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

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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.

This is precisely why people keep asking for Mythic+ dungeons and harder casual content. Current dungeons are boring—something the developers outright acknowledged. Swallow's Compass is an end game dungeon with an ilvl tuned so low it's invalidated before it even releases. At least in JRPGs, you typically don't overgear new areas unless you powerlevel beforehand yet dungeons are the equivalent of players grinding for several hours despite not actually grinding at all. Put simply, it's poor design because it provides no incentive for players to learn or play their intended roles. Healers DPS because they're bored. Tanks pull the entire room because they're bored. And putting all this aside, I have healed these dungeons near the minimum ilvl with a tank equally low. I still spent significantly more time DPSing because things simply didn't hit hard enough.

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.

Translation: "I am entitled to your time."

You are literally telling raiders to give them their time because you demand it yet you have the audacity to call us selfish? Why are we obligated to carry you through content if you aren't making a concerted effort to try? In a recent o5s party, I had a PLD who simply wouldn't provoke when I got the prey mechanic, which drops a proximity aoe under my feet after roughly five seconds. A tank buster precedes this oncoming damage, therefore the OT, ideally, takes the buster by provoking the boss. He didn't despite being asked before we pulled and twice afterwards when we wiped. He actually argued he shouldn't have to, essentially telling me to do the mechanic myself. Not only does this force me either into tank stance or unnecessarily blow CDs unless I have Holmgang available, it puts more pressure on the healers who now have a heavy amount of incoming damage on the MT all because one person couldn't be a team player. According to you, we're required to adapt otherwise it's selfish? Is he not selfish for demanding I and both healers adapt around his laziness? We tried four times before the party disbanded.

Instead of blaming FFlogs, raiders and everyone else, how about you reflect on why you were kicked? I have seen you heal before. You linked that Anti-Tower video. Considering Anti-Tower released long after 2.5, it's far more likely they kicked you because you couldn't perform even your base role correctly and caused wipes, especially as ACT was not nearly as ubiquitous or accepted back then. Many of us arguing with you now offered advice on how to improve—I, specifically, remembering outlining a baseline rotation you could use that proved effective for me while learning. Don't I sound absolutely toxic? Instead of showing a little humility, you decried everyone who dared criticise you, dug in your heels and insisted it was everyone else's fault. Now if you were kicked for entirely frivolous reasons, so? You think I haven't been? Someone kicked me in an A1S party when we were light farming because they insisted all puddles get stacked middle and I mistimed my movements. Am I going to fault everyone because of one person's actions? What a depressing world to leave in if everyone were that petty.

You have that impression yet I'm currently watching Xeno, notorious "bully," help a PLD with his weekly clear. Over seven pulls, and despite the PLD clearly having little idea how to properly tank God Kefka, Xeno hasn't left.

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.

You wouldn't, because it's easier to shift the blame onto others. Your arrogance is so profound, you won't even entertain the mere idea you could possibly be wrong. "It must be those evil raiders! I know everything about WHM!" Regardless, cheating would be Ungarmax. A parse simply reveals how much damage and healing you do. The only thing "objectively right" is your bias.

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.

You mean more accurate than the random numbers you pulled from your head with no source to verify them? Yeah, that's generally how statistics work.

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.

And here it is. I am glad you have finally admitted to only giving a damn about yourself. I suppose you're unfamiliar with the concept of "teamwork?" In fact, let's use your analogy! The direct equivalent would be a group assignment where you only perform the bare minimum while your colleagues do everything else. See, you're under the false assumption you do everything correct—refusing to acknowledge a healer who can both heal more effectively and DPS is 100% superior. They performed the exact same task, but contributed more to the party. Therefore, you aren't "near the top of your ability." That healer didn't cheat, they simply found a more effective way to heal than you. But you couldn't care less. So I have a simple, ultimately, rhetorical question. If you "don't even care." Why should I? Why should I care what you want when you refuse to show that same courtesy? Going back to the school analogy, if I discovered a faster means of researching the information, thus my method is better. Would you accept and adapt? Evidently not, since we have long established you'd rather remain stubborn.

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.

Heaven forbid everyone contributes in a team game! How dare I expect those dastardly DPS to use an ability that doesn't mess up their rotation or lower their damage in any conceivable way?! I am simply awful.

Dripping sarcasm aside, if you actually did harder content, you would know this simply isn't true. As a melee main myself, I seldom touch either Second Wind or Bloodbath unless I take extra damage either to maintain uptime or because I messed up a mechanic. Neither ability reduces a DPS' damage whatsoever. While Purification/Third Eye do, it's been calculated to be a greater loss for the raid forcing the tank back into tank stance, especially as Seigan's potency is so negligible, some of the top ranked Samurai don't even have a single cast of it. With properly rotated Shirks between the tanks, this is rarely an issue. And if it is, you will often see tanks adjust with a threat combo or Defiance/Unchained.

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.

Has it ever occurred to you people ask for more DPS abilities because healing requirements in this game are extremely easy, thus they find it boring to spam Broil/Malefic III/Stone IV endlessly? There have been just as many threads asking for more healer checks, discussing how healer potency is too high or how healers barely need to heal. Nothing has changed. Therefore, many healers have simply given up expecting to actually be healers in this game, but still want to be entertained. So they ask for more DPS abilities since the devs haven't listened to their complaints about how low healing requirements are. Coincidentally, I once had a situation where our tank was a troll and promptly bailed on us in Kugane Castle. The BRD elected to tank Yojimbo, and healing her was arguably the most fun I've had healing a dungeon boss since I started playing this game. Why? For once, I had to consistently heal otherwise she dies. I could still weave in DPS abilities, but not nearly to the extent I would normally, especially in that dungeon where Assize usually handles everything. I would love seeing incoming damage like that so I would actually need to bother with Cure II and more actively healing.

As for tanks, if enmity gradually reduced whenever you went into DPS stance, tanks would finally have something to care about besides damage. The main reason they focus so heavily on their DPS is because nothing else currently matters. You only need enough mitigation to survive the incoming attacks. If I can live through a tank buster with a CD and maintain enmity while in deliverance, I have no reason to touch Defiance. Higher incoming damage, more frequent damage spikes and a gradual enmity reduction would give tanks actual mechanics besides "press a cooldown during this scripted event before going back to being a DPS." Reducing aggro immediately makes such a change too rigid, in my opinion. The interesting aspect would be tanks weaving tank stance and learning how to get the most out of DPS stance while not being a hindrance. Don't make the reduction too gradual otherwise people ignore it, but too fast and it becomes "just sit in tank stance whenever you have the boss and don't think about it."

For the same reason, healers should still have an opportunity to DPS. That aspect remains fun and engaging. The issue is how one-sided it is currently. Much like the tanks above, make it so you can weave DPS abilities in once damage settles, however you will spend far more time actually healing. 20/30% DPSing and 80/70% healing is a good benchmark to work around as it rewards better skilled players without forcing it onto everyone else. If content hit harder, you aren't going to see PF demand healer DPS nearly to the extent they do now because 20% isn't much whereas right now healer DPS is enormous.

We may actually have some common ground if you came into these discussion with less of an axe to grind. Regardless, it's on the developers to design content where tank stance and healing is more a necessity if they want people to care about it, not on parsers. Raiders will adapt to whenever the game allows. Presently, it allows us to aggressive DPS.