FFXIV is super interesting BUT then why?

[Anhra]

snip

To a extent, youre correct, Job balance will always require some Jobs to be stronger than others, because of the necessity of a Meta having to exist, but despite sounding rather contradicting, Healers and Tanks can both be balanced and staying inbalanced and fullfilling their role at the same time, ill provide you with examples.

There are, at least from what ive observes in my time with MMOs in general, two ways of "balancing" Healers and Tanks in PvP that would make them work in both 1vs1 scenarios, as well as group fights: "by design" and "artificially".

-With Artificially, i mean in order to counteract the ideology of a Tank being sturdy and a Healer keeping things and itself alive (which makes it by nature overpowered), over-usage needs to be punished.
A example for this would be "healing sickness" on Healers. Healing sickness is a debuff that is being applied everytime someone is being healed, which reduces healing recieved by a certain amount for a few seconds (like, up to 10 seconds). It wont reduce the initial Heal recieved, but any healing that would follow in a short amount of time and said debuff WILL stack if you try to spam Heals on the same target over and over, forcing the Healer to use other means (like Shields, Buffs, crowd control effects, debuffs and so on) to buy time, until it can Heal again (said Heals, are usually quite potent, because of the sickness debuff, to even things out).
On a Tank, a similar example would be a Parry Skill which would work in a similar fashion. On FFXIV terms, it could work as follows: You gain a buff (similar to Retaliation) which lasts a couple of seconds that puts you into a "stance" for like up to 10 seconds. IF you get hit during that time, you gain advantages such as increased defense, a shield, Lifesteal effects, you name it. BUT if you dont get hit during that time, it will provide a debuff on you in a similar fashion as mentioned before. That does not mean that Tanks shouldnt have any defensive cooldowns as it is fashion, but more on this on the next Point, which is

Post 1/2, because too many words.

[Anhra]

sorry for doubleposting

-By Design. By Design i mean simply "holes" in a toolkit in which a Healer cant heal and a Tank cant Tank under normal circumstances. That doesnt mean that said holes are something that only exist on Healers/tanks account, but they also could be created by other Jobs which are able to make them with Skills that either completely negate or punish their nature (imagine it like this, "Caster" is being able to apply a DoT which has by nature a additional effect alongside doing noticeably large damage, it also detonates immediately for the FULL duration when it gets dispelled or "healed over" when a Healer tries to mitigate it in said way). The whole purpose of this kind of design, is to provide opportunities in which others COULD emerge victorious over a Healer or Tank, but those "holes in design" shouldnt by any means, render the latter completely helpless, only "weaker than usual" for a brief time. That way, Cooldowns can still exist, but in order for them to do so in a fair fashion, theyre tied usually to a LONG Cooldown, since their very nature, can patch up those holes in design.


Nevertheless, it is a very complicated matter and requires Classes to be well thought of, but it is definitely possible to Design Healers and Tanks for PvP in which they arent simply unfair metagolems.

Post 2/2