Quote Originally Posted by Lyth View Post
Managing 'buffs' is not an identity. Managing 'debuffs' is not an identity. There are what, 17 standard combat jobs? Let's not reserve mandatory raid spots for our favourites by cordoning off massive areas of design space.

Everyone wants those big numbers that they get from buffs/debuffs. Who cares who the highest damage dealing healer is, especially when pure damage dealers provide a progressively larger share of raid dps with each expansion? "I know you can clear on WHM, but would you mind swapping to make my numbers look better?"

I think the moment that you introduce offensive raid buffs/debuffs to a role, everyone in that role has to have it for there to be a level playing field. Alternatively, if they add a fourth healer next expansion, have SCH and AST's buff/debuff effects rewrite each other/share downtime such that you only ever want to take one of them at a time. I think the latter is less likely given that they opted not to go that way with tanks.
What exactly is an "identity" in your opinion? Managing buffs/debuffs seems pretty interesting as gameplay, and seems to come with a certain amount of unique choices. Of course it all comes down to how said activities are designed.

There seem to be two major ways to contribute to dps in FFXIV, either trough personal dps like SAM, BLM and MCH, or through giving others buffs and improving their dps, like DNC, RDM and NIN.

Healers also seem to fall under this binary in terms of design.

I agree giving jobs a sub-role might prevent a certain degree of design creativity, but I don't agree with the idea that having utility automatically makes sure that a job will be picked over another. I think pre 5.3 AST is a testament to that. AST was barely played compared to the other two even though it brought higher utility.

After what happened at the beginning of Shb, I think job homogenization is a bigger danger to job design than the "meta". Isn't homogenization one of the biggest sources of healer unhappiness after all?