Enrage timer raid design is causing all the problems

[Endariel]

Enrage timers are necessary. How else do you motivate DPS players to improve? Healers receive direct feedback when they suck at their job - everyone dies. Tanks receive direct feedback when they suck at their job - they die to a buster or the boss isn't positioned right for a mechanic. DPS players can afk through a fight and only realise something is wrong when they hit enrage. WOW style raids would just result in certain jobs being "meta" for certain raids which is an even worse problem. I don't get why you want raids to be based around a single gimmick like dual boss fights, adds, gaols etc. You can just have these things as mechanics/phases instead of making the whole fight based around it. And we do have raids with such gimmicks in phases and it works fine. And even if you had fights based around a single gimmick you would still need an enrage. If they made a fight full of adds you'd have to make the adds cast an enrage eventually, or else what's the point? Have two bosses in a fight? One of them has to cast an enrage after the other dies, otherwise you'd just kill them individually. And regardless of how many gimmicks they come up with, people are still going to lean towards the jobs that do the most dps regardless of what the encounter asks of them. The only way you can eliminate this problem is if bosses were like the simon says boss in bardam's mettle where you couldn't even attack.

This game has been around for 6+ years. It's too late to break the DPS, blue DPS, green DPS meta. That's just how the game is and if you dislike the meta you are free to play another MMO that caters to your vision of how each role should play. SE has been rightfully doubling down on this idea by removing tank stance and focusing on DPS rotations for tanks. If all raids had enrages as lenient as UCOB Nael or Bahamut where you could have like 5 deaths and still meet the DPS check without LB there would be no reason to put in any effort.

Except, most of the time if you hit the enrage, it's because tanks and healers not doing enough DPS.
You know their "secondary" concern

[GutsyBoozetank]

Except, most of the time if you hit the enrage, it's because tanks and healers not doing enough DPS.
You know their "secondary" concern

Back in my days of raiding it was normal to be fighting the first boss over and over until you had the gear instead of expecting all 4 fights to be cleared in the first week in 450 gear.

[Suniva]

Back in my days of raiding it was normal to be fighting the first boss over and over until you had the gear instead of expecting all 4 fights to be cleared in the first week in 450 gear.

True. But we were also not NEARLY as popular back then as we are now. The player base was far more casual back in the day, and by all accounts, we still have a very large casual player base. I only started doing savage this tier, so I am frankly not all too familiar with it, but if all that is ever required to get past the content is just not dying to mechanics and dps checks, with no other elements added to the fights, I can see that getting pretty boring over the years.

[BarretOblivion]

Except, most of the time if you hit the enrage, it's because tanks and healers not doing enough DPS.
You know their "secondary" concern

Healers... sure secondary concern.
Tanks... DPS is basically an equal concern to us not dying and positioning. Once you learn how hard a tankbuster hits and the timings of them Tanks should start pushing thier numbers because outside of cooldowns everything we do is DPS. DPSing is part of tanks simple as that.

With regards to DPS currently struggling as a job, that is a job issue that needs to be addressed. RDM and NIN are the two jobs right now that are undertuned. In SB I remember it being a variety of different jobs being undertuned, DRG, SMN, MCH were the main culprits that needed time to get their much needed buffs followed by other jobs getting their own buffs. We are at the start of a raid tier, and a new expansion. We have hit the wall where some jobs are indeed undertuned and they need buffs, thats fine it happens. It isn't a problem with raid design, its a problem with undertuned jobs.

When it comes to encounters however, I would argue there are fights that make some jobs more difficult to play than others just because of how they are designed. In E1 and E2 I would argue so far PLD seems to be king in those fights simply because there is quite a bit of time you have to move away from the boss as well as in E1 where you can hit multiple targets to pad your numbers while WAR and GNB feel clunky in E2 from what I have seen. The same can be said for other encounters of what they ask of you, but as some people have stated E2 DPS check feels rather tight and I have to agree... but its not necessarily for the same reasons as others have pointed out.

E2 has a brutal and I mean BRUUUTAL DPS down portion of the fight, especially going into the final push of Quietas where you are getting bombareded with those darn heads. The last push is difficult to keep as many players not only alive but with no DMG downs which is a giant roadblock that teams just have to get over. Everywhere else in the fight feels managable to where people shouldn't be dying or getting DMG downs going into Quietas.

Quietas is going to be where your DPS dies, this is why the DPS check is so strict because its not 1 person usually getting DMG down its 3-4 people sometimes more getting the DMG downs. Remeber these DMG downs are half of your damage output so when multiple people get hit... your raid damage is going to plummet.