What if Tanks were treated like Healers?

[Renathras]

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I think this can depend on the player, but there ARE general trends. In general, people that play Healers do so because they don't want to play DPS. While there is a segment of players that want to play a DPS-ish class but also have some party support, Jobs like DNC and RDM exist, and are generally very popular with that segment of the playerbase. People that enjoy moderate DPS rotations but also enjoy throwing occasional healing or buffing to party members. (And while someone can argue about the viability of RDM Vercure or that using Verraise frequently is a DPS loss...that's irrelevant to large swaths of the playerbase).

So while it can be argued that some people playing Healers enjoy that sort of a playstyle, they likely aren't the bulk of Healer players, and there are several existing DPS Jobs that appeal to those types of players.

In a general sense, in MMOs/MUDs/etc, the type of players inclined to play Healers enjoy healing and related decision making and gameplay, not involved DPS rotations. That some games have some options for that doesn't negate this reality much, and even in those games, it's often only an option for marginal benefit that only some classes have. For much of WoW's history, Healers were not even supposed to attack (other than Wanding), because it would risk their MP pool. I remember in Cata when Resto Druids got Wrath costing 0 mana so they could use it as a filler spell without harming their healing capacity, and I think Shaman Lighting Bolt was somehow mana positive when used. Disc Priest was specifically an aberration because it allowed - nay, encouraged/required - DPSing to function (akin to SGE, but moreso), but this was specifically different from the other Healing classes at the time.

Likewise - since we ARE in the Tank forum here - players that tend to like Tanking tend to be less interested in DPS rotations and mechanics. Again, it's not universal, but the tendency is to enjoy charging into enemies, being able to solo (or nearly solo) stuff, being in control of encounter pace, having a good deal of personal agency in one's survival (mitigation abilities, often some healing), and in general getting up in the enemy dragon's face and smacking it around to provide that utility and control of a situation to their team.

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I think the issue is people trying to shoehorn "Healers" (and Tanks) into a "slash Support" role.

Support/Control is a distinct role, despite MMOs refusing to acknowledge it as such. It's a different type of player that enjoys Support than does Tanking or Healing. The kind of person that loves Guild Wars Mesmers or EverQuest Enchanters is GENERALLY not the kind who would enjoy FFXIV WHM or DRK.

The issue is that Support/Control people are largely homeless, so latch onto what does exist in games and try to argue for those things (generally Healers, sometimes Tanks) to be made into Supports instead, since that's what they really want to play instead.

Indeed, it's such a portion of the playerbase, it's odd to me that more games don't try to capitalize on them. Pantheon is planning to have a Quaternity system of Tank/Healer/Damage/Support-Control, and the latter is frequently what over a quarter of those following the game's development want as their main. Ashes of Creation is likewise planning to have a archetype dedicated to healing (Cleric), tanking (the horribly named "Tank"), and support (the Bard), (as well as the Fighter, Rogue, Mage ones for various types of damage dealing), with Summoner having been described (though I've no idea if this is still true) as able to flex into any role. EVE Online has long had EWAR (Electronic Warfare) and ECM (Electronic CounterMeasures) as possible builds with TONS of support or battlefield control options alongside healers (Logistics) and damage dealers (too many to name) and what passes for tanking (spidertanking, to a point large high value units that easily draw enemy fire). Rift famously had each of those roles, with each of the initial four classes having at least one build across two roles, later three, and later all four. Even the DPS-y Mage had the Cloromancer Healer spec/build, for example.

Clearly there's a desire for that playstyle, and I wish more games would embrace it. I wish FFXIV would, as RDM, DNC, and BRD could be founding members of the Support role easily enough, and the game's systems could easily accommodate a Support role (4 man party being T/H/D/S, 8 man being T/T/H/H/D(melee)/D(ranged)/D(caster)/S, [possibly just do away with melee/ranged/caster as separate things and lump the remaining ones together as "DPS" and call it a day], etc etc, with casual content treating Support as DPS for matchmaking purposes in DF considering there aren't enrage timers so it wouldn't harm clear rates in, say, Leveling Roulette if a party got T/H/S/S or something; if you get two DNCs as your DPS now, you can still clear Lapis Manalis just fine).

