Nope. I haven't been happy with healing for a long time. Used to main healing up through HW. It was fun. I'm not even sure I can put it into words why, it feels like ages ago. I remember how I felt at the time though and, at the time, I could never have imagined giving up healing. I've always gravitated towards supporting roles in games (and arguably in life lol) and healing always fit that nicely...
...until SB. Whatever they changed - might be one thing, maybe a hundred little things - just killed the role for me since then. To me, it just feels less thoughtful and less rewarding, but somehow more busywork. Like you went from being a sous chef in ARR-HW to standing at the end of the line, holding a napkin and wiping down plates making them look presentable in SB-ShB. You don't even get to actually put anything on the plate. Quite literally, your only job is to hold that napkin and keep wiping. It kinda killed my enjoyment of the game as a whole. I played religiously through most of ARR and all of HW, but then came SB and I didn't really have a job I loved playing anymore. I played and leveled everything, but nothing ever quite stuck with me anymore.
I'm sure someone will vehemently disagree with me and that's fine. I'm just saying what the role felt/feels like to me.
Give your opinion on healer design!
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03-22-2020, 03:56 AMGalaktica
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03-22-2020, 05:59 AMVaer
I find in general the "healing" mechanics for this game to be rather boring. Mostly because it comes down to finding ways to not heal without wiping the group. That means no matter what "new" job they add, I'll still be bored using mostly DPS abilities unless they overhaul healing design. I feel like an idiot when I use a GCD heal in this game. The one exception is perhaps necessary shielding which can be eventually dropped with help from mitigation skills or just gear level/HP increases.
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03-22-2020, 06:02 AMBrandedbladeYes, it could be better but I dont hate what they currently are. Scholar is my favorite aesthetically, but I also enjoy playing AST whenever I want extra to do. Scholar, ironically enough tends to be my go too when learning fights or going harder content.Quote:
Originally Posted by GrimGale
It depends, with scholar it\\'s the feeling of being a combat medic that always has a trick up its sleeve, while older expansions did have some boons in this regard, I personally dont find the current design so detrimental as to take away that fantasy.Quote:
-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?
With AST I love the feeling of building up to something big over time with setting up Divination, and I tend to prefer it over white mage for healing with regens. And its ability to single weave makes me feel nice and flexible to take advantage of. Especially with large pulls and Gravity.
WHM is my least played healer, tbh the only real excitement I get with it is when I get to blast a large mob with a Misery or two.
I think I\\'m on alot of people\\'s side in wanting there to be a synergy with the dps and healing toolkits. Another big thing, although this is for all jobs across the board, is that they really need to reevaluate the leveling progression of skills and not be afraid of giving classes weaker versions of mechanics they want to add later. For example WHM could get Divine Seal at level 40 to introduce them to popping cooldowns for buffing healing then at 80 it upgrades to Temperance. Or AST gets a "balanced sect" that introduces them to having a cooldown for both sects, then it upgrades to Nuetral Sect at 80.Quote:
-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.
With Scholar as much as I wouldnt mind having Miasma and Bane back. I\\'d be more interested in creating a system where your dps and healing bounce back and forth with building up resources. Essentially have your dps skills help build fae guage and have more of your heals spend it. And introduce a dps skill that serves to help shave off excess resources. However, it needs to have restrictions in place that clearly define it as a tool for shaving off excess fae guage to offset the increase gaining of it.
WHM my biggest complaint is mainly aesthetic. WHMs having earth and wind spells made them feel unique for the series. I\\'d rather Quake and Tornado then Glare and Dia. However. One concept I\\'ve seen thrown around I love the sound of is them getting a cooldown that causes them to "ascend" and heal off their dps for that time period. As far as mechanics go one idea I have is the idea of allowing your regens to heal rewards you with dps procs. Like upgrading fluid Aura into something useful.
AST I believe has a very solid design. The biggest thing I can think of is that they need to come up with a way to make the card system more friendly to controller players without completely automating it.
Yes. Personally I want to see a gun slinging chemist healer or a melee "cleric" style healer who uses a basic melee combo to build a resource they spend their ogcd heals on, or to make their gcd skills instant cast. And have a stance system where while they\\'re rewarded with more efficiency by dpsing in melee. If a fight mechanic forces them away from the group they can build the resource at a slower pace with say a gcd nuke or gcd heals.Quote:
-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?
