Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
EverQuest is not the first, and that has more to do with spell schools, ability balance, and, above all, little patience for people to learn how to juggle their spells due to just how punishing a wipe would be.

But let me guess, they also gave him shit over using Hammer of Wrath/Striking/etc. on undead and before one's party has access yet to enchanted weapons, or Holy Might/Aweflash/etc when the stun could prevent more damage than Healing/Sincere Remedy/etc., respectively, could heal? Told him he should never use Blessing of Piety or the like because it costs too much mana that should be reserved for spamming , even when he had plenty?

...They were being selfishly reductive, likely to the disbenefit of the run, on the off-chance their Cleric hadn't yet learned to juggle their skills appropriately. But, that's what happens when literally everything is slow af -- as any actual failure, above all else, wastes even more inordinate amounts of time. That, however, has little bearing on design since.

What you're describing has at least as much to do, in core RPG terms, with the tendency to Rest after every fight on the off-chance you might need your fifth Minor Healing charge as it does actual intended design on classes capable of healing. It's a matter of (excessive) caution, over taking the time and chances to become, ultimately, more efficient. Cleric was a flex support. Reducing it to a healer hardly seems "intended" if it thereby wastes 3/4s of the kit.
EQ had a lot more set in stone roles. When we were raiding, clerics had a channel where they coordinated their chain heals. Enchanters like me had a channel where we coordinated our mezzes. I kept the haste and the mana regen going otherwise because dropping my pitiful DoT or doing my DD on anything really was a waste of mana because the devs didn't design us with high damage in mind. Same with my cleric friend. He did that because he was a dwarf and wanted to behave like a Tolkien dwarf, not because the design made it more than slapping the mob. The actual direct damage classes handled whittling everything down. I quit after Depths, so maybe things changed up a bit after that point.

This was also the case in early WoW and early EQII though since everyone was supposed to be able to solo the solo content it wasn't as rigid until you got into more grouping content. And in WoW it could depend on your build. But to claim this the idea of set roles was never the norm is not true. When a true support role was still a thing, it was very much heavily baked into game design.