Quote Originally Posted by fusional View Post
it's not as simple as "being the best tank"- it's about being the best tank in certain different circumstances. paladin and warrior achieved this by the end of 1.0. paladin was the superior tank for bosses, heavy hitters, and long fights with high healing requirements. it was also the superior tank for groups with really great dps, as paladin found it faster and easier to reach the enmity ceiling. warrior was the superior tank for trash, light hitters, and short fights with low healing requirements. it was also the superior tank for groups with average dps, as not only would they likely not rip hate from damage- but their lower dps meant getting a dps boost from the tank position was very helpful.

it's not as simple as "being the best DPS"- it's about being the best DPS in certain different circumstances. and dps jobs achieved this by the end of 1.0 with one exception. BLM was incredibly strong (not always the best, but often at or near the top) in pretty much every situation. otherwise, monk was superior single target damage on short fights- especially with mobs weak to magic/fire. dragoon was the superior aoe dps, and superior single target dps on longer fights (due to the nature of power surge). warrior, in being able to tank, was never really designed to compete with blm/drg/mnk for highest dps- but its aoe was fast and bursty, making it ideal in the *shortest* fights with multiple mobs.

and this brings us to healers. it's not as simple as all being the best healer. that's not how design should work, or people will just run the numbers and always stack the one class which tops the charts. therefore introducing another healer would be fine so long as the two jobs are superior in different fights/contexts and don't handle exactly the same.

as long as there are different strengths and weaknesses to each job/class, and each job/class has content in which it can shine- balancing isn't an issue and the classes will not only not be neglected, but the community benefits from greater diversity, giving the developers more freedom to design content with this diversity in mind, which benefits the community even more.
Ah, cripes. Now Skye's gotten people on the same side of the fence to start arguing with each other.

Dzian was not arguing that there needs to be one best of anything, s/he was trying to illustrate that it's a problem if you try to say there needs to be one best of anything without going into those details about circumstance. So, that list was a counter-argument.

Skye's argument, as I read it, was that WHMs should always be the best healer because they are the only healer. It's circular reasoning, or at least was until some ten thousand words later Skye finally said "until a new healing job is introduced".