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03-22-2020, 09:22 AMBobsmiawQuote:
Originally Posted by GrimGale
Not happy.Quote:
-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?
My favorite is AST due to its flexibility and party support.
SCH used to be my favorite but this patch make me hate it.
I just like the feeling when you heal/save someone from their mistake.Quote:
-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?
WHMQuote:
-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.
- Keep it identity as GCD healer.
- Keep developing on lily. Maybe add a mitigation spell that consume 2 or more Lily.
- Add a new skill that letting us deal more damage/healing by increasing MP cost.
SCH
- Turn SCH into a debuffer. Decrease enemy damage, expose enemy weakness, and more dot/poison based damage.
- Give fairy identity. Maybe make Eos focus on direct healing and Selene focus on shielding.
- Make Seraph more impactful?
AST
- Keep its identity as flexible healer + party support buff.
- Rework card system, less target switching. Give it back the feeling/sensation of playing a card (redraw, spread, royal road, etc.).
- Give us back a time manipulation skill. Maybe change Horoscope into time manipulating skill (the skill animation already feels like it).
Yes please. Its been so long since we have a new healer.Quote:
- Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?
I think chemist is a good job to fill this position. -
03-22-2020, 11:16 AMBillythepancake
No, I'm very unhappy with current healer design.
I find SCH/WHM very boring with almost nothing to do either when healing or DPSing. With healing you press 1 button, watch health bars go up, and you're done. While this was also the case for Stormblood, there was at least enough to do on the DPS end, as well as fairy end, for SCH that I didn't mind this. With the gutting of SCH's dps identity and their fairy, everything I enjoyed about the class was basically thrown away. For AST, I don't mind every card being a DPS card, I was never a fan of the RNG, but I still think it's bad design because of the groups of people that loved the class for the RNG. The current system I still find worse though because of the excessive amounts of target swaps, especially in the opener.
The biggest things I want back for SCH are 1. I want more DPS buttons, and I'd also like the DPS to feel much more important. Healers spend the vast majority of their time DPSing, if you're doing it right anyway, and, tbh, I love that design. In my head, you're a combat medic, a solider with every other soldier, you should do damage, but I don't like that DPS is that thing you do because you have nothing else to do, I want it to feel like I have to do it to get the most out of my kit. 2. I want both of my fairies back and I want them to actually feel impactful. Fairy was nerfed so heavily on top of having to weave in the abilities, it just feel like a glorified oGCD that doesn't work half the time. I loved being able to use the fairy while casting, it went into the idea that you are a combat medic, use your tool wisely and you can deal more damage without stopping. Now my tool is so gimped I have to stop to use it, and even then, it doesn't work half the damn time because of the stupid delay they decided to add ON TOP OF making it an oGCD. Either make the thing an instant oGCD like every single other oGCD in the game, or put it back on the pet hotbar.
Do I expect another healer next expac? I say it can go 50/50, honestly. With how poorly they handled healers this expac, I don't want another one next expac. I'd rather have 3 poorly designed classes over 4 poorly designed classes.
As for why do I still play it? outside of savage in my static, I really don't. Right now the plan is to clear TEA and then cancel my sub. Maybe find an MMO that has what I'm looking for. -
03-22-2020, 11:41 AMCoffeeBuns
I have always healed in MMOs and I never thought one day, I would quit.
-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?
I dislike all of them but the one I can say is my "favorite" is AST because it's the only healer I don't fall asleep playing on. I was SCH main until SB came.
-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?
Nothing hence why I am now playing Dancer.
-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.
I am horrible at giving ideas and I feel like I am the worst person to answer this question but I just want my SCH to be back to the HW days, god I miss those days.
- Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?
Yes, I was actually expecting one this expansion, I hope we get either Chemist or a Battle Healer. -
03-22-2020, 12:24 PMSynaesthesia
-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?
