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

[Renathras]

You mean like...

I thought we were talking about the role/Jobs/design, not individual players. This place DOES NOT provide a better platform for counter points and debate. I get ragged on constantly when making an opposing position, and people frequently lie about or insinuate things about my motivations. I get ratioed here all the time, and I can count 3 times in the entire 2 years I've been posting here someone came to my defense on something.

I've been downvoted there before, but that place both represents and tolerates a wider swath than this place does.

The difference you're describing is due to the system (that is, this forum mechanically doesn't have "hidden via downvote"). That's not really an adequate defense considering how often people have mentioned in regard to my posts they wish there was a dislike button...

And if you fixate the whole of the Physical Ranged role greatly around ally-dependent indirect value then you effectively remove the option to play with any of those aesthetics (bows, guns, etc.) unless one's into that degree of support (as opposed to personal carry potential / direct value, etc.).

While I sympathize, this argument isn't really a useful or practical one.

Consider that some FF fans may want to play a Black Mage...like Vivi. They love the aesthetic. They like just casting the biggest elemental spell they have over and over, Osmose to refill MP, and keep going with it.
...yeah, you can't do that here. And if someone suggested BLM should be able to just chaincast Fire 4 inter spaced with Osmose - and that be a valid playstyle - no one here would support it. "Ice Mage" is not a viable playstyle, no matter how much one might like the aesthetic.

While it's a sympathetic position, at the end of the day in game design, we have to recognize that not every aesthetic will support every playstyle and preference. I like ROG but not NIN. I like the aesthetic but not the Ninki stuff, and I don't like the burst. Does it get changed to suit me? Of course not. There will be people who like an aesthetic but not the playstyle associated with it. That's an inevitability of game design.

Ideally, you match the aesthetic as best you can to the playstyle (e.g. SCH [at least its healing kit] is a technical Job requiring setup for the biggest and most powerful ability combinations; NIN's rotation is relatively fast matching the agile and quick archetype, and so on), but there's no way that those things will suit everyone who might like the aesthetic. There will always be some people that like a particular aesthetic, but the playstyle won't suit them. And that's even with games that have specs and a lot of customization. In games like FFXIV where Jobs are pretty rigid and all have the same setup and abilities, this is even more true.

EDIT:

What is happening right now? I answered you multiple times over and over. I even gave you a flowchart answering your question in the most straightforward way possible. What else do you want from me? To answer you in seven different languages?

I'm not going to engage with you on the Support thing anymore, either.

Actually? You know what? Duck it. I don't give a damn anymore. You can answer or not, I legitimately don't care and won't respond any more to you on this derail.

[Shurrikhan]

While I sympathize, this argument isn't really a useful or practical one.

Consider that some FF fans may want to play a Black Mage...like Vivi. They love the aesthetic.

Okay, and then sometime comes along and tells you, "No, Role X are actually supposed to all be Supports, because that's how they were (mis-)labelled in the past." So now not only can you not play BLM as it was, you can't play a pure DPS unless you swap to an entirely different gear class.

See the difference?

Again, all I'm asking is to simply let Dancer, Red Mage, etc. have more utility options (i.e., at cost per use, rather than things they're charged for merely having since they'd then be "free" and have to be balanced in turn), without moving them into a new Support category or forcing the whole of Physical Ranged role to turn into Supports without regard to their individual job identities.

Leave the damn label out of it. Just stick with Tanks, DPS, and Healers, with any amount --small or high-- of support available to jobs of any and every role based simply on how well that fits their identity.

[ty_taurus]

Okay, and then sometime comes along and tells you, "No, Role X are actually supposed to all be Supports, because that's how they were (mis-)labelled in the past." So now not only can you not play BLM as it was, you can't play a pure DPS unless you swap to an entirely different gear class.

See the difference?

Again, all I'm asking is to simply let Dancer, Red Mage, etc. have more utility options (i.e., at cost per use, rather than things they're charged for merely having since they'd then be "free" and have to be balanced in turn), without moving them into a new Support category or forcing the whole of Physical Ranged role to turn into Supports without regard to their individual job identities.

Leave the damn label out of it. Just stick with Tanks, DPS, and Healers, with any amount --small or high-- of support available to jobs of any and every role based simply on how well that fits their identity.

