Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
The idea as it's been presented here doesn't do the greatest job of explaining its warrants, but let's consider:
  • Tanks' "tanking" throughput is entirely free outside of Clemency, which PLD is already balanced around never using.
  • Healers' "healing" throughput is free only to a point, which varies rapidly by job.
  • A tank is therefore putting out their full role throughput, at no cost to damage, and higher maximum damage, while a healer's damage comes at cost to their damage and they have lower maximal damage.
If you watch the clears, the only job with 100% free sustain is WAR. The PLD had to Clemency(dps loss) and the GNB had to 1-2 Brutal Shell spam(dps loss). Not to mention DRK's TBN is only free if the bubble pops otherwise it's also a dps loss.

Healers healing throughput is about 99% free in most content, considering most content you can heal all the way through without needing to GCD heal once, including some of the current savage fights. Most groups don't even GCD heal at all. The only GCDing healing that is "mandatory" that I can think of are SGE Pneuma(dps neutral anyways), SCH Adlo(for crit spreadlo's), AST with Synastry(lol) and Neutral Sect(only works on GCD's, but most AST's don't even use it in most fights), and WHM Lily system(which everyone can agree needs a rework anyway).

Here's where I think the designed tradeoff is: Tanks do more damage because they cannot sustain the entire party by themselves, healers do less damage because they can sustain the entire party by themselves. Sure a tank could probably keep one person alive, but not for long. Think of healing like a utility and pretend we are all DPS(which we all are), in that case if you had a dps that could sustain an entire 8 man party for an entire fight, of course they would do the least damage. This is my theory, speculation, whatever, but it makes sense to me. This is, however, only relevant in High End content. Normal modes and dungeons don't really matter.

Now if healers just want more damage buttons, go ahead, God bless.