I do not feel like they did a good job in this expansion. They actually designed classes that could flow really well in a different encounter design than we have now, where healing is more intense and less predictable. If we were forced into situations where GCD healing was required to cover the predictable damage and then the large amount of ogcds had to be managed around and used for less predictable things it would feel much more engaging, but the ogcds we have now are what cover the vast majority of healing leaving huge amounts of downtime with very little diversity in the downtime.
I also feel is that FFXIV is also a game with a lot of single player elements and things you'll go do alone, and the narrative is that you're supposed to be the warrior of light, a master of martial disciplines except that if you play as a healer you're really just kinda a one trick pony.. If you do the story, story duties, go and grind fates, or explore around in the world on a DPS or tank it feels great. You have attacks, counters, movement skills and things that make it fun whether it's actually very hard or not. But as a healer you gather up a bunch of them and spam your one aoe over and over, or feel like the encounter you're doing is a joke because the scripted single player duty isn't dangerous to you, all you can do is spam your single target attack on this boss until it slowly dies. It ruins the story experience, and makes playing a healer very dull in so many situations.
This carries through to older group content too, which is still so much of the game! Things get much easier as the item level of players gets above the content but on healers it has terrible consequences. Like if I get Void Ark on DPS I don't really mind so much. Everything is a moving target dummy and that's 20 minutes of practice ^^
On a healer it's literally so dull that withdrawing and going to work on a house for 30 minutes is a much more enjoyable experience. Casting a regen on your main tank overpowers the final boss tankbusters.. This situation applies to huge, huge amounts of older content. When you can solve the healing problem for an encounter by just casting Medica II once in a while, it's not fun.
I don't feel like it's fair at all that 2 of the 3 role types have enough stuff they can use to feel engaged in what they're doing whether it's Savage or just zipping from Fate monster to Fate monster taking them down with attack combos and finishers while the third role type only engages you in a select number of current, end game fights.
-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?
When both the fight is dangerous enough either you or you and your co-healer have to actively cycle through your kit and use varied skills and there's an incentive to start mapping and using that kit properly for the encounter. -
03-22-2020, 12:26 PMSynaesthesia
-Regarding healer identity
CLASS GIMMICKS SHOULD FEEL GOOD.
Samurai's Gauge feels good. Building up into Midare Setsugekka and being rewarded with a huge number feels great..
Red Mage? It changes your gameplay for a few seconds with another huge number!
Scholar.. The fairy isn't fun now. Making it so that she casts while moving just removes an incentive to place her with caution and makes it less interactive, and the sluggish response speed generates frustration more than elation. This just feels bad.
Astrologian? The cards aren't really fun now. There's no high feeling of reward when you get a good combination, it's super frustrating when you're soloing and realize that you're getting a lot of half power cards because you have a class identity based around remaining competitive to White Mage when you're raiding now. You build up into Divination but it just feels like "okay I guess that will show up on someone's log report later at least"
I don't really have any suggestions for new spells or anything, but I know that Scholar's fairy used to be more fun, cards used to be more fun.. White Mage moved forward with a much better gauge system that you can take advantage of in any situation, which is nice. They need to go back to making class mechanics feel more interesting and rewarding to use properly.
-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?
I really do not know, but I hope that they can improve the role as a whole. -
03-22-2020, 02:15 PMMPNZ1) Not at all, AST is just painful and tiring to play for extended periods and WHM is just not fun to play in general (EXAMPLE: PLD in 2.0). And, SCH has never really kept my interest outside of the tonberry storyline, but that was always OK since it was designed to appeal towards a different nicheQuote:
Originally Posted by GrimGale
2) Largely, how the jobs play, which is way lower in qualtiy than StB, the toolkit, and helping. They literally could replace every HLR with automated healers and improve the experience overall atm
3) WHM - a repetitive robotic assembly line machine playing cow-clicker
AST - carpal tunnel with an adaptive pace of casting
4) Um, they need to/have to, but the existing healers are in need of complete remakes at this point which may not make it until after the main story of the final expansion -
03-22-2020, 02:33 PMShurrikhanNo. AST, by a slim margin, since it gives me more to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by GrimGale
Quote:
Originally Posted by GrimGale
- Necessary events that are difficult to achieve and are usually recoverable but highly punishing if failed. A must be at B level by C time, or else D.