You know, thinking about it more, if you actually want to enhance the experience for players who want to be more support-y, what you need to change isn't the jobs, it's the encounters. A big problem with support in general is that there are very few ways to actually provide support. Offensively, we have direct damage buffs, critical hit buffs, and direct hit buffs. In terms of utility, we only have raise, sustain (healing/shielding), healing enhancements, and combat sprint. Mitigation would normally be treated as utility, but since fight design has shifted toward making mitigation mandatory and available on every job, it's less utility and more required battle mechanics at this point. There are some fringe examples of things that could be utility, like esuna, silence, stun/sleep, and dispel, but they are incredibly infrequently needed.

If there were more avenues available to provide utility or offensive support in the first place, you'd have room to offer more variety in supporting as jobs like Dancer or Red Mage. I've referred to Red Mage as a support before, and it's regularly referred to as such, but it doesn't actually feel very supporting when you think about it. A single target GCD heal you never want to use, a tiny magic mitigation attached to increased healing effect every 90 seconds, and instant raises don't actually promote a very consistent support-like experience. Most of the time, you're never going to even use Vercure or Verraise anyway. Embolden exists as an offensive buff, but nearly every DPS has an Embolden equivalent, and two healers have one as well.

[Renathras]

Okay, and then sometime comes along...

Note that's what people want to do with Healers. But yes, I agree. I don't think they'll ever add an actual Support role anyway. Ranged arguably WAS a Support-sub-role in the past, but it's changed away from that. I think that was their original design intent. In ARR, BRD used the Healer LB3, and in the End of an Era ARR cinematic, cast protect on the WAR while the WHM moved up to heal him.

I think the issue largely comes down to...balance. Say DNC has a lot of support options and MCH has none. So how do we balance that? Does MCH need to do all the damage that DNC would contribute to a SAM or BLM if they were in the party (highest) or what it would be if DNC was Dance Partnering the RDM? Does MCH new more utility like Dismantle? If so, is that weighted by players as more or less important than Dance Partner SAM? Maybe it depends on the fight. Maybe it depends if one fight has mechanics at 2 mins that make SAM's burst less but Dismantle worth more, or if the 2 min burst has the boss doing nothing so the SAM can blow it out of the park with Dance Partner and Dismantle is barely useful that fight because boss mechanics happen 100 seconds from each other so that Dismantle isn't ready but for every other major mechanic at 240 sec, losing 2-3 uses over the course of the fight because the mechanics don't line up with it.

As much as people hate the dreaded "b" word, it's the reason there's not a lot of differentiation. Pull up the DPS spreads on specs in WoW sometime and you'll see massive % gaps between the top and bottom spec. But the game's combat system also is a lot less rigid, with talent choices and Jobs having various levels and types of utility and stuff. The cost of difference is people having to take a turn at being blackballed - something the community has not shown it won't do - so the Devs do everything they can to avoid that. Which happens to include beating anything different or interesting out of Jobs... <_<

(...though it is funny to me reading Nizzi's post in the SGE thread where he's pointing out that SCH and SGE and even AST and WHM are distinct from each other...)

But I agree with you the rug shouldn't be pulled out from under people. It's one reason I oppose changing all the Healer designs to be damage rotation focused.

You know, thinking about it more, if you actually want to enhance the experience for players who want to be more support-y, what you need to change isn't the jobs, it's the encounters.

Agreed in part. It's really a whole combat system change. Encounters are too rigid and class design is too rigid. And the community has a bad habit of punishing any Jobs that aren't if they underperform (or overrewarding them if they are different and overperform, such as Ares- er, I mean, WAR-god.)

I do agree that there need to be more avenues for types of support. I think that's why Expedience was such an exciting ability to me, since it's something that's NOT directly damage related (and while it has the mitigation, movement itself can be a different kind of mitigation), yet is very clearly useful and people prize it, showing there are other options for support besides "Raise" and "more damage".

...

So you know, being ratioed and browbeaten and accused of all sorts of things like ulterior motives and such CONSTANTLY doesn't feel better than just having my posts buried. I won't keep arguing the point, but I can post things like I do here and my posts aren't buried. I often will get downvotes and some people disagreeing with me (vehemently), but also some people agreeing or saying "But he's not wrong" or otherwise coming to my defense/agreeing with me, and so on.

