What if Tanks were treated like Healers?

[Lyth]

This is a healer discussion thread disguised as a tank one. 'What if tanks had our problems?' Er, but why would tanks want that, though?

The underlying issue comes down to pass-fail checks. Tanks are very much dependent on fight design for engagement. You can develop a fight with a self-positioning boss that has no real 'tank checks', where one tank is forced to just be an understudy. In casual content, you can actually see tanks fighting over who actually gets to 'tank' the instance. This is in combination with the fact that tank survivability means that you can survive failed mechanics that would ordinarily kill off any other role. The frustration that experienced tanks have is that while there are flashes of positioning and mechanical brilliance in fights that let experienced tanks show off their stuff, those fights aren't being made consistently. It's harder to demonstrate value at baseline.

Healing intrinsically is built around pass-fail checks, which means it's easier for a healer to gate a party's progress even at lower difficulties, especially in the absence of raises. This is actually the primary appeal, because not everyone can clear a given fight on a healer, even if they are versatile enough to do so on every other role. To counteract issues around being gated by your healers, other roles have been expanded out to cross-compensate through either self-healing tools or non-healer raises. And I suspect that the playerbase's feedback will likely push healing progressively towards more of a vestigial 'support DPS' role in the long run like you see in some other action MMOs, with everyone bringing their own survival tools to the table.

The other issue is that, as long as tanking and healing have additional responsibilities around these pass-fail checks, their rotations will tend to be simpler than their DPS counterparts. And the problem is that while tanks are based off melee designs, healers are based off of caster designs. What are the features of a caster? Low APM. Bursts into tears and endlessly complains about how much easier ranged have it when required to move, despite the fact that their rotations are all now mostly instant cast. Relatively simple rotation with progressively less resource management each expansion. What happens when you try to simplify that further? You get the current healer design. Your issue about rotations is an inherited one. Your fundamental issue is caster design in general.

There's no point in asking 'what if tanks were designed based off of caster design rather than melee?' The question that you should be asking is 'what if healers were designed based off of melee rather than casters'? Bring out a quarterstaff wielding healer that stays in melee range and we'll have a proper topic for discussion on our hands.

[ty_taurus]

This is a healer discussion thread disguised as a tank one. 'What if tanks had our problems?' Er, but why would tanks want that, though?

My intentions are undoubtedly skewed toward healer concerns; I won't lie.

But, while the conversation is fine over on the healer page, it's not somewhere that's likely to get a lot of input from actual tank players, which was why I wanted to cross post it here as well. Someone over there said "tank players would probably be fine if it was just 1 tank that was like this," so I wanted to see if anyone would vote green or vote blue in regards to changes like this. There's nothing about these kits in particular that prevent the tanks from performing their responsibilities or clearing solo content. Outside of maybe numbers balance, there's no reason these takes on the tanks aren't functional in FFXIV. Basically, it's just a question of, is this job design philosophy something tank players would support, tolerate, or reject?

[Zairava]

My intentions are undoubtedly skewed toward healer concerns; I won't lie.

But, while the conversation is fine over on the healer page, it's not somewhere that's likely to get a lot of input from actual tank players, which was why I wanted to cross post it here as well. Someone over there said "tank players would probably be fine if it was just 1 tank that was like this," so I wanted to see if anyone would vote green or vote blue in regards to changes like this. There's nothing about these kits in particular that prevent the tanks from performing their responsibilities or clearing solo content. Outside of maybe numbers balance, there's no reason these takes on the tanks aren't functional in FFXIV. Basically, it's just a question of, is this job design philosophy something tank players would support, tolerate, or reject?

The day they make tanks designed like how healers currently are is the day I quit the game entirely, 5.0 already pulled most of the thread for me after removing Stance Dancing and neutering DRK.

Healers are designed horribly, and WAR and PLD need their party healing nerfed into the ground. Having one single dps cast in healing downtime ad infinitum is nothing but boring design. I would be more inclined to play them if probably 90% of my spells weren't glare, broil, etc.

[Lyth]

Basically, it's just a question of, is this job design philosophy something tank players would support, tolerate, or reject?

