Leveling/playing DPS is actively punished

[Payadopa]

You get EXP stupidly fast in this game. What are you on about? The armory, FC, food and earring buff along with DR and so on is more than enough. And if you don't like the queues do a trust.

[Colt47]

Naw, it's simply the fact that some folks cannot come to terms with the smoldering despair of DPS roles.

[Silverbane]

Think the issue they have right now is that ... the people who do play tanks and healers have leveled every single tank and healer to 90 already.

I started my fourth new character last weekend, leveling SCH, WAR and some WHM.
I am enjoying playing the MSQ from the start, it's like re-reading a good book from years ago.
Everyone with a regular subscription has this option.

Every single dps, even ones that parse pink, are worthless ... They can't even heal anyone ...

Not at all true.
For example, Dancers have Healing Waltz, which does a substantial amount of healing to them, their dance partner, and anyone near either of them. And at least some DPS have damage reduction debuffs (e.g. Dancer's Shield Samba, Reaper's Feint) which reduces the need for healing.
Furthermore, as most experienced players already know, Summoners and Red Mages can resurrect players.

[Genisay]

Of course, if you want to skip queue times altogether, there is always completing story content with the Trust and Support systems that have been out since earlier this year.
The play-through of the dungeons does get a bit longer if you are not running as a tank, though you can still force your NPCs to pick up larger pulls if you want to do the pull and run back strategy. But it sure cuts down on the time you will have to wait for getting in.
I enjoy playing content with live players, so I will often still do the regular queues, but if I am in a time crunch, I'll go with Support Duty.

I have played a DPS most of my five years in the game, not because I do not enjoy playing my tank, but simply because I just have so much fun playing as Bard. Not for the lack of responsibility, I just find the fast-paced action and rotation it brings to be super satisfying after picking it up several years ago and keeping it as my main.
I tend to try and make myself useful even as a DPS, being on top of trash clean-up, wrangling any mobs that get off the tank somehow and drawing them back, and taking care of mechanics that require interactions that are not specific to the tank.
Granted, I came from WoW and I was used to DPS also having responsibilities, like taking off-turn interrupting duty and being on the lookout for mechanics and certain types of adds.

But I think what a lot of people, like myself originally, who came from WoW at least, don't realize is that overall, the people who play FFXIV are far more friendly and willing to help them than the vast majority of WoW players were and that tanking and healing in 14 still need people to pay attention and manage things, they are not nearly as daunting or difficult as they were in WoW. I played tank in WoW for several years. I only enjoyed doing it when I got in with the good guild that picked me up because people were just so harsh and toxic. There were few opportunities to truly get good at it because pugs would drop new tanks in under a minute.
I love tanking as a Dark Knight in this game and since I have actually been trying to be a good tank, people tend to be very understanding if I make a mistake or don't do it perfectly my first several runs, especially as I know the content, I just don't know it from that perspective as well.

There might be more tanks and healers out there if people were not so worried that they were going to get chewed up for making mistakes. The only real thing for that is to talk to people and encourage them to try. Give them the confidence they can do it.

Overall though, I did not feel that it took me huge amounts of time to get into dungeons as a DPS, but then again, came from WoW, where DPS had half-hour to nearly an hour queue times if not in premade, so I might be a bad judge. XD Queue times seem downright fast to me here.

Some of it can also come down to the content itself though, especially if there are not many players doing it at that time. For some older content, even as a tank I have waited 10-15 minutes in the queue outside of the mog tome season.

[Luizgazen]

It does though - if the group comp was 1/1/3 that increases the demand for dps by 50% - every queue pop grabs an additional dps, which means less dps in queue which means lower queue times.

Regardless, your core point is that other methods should be just as viable as dungeon spam, and you're right.

It wouldn't change anything really, the moment the queues for DPS are reduced, players like the OP who only got to tank or heal begrudingly would rush back into DPS jobs raising the queues to right were they were before...

[dspguy]

DPS queues have not bothered me in the ~9 years I've been in Eorzea. Don't just "sit" in the DPS queue. Craft, gather, seek daily hunt marks, FATEs, etc etc. I can't say I'm ever "sitting" in a DPS queue unless I choose to. Which probably means I've turned the volume way up and I'm cleaning the house while waiting for the queue. If you are staring at the screen for 15-20 minutes waiting for the queue to pop, you are doing it wrong.

[Tlamila]

It's not just a matter of role popularity.
There are 4 tanks, 4 healers, and how many dpses, job -wise?
When the number of classes is not balanced, of course queues also won't be.

That said, queue disparity is not that huge.

[Stasya]

If only trust npc's were not complete trash that can't aoe and also completly stops attacking after avoiding aoe.

[CelestiCer]

Re-Leveling an alt and " DPS does feel actively Punished "

• DPS deals with very long queues
• DPS are not encouraged to be responsible
• DPS even if played correctly feels unrewarding
• DPS with Duty Support just feels clunky

Square does not push responsibility on DPS, nothing to do wrong or right except " Hey, just don't die ". Skill-Floor is made laughable, but everyone starts somewhere. Just that at times the Skill-Ceiling is about as high as the barrier of entry. No room for skill-expression, even if you try to its rewarded with " Thank you for existing? sorta, I guess. "

DPS: What's Feinting and Addle btw?

This cuddling of the player-base encourages irresponsibility. With Zero damage checks anywhere, the DPS can spam their single target Lv1 skill unpunished cause that's how Square designed it. You can't tell how another player should play either that's against ToS. Even if it results in makin dungeons twice / 3x longer.

DPS Don't learn from mistakes, just enjoy your mistakes - big Thumbsup

I say there should be a lot better methods to design the game around what each role has to offer. Coupled with very mild DPS checks here and there, spicing up the dungeons a little bit to make it feel ever so slightly rewarding to maximize learning DPS properly? would be nice. Cause you can quite literally ( not joking ) make Dungeon runs twice as fast if you play your DPS job correctly.

But Square won't do this because why appeal to players wanting to play properly, when you can appeal to cushioning the lazy to be more lazy i.e soulless Duty Support while simplifying the Jobs to deal more damage with less effort and mastery.

Some examples? Think SMN rework, Kaiten removal and next up perhaps Dragoon's line AoE's turned to Circles who knows what SE might do.

[george357]

have all my jobs capped and with ilv500+ gear and weapons/tools so leveling is not a problem.