That doesn't happen here. I've seen you once recently (thank you again, btw) correcting someone for lying about me...but it took 2-3 pages and literally no one else would do it, with people upvoting the posts instead. I've seen Vetch semi-correct I think twice now (not really support me, but more say to someone else that their attack may not be fair - not actually calling them out or supporting me, but it's something as at least a respectful "point of order"), though again, those posts got upvotes and mine didn't and his corrections didn't. Both of those (semi-positive) examples are incredibly recent and, so far, isolated cases.

Perhaps it's that Reddit is less tolerant of different views than here, but I see posts there with people raging on healers and posts where people praise them, and the comments come from both sides. Here, it's me and...that's it. And the attacks on me here are worse than any I've ever gotten on Reddit. And that's saying a lot, since Reddit isn't the kindest place on the internet.

[Shurrikhan]

Note that [changing one role into an altered and narrow version thereof that only fits a small fraction of the role's jobs] is what people want to do with Healers.

Unless you're referring to the far rarer and extreme positions of those who want to remove all GCD healing instead of at all trying to make them more relevant again...

...It's not the same. It's really not.

Having additional healing-downtime options, reducing the portion of CPM (and possibly portion of GCDs) spent on our filler attack, and better spreading out its CPM... is not alike to, say, changing a MCH into a Support instead of a DPS.

That change in MCH's role necessitates a change in where one's output comes from (shifting it from self to others). Allowing healers more buttons to press in the time they already cannot heal does not do that; the available healing was already capped.

Nor would, say, adding more Card-related GCD options to AST suddenly force WHM, SGE, and SCH, too, to take on GCD buffs by nature of simply being in the same role as AST; even Ty's requested parameters for Healers as a role (no more than 30% of CPM spent on a single action, 10+ actions required to reach 80% of total CPM, and able to meet healing requirements) were as about broad as possible short of "should be labelled Healer" and were utterly uncontroversial to anyone playing XIV with a button count greater than that of an SNES controller.

Perhaps it's that Reddit is less tolerant of different views than here, but I see posts there with people raging on healers and posts where people praise them, and the comments come from both sides. Here, it's me and...that's it.

Been reading through threads searchable from "healer" or "healer gameplay" for the last couple hours (over a dozen threads so far scanned in full, many more skimmed) and gone through the replies therein... all to find the most liked comments (after those with purely direct answers to the OP's questions), sadly, centered on stuff like "What healing lol?" "Thought ends as soon as you've solved the fight, leaving you with only very barebone execution", "Expect to be bored after prog", "Green DPS", "Gutted gameplay", and "Your reward for getting good is to be less of a healer... which you could also do by just switching to WAR in the first place", etc...

I'm not seeing any less a portion of negativity there than here. There's a far larger portion that just forms no appraisal and will solely answer the OP's question, but the moment evaluations comes up... they've actually been even more negative, on average, than these forums.

___________________

I'd say you can get meaningful value out of Magick Barrier in savage.

How often, though, does it actually save long-term resource (rDPS) by avoiding death in a situation where no one else could make that difference or by sparing a healer GCD, though? It feels like it's rarely if ever significant enough to do so.

Tangent: This actually feels like a good reason for AoEs to become weaker smart heals (e.g., a 300p smart-heal instead of a 400p basic heal), such that non-AoE mitigation can actually make a positive difference, and for more mitigation methods to become partially split among nearby allies (raising their maximal individual mitigation without improving their total mitigation, thereby providing more utility and agency).

[Renathras]

WARNING: Long thread because of quotes. See: TL;DR if you want and then can skim back up through the comments to see if you agree or not.

...

Actually made a thread (more general) to see kind of what people on the main sub think of the roles in a general sense: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...which_is_your/

Likes aren't what I'm looking for here, it's comments people actually wrote out. Something you'll find if you read the healer specific ones are...varied.

"I've always loved healing, no matter what game, I always try healer first and generally stick to it. I always hate worrying about if my dps is high enough, or if I'm doing the right rotation."
Perhaps it's my interpretation, but this SOUNDS like a person saying they don't like involved DPS rotations as they worry about not doing them right, but they enjoy healing instead.

