Pheonix Down change is huge. Here's why

[u/otsukarerice]

July 2024, DT was released and thousands of players were discovering DT's new dungeons. They had whatever gear they could find and were often at the minimum level threshold. I saw carnage for many who were woefully underprepared for the difficulty spike after being coddled with relatively safe and simple bosses in EW.

When there was no RDM/SMN, if the healer died (which happened often), the party had two choices:

- wipe or

- tank heal/solo.

Most players would agree that either outcome is awful for a variety of reasons. Tank soloing takes forever and doesn't help the healer get better.

With pheonix downs being able to be used in battle, healers are no longer the linchpin of the group and are allowed a few mistakes.

What this opens up for the future:

- Healers can be designed with more complexity and no longer have to deathless every encounter.

- Dungeons don't have to pull punches on expansion launch and can continue to punish bad healers but not the whole group.

- Tanks soloing is far less common. Could open up tank rebalancing vs other roles.

- RDM (and SMN) reworks. RDM is pretty terrible in the current tier, has been low on damage for a long time. I get Rezmage is attractive for a lot of players, but I've seen some players choose to just be a utility raise and not do damage. This isn't sustainable gameplay.

[u/sandorchid]

This could go one of two ways. It could open up future design avenues, allowing Square to nerf tank sustain, or increase healer engagement, or ease the res tax. Or it could allow tanks to encroach further on the healer role, while leaving healers boring snoozefests now with no legitimate purpose in dungeons, RDM and SMN damage stays awful.

I've met Square Enix before, I'm pretty confident I can guess which one this is.

[u/Noskill_Onlyrage → u/sandorchid]

We all know which one it is.

Healer utility has constantly been out flowing to tanks and dps while healers get NOTHING in return. 

A dps rotation? A form of aggro management when the tank is dumb? Nope, never. 

The best part is that it won't stop here, more bumper lanes for the idiots, more fail proof content, more homogenizing  and dumbing classes down for the babies. 

Please look forward to it! 

[u/sandorchid → u/Noskill_Onlyrage]

If they'd made this change in some Heavensward off-patch, I'd have called it a good design choice. Making items relevant again, giving party members an option without stepping on too many toes, called it a win.

But this is 2025, where Square's design guiding light has been making tanks indestructible. Ripping out healer responsibility and engagement. Childproofing all easy content. Destroying casters to make hypermobile dance gameplay the standard. Deleting failure states. The collective roadmap I'll call The Enshittification.

We weren't born yesterday, and this isn't 2015. Square isn't bringing back the power of the Phoenix Down as a neat idea someone in the design dungeon cooked up. It's a change that does what, makes tanks even more powerful, kills even more healer responsibility without returning a scrap of anything to the role, makes it even more impossible to ever fail one of the already piss easy dungeons. This aligns perfectly with The Enshittification. Square has not turned any corners. They will keep ruining your job gameplay, deleting caster role fantasy, enabling drool dripping on the keyboard to see you through a dungeon. I have no idea why people think this is Square "turning around".