It's time to hire dedicated Tank an Healer devs!

[Jeeqbit]

I agree that DRK does not look like it is changing much. In an expansion you usually have some fresh animations and a slightly different feel for the new expansion, like how Spirits Within got upgraded to Expiacion. Although we do have extra off-globals to press which DRK already has a lot of. The biggest change actually seems how often we will be using bloodspiller because of the reduced recast time of Delirium.

I don't agree with the "DRK is WAR" thing. They are substantially different tanks. DRK is about absorbing damage with TBN while WAR is about taking that damage then healing it back up. DRK is about off-globals while the WAR rotation is primarily on the GCD.

[Saefinn]

I would like to see some more dedication towards healer and tank design for sure and it splits the current people less because the roles each cater for different experiences and expectations. I can appreciate from hearing from the healer questions in the recent interviews the challenge of balance the devs face in wanting simplicity for accessibility but variety for the experienced.

I know I've put out plenty of feedback as have others on the healer experience. My view is a "low skill floor, high skill ceiling" approach and have taken the argument that more variety in DPS is the way to do that because it respects existing design (this game was originally designed to accommodate healers DPSing) and changes nothing about the skill floor because DPS is not required as a barrier to entry in playing a healing job and if you DPS you don't have to do good DPS until a much higher level of play. And arguably out of all the solutions this is the easiest to implement because the groundwork is already there.

But the devs have made clear they're not going to go with that route but instead with the much bigger challenge of balancing healing intensity to satisfy higher skilled healers whilst not being impossible for the lower end of healers. I think that's a very difficult balance, which I think (and as Yoshi P acknowledged) is exacerbated by iLevel differences. Healing requirements take a dive the higher iLevels get. If they can fix that then I think they'll have a much better chance of achieving their goal and with an added bonus, they can keep content as it was intended even when iLevels are much higher and I think they can benefit anybody running through older content because a) they get to experience stuff closer to what was intended and b) a lot of older content was designed in a way to help you learn your roles better and may help newer players ease into their roles better.

When my group ran Cape Westwind at min iLevel for fun i found the healing intensity was higher - it wasn't difficult or challenging but I was more engaged and I expect this is closer to the kind of things the devs are looking to achieve. When I first ran through ShB's levelling dungeons on SCH I was engaged because the lower iLevels meant the efficiency wasn't there and I was able to find it more engaging and lulled me into this thought of "maybe SCH is fun in ShB content at least" and then I got to Mt Gulg with a geared party and that feeling went out of the window. So I think iLevel is a contributing factor to why the current design just doesn't feel good to play. If they could make a way of capping stats better for content, I think we could see improvement.

I agree that DRK does not look like it is changing much. In an expansion you usually have some fresh animations and a slightly different feel for the new expansion, like how Spirits Within got upgraded to Expiacion. Although we do have extra off-globals to press which DRK already has a lot of. The biggest change actually seems how often we will be using bloodspiller because of the reduced recast time of Delirium.

I don't agree with the "DRK is WAR" thing. They are substantially different tanks. DRK is about absorbing damage with TBN while WAR is about taking that damage then healing it back up. DRK is about off-globals while the WAR rotation is primarily on the GCD.

I think on the surface they're very similar and I think for most places you're going to use them then they're going to feel very similar.

Like with the claims about healers being homogenised, it feels that way until you are pushed to play the job's potential where there differences count. EG. I was playing AST with the mindset of "WHM mode" and "SCH mode" until I got to doing Memoria Misera EX on it and realised I had to approach things differently to get the most out of it.

But DRK does feel very watered down to me now, it does flow well, but I always valued it as the technical tank and I felt Stormblood DRK was the compromise for making it more accessible. But ShB took it too far IMO. DRK was always my preferred tanked to play, but it feels pretty bland to me now as does WAR, though WAR was my favoured choice in 2.0. But now it's Paladin who steals it for me and I can't wait to see what it's like in 6.0