"...and I just don't care about big numbers or DPS contests for there to be a draw there"
This was a person saying they like healer and find tank too stressful and aren't drawn to DPS. I don't think it's a bridge too far to assume they like healers not having involved damage rotations.

Next healer didn't really comment on the playstyle, just that they like being able to hard carry teams in DF. Certainly doesn't seem like someone who dislikes current healer design, at least not in the content they run.

"Healing. In high-end pugging it’s about reading the other healer (and everyone else) and figuring out how to order your ogcds correctly to prevent overheating. In normals it gets exciting if people start dying."
This one is the first one I think somewhat matches what you guys are saying...but not QUITE. This person didn't say they dislike healing at present, they say they like it in high end pugging and making an oGCD plan, and they find normal exciting when people are messing up. While they don't say they want more damage abilities or are bored, I think it's reasonable that they get bored in normals if people aren't dying (per their last comment), though that's inference on my part.

"healer for me, it just clicks"
Doesn't really comment either way, but this person doesn't SOUND like they dislike current healing.

"I like healing and hate it all at the same time. Astro is my go to healer it’s busy and I enjoy that as the other healers feel boring to me"
This is the first comment that's more or less in agreement with here unambiguously. Though they don't say they want more damage abilities per se, they also say the other healers are boring except for AST, which they find busy enough to enjoy. Their words "I enjoy that". Not asking for more damage buttons either, but some of you have suggested AST get more buff stuff to juggle instead, and agrees with you guys that the other three are boring. So this is the first comment that unambiguously agrees with this forum here.

The next comment is from a person who identified themselves as a DPSer: "Healing's alright, the fast queues are fantastic but lack of DPS rotation gets boring after awhile. My 2 key is gonna wear out on my MMO mouse at this rate."
This comment SORTA agrees with you guys here, if we ignore the first two words of "Healing's alright". But it agrees with you guys on the lack of DPS rotation getting boring after awhile. But it's also not from a healer main. (Not making any "real healer" comment here, I'm just pointing out it isn't from a person who identifies as a healer but I felt it was worth adding since it DOES unabiguously agree with here as well, so we can keep the tally fair.)

"Magic DPS, followed by Healers
I just wanna be a Wizard :V"
Here for completion, but I don't think we can really glean anything from it other than this person doesn't seem to dislike current healers. But also "I just wanna be a Wizard" isn't really something we can work with. XD

"Healing as Astro is a close second though because I like managing the cards, occasionally saving the day, and their LB3 is fañcy"
Another DPS main, but seems to really like AST. Not seeing anything about it being boring or bland or not having enough damage buttons.

"I main Black Mage, but my favorite role is actually healer. I enjoy playing all the healers. I think it's the most engaging role to play in duty finder. Saving a party from what seemed like a certain wipe feels very good.
What I'd like changed is an increased emphasis on healing. Most of your actions as a healer are not healing, they're your one DPS button."
This is more or less the exact opposite view of this forum and reflects what I've asked for a lot of times - more emphasis on healing, less on damage dealing. This person might even be the kind who would like that "GCD heals nourish the Blood Lily" idea.

"If I Tank, I get a shitty healer who's spamming LV1 base spells in LV90 Roulette at 90% HP. If Idecide to play Healer, I'm getting a Tank who doesn't know what Migitations are.
Despite all that, I enjoy Tanking/Healing the most, Melee DPS is the worst for me."
Here for completeness, but again doesn't really help us.

"Healers, i love fast paced raiding stuff and a good healer always gives you the comfort to pull or dps mindlessly without worrying about dying."
Not super helpful either...but this person seems not to dislike healers, either.

"Healer. I would say it is the only job that does something beyond either standing still or doing the exactly one good rotation all DPS classes are cursed with… but that is a lie, the dev team had to add boring and predictable fight-starting room-wides to even force out some healing.
Still, it has its moments, usually in alliance raids where tons of players ---- up and you have to salvage the entire situation. Sometimes it happens in 8-player and 4-player content as well.
But, overall, mostly because it is the least tunnel-visioned jobs, more so than tank. It is also the role where people learn to move the party list to a spot they actually see instead of chugging it in the corner somewhere. Suddenly, you have to care about all the faceless bozos running around you."
Person seems not to like DPS rotations, and is complaining about fight design not healer design. This person doesn't seem to dislike current healer design nor to be asking for more DPS buttons.