But I also wish people would stop trying to force Healer to become Support. Argue for Support to be made a real role. That solution would probably be far better for everyone.

Or, make healer more engaging... give them more to do. Tanks essentially have a DPS-lite combo to maintain. Give healers something similar.

Not everybody wants that.

So now what?

Personally, I think the solution is kind of to do what WoW did - the Healer classes there run the gambit from the rarely DPSing Holy Priest (where the damage is almost meaningless anyway) to the "Fistweaving" healer Monk or the damage-generates-healing Discipline Priest. Other than stubbornness and some people wanting every Job in a role to play their way, there's no reason, for example, that we couldn't have WHM work as it does now or even lose the DoT, have AST Cards have no CD so they're constantly juggling buffs (possibly make them GCD to reduce the carpel tunnel), give SCH a DoT based gameplay system, and give SGE a SMN or RDM level caster rotation while gutting its non-Kardia healing so that doing its DPS rotation correctly generates its actual healing. There's zero reason we can't simultaneously appeal to all player types at the same time other than some people wanting to have their cake, eat it too, and screw everyone who doesn't like their type of cake.

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What you describe isn't a Sylphie, it's an anti-Sylphie. It'd be the WHM that refuses to cast a heal spell, not the WHM who only casts heal spells. And Sylphie is a caricature in general anyway, not a real thing. The worst part is, people use the term exclusively as an insult and don't even use it right - in the CNJ quest, Sylphie's issue was that she was draining her own life force to heal people, killing herself, because she feared drawing on the Elementals power would harm them; it was not that she was unwilling to cast attack magic or "just wanted to heal".

It's the weirdest insult possible, because everyone that uses it is just indicating they're ignorant of what it means. It's like people that call someone they don't like a communist, even if said person happens to be for private ownership of things and for free trade, two anti-communist values. It proves more the ignorance of those using it as an insult than it does anything about the people it's used against, and is generally used as a caricature anyway - while they CAN exist, it's extremely rare to find a Healer in FFXIV that genuinely does not cast a single damage spell or continues chain casting healing spells when literally no one has taken any damage.

It's like, there's only 1 healer and 1 tank, and it's just a layer that's applied on top of jobs with less DPS rotations than the actual jobs so the buttons can fit. All of them basically meet their role requirements the same way. Maybe they made it that way for the sake of balance, but the roles themselves have lost a lot of their souls in the process.

Agreed. And I think that's the frustrating part, since there's no reason for it, and clearly balance hasn't been achieved by doing so.

[Katish]

Rene read the post again you missed the point buddy. It is not what the term is but what it represents that is important here, everyone knows the story of Sylphie but when the term is used it's not the fact of Sylphie's story that is important, it was that she was a bad conjurer/healer. A bad healer could be a plethora of things but in this game not doing damage is definitely one of those things. As she was not using conjuring correctly she became an icon as to "what not to do". So everyone that uses it like so aren't as ignorant as you make them out to be, in fact I'd even argue it's rude to go to such lengths to side-line what was said based on the term that was used because you clearly understood what the meaning was behind it including the terms usage (even if you disagree with the term usage in this case). I want to believe your trolling unintentionally, so if you could be so kind, stop taking the high ground on that. Thank you.

P.S I think the usage was aired more toward healers that didn't heal as often in the past but reflects more to healers that do not do enough damage nowadays given that healing requirements aren't as aggressive now.

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)

YASSS, I loved Gorge unironically, I love this. XD

[vetch]

in the CNJ quest, Sylphie's issue was that she was draining her own life force to heal people, killing herself, because she feared drawing on the Elementals power would harm them

No? She didn't want to learn to listen to the elementals because it was a fat lot of extra homework just to be able to do something she thought she was already great at doing.

People do twist the moral to make it align with whatever their pet cause is, but it's only a tale about an apprentice learning why the workshop has those safety rules.