need this stuff. Parser users "optimization" is by looking at numbers they're not supposed to see and only adjusting their strategy to maximize DPS, even if it's counter-intuitive to the content design.

False - Gordias required massive amounts of optimisation from near enough any group that wasn't stacked with absolute world class players. Fact. Early progression teams will also typically need to refine and optimise things as they learn new tiers whilst being arguably under geared for them. Fact - Rather than blaming all of this on parses, perhaps it's time you considered that finding an easier way is simply human nature and comes naturally for many? Here's a fun example for you, namely my 'Whm tanking Titan HM' thinger from years back. Do you see the dirty trick that not only made this possible, but actually really quite easy (Note the instance timer, it was a one shot). On the final phase of Titan HM there's actually a small crystal jutting out of the side of the platform half a foot or so below the arena surface. Standing on that puts you just outside of the exploding gaol circle avoiding an almost guaranteed one shot with my squishy cloth defence if I time the circle even slightly wrong. This isn't something a parser could tell me, it's something I saw with my own two eyes and got cheeky enough to actually try in one of my many clears of that trial.

Some people refer to this as human ingenuity. Hopefully I don't need to explain how important this has been over the last few millennia right?

[KaldeaSahaline]

Also refrain to quote me from now on if you have the need to insult me, I honestly don't have the time and patiente to deal with blizzard fanboys anymore, especially today when blizzard's writing have touched a new low

1) I am not a Blizzard fanboy. I criticize WoW quite frequently, and many other games as well. Regarding their writing - that is your opinion. I found their Legion writing to be quite good, especially the Suramar bits.

2) No matter how much you think so, me calling your analysis juvenile is not an insult on you personally. I am merely trying to see if I can get you too look at your posts with a rational mindset rather than an emotional one.

I've seen you give good feedback before, but for some reason the mere mention of WoW (or Blizz for that matter), tends to send you down a whirlwind of emotion and irrationality that isn't consistent with previous analysis. I'm all for you not liking Blizz/WoW. Just make sure you can convey your thoughts/examples with concrete points and not misinformation and irrationality.

Everyone that uses it seems to care more about their own score on a third party site called fflogs, rather than helping PUGs learn the content. All the raiders go off and cordon themselves off so they can farm the content. Meanwhile people who do want to learn the content will not since nobody is willing to play it knowing those raiders will kick them.

This is a good example of juvenile analysis. You clearly didn't put an iota of effort into this otherwise you'd know there are a staggering number of mitigating factors that go into this, honestly much larger than raiders keeping score.

SE is the reason the playerbase is segregated, not raiders. Remember when they put in the cleared only flag for PF? I do. Remember when they took EX's out of the DF until a patch later? I do. I could go on, but I know you won't read or care.

Thus they push the content off to a later patch and have to clear it unsynced if they want the clear. That's why the EX content clear rates go from 1% at release to 25%-30% after the major content patch. Unsync party clear...

Source? Or is this more of your made up statistics and hyperbole?

[Remedi]

I said enough on why blizzard is just a speck of it former self and why OW is disappointing, I even prefaced it by saying it's a good game, but you ignored that part.
I've criticized the downspiral trend of blizzard and the fact that ppl seems to not care.
Yes I am emotional about blizzard and I have the rights to be if I convey my points wrongly that's my bad but it's how I'm at the moment and frankly calling my points juvenile or w/e won't really make me focus better actually it'll make it worse.

Besides I was talking about the sunday cartoon Sylvanas turn that they released that day, which even by most wow aficionados channels has been panned as disappointing. As I said to my friends. You can be ruthless like Tywin or like Jeoffrey, they choose the latter

Also frankly I've never been good at explaining nor argumenting and English is not my native language so I'm trying my best

[KisaiTenshi]

Ultimately, it boils down to an easy solution. Come 5.0, make content have some teeth and reduce healer potency. Now healers have to focus more on healing. Considering I have seen how you play, would that not be preferable? Many healers want to heal more, but also recognize the game simply doesn't necessitate it.

That comes from gear creep in the game. You start Swallows Compass with i350 or better gear and it literately has no teeth. I've gone into it with my SCH who didn't have an i3xx weapon but otherwise had all i360 gear from my WHM. This goes back to basic JRPG design. You either outlevel the content or you outgear the content or both, to make it easier. The trouble is that, even in old SNES JRPG's is literately the fastest solution when you've outgeared and outleveled the content will sideline the healer. In single player games, it is fine to do that, in a MMORPG it turns every piece of content into "boring" for the healer.