"I prefer tanking.
Healing causes me severe stress. I've literally found my hands trembling after a difficult encounter. I only heal during really easy encounters as a result."
Again added for completion, but not really something we can work with other than this person dislikes healing hard content. Though they certainly DON'T seem to be saying healing is boring/braindead/easy/needs more to do to keep awake like this forum does.

"It used to be healer but due to shinanigans in my static I volunteered to go DPS this expansion and my stress has gone way down and I'm enjoying raids again.
I think I was burnt out on healing and didn't realize it. I play SMN now and like to use my utility abilities but I can never tell if I'm being helpful which now bothers me lol."
For completeness, but again doesn't really help us other than they found healing stressful (so probably not braindead) and we don't know the nature of the mentioned "shinanigans", so we can't really do anything with this one other than that this person probably doesn't think healers are braindead.

DPS main again "I prefer dps because interesting rotation + not any real responsibility in casual content, but i also love playing healer for fast queues and alliance raids can be a lot of fun when everyone is dead as a healer lol
and white mage is my go-to brain dead glare-bot instant queue job"
...but this one doesn't seem to hate healers, and seems to like WHM specifically when they do casual content. Does think it's brain dead, but seems to see that as a positive.

"Healer. Because everyone's at my mercy."
The post goes on in that vein, so isn't super helpful to us, but again, a person that doesn't seem to hate current healer design.

"healer is by far my favorite. some people think having 3 dps buttons are "boring" but i like not having combos to deal with to do my job correctly. and the constant "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING" to the dps is always a fun time. my least favorite is tank. i don't like any of them because of super strict rotations."
Do I...need to mention that this person agrees with me? This is the kind of person I mean when I say WHM should stay the same for people who like current healer designs and you guys here are like "People? Who? You just mean you, right?" As I always say, "No, it's not just me". Here's an example of a person who isn't me saying the same thing.

"Healer
1. Watching bars fill up is more satisfying to me than watching bars empty.
2. Many-Buttons difficulty is not enjoyable to me, nor is Scheduling-Every-Click-a-year-in-advance
3. I don't have a competitive bone in my body.
4. I enjoy being the guy who has an eye on everything.
What would I like changed? In an ideal world, more healing, less DPSing. But that's not what the game is or ever will be, so I'm good as is."
Do I need to point out this one agrees with me? Even more than that, this person is literally asking for less DPSing, not more. "Many-Buttions difficulty is not enjoyable to me, nor is Scheduling-Every-Click-a-year-in-advance". Does that sound more like you guys and the prevailing opinion on this forum, or more like mine? Pretty sure we can chalk this one up into also being at odds with the forum here.

"Usually healer. I enjoy all three equally, but a bad healer is hard to carry for. If a tank or the dps are bad the game just becomes slower and not impossible (usually). A bad healer is hard to overcome and usually leads to duty failure. If I heal I can at least ensure the healer is good (or in the case of an 8 or 24 man Duty, at least half the healers are good)."
Doesn't really say either way, but here for completeness. Again, doesn't seem to hate current healer implementation.

"I prefer support type classes in all games so I tend to gravitate to healer roles the most. My second would be class cannon mage types.
I enjoy being able to analyze a fight/encounter with a little less stress on my own “rotations”. I personally don’t find myself in a panic when keeping others alive but it’s probably because I tend to heal primarily in every game. This also allows me to make calls during a fight or encounter to pull some stress off other jobs who can focus more attention to their performance. Also as a healer you can carry a less experienced team through trouble FAR more than if you were another role.
Currently in FFXIV I would like healers to actually need to do more healing outside of first time runs/brand new content. Currently most content boils down to 2 DPS buttons and the occasional OGCD press. I wish healing was more about weaving DPS into your healing vs weaving a heal into your DPS button spam.
Edit: I also enjoy situations where you can hardcore pocket heal a player allowing them to really pump those DPS numbers."
Again, this person seems to agree with me. Don't like stressing about their own rotation, enjoys supporting others, even outright claims to enjoy what Semi always calls "being a heal bitch" and that she hates. Also another vote for more healing, and weaving damage into their healing rotation instead of weaving heals between damage. Which means this person sounds like they'd also like the WHM GCD heals generate Misery, as that would be a model that encourages weaving occasional damage (Misery) in between their healing.

