The trinity, party responsibility, and how to try and improve the game from within

[Fevelle]

Perhaps there is a language barrier, and I'm sorry for using a word that may not be as known to people with ESL.

A norm is not an enforced rule, but is merely a typical set of behaviour adopted by the public.

From Merriam Webster:
Simple Definition of norm
norms : standards of proper or acceptable behavior
the norm : an average level of development or achievement
the norm : something (such as a behavior or way of doing something) that is usual or expected

Or here is a more detailed definition:
a principle of right action binding upon the members of a group and serving to guide, control, or regulate proper and acceptable behavior
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/norm

From the link you posted:

"Norm (n.) - an authoritative standard."

So yes, maybe it was not a wise choice to use 'norm' to refer to Healer DPS.

[Kaurie]

From the link you posted:

"Norm (n.) - an authoritative standard."

So yes, maybe it was not a wise choice to use 'norm' to refer to Healer DPS.

Indeed, 1 out of the many (3 simple, 1, 2, 3a,3b,3c detailed) definitions included the word 'authoritative' to suggest that a norm can, but is not required, to have an authoritative backing.

[Istede]

I am social and friendly but many do not like my playstyle. I am a 100% healer, I do not dps.

I am just curious what you do as a healer that only heals, since there's not one instance in the game where you don't have downtime. Do you just stand around doing nothing? Do you spam heals even when everyone never dips below 95% health? Is that really fun for you?

I am a scholar main and if I didn't have the ability to DPS I wouldn't play the job at all. I've not done A4S yet, nor did I do any real Coil progression (2.55 baby), but I have yet to do a single fight in this game that really taxes my limits as a healer. Maybe a phase here or there where I need to really focus on what I am doing, but an entire fight or dungeon? As far as I know, no such thing exists.

The way I see it, my job isn't ONLY to heal, it's to make the run as fast as possible for everyone. You should be considerate of other peoples' time, and that applies to all roles.

[Fevelle]

...

Unless you have every single instance on farm, yes, there's a lot of places where you don't have downtime due to people screwing up and you having to bring them up. Even in Sastasha it's possible to need to heal every GCD, on triple pulls, for example.

[KaitlanKela]

Unless you have every single instance on farm, yes, there's a lot of places where you don't have downtime due to people screwing up and you having to bring them up. Even in Sastasha it's possible to need to heal every GCD, on triple pulls, for example.

But didn't you just prove the point? If you have to triple-pull to get the healer to heal, then that should clue you in to the fact that on a normal-size pull, there's plenty of downtime.

I actually think incentivizing DPS to not just let the healers and tanks pick up the slack is a great idea. That way, everyone is doing as much as they can to clear the instance, instead of just saying "ok, the other jobs will cover it, whatever." Have the game engine reward bonus tomes to players who exceed a pre-determined DPS threshold for the instance (which would be different for each job). Don't even need to publicize the numbers or even who got the bonus within the party. Do it all in the background and give a message to just the player after the instance has ended.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

So, a healer doing damage should be a red alarm sign for the DPS classes.

maybe the devs should build in a tome reward penalty for DPS classes if the healer did more damage than they.

10X this. Even more so, make the penalty apply doubly and to the entire party, not just DD's. -25% tome rewards for everyone if tank or healer outdpses the DPS, -50% if both are true. Otherwise, the system would be too easy to abuse.

[Silica-chan]

10X this. Even more so, make the penalty apply doubly and to the entire party, not just DD's. -25% tome rewards for everyone if tank or healer outdpses the DPS, -50% if both are true. Otherwise, the system would be too easy to abuse.

Or you could just reward people for doing more than they are required to complete something.

[Felis]

Or you could just reward people for doing more than they are required to complete something.

If DPS do their jobs right (do more dmg than a healer or tank), they will get rewarded with 100% tomes

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

I am a scholar main

There's your problem. You aren't actually playing a healer, you're playing a DPS job. Even during progression scholar's barely heal directly, they mostly just spam damage skills because their fairy is more than enough to help the real healer.

[Kaurie]

I think we are going back in to the healer DPS debate, which is not the topic at hand to which we're responding. The OP even linked 5 relevant threads that we could contribute to if we really wanted to open that can of worms again.

Let's go back to the main topic, the OP listed the following as the goal of their post.

I'll try to give my point of view on the trinity and what it has become in FFxiv
I'll talk a bit about the threads that we see poping here and there (dps, healers, and whatnot)
I'll give some of my ideas on what we, the community, could do to improve ourselves, and what the devs can do to help us in that process

Tacking on to this, we want to address the blured lines of heals/tanks entering damage territory and resulting in DPS being less important than before - while also not making it so that tanks and healers are bored by limiting their scope.

I mentioned it already, but I think the best way to tackle this is to have specializations. Specs would allow for
DPS to be more tanky in open world and more glass cannon in dungeon content, while more middle ground in progression (mixing survivability and damage dealt)
healers being heavily damage focused in open world and healing focused in group content with the option to be more middle ground if you prefer to heal and contribute DPS
Tanks to be less tanky and more damage focused in open world and.. you get the idea.

We already have this to some extent with say,
WAR = DPS, DRK = Middle, PLD = Mitigation
WHM = Heals/DPS, SCH = DPS focused, AST = Heals/Support focused

I think the problem comes in to scaling/tuning. A WAR can do nearly the same DPS as a damage dealer if they wear all STR and go deliverance. PLD's mitigation was hindered with the design to make progression all focused on magic damage. Content was tuned too easy for healers to stand around healing, encouraging a higher DPS usage.

If we do not add specs, and simply use the jobs as our specs, I propose the following changes:
1. Have more shared gear, and make it easier to swap between your DPS tank (WAR) and mitigation tank (PLD) depending on your fight
2. Use Kosmos idea, but maybe instead of changing how jobs work in instanced content, provide solo buffs. If you are a PLD in open world, and not in a party, you have a 50% increase to damage dealt bonus.
3. Reduce Tank damage significantly
4. Reduce healing damage moderately
5. Increase damage dealers damage moderately
6. Tune content to require more healing
7. Adjust dungeon content to not favour mass pulls, but rather teamwork and coordination