What happened to job inter-play? Was it any good?

[Shurrikhan]

I don't agree on that because I believe that tanks' job is to protect the party from damage. Some of this is achieved by making enemies attack the tank, but it's also achieved by applying damage-reductions to the party, such as a tank limit break, passage of arms, cover, intervention, or indeed Divine Veil.

If damage reductions, let alone specifically party-wide damage reductions, are the domain of tanks, what the heck are Sage and Scholar? Is their main feature just that they're role-swapped tanks?

I think that is exactly why a barrier healer steps on the toes of the tank role.

I hard disagree. If you make simple acontextual barriers the domain of tanks, you degrade the far more versatile and nuance-capable aspects of positioning and mob-control to cover for allies and thwart enemy defenses, both things far, far more quintessentially "tank".

Look at any other game and you'll find that offering external sustain, especially AoE sustain, is predominantly an element of healing, not tanking. Because tanks would otherwise step on their own toes, even, and to net less interesting resultant gameplay for them if tools were ever powerful or cause those tools to feel increasingly like mere bloat otherwise. Because they're overly redundant.

All I know for sure is that in situations where, say, health is low or the party have a lot of vuln stacks, hitting Reprisal + Divine Veil has the potential to increase the amount of them that survive.

Outside of the most unfortunate of timings against unavoidable damage, it's all or none. And that's ignoring the fact that the damage is tuned around it anyways.

What does the "control" of Reprisal and Divine Veil --those tools being in the game and certain AoEs therefore being tuned around them-- offer that less blanket, more flexibly timed tools like Succor or Sacred Soil did not? Apart from more Broil spam, of course.

but it affects the concept of a holy trinity.

Especially when something as straightforward as proactive sustain can be considered by some to be a tanking element rather than healing element, I don't see why anyone would make adherence to a mere summary (and apparently nebulous) term like "holy trinity" a priority.

What should matter is that whatever roles (be they 2 or 3 or 5 or 12) the game decides ought exist should not have its most interesting/synergetic skills rendered redundant by others among their own skills (to the net result of less interesting play -- say, if Paladin could just spam AoE barriers instead of bothering with positioning) nor rendered directly¹ or consistently² redundant other roles' skills (such as there being so many cross-role AoE miti skills that the difference between inevitable death and zero GCD shields being necessary becomes a finer and finer point of balance).

¹ "Rendered directly redundant" here meaning that Role A's more individually interesting or keystone/capstone skills (those necessary for their role to feel as complete, fleshed out, and fun as it should) would be rendered redundant even when following the same party strategy... as opposed to, for example anti-magic mitigation being made redundant through silences and constantly breaking the enemy caster's lines of sight before they can complete any casts (which would make it indirectly rendered redundant).

² "Consistently" refers to, regardless of whether something can always be rendered redundant even if indirectly so, such as CC never being useful simply because one can always kill all enemies before tanks run out of mitigation. However, that's almost always more an overarching tuning issue, be that through relative role strength or simple lack of difficulty.

[Jeeqbit]

If damage reductions, let alone specifically party-wide damage reductions, are the domain of tanks, what the heck are Sage and Scholar? Are their main feature just that they're role-swapped tanks?

They kinda are. But they've always had shields in this game, because White Mage used to have Stone Skin, so it's just how it is.

Look at any other game and you'll find that offering external sustain, especially AoE sustain, is predominantly an element of healing, not tanking.

Well, yes, I said sustain/healing was a healer thing.

What does the "control" of Reprisal and Divine Veil --those tools being in the game and certain AoEs therefore being tuned around them-- offer that less blanket, more flexibly timed tools like Succor or Sacred Soil did not?

Reprisal and Divine Veil have no cast time. But also as we were discussing, the concept of a barrier healer steps into the "protect" identity that tanks are meant to have.

What should matter is that whatever roles (be they 2 or 3 or 5 or 12) the game decides ought exist should not have its most interesting/synergetic skills rendered redundant by others among their own skills (to the net result of less interesting play -- say, if Paladin could just spam AoE barriers instead of bothering with positioning) nor rendered directly¹ or consistently² redundant other roles' skills (such as there being so many cross-role AoE miti skills that the difference between inevitable death and zero GCD shields being necessary becomes a finer and finer point of balance).

Yes, regardless of if they are stepping on eachother's toes, it has certainly got to a point where everyone steps on eachother's toes an awful lot, like how there was a savage challenge to mitigate all of the damage from the 4 adds that enrage in P5S, which was successfully executed by stacking every jobs' mit. Just 1 or 2 of those adds normally wiped the party if they exploded.

such as CC never being useful simply because one can always kill all enemies before tanks run out of mitigation. However, that's almost always more an overarching tuning issue, be that through relative role strength or simple lack of difficulty.