"Healer.
If you disrespect me, you die. Your life is in my hands. RESPEEKT MY AUTHORITALL"
Yeah...not really useful again.

"Green DPS (ie Healer).
I love being able to keep everybody alive while simultaneously keeping up with the actual DPS."
While saying "Green DPS", sounds like this person actually enjoys it.

"My favourite role is DPS, because it's the only role in this game. In other games I'd play a healer, but that role doesn't exist in this game. We only have DPS, DPS with a bit of healing, and DPS with a 1 button rotation."
Here's a post that agrees unambiguously with this forum! It's...also not being upvoted. So take that for what you will.

"love hate relationship with healer. fun to prog and do whacky pugs on, boring as shit in ordinary reclears"
Second to bottom comment as of right now, last comment on healers (the very last comment below it is about DPS), and...agrees with this forum. Like this is straight up what the majority here believes, that healers can be fun in prog but are boring as <poopie> in reclears.

.

TL;DR:

I'm not posting all these to start a tally/contest of which is more popular. This is WAY too few answers/responses to cite as somehow representative of the whole community of the playerbase or anything like that, and wasn't a poll, just a general question about how people like the roles and which.

But what I would like to draw your attention to is that there are other people there (unlike here) that agree with me, and that the position here that is so prominent is actually the minority position there. It IS just one thread, so I'm not saying that's true of the whole forum, but what I'm specifically trying to draw your attention to is that my view is not unique to me, there are others that hold it. And that unlike here, on Reddit, they're given equal say. Notice none of the posts there have been downvoted to the point of being hidden (one was deleted but I think it was someone accusing someone else of using a DPS meter). They all seem to be voicing their positions and are being tolerated, not briggaded or dogpiled.

But, the position prevalent here is still present there. It's not disallowed, it's not being downvoted, it's not being mocked. That isn't a reverse mirror of this echo chamber that's just swinging too far to the other side. It allows both to coexist, and they both seem to be represented by multiple people on all sides...unlike here.

And look at all those different opinions!

There are people that seem to love current healers, to like them, and to dislike them. There are people that find them boring and people that find them TOO stressful/exciting and those that find them comfy. There are those who like the current Jobs as they are, those that want more damage and find them boring, those that want more healing, those that want less damage, and those that don't like any but AST. Your views and my views, views in between, and views even more on the "healers should heal" than my own are all represented there in JUST that one thread.

Contrast here.

If you can't see the contrast...I'd ask you to try looking again.

[Deo14]

Snip

I'm not really sure what's the point of all this. I think everyone understands that community is made out of millions of individuals with different opinions, and that even most controversial opinions will have thousands of supporters, you pulling anecdotes from casual subreddit which is more skewed towards healer mains doesn't really amount to anything.

You're more inclined to be on the more serious side of community if you visit this forum, and because of that, people here will see behind the shallow role that are healers. You can look at the comments in your mainsub's thread and most of them are "I like healers because they're shiny" or "because I can save my party in normal content". But other people have better insight, and don't judge surface level only, just like here.

So obviously, healers are split into casuals which mostly reside in mainsub, and more hardcore people who reside in here or places like r/ffxivdiscussion. Both views are valid, however, we have 4 healers, and all 4 of them are made to suit the casuals. Why can't we have current WHM and current SGE, and then more interesting AST and SCH?

[Shurrikhan]

You know, thinking about it more, if you actually want to enhance the experience for players who want to be more support-y, what you need to change isn't the jobs, it's the encounters.

I mean... it's kinda both. It's always both. A kit can't interact with content that doesn't have any space for it. An encounter can't play on kit that isn't there.

I've been pushing for more avenues of providing and featuring/using (on the sides of kit and encounter) utility since 1.x for that very reason. Undermechanics (something with a label to refer to and with a coded effect that players and/or enemies can trigger in some way -- a la Vulnerability, Heavy, Slow, Draw-ins, etc.) is my broken-record word at this point. v.v

A big problem with support in general is that there are very few ways to actually provide support. Offensively, we have direct damage buffs, critical hit buffs, and direct hit buffs.

