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

[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.