Quote Originally Posted by Acidblood View Post
Given the current state of the combat system, where the party effectively has infinite resources, and DPS loss (including death) is the only real penalty that mechanics can apply, I would agree. The downside is of course that the system inherently lacks depth*, and what little it may have will probably, over time, be removed in the name of 'balance' (see: this forum and the progression of combat in FFXIV so far).
Again, though, hard enrages do not enforce certain metas. Bad balancing does. While it is true that removing hard enrages outright would likely give us a different meta (e.g. defensive and curative utilities above all) when damage is not equally enforced for dps check mechanics specifically, that wouldn't really be any more varied, just dependent upon different imbalances to form said meta -- which would likely only swap one favored set of 4 with a new favored 4. When the jobs are properly balanced, the "meta" is only a vague notion or just a matter of which CDs are most easily aligned in a particular fight.

Since you mention infinite resources, I have to ask -- What additional depth is specifically gained by having finite healing resources? Is depth increased by no longer being capable of so many Raises? Is depth increased by no longer being able to AoE heal except in the most sparing of ways? I'd imagine those questions are hardly answerable on principle alone; it depends upon exactly what gameplay decisions are brought into what balance of each other, thus creating more or fewer options in a given scenario. Such is contextual. And almost none of it would be unique to making resources more finite.

For instance, there's little that finite resources could do to inflate risk that, say, Supplication (max HP down based on damage taken) could not. It's just that non-healers can no longer see the increased risk themselves (i.e. directly or intuitively) and other's mistakes now more directly affect their survival.

It's not that a hard enrage is removing available mechanical depth. It, again, is just a way to make individual mechanics not quite so overbearing while still keeping the fight at the same combined difficulty. We can still make mechanics even more cumulative in other ways. We already see this with vulnerability stacks. We see it with raid damage mechanics like Doomtrain's. We see it with Flare placement. We could easily see it with AoE overlaps where 3 would be fatal without shields, 4 fatal regardless, 2 an uptime increase, and 1 healing/vuln stacks spared.

T8 had us control the pace of long and short term risk in tandem against additional scripted raid damage. T7 had large ranges in safety based on player tactics. T6 had greatly divergent risk-reward strats, with short-term safety (worms/brambles) against long-term safety (the hard enrage). T1, albeit a soft enrage if you prefer that terminology, set risk of add management and resources wasted against boss damage stacks and healing.

There are plethora more opportunities to create interesting mechanics with a larger emphasis on survival. It's just about finding the right balance between stopping people at one mechanic until they've beaten their heads against it enough and giving them a little more leniency in individual mechanics in favor of the whole. Hard enrage is simply the easiest way to provide that flex, not that we don't have plenty of other examples (T1, T2, T6, and T8 most noticeably) of other means of bringing both short- and long-term risk.

Removing such varied elements of fight design wasn't done in consequence of 'stagnant metas that undervalue indirect contribution to clears' designs. Rather, it's what led directly to that state so many take issue with.