Honestly, I don't consider that as "support" (and, like you, certainly not "utility"), so much as just "My dps... through you all (meaning that I can bring more when at lower ilvl than my team but less when at higher ilvl than my team, compared to playing a more direct contributor)."

Granted, I only really consider utility as something (A) not accounted for in or required by the direct tuning of a fight and/or (B) difficult to provide a stable quantitative estimate for in terms of either primary category (damage or sustain) -- i.e., "(other) usefulness".

"How much utility does it have (here)?" = "What use does it amount to that we didn't already account for under the more easily actionable labels of damage and sustain (in the given context)?"

So, if you have more bursty of damage than is strictly needed, which could thereby help to kill a highly damaging add that much quicker, that burstiness has utility because it's saving resources (e.g., oGCD heals that'd otherwise be useful for random damage later and without which the healers have to play far more cautiously and/or might go oom) and/or efficiency (other DPS would otherwise have to sacrifice DPS over the course of the larger fight in order to blow all their shit then, breaking rhythm, in order to burn the add in time).

Similarly, if you can Cover someone who'd otherwise die, that won't always be an available means of value, but when it is applicable, you're saving MP and the rDPS that'd be lost to Weakness. Etc., etc. That utility will still ultimately amount to some value in sustain (tangentially, shorter-term) resources saved which in turn allow for more damage (long-term / uncapped) output, and should be judged accordingly, but we'd just use that vague term of utility (literally, usefulness/resource or action that'd be [eventual] value) instead of just 'damage' or 'sustain' because that exchange is so situational.

I've referred to Red Mage as a support before, and it's regularly referred to as such, but it doesn't actually feel very supporting when you think about it.

To me it's far from 'supportive', since you can't generally extract any meaningful savings in damage or sustain resources from having used the likes of Magic Barrier and Embolden just shuffles your own would-be damage to others (and then back again, on fflogs), leaving it only with the value of Verraise relative to Summoner or Healers' access to that skill (which, Thin Air arguably then outperforms in terms of situational value).

EDIT: That said, I'd love to see more (non-rDPS / not number-circle-jerking, to be clear) utility added to RDM, of course. I've wanted that since its original premise of a caster balancing White Mana and Black Mana that turned out to be... just arbitrary names for two reskinned halves of the exact same thing.

[ty_taurus]

I mean... it's kinda both. It's always both. A kit can't interact with content that doesn't have any space for it. An encounter can't play on kit that isn't there.

Sorry, I meant more in the sense of reworking the role system and trying to redesign how certain jobs function to fit this new role concept. Adding methods to actually use utility is important in conjunction with ensuring the content created actually asks for it, absolutely.

Honestly, I don't consider that as "support" (and, like you, certainly not "utility"), so much as just "My dps... through you all (meaning that I can bring more when at lower ilvl than my team but less when at higher ilvl than my team, compared to playing a more direct contributor)."

I think of it kind of like the difference between physical and magical. There's no functional difference between the two, but from the player's perspective, some people like jobs that use magic while others like jobs that are physical. Then you also have some players who might appreciate jobs that have damage that come from buffs, and that aligns with players interested in support as a whole. I'd still say it's worth recognizing when talking about trying to reinforce support play, but utility is the more important factor in establishing solid support gameplay, I agree.

To me it's far from 'supportive', since you can't generally extract any meaningful savings in damage or sustain resources from having used the likes of Magic Barrier, Embolden just shuffles your own would-be damage to others (and then back again, on fflogs), leaving it only with the value of Verraise relative to Summoner or Healers' access to that skill. (Arguably, WHM's Thin Air beats it out of the water even then.)

I'd say you can get meaningful value out of Magick Barrier in savage. There are small moments at certain mechanics that do have tight healing windows that can sometimes get tricky, so being able to support them at those times does feel helpful, which is why I find Minne to be much nicer than Improvisation, for example. But the point still stands that there isn't a whole lot of utility to get out of Red Mage most of the time. Instant raise can also contribute to that, but it's situational. One of the great things about Expedient is that even though it functions to increase your group's margin of error, you always use it for certain mechanics. Even in casual content where the stakes aren't high, it still feels great to use as utility because it's proactive, not reactive. Reactive utility requires someone mess up first in order for it to be used. That can be said to some degree about sustain, but not about raise. Not that raise isn't valuable, but the value it offers isn't always felt even when it's still there.