Again, you're equating "damage spikes" to mean "TANKBUSTERS OUT THE ASS".
Which is ridiculous.
Also, who said that it couldn't be prepared for or predicted? Such as it being a telegraphed attack that targeted a random player (Thus if it was someone who already wasn't at full health for some reason, you might want to cancel your cast and react to it)
You're arguing against this asinine belief that "Random damage spikes" means "Random Tankbusters with no telegraph, no sense of consistency and can almost one shot actual tanks"
Which is absurd and in no way suggested in what I've posted.
You mean, instead of simply being able to let Medica II/Aspected Helios tick people back to full life from 50% or lower, healers might actually have some agency thrust upon them to maybe get certain people's life up?
No wai! How would anyone cope? That would be the worst design ever, healers, having to heal people whom are injured!?
/s
You really don't particularly like the idea of Healers having to actually do anything except "Press this oGCD button when Y move happens" do you?
Oh, maybe the target might be random! Okay, but it's still going to be a case of, wait for predetermined attack... Use predetermined response... With the caveat of, you have to target someone after the fact rather than being able to pre-target and pre-cast for them!
Also, again, it's not always a case of "Maybe they this person gets RNG rekt by this attack twice in a row!" maybe it's a case of, someone's going to get blasted by an attack that deals somewhat significant damage, several seconds before a Raidbuster is due to occur. Where depending on whom is hit by the damage, might need to be topped up by a heal before that Raidbuster or might be fine and can pop defensive CD's such as Manaward/Shadeshift or might be a Tank and can mostly shrug the thing off.
So having to heal people is tedious?
Well then, there exists a role where you won't have to be concerned about such "Tedious" things like "Having to heal people"...
Well, the primary issue with the game as a whole, is that rotations are set in stone. That there isn't and random damage spikes. So literally everything can come down to "Press this oGCD at this, this and this time"
This is present for both Tanks and Healers. Where Tanks don't have to worry about any damage other than the predetermined Tankbusters because there's no significant crits or other burst damage to warrant things like, rolling CD's between Tankbusters. Especially so when they're being backed up by HoTs and Shields that are ridiculously strong.
Where Healers don't have to worry about any "Random" damage forcing them to do something other than spam their single Nuke over and over with the occasional Regen or Shield application and direct responses to predetermined attacks such as AoE heals or oGCD heals.
You might think it's "Bothersome" or "Tedious" to have to actually react to things that aren't predetermined, but so long as jobs have the tools to do so (I.e. If Tanks had actual active mitigation as a standard feature) but the inclusion of non-predetermined things is the only way to break the cycle that is everything being so entirely scripted and thus causing Tanks/Healers to have literally nothing to do but focus entirely on DPS.
Since without random things occurring, you literally can plan out every single CD usage for every single attack before ever stepping foot into the encounter. Which means that the entirety of your "Tanking" and "Healing" gameplay is already accounted for, you merely have to press the buttons at the designated time. Thus the only thing left to do is pump out your DPS.
Having a predetermined attack that randomly targets is a step in the right direction, but it still leads to a pretty stale gameplay where you still know WHAT skills you need to use and WHEN to use them, with the only deviation being that you have to look at who needs to be targeted during the encounter. Then once it's over... That's it, that's the only deviation, you go back to fully focusing on DPS again until the next scripted attack occurs.
Heck, even in games where they DO have random attacks occurring and random damage spikes, if they're not impactful enough you can still get into the habit of being able to easily predetermine your CD usage. Especially if the number or power of CD's can make these things obsolete while still covering the major Busters that form up the basis of standard MMO encounters.
So it's not a easy and perfect solution, but it's a step towards the direction. One where you need dynamic encounters that don't just follow specified scripts in order to lead to dynamic gameplay where Tanks and Healers can find themselves more occupied with mitigating/healing damage than DPSing, with good players being able to gear and play more optimally, reducing the time they spend mitigating/healing and increasing time spent maximizing DPS.
Any time that encounters are predominantly scripted, so will defensive abilities be. Thus leading right back to a "Blue/Green DPS" meta, because there simply won't be anything else for the roles to consider as all of their CD usages have been accounted for prior to engaging with the content.



Reply With Quote

