Why is the game going down every expasion?

[TheDustyOne]

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In regards to the job identity criticisms, it largely has to do with attitudes like these:

There was nothing good about the 20 Gauge cost (to Onslaught).

YOU ARE A HEALER. Your job, by definition, *should* be *healing*.

Yes, exactly, I want to be a "HEALER", not a DPS or I would have picked it.

Effectively this ends up sounding like:

Different jobs within a role aren't allowed to do things in a way that's different from the other jobs in that role, because that might mean it has certain downsides, upsides, and quirks that set it apart. Roles are only ever meant to be something set in stone and never have deviations in how they function.

When Square listens to this, we get things like the ShB gutting to healers where they lost their DPS buttons. After all, they're *healers* and should be *healing*. It also leads to Warrior losing Onslaughts gauge interactions because it wasn't something you mindlessly pressed on cooldown like the other tanks.

When I play WHM, I'm not just player a healer; I'm playing a job that has mastery over the natural elements, and at higher levels, attunes to light aspected spells. Why does my gameplay then only consist of casting Glare and occasional lilies? Why not have a suite of earth, water, and wind spells that charge up light themed spells to show that mastery of elements? SCH wasn't just a healer that would throw big shields on teammates, but a master of diseases and tactics, able to both cure and cause them, and spread them with Bane. A lot of these motifs and mechanics are lost when you decide that they should only have minimal actions outside of healing, and there's only so many ways to fill an HP bar in interesting ways.

Tanks have 2 problems; extremely homogenous, and practically invincible. The Onslaught example is just one, but most of the tank kits have 1-to-1 analogues that have so little deviation and flavour that you can learn one tank and you've effectively learned all of them outside of the DPS rotation. The sheer amount of raw defence, healing power, and lack of threatening damage from enemies means that it's hard for tanks to actually achieve a fail state outside of high end content.