What if Tanks were designed like Healers?

[ty_taurus]

Oh, you're probably right about that. I like knowing mostly how Jobs function and what they bring to the table, and DNC (and up until recently, BRD) have been a couple of holes in my knowledge, mostly because I just really really don't like that kind of gameplay and so haven't gone hands on with them.

What I will say about the RNG elements of Bard vs Dancer is that Bard's are more "surprising" because they are automatic procs off your songs. Dancer's procs only occur off your own actions, so they're not really "surprising" in the same way with the exception of Esprit generation. Even with the RNG, the job still feels quite structured most of the time, but the burst window can be a little more hectic due to all the potential Esprit generation that can occur.

Also, Improv is interesting, but the current implementation of it is kind of annoying. The action "Improvisation" changes to "Improvised Finish" while you're channeling, but you lose Improvised Finish if you break the channel. Double weaving it is quite sticky at times because you can't queue Improvised Finish until the action updates. I play with a wired connection, and even with that it's easy to clip your GCD, and sometimes I just can't get it off quickly enough and I lose the barrier when I try to queue the next GCD too soon. It's not a terrible thing, just a mild annoyance on an otherwise situational tool.

It does make me wonder, though, if a Healer Job was to be changed to suit you, if it might be that procs would be more important than DoTs. Like, several different duration DoTs is more GCDs to pres that aren't Broil, say, but the pattern is ultimately identical the entire fight. On the other hand, old MCH's 1-2-3 (pre-ShB?) were procs (which you could exercise SOME control over with Reload and Quick Reload), leading to more variation. I've said before SGE should play a bit more like MCH, and I wonder if something like that would help with the "less boredom" bit. Chances to generate Adderstings, chances to generate the -2 and -3 of the "combo", chances to reduce the CD of Plegma, etc.

There are a handful of playstyles I enjoy in RPGs. I like gamblers. I like agile characters or classes that look flashy while they fight. But my favorite playstyle is as a healer that dismantles enemies and denies them victory. I want to ensure my team wins by breaking the kneecaps of our enemies. I like to bait enemies into thinking they can get a kill and then surprise them with unexpected healing, barriers, or crowd control. I also want to be able to threaten opponents that think they can bully me just because I'm a healer. I don't need to do a lot of damage, I just need to do more than they expect.

For FFXIV, prior to Shadowbringers, I pretty much played Scholar and Astrologian exclusively. I did level White Mage and Bard, but I never used them, and I played Summoner on very rare occasions if I needed to DPS for whatever reason, like playing with someone else who can only heal, but that was very rare. Both Scholar and Astrologian were jobs I adored. Scholar was historically the job that catered to everything I liked in a healer. It blocked damage, had a few different debuffs that weakened enemy damage output, had a few situational debuffs that weren't very useful but felt rewarding to use when they did work, like disease, and it was a DPS-focused healer which plays into that aspect of being a healer you can't bully. Astrologian was very different. It really lacked offensive power, which normally wouldn't have meshed well with me, and I did find it kind of slow and boring when playing alone, but I really liked the in-the-moment decision-making it had to do with its cards. Even if it was messy and inconsistent, I liked constantly having to figure out the best way to utilize every card. And even outside of the cards, there were things that felt satisfying to do as Astrologian. I regularly look back on Heavensward dungeon pulls where tanks didn't have egregious amounts of self-healing and putting both the single target and AoE regen on the tank, hitting them with Wheel of Fortune from Collective Unconscious, and then using Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition, giving them an extra 20 seconds on all three HoTs and stunning all enemies, then just blowing them up with Gravities. And Wheel of Fortune's regen was very powerful back then. That stacked Regen would carry the Tank's HP effortlessly.

If you didn't see my more recent Sage theorycraft and are interested, I shared it earlier on this miro board here. There's also a White Mage theorycraft there as well, but that one was more based on an experimental thought about a different approach to the lilies. As for the Sage build, The move Soma needs to be reworked, and I haven't settled on what that rework should be yet, but it's intended to be the level 100 capstone. Phlegma is still melee, spoiler alert. You've mentioned not liking that before but sorry, I don't see a problem with it, especially with Icarus as an ability. But that's basically what I want in a healer right now.