For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[ty_taurus]

Ty, you have made a proposal. But it's limited to matching your overall personal criteria, which as I said is you not understanding what other people want and telling them what they should want.

Except it's extremely broad criteria that already fits most of the jobs in the game. You're just being confrontational for the sake of being confrontational. It's impossible for a set of criteria that broad to be incapable of creating something rewarding for any given player unless the player just doesn't like the game at all. It's like saying "I want a meal that offers some amount of nutritional value" and you're saying "but what about people who will only ever eat empty calories?"

I'm not sure where this 80+% number is coming from, but it doesn't seem to be coming from Savage...

Can you please read what I originally posted? The 80% came from counting how much the major tools of Black Mage and Gunbreaker added up to in regards to action usage, which was around 80%. I'm not talking about any one tool, I'm talking about ensuring that the majority of your gameplay is dedicated to at least around 10-12 actions rather than something like White Mage where around 80% of your gameplay is about 5 actions.

I'm not going to engage with you on the Support thing anymore, either. We both know what your answer is.

Me: I don't think it matters what I say, you've already made up your mind about what I want.
You: That's a cop out.
Me: Okay, fine. This is how I feel about the idea of a support role.
You: We both know what your real answer is.

What exactly is the lesson here, Ren? You did exactly what I said you'd do: ignore my response in favor of whatever answer you wanted me to say even when it was completely wrong.

[Renathras]

Oh, sorry missed this.

...

As you note, "on these boards", which do not encompass the entirety of the playerbase. Indeed, there are around 10 people that post frequently. It's a pretty tiny microcosm of the community as a whole. Note this isn't a "majority" argument, but the reason you don't see agreement is that. Moreover, it's been clear from the critiques. The people opposed to the idea don't enjoy current Healers, so they want none to remain as such. Some even specifically mentioning wanting to play particular Jobs by their aesthetics, so they are unwilling to surrender them. This was shown in a past discussion where the only allowance for a Healer to play like today was if it was a new Healer Job added and WASN'T one they found the aesthetics of compelling to play.

You shouldn't take that to mean that I'm literally the only player in the game who disagrees with the stated "good design" that my idea supposedly doesn't comply with.

1) I don't get the point in mentioning it if it's true now and would be true then, but let's just call this a "we agree" and move on.

2) I think the disconnect here is that not everyone agrees this is "shitting the bed". Some people enjoy different things. Turns out, some people ENJOY what you call "shitting the bed". This is the entire point of the proposal - to have different Healer Jobs so people that enjoy different things have...well...those things to enjoy.

3) "Reaching 80% of CPM from just the 5 most cast actions is literally current WHM" and the problem with this...is...? What? What is inherently bad about this? Again, some people happen to like that. It's like saying every Job in the game needs to be BLM because anything less is "boring", or alternatively, saying no BLM-like Job should be allowed. People state this as a bad thing, but not why other than they personally think it's bad game design. As to the "which people", again, people who play the game and think like I do. There are at least 3 in my FC alone. I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. Do you SINCERELY think that no one else thinks like I do on this topic? In a game of 1.5-2 million active players, that I'm literally THE ONLY HUMAN BEING who thinks as I do? What on earth would you use to support such a claim?

Second set:

1) You would think, but I've proposed it in the past and been told by the same posters here that it's impossible since it would require changing literally every encounter in the game (for reasons they can never justify and despite this change clearly happening in the reverse from SB to ShB without them changing every prior encounter) and thus it is impossible to do so the only solution is more damage buttons. We've had that actual conversation here, and I've banged my head against that wall more than once.

2) This one - oddly given the above - there's more consistent agreement on, btw.

