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

[Endariel]

The community shares some of the responsibility. We used to have enmity combos, but a lot of tanks chose not to use them in favor of DPS. We used to have a tank stance and a DPS stance for when we aren't tanking, but a lot of tanks chose to use only the DPS stance. Vitality used to be the main tank stat but a lot of tanks used workarounds to stack Strength instead. There is argument to be made that a lot of tanks wanted to be a blue DPS so the development direction was just to let them.

It's not that the tanks wanted, it's that they needed to dps if they wanted to clear the respective tier. And as the matter stands, healers dps is required too in high-end duties, unlike yoshi likes to say "it's optional".

[Larirawiel]

The community shares some of the responsibility. We used to have enmity combos, but a lot of tanks chose not to use them in favor of DPS. We used to have a tank stance and a DPS stance for when we aren't tanking, but a lot of tanks chose to use only the DPS stance. Vitality used to be the main tank stat but a lot of tanks used workarounds to stack Strength instead. There is argument to be made that a lot of tanks wanted to be a blue DPS so the development direction was just to let them.

If you give the players the choice whether they can achieve something in an efficient way or a way that makes fun, they will almost always choose the efficient way. If DPS is king and it is more efficient to sacrifice some tank attributes or tank buffs in exchange for more DPS then the players will do that. It happens in almost all MMORPGs, FF14 is not the exception of it. In WoW classic there is the "fury/prot"-meta. It means, you have a fury dps warrior who servers as a "tank". Full with (very expensive) buffs so he will not be an "one-hit-wonder" on bosses. And the entire raid is build around the playstyle of the fury/pro-warrior. It means, with two fury/prot tanks 38 players have to adapt. Healers have to use very expensive mana potions because the fury/prot tank takes ~60% more damage than a full prot warrior etc. But the players do that because it is more efficient even if it is not fun at all especially for the healers.

It seems also that the FF14 devs try to prevent such behavior with job specific items so sacrificing tank stats for more DPS is not so easy. But almost every job uses materia which increases the chance for a critical hit because it means more DPS.

As long as the game devs create the game around the "DPS is king" narrative the players will always try to do more DPS even if it is not fun for them. But because it is not fun, they will someday begin to hate the game and the game devs for that. WoW is now in that state because the entire game is full of such not funny, grindy and boring FOMO mechanics. And the devs get rants and much hate on Twitter & co for that.


Cheers

[Deceptus]

This is a prime example shown by Nizzi.

What this shows is that a healer spend 70% of their entire casts spamming a single button only to out damage a tank who was using 13 abilities. The mage had as many Glare attacks as the PLD had auto attacks.

But for some reason the FFXIV developers are concerned that "healers need to be concerned with accessibility". While tanks, one of the most important roles in the game, don't.

[Nanchi]

Just to throw my two cents in here. Always loved playing healer and tank in all contents of the game but I do agree that the similarity between tanks especially is becoming very off putting. However it's worse for healers in my opinion, all I really wish for is a harder hitting encounter Design, make healers heal more if you refuse to give them more damage spells, but even that point is moot after seeing how all tanks and some dps jobs got new healing abilities. I don't understand why make healers even more redundant, even in current content it's often the case to be stuck in downtime to due mobs hitting like wet noddles. I don't know how the encounter design will look like in Endwalker but I do seriously hope they will amp up the damage output of mobs/raids just to make healers use their healing kit more.

I get not wanting to throw a newbie healer or tank into cold water but by the time 6.0 drops there really needs to be some sort of change to make healers feel useful again and if it's not by adding more dps spells for downtime, then be it by having harder difficulty fights.

[Reiryuu]

I don't know how the encounter design will look like in Endwalker but I do seriously hope they will amp up the damage output of mobs/raids just to make healers use their healing kit more.

From the media tour, the dungeon at lvl 81 looked pretty mechanic heavy, but even then it didn't look like a whole lot of healing was needed. Leveling dungeons do tend to hit a little harder than the endgame dungeons though, so we don't really know how those will end up being. I imagine the trial encounters will behave similarly to ShB's trials though.

[Allegor]

I get not wanting to throw a newbie healer or tank into cold water but by the time 6.0 drops there really needs to be some sort of change to make healers feel useful again and if it's not by adding more dps spells for downtime, then be it by having harder difficulty fights.

Tbh I think newbie is the key word there. Can someone who even reached lv 70+ [without buying a skip potion, and even then, they'd still need to level the rest "manually" anyways, but I digress] be considered a newbie in anything? I mean, I get it, it's not 'tanking/healing' itself, it's the anxiety of being in the role. I used to be terrified of tanking, I still kinda need some emotional preparation before queuing, and a break after the run is over, even after leveling all 4 tanks to 80.. but that feeling does ware off after a while, and while a tank might eventually find more confidence and enjoyment being a "blue dps", a healer is left with a 111111111 spam.

Unlike dps and tanks, healing doesn't become more enjoyable and rewarding as you get better, quite the opposite - it gets dull, that is not ok.

[Reiryuu]

Unlike dps and tanks, healing doesn't become more enjoyable and rewarding as you get better, quite the opposite - it gets dull, that is not ok.

Also, neither of those roles get as considerably dull as healers' roles do when in higher item level gear. At least tanks have DPS combos if they don't need mitigation as much.

[Stormfur]

I can't speak to WoW's healing or tanking these days. From what I heard, mythic content requires a lot from a tank. I will say that for me, Wrath of the Lich King was where it was at with healing. It was a full-time role, semi chaotic and random, and restoration shaman had a good toolkit by that point. Overall the best healer I've played and the most rewarding was Operative in SWTOR.

What did they do differently that FFXIV does not? (I've never played either of these games)

[Reiryuu]

What did they do differently that FFXIV does not? (I've never played either of these games)

Don't have to have played either. There are plenty of other games where healers have other things they can do including Everquest (Given, for a while raiding as a cleric is CH chain hell, but in group play options do exist and get broader as the expansions go on... not reduced like FFXIV). RIFT, FFXI, LOTR, are a few more MMOs I have experience with with more interesting healers. Hell even AD&D and Pathfinder healers have more options. I am, unfortunately, in no place to talk about tanks, though.

[Lukha]

Put Yoko Taro in charge of designing healers.

Even if it doesn't turn out great the results will be more interesting than what we've been getting.