Openly admitting to ignoring the players

[ItMe]

1) They attempted it with tanks and it has largely failed. They said in Shadowbringers early media they wanted dedicated Tank / Off Tank roles and that hasn't materialized at all.

Did they?
Do you have a source for that?
I thought I remembered them talking about how they wanted to abolish that dichotomy.

[Liam_Harper]

I thought I remembered them talking about how they wanted to abolish that dichotomy.

Exactly, it was a bad idea so they abolished it. They saw it was better that players bring whatever combination of tanks they enjoy, instead of "sorry, we need a MT and your class is an OT". Now for some reason they're repeating that old mistake with healers. If the party has a Sage, they want SCH to be locked out. If the party has an AST, they want WHM to be locked out. And for what? They haven't even created a distinctive pure/shield playstyle. "Barrier" is just a regular pure healer with a handful of shields. It makes no sense.

[Semirhage]

Exactly, it was a bad idea so they abolished it. They saw it was better that players bring whatever combination of tanks they enjoy, instead of "sorry, we need a MT and your class is an OT". Now for some reason they're repeating that old mistake with healers. If the party has a Sage, they want SCH to be locked out. If the party has an AST, they want WHM to be locked out. And for what? They haven't even created a distinctive pure/shield playstyle. "Barrier" is just a regular pure healer with a handful of shields. It makes no sense.

"The WHM would be doing all the healing while the SCH would DPS away".

I can't say for certain that not a single member of the dev team plays healers beyond the skill level of a nervous Cure spamming sprout. But I can say that the way Yoshida talks about how healers play in live letters is the same way Cure spammers on the forums/Reddit talk about oGCD-healers "not healing": because they don't understand how playing a healer actually works.