The solution really calls for less stat inflation from gear to begin with. The entire gear reward design in this game effectively requires you to have the best gear from the previous piece of content, but doesn't actually penalize players for skipping the gear from the previous piece of content since it's no longer BiS. Unless content is going to be designed to ignore the defensive properties of the player gear, so it doesn't matter, it simply will never have any teeth. Yoshi-P is caught in a no-win scenario here because setting ilevel caps to all content to only allow +10 from minimum would make most content "hard enough" but it would likely leave the bottom third of the playerbase unable to complete it by any means without being carried. Where as having such little room makes bothering to even get better gear and materia pointless, it would have the opposite effect and make even savage content easier, since players would only need to outgear the dungeon, not obtain the BiS gear.

Curiously, for all your insistence of raiders being toxic, you seldom see kicks from average players who actually try.

Being kicked by raiders once, is one time too many. You and others wonder why I have such a axe to grind against parser users, the first and only time I was kicked without any communication at all from any party, in 2.5 both DPS players had fflogs in their lodestone profiles,which is what made me aware of that sites existence. This was on The Keeper of the Lake during Expert roulette, which up to that point I had cleared plenty of times, and even with a party with a tank who was wearing DPS gear. I'm willing to roll with what I get on DF, the raiders should not be kicking players for "play style" differences, especially not from dungeon content. The impression I get from the forum raiders is that they check players lodestones and fflogs and kick players just to improve their own parses.

What makes you think I would ever want to play with a parser user after that? No doubt I've played with people who were parsing everything because they're concerned about their ranking on that site, but I don't want to hear it. It is cheating, it violates the ToS, so I'm objectively right. If SE's unwritten policy is to ignore parser users, then they are just going to have an arms race escalation between players building tools that reveal more invisible information from the game until someone crosses a line. That FFXIV ACT plugin is also the basis for the radar tools and callout automations, and even that cactbot plugin has the entire combat script for everything, and is used to reveal anything that the game client is told in advance for.

Regardless, have you a source or are this statistics pulled from Narnia? Because current estimations based on players who have the Lunar Kamuy puts Tsukiyomi clears at 7%. Savage clears have ranged between 10-20% since Creator. And the unofficial census Lucky Bancho does purposely cuts off his calculations when a tier ends. Therefore, the highest level anyone can have clearing Sigmascape Savage is i370. That 1% applies only towards Ultimate.

That only means Lucky Bancho theoretically more accurate as they are only counting clears before gear creep sets in. It would be nice if SE posted clear rates for content themselves so we can quit having this argument about clear rates. Right now, I doubt few players have legitimate clears in hard content, be it parser usage, bought carries, or whatever.

Why do I even care? How does someone else cheating themselves affect my ability to play the game? Have you ever been at school or a job where your performance is measured by doing things by the book, and you're near the top of your ability, and then you see the scores posted for other people on your team and you end up at the middle or bottom? Then you're the one that is told to improve, meanwhile the people above you continue to game the grading metric by doing things wrong, and creating more work for other staff to fix their mistakes. I have a real bone to pick with people who insist they aren't cheating, when they absolutely are.

The analogy here is that "the meta" is the result of cheating. The meta doesn't play by the rules the system goes by. It only exists because the game doesn't punish "pushing the work to others", in that post I quoted of yours about tanking, if you turn tank stance off, you are forcing the other players to have to use their enmity reduction if you make a mistake. If you are are a healer, and focusing on DPS, you're forcing the players to use their self-heal, and thus reducing their DPS in the process. The healer DPS doesn't count in the content design, the DPS's DPS does.

If the game's regular content "had more teeth", the healer should never have time to throw Stone/Malefic consecutively, the tank or party should be bleeding enough that taking 5 seconds to throw stone twice would result in the tank or the healer's death without the tank using a CD. Yet on the healer forums we keep seeing players asking for more DPS skills as a healer, because they want to be a green DPS, they do not want to be a healer. The tank, likewise, should lose enmity the second they are out of tank stance, and the fact that doesn't happen shows a large blindspot with how content is designed (the content always assumes the tank is in tank stance.) If they are not in tank stance, they are not "a tank", and the healer should become the primary target of any mob that isn't being targeted. If there's only 3 mobs, you can drop tank stance and the DPS can all deal with one add, and the healer can use party healing without becoming the target. Yet, that's not how the game's logic works. Even in the single player content like the MCH level 50 job quest or the MSQ solo duty where you fight the GC's, where there are belligerent healers present, you the player are not going to fight the belligerent tank first unless they're actively preventing you from getting to the belligerent healer. Those belligerent healers are always casting healing magic because you're damaging the belligerent mob group. If you sit there long enough without doing anything, you might see the belligerent healers cast stone.

The Squadron's even do this. I leveled MCH, MNK and NIN entirely from the squadrons because that was faster than waiting for the DPS queue. You can quite literately, start the dungeon, target a mob group, and tell your squadron to attack, while you sit back and watch. The healer will heal more often, because the mobs die a little slower without your participation, but the Squadron healer has access to all the level 50 role actions and skills of the conjurer, even when they are not in level 50 content. And by having everyone have a level 5 buff, the trash mobs can always be completed without your participation when you're on DPS. What does this tell us about DPS's responsibility? If it wasn't for there being mechanics to bosses, they could probably clear most of the bosses too.

