Final Fantasy XIV's Trinity System is Broken

[Milkbeard]

I want content to require so much healing that only healers can heal it. I agree UCOB isn't a good example because it was power crept by that point, and it's probably saying more about the DPS checks than heal checks since it was run by tanks. But we've seen hard content get cleared during the patch it was released in as well.


DPS and tanks are also not designed to spam 1. Healers are told that their primary job is to heal, therefore they get no DPS complexity. Then we get told that the content is easy, so obviously it doesn't need healing. It doesn't add up.


This is exactly what the no-healer TOP clear shows us. In the hardest content, even on patch, tanks and DPS can coordinate their tools to mitigate and heal the damage. That should not be possible in a functioning trinity.

You neglected to mention that you agreed with a lot of my claims lol. We are seeing eye to eye on most what I've said.

However, Unlike the healerstrike thread, this one asserts the trinity is broken. When I am here to defend that it is not broken, it is that the majority of the game itself is too easy.

Do not get me wrong. I sincerely believe that healers should have more spells, for dps too. We should all advocate for that.

A no-healer clear is not the meta. If you see an ultimate cleared in a trick-run format, then I beg you to seek an understanding for how its' do-able rather than taking it at face value and telling the world its just because healers aren't necessary. UCOB can be done because it has a large amount of down-time, a slow enrage timer for certain phases and many more reason- and no matter what they change, it will always have those exploitable areas unless the fight itself is frankly nerfed. Does that mean the whole games Trinity is off? No!! It means cracked players successfully broke a difficult fight down so efficiently into its' core elements that they could pull off something epic. Outlier clears aren't true fuel for the fire, because when you have a game that people are passionate about for years there will always be outlier events like this. It isn't Meta, it's a feat of passion and we should respect it. None of them cleared that content without having first extensively cleared it with the complete trinity group numerous times.

Bro in every mmo dungeons can be done without dps. Speed is all that matters and why dps are brought lol
tanks are brought because they allow you to pull the entire dungeon for the dps to aoe (warriors and paladins don't need a healer to do this either, thus the OP's post)

There's no incentive to bring a healer to roulettes beyond "you have to"

Understood, however, I offered a solution where as you are stating the whole framework is broken because of it. If the game were simply made more difficult then healers would be more necessary.

[Milkbeard]

100% on board with an MMORPG that does not run the trinity... however, I may not be a game developer but isn't that decision something you make before you finish your game? Seems like a large waste of time and resources to devote to a project if you are going to slowly remove it years later.

I think that having the game develop in new directions after 8 years is a better development move then giving the same thing (which they basically have been) until the heat death of the universe. For ex, red mage. Personally, the game was far worse before red mage for me. I'm tatooing red mage on my body, I love it so much. If they decided to not bring it in I may have lost interest from being so purely blm.

[aiqa]

The only way a trinity system works in content of various levels of difficulty is to make the roles extremely different. If the unique qualities of each role are shared to much with other roles, no amount of content balancing will fix it fully. Or in the style of the opening post; if the points of the trinity triangle are to close together, the area avaible for balanced content gets smaller. And if the points are properly spread out, the area available for balanced content is bigger. For balancing only ultimates you can always find some point that fits in the area between the roles.

In my opinion enforcing trinity gameplay in only ultimate content isn't good enough, and enforcing it only in ultimate and savage content also isn't enough, etc. It has to work in any group content at least to a point where the optimal way to run the content is with a full trinity group, even for more experienced players in easier content. Which is very much possible for level/item synced content, as long as roles keep enough unique qualities. Since EW that is not the case for the easier content, which is a not fun at all for healers doing daily roulettes with a halfway decent WAR tank or a fairly good PLD. Both can easily replace healers in easier content. And with the healer role diluted even more in the DT preview, that will happen in a bit more difficult content or with worse tanks.

[AnnRam]

It's better than ever except for the 2 min meta and simplification of skills etc.