3) My belief is that things that "cost more" should be more powerful. In this sense, costing more in either cast time, MP, or both. If we had a Cure 4 spell that cost 4000 MP and had a 5 sec cast time, it should be something like 3000 potency of healing, for example. Short duration (60 sec or less) oGCDs shouldn't be more powerful than spells that actually have a cast time, MP cost, and incur a damage loss. Using Cure 2 means being rooted for 2 seconds, losing 1,000 MP, and losing 310 potency in a foregone Glare. Using Tetra means you...can't use Tetra again for 60 seconds. There is no damage loss, no MP loss, and no lost mobility. Solace is in a similar vein, btw, except in that case, you're also foregoing a Rapture but in return have a potential DPS gain if placing Misery under buffs (if not, it's neutral still, though). Some people have argued oGCDs are more punishing because you lose use of the oGCD itself...but that's the Megalixir argument "What if there would be a better time to use it later?!", and for short duration CDs, it just doesn't fly. Especially when you get into cases like Divine Benison or Essential Dignity that have charges so you can keep one in stock. Note that an often praised game in terms of healing here, WoW, doesn't have "oGCDs". It has cast time spells and instant cast spells, and those are your options.

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WHM: You're going to have to explain this. I said nourish the Blood Lily (e.g. contribute to a Misery) not generate a standard Lily (that can be used on Solace/Rapture). E.g. casting three Medicas in a row would allow you to cast one Misery. How is this broken, exactly? The cheapest spamable heals are Regen and Cure 1, which both cost the same amount as a Glare, so you're not generating tons of free MP via Misery casts in place of Glares. Right now, the reason "Lilies are an MP management tool" is because you substitute 4 Glares per minute for three Solace/Rapture + one Misery, so 4 less Glares is 1600 MP. But if you just chain casted Cure 1 for a minute solid, you'd generate 6 Miseries...but you'd be doing this at the cost of 24 Cure 1s. And note that the actual heals you'd typically be using would be Cure 2s for single target and Medica/Medica 2s/Cure 3s for AOE (depending on situation), so you'd be spending more MP not less, I think. 18 Cure 2s + 6 Miseries per minute = 18,000 MP vs 20 Glares + 4 Lilies = 8,000 MP. Even if we kept the 3 Solace/Rapture + 1 Misery in the Cure 2 case, that's 14 Cure 2s + 3 Solace/Rapture + 7 Misery = 14,000 MP. I'm confused where you see infinite MP/"without MP limitations" coming from?

(Misery is worth 400 MP per CD, btw. I'm sure that was a typo, just saying it for clarity. )

Though I do think it's funny that Freecure would actually be...relevant. I hadn't thought of that, lol.

The only issue with it that I can tell is "But why have Glare at that point other than one just feeling bad about overhealing?"

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SCH: /shrug

I guess that was kinda the point. Something generally acceptable to everyone. And considering how often people say they want SB SCH back (not HW, SB), it seems the safe bet.

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AST: I think being able to swap Dirunal/Nocturnal in combat would be too powerful. As long as the Pure/Barrier split is in effect, it would make AST the ultimate Job since it could freely adjust on the fly. It arguably already is because it's a Pure Healer that is also 1/2 Barrier Healer when it wants to be. Neutral Sect pre-EW gave AST a taste of being able to swap in combat, but without making it unlimited. (I think it's funny you think the WHM proposal would be unbalanced but that a combat swapping AST wouldn't be. ) And being able to change at any point that ISN'T in combat is already more flexibility than any other Healer Job has or would have.

As for the rest, I didn't mess with AST much before ShB - because it was even MORE to my dis-like prior to ShB (and is still the one I like the least) - which is why I'm so deferential to what AST players want. I do think a starting point of "SB AST, just with some kind of RNG protection and some way to not make Balance fishing a thing again" would be the most practical.

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SGE: You may have missed it, but I did address this: "Kardia healing would now be variable based on the attack used to generate it."

For a simple sake of argument (BIG FAT "THESE ARE PLACEHOLDER NUMBERS FOR THE SAKE OF EXPLANATION NOT AN ACTUAL PROPOSAL", just to be clear), let's pretend for a moment that SGE had three damage spells in a sort of combo. Let's call them "Jolt", "Thunder", and "Flare" (since we all know RDM well enough to see the general connection). Let's say Jolt generates 150 potency of healing to the Kardia target(s), Thunder generates 250, and Flare generates 400. The total combo would generate 800, meaning properly performing your 1-2-3 combo in this simplistic structure would result in the equivalent of casting a Cure 2 on your Kardia target every 7.5 sec. (maybe we could use 75/125/200 for a total of a Cure 2 every 15, which is close to a Solace, but you get the general idea). You would thus want to perform your combo CORRECTLY in order to ensure maximum healing. Any combo action used out of turn (e.g. casting Thunder without Jolt before it or Flare without a Jolt-Thunder before it) would only generate 100 potency of healing, and be both a DPS and HPS loss, obviously. Doing this enough would require using the fallback heals (Diagnosis/Prognosis) to make up the difference, which would return HPS to neutral but at a further DPS loss and possibly greater MP costs, taxing your sustainability over a long enough fight if you do it too frequently.

