A different kidn of question: What do you think a Healer, in MMO/Trinity terms, is?

[fulminating]

EDIT2:



That is probably a good point to raise, but I think the answer is: Yes, it has a rigid trinity model. Only Tanks can effectively tank most content. Only DPS can effectively DPS at the level needed to beat Enrages (that is, if you have a party of all Tanks or all Healers, they typically will not be able to beat Enrages). Only Healers have sufficient healing (arguably too much, but sufficient) to make it through entire encounters without people dying, or to recover from people taking avoidable damage that kills them [caveat: RDM, which is a semi-hybrid DPS/Healer and SMN which is...weird and largely vestigial/legacy at this point, not by design.]

Though it's not perfectly rigid, this is the design philosophy and is true in all the more challenging content of the game.

So yes, FFXIV is really a trinity game. An oddly rigid one. I say oddly, because it is at once super rigid on one end and on the other (casual content) completely irrelevant, at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O07A5dXHTmI Sure it's off patch, but it's still an ultimate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2V5Fr6-JGo Sure it's only phase 1, but it's still tankless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFcZCEny4x4 Sure it's only normal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2RAm25NLlk Sure it's also only normal, but week 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ healer free dungeon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5TDzbqfEAo oh it's got sebazy in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLDf7V0yZdQ Not that this is really much of a fight


I can't really link any examples of dragoon tanking because it was unremarkable enough noone videoed it. But it was fairly common in containment bay: the one with sephirot in and titan normal/hard for the tanks to become incapacitated and another having to take over, or healer tanking in basically any dungeon if the tank's unable to hold aggro but noone was willing to say yes on the vote kick and so on. Hell there's usually 0 healer/nonstandard runs of on patch extremes if they're worth doing because they're unnecessary.

[Renathras]

...

These are exceptions that prove the rule, not evidence that disproves it, though. Though I guess this depends on how you want to define it.

Sebazy's Titan tank (which we have discussed before, I believe...) was absolutely an exception, and Seb even said so. The only one of these examples that's on patch of at all current, high end-ish content (9 years ago isn't exactly "current", even if we didn't say that was an exception) is Ex5, which has an absurdly low damage profile.

Being able to 1 Heal or 1 Tank stuff doesn't change needing one, and the roles in the game - that is, the Jobs in them - are pretty rigidly crammed into a Trinity role. The only real exceptions are RDM and PLD, and they're still firmly in the DPS and Tank roles. SMN is the only other real candidate, and it's "healing" is largely flavor (Phoenix) or vestigial (Resurrection, Physic).

Either way, I think the fair conclusion is that yes, FFXIV is a Trinity game.

Now, you can argue that it doesn't do the Trinity WELL, but not that it's not a Trinity game at all. Contrast to something like Guild Wars 2 at launch (which had no Tank/agro generating classes to speak of, and most classes functioned on self-healing and physically dodging attacks) for an example of something that isn't a Trinity system. While you can argue FFXIV leans in that direction, the GW2 launch classes were all DPS. There was nothing even approaching a Tank or Healer in the normal sense of the terms. It was more like if every Job was DRG or DNC or something.

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EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying it can't or doesn't happen, but this is true of Trinity games. I remember there being a guild in Wrath era WoW famous for having an Enhance Shaman main tank...but it was a novelty, not the game's design.

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Anyway, I think the relevant overall point is:

For many of the posters in this forum, "Healer" is more what could generally be described as "Healer/Support" hybrid or in a Quaternity system as "Support/Control" or "Support/DPS". Which is a bit distinct from "Healer" in the normal Trinity sense, which has less DPS/Support/Control in its focus, though often has a "midpoint" or "hybrid" version among some of its classes that lean into those subroles.

Again, Everquest being a good example of the pure Healer (Cleric) vs the Healer/Support hybrid (Shaman) and Healer/Damage hybrid (Druid). Note that these were all HEALERS (as opposed to the more Support Enchanter and Bard or the outright DPS Rogue, Ranger, Wizard), but Cleric was the archetype core and Druid and Shaman hybrids of that archetype leaning into the two adjacent roles.

Indeed, FFXIV arguably did this in ARR with WHM being like the Cleric and SCH being a mix of Shaman and Druid.