I don't want healers to be in full control of encounters ( Woops the healer died again? Whelp wipe I guess. Or the healer refuses to heal big packs? Well back to pull 1 by 1) like they use to be in HS/SB.

Healers should be supports rather than cure 1 bots + dot.

[Niroken]

I think that having the game develop in new directions after 8 years is a better development move then giving the same thing (which they basically have been) until the heat death of the universe. For ex, red mage. Personally, the game was far worse before red mage for me. I'm tatooing red mage on my body, I love it so much. If they decided to not bring it in I may have lost interest from being so purely blm.

Changing a fundamental core system is just a little bit different then adding a new job though. Just a smidge. Not to mention changing the system would be better off modifying all roles evenly instead of large adjustments to one and slow adjustments to the other two. Even more so when one of those two barely changed at all throughout.

[Supersnow845]

Look at the healerless TOP clear this way

The damage loss skills that were cast to facilitate this were 75 clemency 75 vercure and 25 physick. I’m not even going to calculate physick because it isn’t worth it but let’s calculate the rest and use the generous assumption that the PLD used all 75 clemency on someone else so they got the half potency on themselves

(75*1500)*0.7+75*400=108750 potency of casted dps loss heals. TOP is about an 18 minute fight so the casted HPS amounts to about 100 (108750/60/18)

So you only need a healer to put out about 100 HPS to remove the need for those casted heals, an average green HPS parsing TOP healer is putting out 100* that at about 10,000 HPS

How can you argue that TWO healers are being stressed by TOP’s healing when once you factor in the potential of the DPS and tank healing you barely need to cover one one hundredth of a green HPS parsing healers potential

Healer kits are not being remotely tested In ultimates because the other roles simply have too much healing and that’s a fundamental flaw of the trinity system

[Reimmi]

You neglected to mention that you agreed with a lot of my claims lol. We are seeing eye to eye on most what I've said.

However, Unlike the healerstrike thread, this one asserts the trinity is broken. When I am here to defend that it is not broken, it is that the majority of the game itself is too easy.

Do not get me wrong. I sincerely believe that healers should have more spells, for dps too. We should all advocate for that.

A no-healer clear is not the meta. If you see an ultimate cleared in a trick-run format, then I beg you to seek an understanding for how its' do-able rather than taking it at face value and telling the world its just because healers aren't necessary. UCOB can be done because it has a large amount of down-time, a slow enrage timer for certain phases and many more reason- and no matter what they change, it will always have those exploitable areas unless the fight itself is frankly nerfed. Does that mean the whole games Trinity is off? No!! It means cracked players successfully broke a difficult fight down so efficiently into its' core elements that they could pull off something epic. Outlier clears aren't true fuel for the fire, because when you have a game that people are passionate about for years there will always be outlier events like this. It isn't Meta, it's a feat of passion and we should respect it. None of them cleared that content without having first extensively cleared it with the complete trinity group numerous times.







Understood, however, I offered a solution where as you are stating the whole framework is broken because of it. If the game were simply made more difficult then healers would be more necessary.

I absolutely agree that making the game more difficult would make things better for healers. More fun for everyone too i think

yoshi did say he found roulettes boring so maybe something will be done about that

[Jeeqbit]

Tanks Are Irrelevant Too
It's not just healers that are irrelevant. Really, healers are only replaced with tanks, because tanks have higher DPS. You can often just have a healer replace the tank (if you don't care about the DPS loss). A scholar can just shield a DPS for a tank buster.

DPS can tank
That's not all. I've been doing mentor roulette on various DPS roles lately. Sometimes the tank has died, and I've had aggro as the top DPS. I've eaten whole tank busters and healed myself up with Second Wind and Bloodbath. I've sometimes mitigated them with Feint, Shade Shift and abilities like that.

I've also had the tank die during pulls sometimes, so as the top DPS I've just hit Bloodbath and any DPS mitigation and Second Wind and lived.

