Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Now, of course, in this case, you're also asking them to lose gameplay, too, all so that you don't feel like your own options are made as redundant when going for content tuned too cheaply/easily for you/your available output.
I suppose, but I would not consider healer really a major component of tank gameplay. I really dislike WAR's ability to self heal. It's too high and while it may feel fine for them, it's terrible for healers. I wouldn't mind if tanks lost all self healing. To you're point though, tanks could keep the healing and other changes could be made to balance it out. Yet even in that case I don't see a situation where a tank like WAR should ever exist in dungeons. If healers aren't going to be the exclusive source of healing, they should at least excel at it far beyond other roles.


Yes, you could replace the majority of tank's kits instead with 0-MP-cost Flash spam and remove all attacks from healers so they wouldn't step on the toes of DPS, but would that improve DPS gameplay?
It might. If party DPS is so high that a DPS can't even start their rotations before things die, then yes, cutting tank and healer DPS would help. It would also definitely very clearly shift the responsibility for clear time, at least via damage, on to the DPS since no one else would be able to contribute.

Anyway a partial solution to the role dilemma that I like is designing combat with more optional damage in mind. What I mean by that is include more sources of avoidable damage, but let there be a tradeoff involving damage done (or maybe something else) that comes with the damage inflicted on party. As an example, imagine a boss that has an AoE attack that is either right or left, but which ever side the AoE is on also opens a weakspot. To hit the weakspot you need to be standing in the AoE, and will take damage because of this. The party could choose to take the risk of attacking the weakpoint, or the safety of avoiding the AoE and doing the usual amount of damage. Something like that would add increased healing challenge that rewards skilled healers while also leaving an option for less skilled healers.

One potential problem with this is the expectations of the current playerbase. Most players have become accustomed to avoiding all AoE's. I can pile on massive shields in dungeons that boss attack cannot break and even mention it to the party and most people will still try to avoid AoE's. There are also some players that expect nothing but optimal play from everyone. To avoid these issues, the optional damage idea could be added initially to a new kind of content, possibly some kind of midcore content that the game is currently lacking. Or when queueing, there could be a checkbox for "playstyle" allowing players to separate themselves into casual and optimal.