It's past time, Yoshi-P...

[Tridus]

As someone who loves, loves, loves DPSing as a healer, I do strongly agree with the OP. SE need to stop catering to the snowflakes and actually give us harder content to heal and tank through.

Tanks should have to constantly control enmity, rather than making it a party obligation, and damage needs to be tuned up in regular intervals to keep healers healing. There's nothing wrong with tanks/healers adding DPS, but their difficulty should come first and foremost in their primary role. I don't find it satisying DPSing 90% of the fight and throwing out an Indom whenever it's needed. That's basically the end-game for most SCHs right now, and we still end up with 50% overall healing alongside our cohealers. If people couldn't handle the stress of healing or tanking being made a little more difficult, then they shouldn't play that role. It really should be that simple!

Yup. Remember back when MP management was a thing? Good times. Things have gotten simpler over time, and now we're in a situation where spells like Cure don't really have a purpose because there's no reason to use it over Cure 2 except MP efficiency... which doesn't matter since it's so easy to never run out of MP (unless you're casting Raise a lot).

On the healer end, the biggest problem is that healing is too strong relative to HP pools. You can burst a party from 1HP to full in a matter of seconds, at which point if they're not getting blasted back down immediately, you're done. A rebalance on this end would need an across the board HPS nerf, but they've been going the opposite direction all of Stormblood.

On the flipside, if they don't want to make a change, give tanks and healers more intricate DPS rotations. Not quite on the level of DPS, but at least more than DoTs + nuke spam. It's dull.

A million times this. I've got lots of healing buttons that do interesting things. I spend the majority of my time hitting Stone, which is the most boring DPS skill in the game (you can't even call it a rotation). If they want us to spend 70% of our time DPSing, devote some more effort to make that more interesting to do.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Yup. Remember back when MP management was a thing? Good times. Things have gotten simpler over time, and now we're in a situation where spells like Cure don't really have a purpose because there's no reason to use it over Cure 2 except MP efficiency... which doesn't matter since it's so easy to never run out of MP (unless you're casting Raise a lot).

On the healer end, the biggest problem is that healing is too strong relative to HP pools. You can burst a party from 1HP to full in a matter of seconds, at which point if they're not getting blasted back down immediately, you're done. A rebalance on this end would need an across the board HPS nerf, but they've been going the opposite direction all of Stormblood.

Blizzard attempted to address the exact same problem. They nerfed healing spells and mana pools so the party had to work with the healer to get through the content. Sadly, it was a disaster because tanks and damage dealers refused to change their ways leading to numerous wipes and kicking of healers. This in turn led to the Great Healer Drought.™

Now, with that said, I think there is something to the idea. Surely, wouldn't the game be improved by reining in the power of our heals? This gathering of all the mobs and running to the boss is an abomination. I'd love for crowd control to be a thing in our dungeons. In other words, instead of everyone being focused on dealing the most damage, how about being focused on our roles and teamwork?

[Tridus]

Blizzard attempted to address the exact same problem. They nerfed healing spells and mana pools so the party had to work with the healer to get through the content. Sadly, it was a disaster because tanks and damage dealers refused to change their ways leading to numerous wipes and kicking of healers. This in turn led to the Great Healer Drought.™

Yep. I was there for it, and I thought it was great. It didn't work out so well on the lack of healers department, but if healing doesn't have resource management, then why do we have more than two heals (big heal and big aoe heal)?

That said, it was also that way back in vanilla WoW, and it wasn't so bad there in terms of healer numbers. I remember people used to keep multiple ranks of a given heal on their bars so they could minimize the MP usage for the amount of HP needing to be healed. We were of course the only role that would ever do that, but we were the ones with the most resource issues and the only one where "more" isn't necessarily "better" due to overheal. Then we got collectively lazy when it got progressively easier in WotLK (where "spam Circle of healing the entire run" was sufficient for an awful lot of content), and having to do it the hard way again was a big adjustment that some people just didn't want to make.

I mean, stuff like freecure and ehanced benefic II suggest pretty strongly that SE thinks we should be using Cure and Benefic. For some reason they then gave us a system where there's no particular reason to do that most of the time at endgame. Either they didn't intend for what we got and it's just too late to fix it for Stormblood, or the left hand and the right hand need to have a conversation.

Now, with that said, I think there is something to the idea. Surely, wouldn't the game be improved by reining in the power of our heals? This gathering of all the mobs and running to the boss is an abomination. I'd love for crowd control to be a thing in our dungeons. In other words, instead of everyone being focused on dealing the most damage, how about being focused on our roles and teamwork?

It should be, yeah. At one point in MMOs, being able to lock down, kite, snare, stun, CC and all that were valuable skills. Yanking stuff off and keeping it busy was a big deal. Pulling extra stuff was bad. Saw this amazing Hunter freeze trap snare one enemy in a pack, kite another, and pet tank a third after the tank died, and it was AWESOME when we turned what should have been a wipe into a win. There isn't a lot of room to do that these days, because even if I do use my CC, so few other players recognize what's happening that they'll probably just AoE and break it immediately.