The Trinity
So what does this all say about the trinity - when I even have the tools to take a tank buster and tank certain big pulls as a DPS on my own? This is not just low level dungeons. This is dungeons like The Atiascope, The Dead Ends, Smileton and Alzadaal's Legacy.

Conclusion
The conclusion here is that SE has intentionally done away with the trinity for casual content like dungeons, to make sure that new players have no friction or difficulty clearing. Despite that it has always been easy even in Heavensward when the trinity was more of a thing, and when they can just clear MSQ dungeons with NPCs anyway, and when we could have some sort of hard mode we can initiate a vote for in the dungeon which enables higher tomestones/experience/gil.

If it is the case that the trinity has been intentionally removed, then why put role restrictions on roulettes in the first place? I remember playing SWTOR and seeing how the roles didn't matter in their's and you could switch role in the dungeon itself. Why not just let us switch jobs in-duty at this point?

Effect on High-End Content
But doing away with the trinity there has an effect on high-end content as well, where the majority of the time I can survive on my own even if the healer ignores me. I just have to juggle my excessive tank heals right and that's it. You might think Abyssos was awful for healers but Warrior had an abundance of things to tackle those DoT-busters. There was a mechanic where if someone messed up dog1 you got a giant DoT and as a Warrior I could survive it by rotating my excessive heals. At first, healers would try to help me survive it, but it was quite clear I could do this on my own, despite the large amount of heals or shields needed to achieve it.

I was also regularly planning to use Shake It Off, not just for its mitigation, but for its ability to do what healers are meant to do: regen the party for the next mechanic and shield them for it.

I can't complain as a tank. That's great for me. But is it great for the trinity?

[Milkbeard]

I don't know why you went back to UCOB but ignored the entire point about TOP. There is a problem with the balance of old ultimates in general.


You haven't given a justification for this. If we're talking about the "whole game", majority of the game doesn't need healers (or other roles) per your own admission.



I'll repeat what I said in the previous response. The TOP clear tells us that tanks and DPS have enough tools to deal with healing and mitigations themselves. That is a problem with the trinity. Everyone plays by the games rule's, no matter how skilled. If this game actually had a real trinity, it would be an impossible task in the hardest fight of the game.

What is your actual point? Is it that because trick runs can happen, traditional groups aren't the standard in the hardest content? Because that isn't true. Healers are viable in ultimates. Fact

Just make content harder and all roles become viable. Till then, in easy content, anything can be substituted, not just healers.

Only amazing bastards are clearing ultimates and savage without healers or without tanks, or with solo healers or with solo tanks. Step off, its kool and happens in other MMOs. The trinity is fine as long as there are challenges

[Boblawblah]

If it is the case that the trinity has been intentionally removed, then why put role restrictions on roulettes in the first place? I remember playing SWTOR and seeing how the roles didn't matter in their's and you could switch role in the dungeon itself. Why not just let us switch jobs in-duty at this point?

I'm not sure if you're being serious with this part but...

Because for most players, they NEED a proper healer and tank. DPS are simply there to allow the run to go faster, as it is with most mmos and casual content. Can you imagine having the tank suddenly decide "Eh, I'm not feeling this, going to play DPS now" and turn off their tank stance? You ever played ESO with 'fake' tanks/healers? That's what happens, and it's awful, and it would be 10 times worse in FFXIV.

Go ahead and have the healer decide they're not going to heal and see what happens in 90% of roulettes. Just look at the tales from duty finder, and all the 'healer died, tank blamed them, etc' that goes on.

I get the feeling a lot of more serious players really don't understand just how bad most players are. We're BAD, if you don't heal me when I'm tanking? Yea, I'm not soloing bosses, I'm just going to die.

Oh, and people saying that making the game harder will make things more fun? Time and time again that's been proven outright incorrect. Most casual players won't "step up", they'll just quit.