The goal of this design is that your various CDs enhance Kardia effects. So think like Soteria for more healing, "Pankardia" for party healing (the above-mentioned "party-wide Kardia on a 1 min CD") or "Dikardia" for healing a second target like with shared tankbusters (again, on a CD), and so on. Aside from that, SGE would have damage reduction abilities (like the reduction of Kerochole), but reduced healing. Aside from Kardia, if SGE wants to refill health bars, it has to use Diagnosis/Prognosis. No more Physis 2, Ixochole, Kerachole, Holos healing. Shielding is fine, but not healing. Kardia is for healing, and Kardia requires doing damage.

Note: The damage rotation would probably be more than this with some kind of rotation via "Ready" procs or the like. For example, suppose RDM's rotation was Jolt-Fire-Thunder-Stone-Aero-Resolution. You could have some system akin to that for SGE with Pneuma being the big line AOE at the end that also does a big Kardia heal and possibly an AOE heal like it does now.

oGCDs that remain, aside from the mitigation ones, would include Zoe and Pepsis, and possibly something like WHM's PoM or BRD's Raging Strikes (which would increase the Kardia heal procs for its duration).

Does that make more sense to you as far as what I'm aiming at here? Because it sounds like your critique here was what I already proposed...

.

Cure -> Cure 2 is my alternate proposal. It's the one I've actually pitched for a while. I've just seen the Cure -> Esuna pitched by some people and like it just as well. The problem with Cure -> Cure 2 is that Cure 2 has a longer cast time and MP cost. Esuna does not. The shorter cast time and debuff removal qualities would legitimately feel like an upgrade, whereas Cure -> Cure 2 would feel like a downgrade due to being slower cast (less responsive) and more MP expensive. Note that unlike pre-ShB, our MP pools are fixed at 10,000, so we don't have growing MP pools over time to support more expensive cast spells. Cure 2 cost 2.5x the MP of Cure 1 and has a 33% longer cast time. And the Esuna being a separate button would retain this functionality of "that case you're too low on MP for Cure 2 and/or don't have enough time to cast a Cure 2 before the target takes fatal damage". Cure -> Esuna would preserve (and slightly improve the latter) functionality there, even if it is generally considered niche today.

Note that Benefic is a particular exception to this rule, as Benefic 2 has the same cast time and only a modest MP cost increase. (Honestly, given AST's insane MP economy, I could almost be convinced they swapped WHM and AST's MP costs for their Cure 2, Medica, and Medica 2 equivalents by accident...)

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EDIT:

It's kind of like arguing to greatly reduce traffic by making people not idiots. It's a simple idea, but not so simple to execute upon. The lack of responsive, mobile, and GCD-stackable oGCD heals would greatly change the viable tuning of fights.

To be fair: That's if none are instant cast. Solace is a GCD. Solace is instant cast. Solace is actually used FOR movement where Tetra isn't.

[Renathras]

God I wish you wouldn't make bad faith posts.

It's impossible for a set of criteria that broad to be incapable of creating something rewarding for any given player unless the player just doesn't like the game at all.

WHY do you CONSTANTLY do this?

"It's so broad anything I would like is covered. The fact what you want isn't covered just means you don't like the game at all." is what you just said. While also calling me confrontational.

Can you please read what I originally posted?

No, this was an in general question. People very often say that Healers spam their basic spamnuke 80% of the time or so, but that number doesn't seem to match reality outside of some 6.0 chadding WHMs, maybe.

