Quote Originally Posted by Acidblood View Post
True, but seeking to eliminate the meta is a fool’s errand; there will always be one, and the ill-informed will always assert its ‘truth’ (I’m not a bad player, class X just ‘sucks’). Which is not to say that reasonable balance should not be strived for, I would just prefer that balance to be less comparable than a single number.
Oh, same. Absolutely. I hate that "Which job is best?" for so many people will boil down purely to that job's fflogs page for a given fight. I miss the little advantages of frequent extra stuns or bonus healing or added range or restoration or free cleanse, and wish they had gone further in that direction by more frequently including mechanics which could make use of these things, rather than taking them out back and putting these utilities 'out of their misery' (especially given that these utilities were only disempowered by the dev's specifically making most mobs immune to them).

I don't mind that one comp is meta for one strategy for dealing with a fight. I just mind when there's only one strategy and therefore one meta. And I especially mind when that meta is propped up only by differences rDPS. (And, no, I don't believe we'd still see metas enforced by rDPS differences if jobs performed within a couple % of each other, rather than up to some 15%+ difference between 'god' jobs and 'tier 2' jobs)

With a hard enrage you have to finish a fight in X minutes, no ifs, buts, or maybes; and as I’ve said this reduces survival to a binary… unless of course the timer is generous, which would then negate the benefits you have outlined.
Again, it does the exact opposite of that.

Fight design without hard enrage:
Mechanic 1: Must perform at 75% or higher.
Mechanic 2: Must perform at 70% or higher.
Mechanic 3: Must perform at 80% or higher.
Total: Irrelevant. You already either failed at Mechanic 1, 2, or 3 individually, and each had no further consequence on the rest of the fight.

Fight design with hard enrage:
Mechanic 1: Must perform at 55% or higher.
Mechanic 2: Must perform at 50% or higher.
Mechanic 3: Must perform at 70% or higher.
Total: Must perform at a combined 225% or higher. The combined difficulty is still the same as without enrages, but the mechanics are no longer binary. The excess performance on one can be applied towards another after its minimum performance.

Hard enrages are one of many ways to make individual mechanics non-binary. Using none of those ways, as per any modern fight if denied its hard enrage, would make each mechanic binary and grant absolutely no reward for performing a mechanic better on one run than another or better than another group so long as no wipe occurred in either case.

Finite resource systems are another way to make, effectively, a hard enrage, but it involves exactly the same risk-reward structure as what we have now except denies players ready access to information. I can tell by the duty clock and the boss's %HP if I'm likely to make it or not, but there are just too many variables between healer MP and success to be sure of anything in regards to the imminent wipe provided by finite resources, muddies player-by-player risk reward, as one person taking excess damage will just as likely lead to someone else's (or everyone's) death, and generally just makes for a more convoluted experience despite having the same pressures and priority on dps. (Unless, again, you want healers not to deal damage at all and to retune bosses around that change, because whether you like it or not, the way we clear content now absolutely, undeniably, takes healer damage into account.)