Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Volgia]

For one, tanks can't solo everything. I'm not certain where people got the idea they could, but there's plenty of stuff they can't. Seeing a YouTube video of a single player managing to solo something absurd after probably hundreds of prior attempts does not mean everyone can do it, just as seeing an all-tank clear of an Ultimate doesn't mean every raid team could do it. Judging the state of a game by what the top 1% can pull off is how we got where we are now in the first place.

The above aside, how exactly is a tank rarely needing healing affecting your fun as a healer if fight design is changed in such a way that you are frequently required to heal the DPS? You're still getting to heal. You just aren't having to heal the tank all that often.



Damage optimization has pretty much always been the go-to for role in this game. In the old days tanks would run crafted DPS accessories to milk more DPS. We kept melding for damage even once that option was taken away. This behavior actually did come at the expense of survivability at the time, but we kept engaging in it anyway. Healers complained; changes were made. SE realized fairly quickly nothing they did was going to stop us optimizing for damage, so they started leaning into it instead of away from it.

The same was once true of healers. Cleric stance was their bread and butter, and it only got turned off if something went off the rails.

tl;dr: the whole game is rocket tag.

I see. So it was harder to play with a more damaging tank, until it became so meta the devs had to make a change to make it this way? I liked the idea that it came at the expense of survivability/less healing, it sounds like you needed a bit more skill and planning to pull it off, but I wasn't there when this was a thing so I wouldn't know how postiive or negative this had on hard content.

[Absimiliard]

I see. So it was harder to play with a more damaging tank, until it became so meta the devs had to make a change to make it this way? I liked the idea that it came at the expense of survivability/less healing, it sounds like you needed a bit more skill and planning to pull it off, but I wasn't there when this was a thing so I wouldn't know how postiive or negative this had on hard content.

Tanks had very limited healing at the time, although their damage was higher compared to the actual DPS than it is now.

Positive or negative didn't really matter to us. We were only interested in getting fights down as quickly and efficiently as possible. As is the norm, this behavior eventually trickled down to the entire player-base. Now just about everyone really only cares about damage numbers. Some groups don't even care about correctly resolving mechanics so long as it doesn't kill anyone/lower their numbers.