- Necessary gambles to meet the necessary events. This can be as simple as applying a HoT at a time when every spam heal seems necessary on the hopes that the tank won't be finished off before your oGCD comes up again in the next GCD, allowing you to survive otherwise overwhelming damage several GCDs later, or can be a result of internal mechanics or interactions with your tank.
- Necessary shifts in output and/or perspective. These are the times where more effective healing/survival can be provided by CCing or dealing damage. These should be integral and frequent enough, but far from the majority of GCDs in content tuned to require a full-fledged healer.
Sadly, much of what I want for healers would require stricter scaling and a greater variety of play available to all roles, such that they can better compensate for lower healing output through CC, sabotage, "turtling", hit-and-run tactics, or just about anything else you could think of.
The classic 'trinity' experience will remain simplest and often the most efficient, but not greatly superior so long as the party is able to make full use of their kits and change their style of play around reduced healing output available to their party. A strong healer allows for their tank to pull higher numbers and their DPS to play in a more straightforward and more purely damage-centric manner, while a strong tank and/or DPS who are highly flexible and aware can allow for a weaker healer, etc.
WHM: If we get an eventual Geomancer, I want to see split jobs have split experience as well and for the Geomancer to require a base in Conjurer, even if it may retroactively replace almost everything about it. If not, I want WHM to play more to its CNJ roots, making use of Wind, Earth, and Water magics for both offense and support. Its support outputs should be the least direct in terms of increasing damage numbers by some amount (and arguably the most varied in terms of actual uses of its toolkit) but the most direct in terms of smaller functions such as moving allies or enemies. WHM has a mode called Soulfont which converts formerly elemental spells and effects into raw white magic with far more power but slightly less varied effect. This mode makes it a true powerhouse, but should be set up and around. Time one can spend in that mode gradually increases until becoming relatively unlimited, though with further synergy to and from the surrounding elemental kit, in Shadowbringers, at which time one spends the majority of time in that mode and many former gambles and complex macrorotational concerns become more direct utility, retaining their full complexity only in the context of optimizing output.Quote:
Originally Posted by GrimGale
SCH: I want SCH's AST roots to be more interesting than "I DoT things, and my glowing rodent acts like a further DoT", but I also want SCH to pursue its own direction much further. I'd like to find a core mechanic, such as the idea of storing and imbuing aether, from which to draw many more. I also think the fairy should be a powerful tool -- an adviser and partner capable of highly useful combo play --, but still an optional one, consuming mana upon creation, faintly over time, and per spell in a way that neither feels "taxing" nor "free". It probably shouldn't be the only mana construct SCH can make, either. I'd like to build further on traditional skills and concepts like Libra and light/dark magics, perhaps through Stratagems (party-affecting modes that act like a far stronger and more mechanically significant version of Bard songs and more flexible timing) or the like.
AST: I'd replace AST's Nocturnal and Diurnal sects with a mechanic behind each that can source their gameplay (among far more in keeping with the idea of hastened and regenerative/reiterative effects or slowed but banked--and thereby fortified--effects) while leaning seriously into Time-Space magics. Would probably include Theoretical Mass as a mechanic, and maybe even build further upon that with Slingshot. I want them to be badass foretelling users of Time-Space and Abstract magics.
Ultimately, though, working on concepts for any three of the healers really makes clear just how bare-bone the undermechanics of this game are. We can't bank buffs onto players that can be consumed as they're used, allowing for more consistent usefulness on short but potentially very impactful buffs. There's no place for informational buffs and systems as could be provided by Libra; the most we could do is provide a generic Crit buff and pretend it came from being more informed about certain things. There's no point in altering an enemy's mass, since we can neither launch it skyward nor adjust the durations of status effects against the target when we stun or topple it. Mob movement in general is finicky. Almost any really cool but intuitive effect that could be written in all of a term and a number ("Additional Effect: Grants Wind at 30% of potency") if there were a greater breadth of underlying systems is instead forced to come as overly complicated, while a tremendous amount of enjoyable play that Supports could otherwise allow for just aren't possible.
Honestly, I can't get myself to care until there's more interesting stuff going on among our existing healers. So... probably and no idea, respectively.Quote:
Originally Posted by GrimGale