Me: I don't think it matters what I say, you've already made up your mind about what I want.
You: That's a cop out.
Me: Okay, fine. This is how I feel about the idea of a support role.
You: We both know what your real answer is.

Except...this isn't how that conversation went, is it?

Me: Here's a question, Ty.
You: I refuse to answer that question, you've already decided what I would say.
Me: No I haven't. That's why I asked the question.
You: Yes, you have! So I refuse to answer it.
Me: The only reason I can think of is if you would have answered it X. But please clarify if this is or is not what you think?
You: SEE! You've proven my point you've already decided what I would say!
Me: I literally asked you - twice - to say what your position is.
You: IT DOESN'T MATTER! YOU'VE ALREADY DECIDED WHAT I WOULD SAY!!

The lesson here is I DIDN'T do "exactly what (you) said (I)'d do". I literally asked you, I think THREE TIMES. Only when you refused to answer did I say I can only think of one reason offhand for you to do so, which would be if your answer was X. But even there, I gave you the freedom to clarify.

Instead of clarifying, you chose YET AGAIN to not answer the question, and YET AGAIN insisted that I was doing a thing I wasn't doing.

When I ask you - multiple times - a question, it's because I'm NOT "deciding what you would say".

I didn't ignore your ANSWER because you didn't give one.

And I didn't ignore your RESPONSE, I addressed it directly, calling it a cop out.

For the love of god, man, at least don't outright lie. <_<

The lesson here is: When someone asks you a question, give a good faith answer. You might be surprised how well things work out when you AREN'T being evasive and duplicitous. And the worst part is, as I said before, it's even pointless for you to BE evasive on this. I outright said I'd try out a Support role/Job if one was introduced, so that should have diffused any concern you had that if you answered you'd try it out I'd call you "not a real healer".

...that and that I don't say of people here "you aren't a real healer". Both you and Roe have used that canard, insisting I do it, when I'm the one of us that HASN'T.

[Shurrikhan]

As you note, "on these boards", which do not encompass the entirety of the playerbase. Indeed, there are around 10 people that post frequently. It's a pretty tiny microcosm of the community as a whole. Note this isn't a "majority" argument, but the reason you don't see agreement is that. Moreover, it's been clear from the critiques. The people opposed to the idea don't enjoy current Healers, so they want none to remain as such.

Welp, I figured that would be twisted, but... whatever.

Look, Reddit is no nicer to healers. There is no community by which to warrant through contrast to these official forums the idea that your ideas would be disliked only because of small sample skewing responses to only those of people with abnormal taste.

Opposition to how healers play right now... is not abnormal, by any measure that can contextualize itself with a spoken/written opinion, or even a godsdamned 1-N satisfaction poll.

WHM: You're going to have to explain this. I said nourish the Blood Lily (e.g. contribute to a Misery)

That's exactly how I read it.

If every single GCD heal contributes a third of 1240 (4-filler-attacks) potency attack that itself costs no MP, then that means that even Cure is effectively producing 310 offensive potency atop its 500 cure potency all while contributing to a saving of 400 MP (via the Glare not cast) even without considering Freecure (which would effectively produce an extra 150 MP's [15% chance of 1000] worth of MP savings, or 250 when also counting the Misery contribution of that free Cure II).

The cheapest spamable heals are Regen and Cure 1, which both cost the same amount as a Glare, so you're not generating tons of free MP via Misery casts in place of Glares.

No, that is exactly what you'd be doing.

In your model, a Glare III would give 310 offensive potency for effectively 400 MP.
A Regen would 310 offensive potency and 1500 cure potency for effectively 300 MP, since it contributes a third of a free GCD otherwise costing 400 MP (since that GCD itself a GCD, the Regen is 1 in 4 GCDs and therefore would be associated with a fourth of its savings).

You'd never touch Glare. Ever. Because you made it so every GCD nourishes the Blood Lily.

Without AoE spam, that's self-sustaining. You have 24 GCDs per minute, two of which have to be Dia for maximum DPS. Of the remaining 22 otherwise spent on Glare, you can now use Regen or Cure instead for free healing on 15.67 of those GCDs per minute, thereby also saving MP on the 7.33 consequent Misery casts made available per minute, in total saving ~2932 MP per minute compared to beating down a striking dummy, in which situation we already gain more MP than we spend.

