Would you consider greedy DPS Mechanics on Tanks/Healers good or bad?

[Azurarok]

Energy drain, old tank stances and cleric stance, Shadowflare, pretty much any healer GCD dps tool, etc. Basically anything that trades a Tank/Healer's ability to do their role for personal damage gains.

I believe this sort of risk-reward system's usually seen as a good design in many games, but here it seems to be a bit of a mixed bag since you could be on the receiving end of another player who took it a step too far, and this game's content often heavily punishes parties for an individual's mistakes, especially with those roles since they're supposed to be the party's lifeline.

I personally think it's good to have, and I think at least one job for both roles could be designed around the concept for healthier job variety, but I've been wondering what others think of it.

[Jeeqbit]

Rather than saying whether it's good "in theory", I'm going to say whether it was good in the past:

I enjoyed Cleric Stance's risk-reward very much. There was no problem with it at all in my opinion. If someone died, it was not due to me being in Cleric Stance or DPSing too much. If you let someone die, they'd often jump on the "you were DPSing too much" bandwagon, but that was never the actual reason in my observation. If someone died, it was due to a healing mistake/miscalculation. Knowing when to not be stuck in Cleric Stance was easy. It was just fun knowing it could trap me. But realistically it wouldn't trap me usually unless it was my first time using it. It's a bit like walking along that 1 pixel line at the end of Dohn Mheg. You're not going to fall on such a simple and easy mechanic. But it forces you to be careful and pay attention to make sure that you don't embarress yourself and fail such a simple mechanic that gives you an eternity.

I also enjoyed the Stance Dancing on tanks. To me, it made lower level content more engaging as a tank. However, I felt conflicted about this, because 50% of players "believed in" using tank stance 100% of the time "because they are tanks". The problem with that is the giant disaparity it would create between tanks:

A PLD that used food + Sword Oath + Fight or Flight + DPS rotation + BiS + Strength on Accessories

vs

A PLD that used no food + Shield Oath + ignored all abilities including Fight or Flight + spammed their lowest damage combo Rage of Halone + worst substats + Vitality on Accessories with no melds

I really felt like the gap there was too big and that tanking wasn't intuitive enough to an average dungeon player unless they had done raiding.

However, a similar argument can be made for positionals. A lot of players do not understand these. To such a point, that SE reduced their impact to barely matter. A similar thing could have been done with Stance Dancing - make the difference between it just 5 potency. Not going to actually affect anything and probably RNG will make it irrelevant, but the bigger potency number makes you want to use it anyway.

I think if they rework 8.0 to have skill trees, they could just have a "simple" tree for new players and a more engaging tree for veteran players that has things like Cleric Stance and Stance Dancing, but that has the same overall damage.

[Supersnow845]

Energy drain is an internal limiter on SCH’s bonkers theoretical HPS. SCH is already the strongest healer, it doesn’t also need to be the highest throughput healer

The only problem people run into with “selfish SCH’s” is the fact that if the shield healer is uncooperative the regen healer is basically useless because the game NEEDS a shield healer but a regen healer is basically optional. So if you are a WHM/AST and you have a SCH that refuses to use soil it can affect your progress but I think that’s a necessary evil for the fact that ED is why SCH’s healing kit is so well designed (well for a modern 14 healer)

A non selfish SCH is basically just SGE which just trades SCH’s cutting edge value for…….pointless HPS? What great design

[Azurarok]

I really felt like the gap there was too big and that tanking wasn't intuitive enough to an average dungeon player unless they had done raiding.

However, a similar argument can be made for positionals. A lot of players do not understand these. To such a point, that SE reduced their impact to barely matter. A similar thing could have been done with Stance Dancing - make the difference between it just 5 potency. Not going to actually affect anything and probably RNG will make it irrelevant, but the bigger potency number makes you want to use it anyway.

One fairly big difference is that dps doing their role poorly is only punished with a fight dragging out longer in casual content, whereas a Tank/Healer doing that can still lead to a wipe. They do occasionally have dps checks mid-fight but they're usually incredibly lax anyways.

I think if they rework 8.0 to have skill trees, they could just have a "simple" tree for new players and a more engaging tree for veteran players that has things like Cleric Stance and Stance Dancing, but that has the same overall damage.

There really isn't too much of a point in creating a riskier build if it's not going to have the returns to match imo.

The only problem people run into with “selfish SCH’s” is the fact that if the shield healer is uncooperative the regen healer is basically useless because the game NEEDS a shield healer but a regen healer is basically optional. So if you are a WHM/AST and you have a SCH that refuses to use soil it can affect your progress

That's true (like I needed any more reason to believe the pure/barrier healer split's dumb), mitigation tends to be way more important than having 'strong heals', and it's one of the biggest drawbacks to using WHM. Can't heal up damage taken if that damage could one-shot party members without mitigation. Mits could potentially save a dps when your tank dies and they've been targeted with a tankbuster too.

[Jeeqbit]

There really isn't too much of a point in creating a riskier build if it's not going to have the returns to match imo.

If we're honest, the "harder" jobs aren't played much. Take BLM's long history for example.

If there are harder builds, they likely wouldn't be used by the majority of players, because they like it easy. Humans like to get any advantage they can. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist. They are useful when we're getting bored of fights and want something else to handicap them, which is one of the reasons people pick harder jobs when they're getting bored of content - to add a new challenge to overcome.

[Kohashi]

Energy drain is an internal limiter on SCH’s bonkers theoretical HPS. SCH is already the strongest healer, it doesn’t also need to be the highest throughput healer

The funny thing is, they are strongest in terms of DPS followed by Ast then SGE, and then whm.

[Azurarok]

The funny thing is, they are strongest in terms of DPS followed by Ast then SGE, and then whm.

Maybe I'm not reading it right but this hasn't been what I've been seeing in the funny numbers site with the current Savage tier and FRU lately. All but AST tends to be really close but SCH's generally been on the bottom.

[dspguy]

"Greedy" tank/healer abilities made the jobs better and it could show you were more talented at your job. The thing is, if you were too greedy, people knew... because the non-tank-stance tank would eat a tankbuster and die. The cleric stance healer couldn't land enough heals people would die. Generally speaking, if the group did mechanics but the a tank/healer got greedy, it was pretty obvious.

I'd like to see those come back. Along with hate dropping abilities by the DPS. It gave more flavor to these jobs. Enmity should be a resource. It isn't. Just put on tank stance, hit the enemy for 30 seconds, and you could turn off tank stance and have hate the rest of the battle - easy. When enmity was a resource, your goal was to stay just above the top DPS with a little cushion so they wouldn't pull hate while you drop tank stance and do more damage. But it is no longer a resource. It is "hit one button, have hate."

[Anienai]

Greed is good.-Gordon Gekko 1987

[Supersnow845]

Maybe I'm not reading it right but this hasn't been what I've been seeing in the funny numbers site with the current Savage tier and FRU lately. All but AST tends to be really close but SCH's generally been on the bottom.

Since DT of the three that aren’t AST SCH tends to have the highest peaks but the lowest average (as it’s the hardest healer) but damage wasn’t really my original point in that anyway. SCH is the strongest healer because of everything else it offers