For sure there is a night and day difference between enemies in this game and other MMORPGs. We not only don't have elite trash mobs (except hunts in the open world), item level thoroughly makes them a joke very quickly. The abilities we all get by level 90 just make that even more the case to where tanks are soloing big pulls with the greatest of ease.

[Shurrikhan]

They kinda are. But they've always had shields in this game, because White Mage used to have Stone Skin, so it's just how it is.

If I heal an ally and a portion of overhealing increases their maximum HP for a brief duration as not to waste said healing... that's a healer, while if I heal an ally and a portion of the healing is also done as a barrier, effectively increasing their maximum HP for a short duration... that's not?

Heals also protect people from death. As does dodging. What makes on-ally blanket barriers the domain of tanks?

I could see a Ninja summoning a Shadow Clone to taunt an enemy and those near it while active, lasting up to X seconds or until a couple seconds after taking Y damage being considered a tanking ability; it results in decreased need for party sustain which in turn can result in net rDPS increase, all by redirecting and/or reposition enemy offenses. But Succor and Sacred Soil? They're simple AoE sustain that happens to increase max eHP along with current, the only difference for which is one-shots (or attacks too near to each other to be split by later sustain). But not all that helps prevent one-shots is necessarily tanking, especially when it is completely independent of (in no way requires) redirecting or repositioning the fight or the enemy's offense.

Well, yes, I said sustain/healing was a healer thing.

What are you defining as sustain here, just for clarity? Just another word for healing, or where things like Macrocosmos would be included where it normally wouldn't (under "healing")?
%DR also sustains you and is generally considered "sustain" among multi-MMO theorycrafters (simply "scaled" or "percentile" instead of "flat", and "max-eHP increasing").

Reprisal and Divine Veil have no cast time.

I didn't say they did, but neither is that any significant increase in flexibility compared to Succor (limited only by MP) or Sacred Soil (30s CD; consuming one of three per-minute resource charges).

But also as we were discussing, the concept of a barrier healer steps into the "protect" identity that tanks are meant to have.

Then so does killing enemies: Try not dying to a DPS check without damage; unless flagrantly undertuned, protecting the party from that... requires DPS.

Or consider damage-dealing itself: every role deals damage, yet not every class will be of the "Damage" role. There is no reason to define roles in such ways.

Well-crafted roles have far more to do with creating a perspective or mindset from which fun and interesting gameplay can happen without being quite so thrown to the winds with random party-mates, generally by reducing the personal gameplay otherwise more directly available to you instead to a tailored, synergetic cluster therefrom.

That's not just "Damage", "Protect", and "Make up for what passed through Protect", though. In games not so laughably easy or rigid, even a DPS's decisions as to when to burst and against what can be life or death for their party, and its the enhanced ability to leverage those dynamics that makes them that role, not merely that they do damage.

[Jeeqbit]

What are you defining as sustain here, then? %DR also sustains you.

Heals and regens. I don't see DR as sustain, personally.

I didn't say they did, but neither is that any significant increase in flexibility compared to Succor (limited only by MP) or Sacred Soil (30s CD; consuming one of three per-minute resource charges).

All I can really say here is that I've used Reprisal and the raid-wide mit many, many times to save parties from wiping, whether due to not being at max HP or due to vuln stacks or both.

Or consider damage-dealing itself: every role deals damage, yet not every class will be of the "Damage" role. There is no reason to define roles in such ways.

There is certainly a concept for a tank just purely holding aggro and mitigating. This was done when clearing raids on blue mage, because everything hits them a lot harder than normal jobs. I do personally prefer tanks to do at least just-noticeable damage, but it has probably just got out of hand like everything else at this point, given how tanks have gone from barely making a dent on trash packs to single-handedly destroying them with their burst.

From what I can see statistically, healers don't do much damage at all despite their best effort, but they have always felt rather impactful with AoE.

Well-crafted roles have far more to do with creating a perspective or mindset from which fun and interesting gameplay can happen without being quite so thrown to the winds with random party-mates, generally by reducing the personal gameplay otherwise more directly available to you instead to a tailored, synergetic cluster therefrom.

That is one way to do it, it's just got to a point where everyone can rather fend for themselves or alternatively just carry out the role of the person who is supposed to do it. Whether it's a DPS tanking, a healer tanking, or a tank healing, or 4 dps really handling themselves. That in itself might not be so bad if it wasn't for how samey it was and how a lot of it was a result of Role Actions (or actions all of that role have).

even a DPS's decisions as to when to burst and against what can be life or death for their party, and its the enhanced ability to leverage those dynamics that makes them that role, not merely that they do damage.

I think the unique strength of a DPS is their burst actually. I can say that it never felt like my damage on a tank could really make this sort of difference, but now it absolutely can. If something's going to happen sometimes I can accelerate some of my burst on a tank so there isn't a wipe and it just never felt like that was a thing to me before.