That means not only can you turn Glares into Cure or Regen for free additional healing; you can put out some goddamn Medica IIs for 8000 cure potency apiece without losing any offensive potency or becoming MP starved.

So no. That's broken. It is not a good idea to have every WHM healing spell nourish the Blood Lily. Hard stop. No.

To be fair: That's if none are instant cast. Solace is a GCD. Solace is instant cast. Solace is actually used FOR movement where Tetra isn't.

Cool. Now for SCH? AST? They don't have Eukresia or Lilies. If your solution relies on CD-limited capacity or one unique to a single job... that's obviously not going to be a broadly applicable solution.

Note that an often praised game in terms of healing here, WoW, doesn't have "oGCDs". It has cast time spells and instant cast spells, and those are your options.

Yes. Because it was and has always been built around that, and offers dynamism in varying MP expense for varying levels of HPS/responsiveness.

But you can't simply swap from one design paradigm to another (mostly oGCD-based healing to entirely GCD-based healing) without adjusting encounters and/or healers' dynamism accordingly.

[ty_taurus]

God I wish you wouldn't make bad faith posts.

I wish you wouldn't make bad faith posts.

WHY do you CONSTANTLY do this?

Because...

You. Are. Wrong. Say it with me.

You are treating what should be general standards of class design in a cooldown-based RPG as some sort of hyper-specific playstyle. Ensuring a job doesn't spent too much time spamming any one button and regularly engages with healthy number of actions should be the standard for every job. In Ren-Land, perhaps that is an unreasonable request, like asking a group of people who don't know how to read or play music to man the violin, the trumpet, and the flute, and you're here crying out for the option to play the triangle. But in the real world, It's asking for basic standards of job design. I know you don't like standards, but game designers shouldn't care about players who don't want to engage with the combat system, because then why make that combat system to begin with? If I want to appeal to you and people who are as disinterested in the combat system as you are, I would make FFXIV into an idle game where each job has one action.

I sympathize with players who want to heal without DPSing. I do not sympathize with players who want a job that can be played with 1-4 buttons where the game is designed around having around 28-32.

Except...this isn't how that conversation went, is it?

Except it is how the conversation went. You just didn't read. You remember when you tried to burn me at the stake for glossing over one of your posts and responding to it?

First of all, I'm not looking to play a role on principle. What I care about is what the job is and how it plays. I have nothing against a support role.

^ The simple answer I gave first.

The fact that you decided to answer for me is exactly why I say that you've made up your mind on what I want. Is that not obvious to you? You're wrong by the way, because your answer severely lacks context for what happens to the other roles. In your hypothetical world where the support role is added as a 4th, are the healers fixed, or do they stay hot feces for the rest of eternity? Because if your idea of adding the support role is specifically to allow the healers to remain in the ass tier of design quality, then obviously I'm going to go for support because there is no healer role to go to. If the healer role is allowed to be fixed, then I'm going to play the healer role and would probably be a Sage one-trick. Would I try the support jobs? I suppose technically I would when I level them to 100, since I level every job to max level, but I'd probably never actively try to play it or queue as it. Depending on what the new caster DPS will be, I might either make that my back-pocket DPS for when I can't heal (like if I'm doing treasure maps with my FC and someone else wants to heal) or maybe I'd keep that as Dancer. If the caster is Onmyoji, there's a good chance I might swap to that if the healer role continues to be defecated on because I like that concept. Whether or not Dancer remains in the physical ranged DPS role or the new support role is irrelevant to me.

^ The detailed answer I gave second after you continued to tell me to just admit I'd play support. If you want to crucify me on the forums, try actually reading what I write first. You are the liar here.

[ty_taurus]

Here, I made you a flowchart for your answer. Maybe you'll be more inclined to read this:

[ASkellington]

The supposed support role is P.Ranged. I'm not sure why no one has brought this up yet. BRD pre-SB had support tools and so did MCH. IIRC BRD had MP regen and MCH had TP regen. You supported your party in that way but you also did your dps duties. BRD now has an Esuna, all three have a AOE defense buff, DNC has a heal and MCH now has Dismantle. I think they could have more tools to support like they do in PvP but for now, they're adaquete.