So, what are the issues with current content design?
1) The tank's "tank stance" isn't really mandatory, thus you get blue DPS activity, this is because enmity generation assumes the tank stays in tank stance. If the tank drops tank stance, the enemies should delete the tank from their enmity table. This still allows the tank to do this purposely, but the way it works right now, the tank is getting the benefit of being a tank without being in tank stance. Belligerent mob groups rarely have tanks, and players know to finish them off last because they do less damage to the party and have larger HP pools. Single target bosses pretty much do not need the party tank in tank stance if the rest of the party doesn't generate more enmity than them.
How I'd fix it - leaving tank stance should reset enmity as if the tank was ko'd. After all, there's no longer a tank.

2) The healer doesn't have enough to do, and casting high-enmity healing like Medica II to allow for green DPS activity should rip enmity away from the tank if the tank is not in tank stance. With single-target bosses, this ultimately doesn't have any meaningful use since there is only one target, hence most players just spam Medica II without consideration of the tank. On trash, casting Medica II should always be a mistake, and when the Squadron does it, they always follow it with the enmity dump, but they never cast Medica II the way "the meta" assumes.
How I'd fix it - The most obvious thing to do is remove regen/aspected benefic and medica II/diurnal aspected helios from being skills to actions with CD's. But perhaps a better change would be to put the regen effect entirely on a separate skill so that "the next cure/medica/benefic/helios/physick will add X seconds of regen/shield of potency Y to a maximum of (capped) seconds" and then fold Medica and Medica II into the same skill, and Cure/Cure II into the same skill, and benefic/benefic II into the same skill, and Helios/Aspected Helios into the same skill. For Nocturnal AST's that would swap regen for shield. If you have two WHM, or two AST or one of each, then the regen effect is added instead of overwritten. It would at the very least allow healers to benefit from each other's buffs. There are two pieces of content in the game (both in the MSQ Roulette) where the healer is the better tank, because the boss has no teeth, and by purposely creating enmity from Medica II, all the adds are drawn automatically to the healer.

3) DPS are ultimately allowed to underperform, even in punishing content. The healer and tank should not have time to DPS, they should be performing their role at all times. Which means that if the tank or healer have time to use single target DPS, then all the DPS are underperforming. We already have the gauges, they tell the player what they should be doing, but ultimately there is no imperative to do anything at all. If the tank or healer stops what they're doing, the party would immediately fail. If the DPS stop what they're doing, they can continue to do nothing.
How I'd fix it - Pretty much, as also observed from the squadron content, the fix here really needs to be that the tank and healer DPS be effectively zero relative to DPS contribution. That would not be very fun at all for the tank or healer, so perhaps the mechanic that is needed here is for the mob groups to have their own healers. Thus if the party DPS are under-performing, the belligerent healers will have no problem keeping their group fully healed. The party healer and party tank will not be able to kill the belligerent healer by themselves as the rest of the belligerent party would kill the party healer if the tank tries to drop tank stance to help DPS the belligerent healer.

4) Mobs spawned do nothing until hit or a few seconds. Okay this really needs to ask the question of why. Mobs are always at the disadvantage because the player is always allowed to get the first hit in, thus they can be stunlocked at spawn. What should happen is that hostile mobs should always LoS (Line of Sight) attack players at spawn.
How'd I'd fix it - This is really a problem of latency, sure it might not be fair to players to suddenly be attacked before seeing the mob spawn, but perhaps maybe the spawning process can make sure that the mobs are not spawned within players auto-attack range to prevent that.

5) Trash mobs are generally toothless, and so is their AI. So? Classic JRPG formula is you outgear and outlevel them, you should be able to sneeze on them and they die. The problem here is that levelsync and ilevelsync doesn't actually bring these anywhere close to having teeth. Sure I may have to use a different strategy for the Squadrons to account for the AI doing stupid things like chasing the invulnerable monster around, but the trash mobs, even the Squadron can defeat quickly with only one DPS. What's the point of having the trash mobs if they're not an obstacle? They're just a few road cones to knock over once you hit the sync point. In an experienced party, the tank can do a wall-to-wall pull of them, and they are stupid enough to follow while ranged players can hit them and they ignore it.
How'd I'd fix it - If the tank moves more than 15y away from the mob's spawn point, the mob will lose interest and resets it's enmity, and recovers it's hp completely if there's nobody else on the enmity table. More to the point, to prevent bots from being able to complete dungeons, also reset the mob if they can't hit the target after 5 seconds without a status effect (eg stun) preventing them. If another player lands a hit on a tagged mob without the tank generating enmity, then the mob should defend itself.