#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[AmiableApkallu]

Why exactly encounters became the "hard part" while jobs didn't, I can only assume it's because they didn't want anybody's favorite job to feel like it couldn't participate in certain content, so every job had to be made viable even if that resulted in homogenization or over-simplification. "No jobstone left behind" and such.

Hot take: Encounters became the "hard part" in a way that ignores the existence of roles and jobs. Spread. Stack. In. Out. Go left. Go right. Do the hokey pokey. None of that cares whether you're a tank, healer, melee DPS, or ranged DPS. Every job becomes viable when all that an encounter requires is that whatever warm bodies exist not stand in the bad.

Add in a DPS check, and maybe we start to care that everyone can maintain uptime. Add in a tank buster with a Damage Up debuff, and maybe we start to care that there's a second tank. Add in a "hard hitting" raid wide, and maybe we start to care that there's a healer around somewhere.

Rather than design encounters so that the jobs in the roles and sub-roles each have their part to play -- which would be a meaningful form of participation -- it would seem that SE has decided to see how far they can go with turning jobs into generic warm bodies.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Hot take: Encounters became the "hard part" in a way that ignores the existence of roles and jobs. Spread. Stack. In. Out. Go left. Go right. Do the hokey pokey. None of that cares whether you're a tank, healer, melee DPS, or ranged DPS. Every job becomes viable when all that an encounter requires is that whatever warm bodies exist not stand in the bad.

Add in a DPS check, and maybe we start to care that everyone can maintain uptime. Add in a tank buster with a Damage Up debuff, and maybe we start to care that there's a second tank. Add in a "hard hitting" raid wide, and maybe we start to care that there's a healer around somewhere.

Rather than design encounters so that the jobs in the roles and sub-roles each have their part to play -- which would be a meaningful form of participation -- it would seem that SE has decided to see how far they can go with turning jobs into generic warm bodies.

That's it. You hit the nail on the head.

[Shurrikhan]

Hot take: Encounters became the "hard part" in a way that ignores the existence of roles and jobs. Spread. Stack. In. Out. Go left. Go right. Do the hokey pokey. None of that cares whether you're a tank, healer, melee DPS, or ranged DPS. Every job becomes viable when all that an encounter requires is that whatever warm bodies exist not stand in the bad.

Add in a DPS check, and maybe we start to care that everyone can maintain uptime. Add in a tank buster with a Damage Up debuff, and maybe we start to care that there's a second tank. Add in a "hard hitting" raid wide, and maybe we start to care that there's a healer around somewhere.

Rather than design encounters so that the jobs in the roles and sub-roles each have their part to play -- which would be a meaningful form of participation -- it would seem that SE has decided to see how far they can go with turning jobs into generic warm bodies.

And the sad thing is that you can absolutely have healing, tanking, and damage-dealing matter in less immediately obvious / all-or-nothing ways in encounters, even just through the combination of positional tendencies and differing outputs, if only you had some undermechanics to allow for interception and more granular short-term checks (such as through something dealing as much damage as it has health remaining, debuffs ignored so long as they don't drop you below X% HP, DoTs that tick until raised above X% HP, etc).