Do I then want to play any of them because I have more to do? No.

I see MMORPG, I play healer if its offered. Support classes are DPS classes. They're not healers. They aren't even combat medics or dip into triage. They may have enough spot healing like RDM and DNC, but as DNC and RDM are DPS here, so are support classes in general.

And before its asked: would I want a pure buffing/debuffing class, no.

What I want is a healer. The problems are:

1. healing is boring in this game due to how similar healing styles are between classes
2. healing is boring in this game due to how encounters are designed
3. healing is boring in this game when a non-healer class (WAR) can replace me because #2
4. healing is boring in this game when I group up with another healer because #2 doesn't factor in having two healers with bloated healing kits
5. healing is boring in this game because when I have nothing to heal and everything is fine I have nothing to do - no buffs/debuffs to manage, no intricate dps kit, no mp management, no cooldown management

I would be fine if FFXIV went from the crap its doing now to a WoW styled model with more incoming damage that is unpredictable which makes it harder for me to do my 1 dot 1 nuke spam, but it still doesn't fix the issue that:

the devs want this to be a more solo rpg and healers in solo content are shite because they have mostly a DoT and a nuke and 20+ healing tools that they don't need or that if I get good enough with my healing tool kit I am rewarded with my DoT and nuke only because see #5.

[ty_taurus]

The supposed support role is P.Ranged. I'm not sure why no one has brought this up yet. BRD pre-SB had support tools and so did MCH. IIRC BRD had MP regen and MCH had TP regen. You supported your party in that way but you also did your dps duties. BRD now has an Esuna, all three have a AOE defense buff, DNC has a heal and MCH now has Dismantle. I think they could have more tools to support like they do in PvP but for now, they're adaquete.

This has been said before as well. The conversation has spiraled (because of course it did), but the original post was about what if we had a 4th role, "Support," that was more support-y than the current physical ranged, offering more buffs and more utility. I'm not sure what other context would apply to this role, but I assume it would have less damage than even Bards and Dancers have now in exchange for that higher support potential while still having things like a rotation and active gameplay. I presume the intent of the entire thread was to try and get people in favor of expanding supports so that we'd leave the real healers alone.

[ForsakenRoe]

The supposed support role is P.Ranged. I'm not sure why no one has brought this up yet. BRD pre-SB had support tools and so did MCH. IIRC BRD had MP regen and MCH had TP regen. You supported your party in that way but you also did your dps duties. BRD now has an Esuna, all three have a AOE defense buff, DNC has a heal and MCH now has Dismantle. I think they could have more tools to support like they do in PvP but for now, they're adaquete.

They both had both, the MP refresh on MCH was tied to the AOE turret though in HW (promotion), in SB it was changed to role actions (Refresh and Tactician). They also had stuff like Palisade (ST phys mit, foil to the caster role's magic mit), and Troubadour, Minne and Warden's (the esuna thing) both existed as far back as SB, etc. MCH was a lot less focused on having 'support' style utility compared to BRD, but it did have the basics of MP/TP restoration potential, and a way to increase damage dealt by allies via Hypercharge. Which is why I find the whole thing about 'what if support was a role' kinda extraneous. We either already have it (as Ranged) or we already have it (as Healer), there's not really anything that a 'true Support role' can do without cannibalizing what we have already, or just renaming some of the current Jobs we have now to the new role, just to pad out it's roster and justify it's existence. If we were to, for example, add a new caster that is 50% personal damage, 50% comes from various raidbuffs, and it's got loads of wacky support skills like a CD that heals allies, a couple of ways to apply mitigations, an AOE Esuna cos why not, a res, etc, then I don't see that as a 'Support', I see it as a 'very support-tool heavy Caster DPS'. We didn't call NIN a Support back when it had Shadewalker, Smokescreen, a Bind on Hyoton (yeh that's still a thing, surprisingly), a movespeed slow on Doton (still a thing), Trick Attack, Jugulate to stun or silence. It was a Melee, that was very support-heavy.