A lot of gameplay has been cast aside in favor of "round up everything and AoE it", and IMO the genre is lesser for it. We may be in the minority, I don't know.

[Awha]

Not much if a raider, but would it hurt the game if SE just gave people an option? Provide players with content where auto attacks do say 1/2 the tanks HP, were encounters have more unavoidable raid wide damage. If some people want to be more active healers or tanks give them that content. I do not see why they cannot if they are able to make a fight that prob less the 1% of the player base will clear, why not provide other forms of content a smaller group of the player base will enjoy.

[Mimilu]

Not much if a raider, but would it hurt the game if SE just gave people an option? Provide players with content where auto attacks do say 1/2 the tanks HP, were encounters have more unavoidable raid wide damage.

I have a question: What exactly is a "more active tank"?
Tanks have a set amount of defensive cooldowns and just turning a stance on and leaving it on doesn't seem very active...
Plus, I don't think the 20% reduction to damage tanks get from tank-stance is going to be that effective if the user's HP is going to continuously be blasted past 50% like you want it to be.
And do you honestly think casual players would want to play as a healer that has to continuously heal a tank who keeps getting blasted?

[Awha]

I have a question: What exactly is a "more active tank"?
Tanks have a set amount of defensive cooldowns and just turning a stance on and leaving it on doesn't seem very active...
Plus, I don't think the 20% reduction to damage tanks get from tank-stance is going to be that effective if the user's HP is going to continuously be blasted past 50% like you want it to be.
And do you honestly think casual players would want to play as a healer that has to continuously heal a tank who keeps getting blasted?

Now where did I mention this is what 'I' want, just going based off what other people have mentioned in the countless threads. I am sure SE is smart enough to figure out some form of content that pleases those players that enjoy only healing or sitting in tank stance and have this playstyle be considered viable for the content that they are in. Also where did I mention causal players, they already have their content were you can pretty much do the bare min and clear the content. All I said was would it hurt so much if SE gave people an form of content that caters to their desired play style? Since they were willing to make an encounter that prob only 1% of the community will clear, I am sure they could make content that those that want live out their tank and healer fantasy without running the risk of being ridiculed.

Now while this type of playstyle is not my cup of tea, I am sure SE can work with the community that does enjoy this type of play style to create some content that fits their desires. I do not have an answer to your question since that is not what I want, but as a player I do think it would be cool if other playstyles were supported by SE and had content to reflect it.

[Mimilu]

Snap

And when did I ever say you wanted it? I was just asking you questions about the suggestion you were making.
The issue with adding a new content-type that focuses less on DPS and more on Healing and Defensive-Tanking is that they would have to balance abilities around it, causal play, and raiding. SE already has an issue balancing around just casual and raiding.

[Awha]

And when did I ever say you wanted it? I was just asking you questions about the suggestion you were making.
The issue with adding a new content-type that focuses less on DPS and more on Healing and Defensive-Tanking is that they would have to balance abilities around it, causal play, and raiding. SE already has an issue balancing around just casual and raiding.

Pretty sure new raid encounter is balanced around top end players only. So certainly SE is willing to make content for a small sub set of players that is balanced around them. Not everything in a game has to be cleared by every subset of players. Also sorry figured since you quoted me I figured you were asking me what a more active tank is, did not know it was a general question.

I am sure SE has developers on staff that would love to make content that places a larger burden on tank and healers, I say let them go ham. Not all content has to be made with every player in mind, that mindset is what causes issues within a community. If SE provided enough variety in content that focused on a wider range of play styles I am willing to bet overall we will have a happier community.

I don't see that working well though. If players can't perform their role's main responsibilities now to the point they can focus on dpsing, then I doubt they'll be able to clear content with a much higher focus on their role's main responsibilities.

Said content will not be meant for those type of players. They already have their own content that can be cleared by putting for the barely any effort. This content will be designed around players that want tank stance to hold more value or not be bashed for sitting in tank stance, and for encounters that allow players to focus solely on healing without being ridiculed. It is not a perfect idea, but I think this type of content will create a preferred play style that allows for content that matches it. Instead of it being forced on all players.

[HoodRat]

Now while this type of playstyle is not my cup of tea, I am sure SE can work with the community that does enjoy this type of play style to create some content that fits their desires.

I don't see that working well though. If players can't perform their role's main responsibilities now to the point they can focus on dpsing, then I doubt they'll be able to clear content with a much higher focus on their role's main responsibilities.

Rabanastre is a fantastic demonstration of what happens when average casual players let their standard of play rot away due to the daily content simply not requiring anything more. And then of course, once they hit content that actually punishes them for all those mistakes they've previously been getting away with, the results are pretty much akin to a train wreck.

I thought Zurvan Ex did a fine job of this, it even showed just how toxic casual players can be.

[Ssmiley_Bjakkzz]

Hellluuuuuu