Diversifying Tanks

[waterboytkd]

This is, of course, just a consequence of the 2/4/2 setup in 8-man content. Should that vary, we'd have a whole different ballpark to balance around.

I see comments like this and it makes me think: would this game be more interesting if dps wasn't a role? Just Tanks and Healers? Maybe you could have a "Support" role, which can have some buffs/debuffs? Or is that just silly?

[Yrantis]

I see comments like this and it makes me think: would this game be more interesting if dps wasn't a role? Just Tanks and Healers? Maybe you could have a "Support" role, which can have some buffs/debuffs? Or is that just silly?

You touch on a funny point about FFXIV: everybody is actually a DPS in disguise, and that's because of the consistency of the fights in this game. Extra mitigation does absolutely nothing for you in a game with 100% predictable damage, and healing someone at full health does nothing, so what do you do the other 80% of the fight when the boss isn't specifically murdering someone? You DPS. They took away tank aggro so they could focus more on DPS, and while they did increase the amount of healing required this tier, it's still entirely predictable damage, meaning once you learn to play around it...you go back to DPSing when you don't need to heal. We are in fact, all DPS classes, but tanks add defensive CDs and position the boss as additional duties, while healers respond to specific, predictable damage outputs (once the fight is learned optimally of course, people take damage they shouldn't all the time when learning).

[Shurrikhan]

I see comments like this and it makes me think: would this game be more interesting if dps wasn't a role? Just Tanks and Healers? Maybe you could have a "Support" role, which can have some buffs/debuffs? Or is that just silly?

To me, it begs less the question of "What if there were no DPS" than "What if DPS could actually do more than just stand in the right places while gradually depleting the boss's HP?" That in turn begs the question, "What if there was more to the game than just standing in the right places, hitting buttons when their cues come up, and depleting the boss's HP?"

Similarly, I've always been under the impression that a great many controversies could have been spared and opportunities taken if the Healer role had just been named Support to begin with (with still many degrees of supportiveness varying across all roles atop that).