Hm, fair enough.

Individual preferences aside, I think that tanks tend to just have a different outlook on their role than healers do. You can't really separate tanking from doing damage, and part of the aesthetic appeal comes from being the person in the front who is actually trading blows with the boss. There's also a historical precedent from ARR/Heavensward where good tanks actually overlapped with Ranged DPS in terms of damage output through the power of STR pentamelds and STR accessories. The end result is that tanks in this game are surprisingly invested in both their dps output as well as maximizing their uptime (to the point where melee will often be knocking elbows with them over tiny wedges of safe space around the boss). I haven't seen a 'tanks are only there to absorb damage' argument since maybe early Stormblood. There is no tanking equivalent for 'Sylphie'.

Healing has a greater diversity of views around the role's function, which naturally leads to a split in the community. There are a subset of players involved in raid content who enjoy maximizing their damage output. It can be interesting studying timings around mitigation in a fight to try and maximize healer uptime. You're also being compared to a subset of players who aren't necessarily trying to optimize their damage so much as they want to shepherd the party alive to see enrage at baseline. It's relatively straightforward to make yourself look good with a bit of effort, even without begging your co-healer to solo heal the instance for a gold star. Big fish, small pond.

At the same time, Healing is the closest thing that this game offers to 'support' gameplay, which is its unique strength. Even if you had a healer that focused on enhancing their teammates indirectly (think of abilities like Expedient that can be translated into uptime, or even resource donation actions), I'm sure that there would be some interest for that sort of 'buffer' gameplay. I don't think that it's a simple binary of 'Healers who want to push their damage' vs. 'Healers who want to relax and take it slow.' But the lack of design direction isn't necessarily a bad thing on its own. The problem is the fact that the game designers only know how to make WHM and SCH clones, when there are so many other ways of designing a healer (just look at how other games do it). Where is the Melee-range support with proximity buffs? Where is the physical-ranged Chemist who lobs potions to mix and match healing ground effects? Could you use Aura to speed up a target's rate of resource generation? Could you use Float to move while you cast? Could you use Warp to transfer the raid group to a different part of the arena? The rotations are part of the problem, sure, but there's so much unexplored design space within the role outside of pure healer/shield healer.

But to get back to your question, I think it's unlikely, because tanks as a whole are a lot more competitive about their personal dps output than healers are (and some DPS, for that matter). Tanks rejected nerfs to their gear progression in Stormblood (time to bring out the i270 STR accessories). Tanks rejected nerfs to their damage relative to other roles in Shadowbringers (can you imagine tanks ever meekly accepting rebalances to allow healers to surpass them in damage output? Not a chance.) And I'm fairly certain that tanks would outright revolt against having healer game design changes being foisted on their role. You can't begin to draw a comparison.

[Katish]

There is no tanking equivalent for 'Sylphie'.

I'd argue there is one or something close enough, but it works in reverse, tanks who do not press their mitigation buttons.
This is apparent even more so on wall-to-wall pulls if doing dungeons and the tank isn't pressing their mitigation or during raids where the tank is all like yeah I'mma take this tank buster without mitigation, it requires healer concentration which eats what could have been the healer personal damage numbers.

I see the sylphie argument not limited to just healers ( healers that only heal) but rather it's not performing your job correctly. Healers are supposed to healer, no duh, but they have to contribute to damage as well. Where a tank has to worry about damage, but also has to contribute to mitigation and mitigating their own tank busters. Which leads to a tank 'Sylphie' or at least fits to some other term but the Sylphie ideology is there.

[ForsakenRoe]

Which leads to a tank 'Sylphie' or at least fits to some other term but the Sylphie ideology is there.

I put forward the entry of 'Gorge' cos of Curious Gorge, who keeps losing sight of 'protect allies' and is overtaken by the inner beast (which just wants to do damage)

[Renathras]

This is a healer discussion thread disguised as a tank one.

That's pretty much exactly what it is. An attempt to "strengthen" an argument by making an absurd one and trying to use it to support a position it doesn't really support.

