Dear SE, I am a Healer

[Belhi]

First of all, it is childish to repeatedly ignore explanations given simply because you don't agree with them, even though they're the official statements. That was my point. And it seems like I'm not the only one who thought so. I'm not going to go into the "let's be civil" stuff again because frankly, look around, it's not happening.

For the second point, if they indeed balance tanks differently as MT and OT as they say they will, yeah, they will probably add them in order of MT and OT separately. I honestly kind of doubt there will be too many new jobs, but logically it makes sense.

There is a difference between ignoring an explanation and not agreeing with it. People generally aren't ignoring explanations, they just find the explanation doesn't convince them or that they disagree with it. That isn't childish. It is pretty normal adult human interaction frankly and why discussions and debates exist.

As for the 'let's be civil' just because others chose not to doesn't make it any better when you chose not to. It is completely unconstructive and serves no purpose beyond antagonising other posters and making any such discussions usually less relevant to the topics at hand. You cant control the behaviour of others around you but you can control your own. If your going to be uncivil then that is entirely on you and 'well other people are doing it' is a cop out.

Finally, I guess by your final paragraph you would be supportive of tanks in the next expansion if they are complaining that they didn't get their third subcategory then?

I'd rather them fix healers before adding a new one.

Disappointed as I am, I would agree with this as long as they actually manage to fix them this time. It is disconcerting when we have gotten the same reasoning before and nothing got fixed. I feel this detail is something people are overlooking. They literally said the exact same thing when leading up to SB and that lead to what we have currently. You can understand why that might make healer's somewhat sceptical and such logic. SE had failed them before on this and naturally they see this and think 'great, what if they screw it up yet again and we are in the exact same situation next expansion? Do we get no new Job then for the same reason again?' Frankly since they have failed us before on this it is kind of on SE to convince us as they have let us down before.

So the biggest take away for me in that interview was Yoshi-P finally admitted that the concept of a Pure healer wasn't working, after holding stead fast to that idea even though players in 3.0 said it was hurting the healer community.

Now to answer you question in regards to Tanks MT/OT, it makes sense when you look at what a tanks main role is. They are there to hold aggro so in a trial, you only really need one tank to main and a secondary for adds or if the main dies. Tanks really don't hold aggro at the same time unless mechanics require so they really can't work in tandem that way. Healers on the other can both work in tandem with each other healing and buffing which is why SCH/AST are the dominate combo right now, and why WHM pure heal, no utility is hurting.

Physical Ranged DPS in 2.0 was BRD and consider a hybrid support/dps job that did lower dps but kept party up going with resource management and buff/debuff. MCH added a second one that pretty much played like 3.0 BRD but was completely changed from that role in 4.0 for better or worse. The key thing to remember in all this is DF queue times. SE is trying to keep them as low as possible and to do that they need as large of a pool as possible to pick from. For example, if the game had two MT slots and two OT tanks for a trial then you would need to wait on one of two jobs to fill that specific slot so if you had 3 DRK queued, in a normal setting it would add those two and start the trial but if DRK was slated to OT you would still have to wait for a MT to join the queue. Same goes for PRanged DPS, though the algorithm might favor them over other DPS, Duty Finder isn't going to specifically wait from them to join the queue so the matchmaker times are faster. I hope that makes sense?

The interview gives me some hope but until we see the results in May I feel quite uncertain. He also said they plan to make WHM easier and I don't take that as a good thing. Of all the issues with healing WHM difficulty isn't one of them.

As for tanks, the logic is the same. Fundamentally, beyond some support aspects, each role serves the same purpose and striped down to a basic level are mostly interchangeable within that role in group content. A dps has the fundamental job of doing the lion's share of damage to the enemy, the healer's primary job is to counter incoming debuffs and damage from the boss, and the tanks job is control and mitigation. Roles generally aren't good at doing each other's task on nearly the same level. Beyond that it becomes a matter of specific fight's mechanics, how damage is distributed over time, utility a job offers and variation of how a job feels to play. If a tanking role is specifically designed to fit the Main Tank role or specifically designed to fit a Off Tank role then there is a strong argument that their role in a fight is as distinctly different as say a caster vs physical dps.

I make this point to try and express an alternative take on the same argument that is the basis for why dps are considered different categories. I don't really like the whole subcategory thing and I doubt tanks will now be treated in the same way but I felt taking a different context on the same argument might help give different perspectives.

As for availability of roles, according the Yoshi P adding new jobs tends to have very little impact in the distribution of what people are playing and so what is available. Adding DRK and AST didn't increase the number of people playing tanks or healers noticeably by the end of HW. The primary reason for jobs in general are about variation of gameplay, not population role balance, particularly with catagories of dps. I have been in plenty of groups which had no MCH or BRD before.