As for WOW, they've more recently moved towards 'scripted big damage moments' too. Difference is, they have smaller ticking instances between those big blasts. For example, a boss I hated reclearing each week from the first raid in DF, Terros. Players are marked with markers, and they place earth spikes after a few seconds. While these spikes are out, they pulse damage on higher difficulties, and the longer the fight goes, the more spikes come out (on heroic, it was 5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8, enrage, iirc). To clear the spikes, the tanks aim a line-Tankbuster through the spikes to crack them. Doing so, however, causes the spikes to explode for a much larger amount of raidwide damage. Thus, there's 'constant pressure' from the ticking, and then big 'scripted moment of big HPS needed' to plan your big cooldowns around, like Aura Mastery, Spirit Link, Tranquility, etc. We've got the second half, but not the first half. Additionally, WOW's healers are designed around having basically zero spammable AOE. Closest there is to 'spammable AOE heal' is Chain Heal, and that eats your MP bar like nothing else. I expect that, if we dropped a WOW fight into FFXIV wholesale, we'd fold it's HPS requirements like a pretzel, because we can just dump AOE healing whenever we like. To have 'WOW style model', play WHM, but unbind Medica 1/2/Cure3 from your bar, and only AOE heal with Rapture, that's pretty close to what we'd end up with

Also, I saw some 'very good at game' WOW healers complaining about healer design over there, saying it's getting too focused on 'use mit on big raidwide'. Apparently, having a raidwide that blasts you from 100% down to like 20% is not fun, who knew

expanding supports so that we'd leave the real healers alone.

And again, I'd say to that 'why add a Support role and screw up the matchmaking/queue times, when we could just make the 'already kinda heavy on support' Jobs like DNC be 'even more supporty'? People who got into certain jobs like BRD or DNC already have an expectation that they're going to have lower DPS, but bring big buffs. So if you give them MORE buffs, then they'll be happy cos it feeds into their expected perception of that job, surely? Well, except the logheads who are now more reliant on their team to do good in buff windows but design shouldn't be based around things like that.

If an announcement was made saying 'AST is being moved from an 80/20 split in personal damage/raidbuff damage contributions, to a 60/40 split, to better capture the identity of 'it buffs allies', who's gonna complain and go 'no I really like how much of my damage comes from Malefic as it is thanks'? There'd be at least one (there always is) but I assume the vast majority would be excited for the 60/40, and a great many would likely ask for more ie 40/60

[ty_taurus]

The fact that our OP never actually elaborated on what makes this support role concept necessary, or how it would fit into the current balance of the trinity creates a massive issue with the entire discussion because as has been said...

The supposed support role is P.Ranged.

And this has been echoed several times before as well. What makes this hypothetical new role different from the current supports we already have, and what justifies that as an entirely separate role? Roles in a game like this exist to represent responsibilities required to clear any given form of content. DPS is the starting point for combat design, as damage is required to defeat enemies in video games. Tanks and healers sacrifice damage by providing something that a DPS cannot do and is otherwise required for some aspect of the fight. You only bring as many tanks or healers as is needed to meet those requirements because the more DPS you bring, the faster the fight is. Tanks offer aggro management (even if heavily simplified) and have the ability to survive when bosses attack them. Healers offer sustain that is (theoretically) required to last long enough to defeat the boss. So what responsibility does a potential support job do that a DPS cannot do?

If the game were reworked from the group up such that all meaningful encounters featured multiple mini enrages, such as Ifrit's Infernal Nails, you could create an environment where support jobs have very significant buff windows that are required to meet these enrages. Like, if you have a tank, healer, and two DPS, you cannot deal enough damage fast enough to defeat the Infernal Nails and will always wipe, but Dancer's Technical Step boosts the party's damage by 50% for 10 seconds, giving you a massive burst that allows you to wipe out that DPS check before the enrage, that could create a reason to justify a 4th role. However, as I said, that would require a ground-up redesigning of the game to support that role in all the content we've seen up to this point, and I don't really think our community would find that added responsibility enjoyable.