Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[SeverianLyonesse]

As I have stated previously, the issue is two-part: Tanks and Healers built up power-creep due to the necessity of wanting them to "feel" stronger with each expansion, and the scaled down difficulty of overall content as they wanted to appeal to as many of the incoming player base as possible. These changes are great for the casual and newer players in simple content like Normal Modes and Dungeons, but hurts the fun and engagement of it's more veteran/hardcore players even in it's Savage tiers. The trick now is how do you make jobs fundamentally more of a challenge and more engaging to veteran players without taxing the skill floor and without making more casual/newer players a complete hindrance in a majority of content. As a tank, it does feel nice to have such a powerful kit that I can carry any party in 4 to 8 man content with, but in the same vein, it feels wasted and boring in current Savage content. This is doubly so with healers having a lackluster DPS rotation to fill in the gaps.

I am still of the mind that they should scrap or combine 1/3rd of healers healing kits, replace them with engaging DPS options, while scaling down tank sustainability and increasing DPS checks in some fights to help bring back the feeling of the trinity, thus allowing tanks and especially healers to feel more like the roles they are supposed to be. However, I do not think any changes to that degree will happen till after the next Ultimate, as I believe Yoshi and the devs are worried they might break something within the jobs and the next Ultimate that was already put on hold for so long.

I agree with all of this. I just have to reiterate that I don't see how self-healing feeds into the tank fantasy "feeling stronger." I know in a roundabout way stuff like Aurora is just another passive mitigation buff, but it still isn't playing into the job fantasy of being "tankier," i.e. having thicker skin or a bigger butt. So the fact that it is stepping on healers' toes *and* doesn't really resonate well with the tank job fantasy tells me that it's probably bad design.

[Ixon]

I agree with all of this. I just have to reiterate that I don't see how self-healing feeds into the tank fantasy "feeling stronger." I know it a round-about way stuff like Aurora is just another passive mitigation buff, but it still isn't playing into the job fantasy of being "tankier," i.e. having thicker skin or a bigger butt. So the fact that it is stepping on healers' toes *and* doesn't really resonate well with the tank job fantasy tells me that it's probably bad design.

I'd have to take a strong guess, but back in ARR you had just PLD and WAR right? PLD was mostly mitigation and blocking of damage while WAR was mostly a SOAKER of damage with Defiance granting more HP and higher healing received. In HW we got DRK, which was just edgy PLD with it's main focus being on magic damage mitigation and TBN, a shield. They leaned a little more into WAR being more of a soaker of damage(that also had great synergy with it's Fell Cleaves and Bloodbath that became iconic with the job, turning into Nascent later), and gave Clemency to PLD which I think thematically makes sense with it being all Holy spells and all that. From there they sort of had their "identities" or main focus and just added more homogenizations while trying to keep them thematically different. When GNB came in, they kinda just threw in what was left; general mitigation, heal and shield on 2 of combo(rather than flat healing on 3 of combo like WAR or DRK), a regen that no other tank had, and a parry ability(Camouflage) cause we heard some DRK's missed Dark Dance. This ideology that they made fed into the tank thought of "needing to protect an ally" where PLD could flat heal, or cover, and provide mitigation; WAR providing healing through hitting things, DRK gave a shield and was still the "magic defense" tank with Dark Mind, and GNB with mitigation and a regen. All of this which got expanded on in EW.

Healing itself is just a part of "sustainability" and is in my opinion, the equivalent of mitigation or a shield when it comes to being tanky. Whether I tank a small amount of damage from mitigation or a shield, or take a large amount of damage that I heal myself up for, it's all apart of sustainability. Roadhog from Overwatch comes to mind in that regard. Though we have reached a point, through my reasons stated above, that it is too much and causing negative side effects on the healer role. They COULD shift the healing more towards Clemency, where your sustainability would be at a cost of your DPS so you would only really do it in an emergency, thuis relying more on your healers to stay alive. However, there is such an overall disdain for Clemency that I do not think they would go in that direction.