As you point out correctly, Tanks are based on Melee design principles, not Caster ones. Healers are based on Caster design, arguably ARR 2.0 SMN (a cure spam nuke, DoT upkeep, and some oGCDs for additional damage and healing, with some token backup GCD cast heals).

I thought it would be interesting if one was based off of something else, like Ranged (either proc based or MCH-based; before 6.0 I pitched Chemist having a caster/magic gun and having a 1-2-3 rotation like MCH with a Mudra-like "Mix" command for its Job Gage/gimmick, and could see SGE working with a 1-2-3 rotation of shooting lasers at things like that, too), but at present, all Healers are designed from Casters.

There was also no one who said "tank players would probably be fine if it was just 1 tank that was like this," the actual quotes were:

"WAR players, for example, just seem happy to be solo 4 man parties. Remove their 1-2-3 -4 and just let them spam Fell Cleave over and over, have full uptime on Bloodwhetting, then Primal Rend once per minute and some Orogeny in there somewhere, and there are quite a few WARs that would be happy as clams over that.
Not saying they all would be, but they probably wouldn't be rioting over it."

"Again, not saying everyone would be thrilled, but quite a few WARs just love being a nearly unkillable god of battle and love the dopamine hits from Feel Cleave and Primal Rend, so "MOAR Fell Cleave! John F---in' MADDEN!!!" would make plenty quite content."

But, just as many would be fine with it, many wouldn't care for it, just like any change to anything will always alienate people that play it. And WAR is arguably already pretty simple. But there is a segment of the playerbase that wouldn't mind being able to run through dungeons with permanent Bloodwhetting, Primal Rending their way down the hallways of dungeons, and fullhealing with each Fell Cleave. I'd think that would get old after a while, but...some people are content with such things forever.

.

The changes for Healers are obvious - have encounters actually require healing; make the Healer Jobs play more distinct from one another.

The changes for Tanks are also obvious - have encounters actually require tanking (positioning, threat management, etc); make the Tank Jobs play more distinct from one another.

EDIT:

And, on both counts, that means continuous requirements from the encounters, not once per minute or whatever, solved with an oGCD.

[ForsakenRoe]

That's pretty much exactly what it is. An attempt to "strengthen" an argument by making an absurd one and trying to use it to support a position it doesn't really support.

You literally say 'there would be some WAR players who would be happy with 1button spam Fell Cleave ad nauseam', this topic seeks to find out if that assertion is true. If anything, the posed rotations in the OP have more depth than the healer ones

The last time you said some dumb stuff about job design and Ty said 'aight bet', we got the survey over in general discussion that showed that around 80% of healer players, across all four healers, would want 'more damage buttons' as their top priority for class design, with AST being 'more buffs' and then 'more damage'

edit:

The changes for Healers are obvious - have encounters actually require healing; make the Healer Jobs play more distinct from one another.

The changes for Tanks are also obvious - have encounters actually require tanking (positioning, threat management, etc); make the Tank Jobs play more distinct from one another.

EDIT:

And, on both counts, that means continuous requirements from the encounters, not once per minute or whatever, solved with an oGCD.

I don't say this to demean or to brag, I say it as a matter of objective fact: to make content 'fun' for players of a higher skill caliber, it would have to be so hard as to exclude players of a lower skill caliber. You wouldn't want to be gated out of content because it's too hard for you to keep up, would you? The only way to keep 'casual content' 'casual accessible' is to have the healing requirements be less threatening which... is exactly the situation we're in now. And the justification of 'well if you want to have fun, there's Savage/Ultimate for you' has been tried, tested and proven to be a stupid stance to have. 'Increase HPS required' does not fix the issue of 'EX roulette is not fun for the veterans who know how to play healer well'

[Kabooa]

If anything, the posed rotations in the OP have more depth than the healer ones
'

Not really?

He just picked a healer for each tank and tried to flavor the tank as a direct analogue.

Less "What if tanks were designed like healers" and more "What if X healer had melee auto attacks".

[ForsakenRoe]

Not really?

He just picked a healer for each tank and tried to flavor the tank as a direct analogue.

Less "What if tanks were designed like healers" and more "What if X healer had melee auto attacks".

ah you right, now that you put it that way I see it