All DPS clears highlight a problem with encounter design in ShB

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Originally Posted by ItMe

They must have seen that not every job could solo in FF11 (though most can now) and wanted to change that.
Makes me wonder what's baked into FF14 they're not happy with that will inform the design of their next MMO.

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To be fair. I don't think they are unhappy with GCD healing, or even healers in general. The dev team just seems to have a fundamental discount between how they assume we play and how we actually play. Things like Stormblood Lilies screams they think we spam GCD heals or want to. Hell, Yoshida has said several times now they don't expect healer DPS unless you're aiming for early Savage clears or Ultimate. The problem, of course, is many players don't share this viewpoint and treat a "pure healer" with contempt on the basis of they aren't equally contributing. Healers themselves, who aren't interested in DPS or simply don't want to make it a significant focus, are equally upset because your options thereafter are to spam a single button or do nothing.

What it comes down to is the dev team needs to pick a lane and stop trying to force what isn't working.

GCDs:
- Pre-pull.
- Down time.
- When no oGCDs available.

oGCDs:
- Always use when available.

Result?
Most recent content can be cleared without GCD heals. Unless you have a bad party.

Why did this happen?
Becuse you have not 1, but 2 healers with a number of oGCD heals in their kit with a short cooldown. When mapped out throughout the encounter, you will realize that you don't need GCD heals.

What's the problem here?
- Healers have a lot of oGCDs?
- oGCDs cooldown is short?
- Encounter damage intervals are very spread a part?

If we reduce the amount of oGCD heals available to the healer, healers will just replace that with GCD and the fight would still be easy to heal.
So the problem is not in healers kit, or calling SMN overpowered, but rather the way dev team designed the encounter.
If the encounter required serious healing, no SMN/PLD/DNC comp can do it without a healer.

Solo Healing in PUG Groups is pretty common and I'm on the Crystal Data Center known for being less hardcore. Most groups are quick to change a second Healer Slot to a DPS slot if you make it known you can handle the fight on your own. It's actually surprising to me that we don't have a continuation for Hall of the Novice. Having an actual tutorial that outlined how much power rest in our HoTs would be amazing. Having an NPC encourage us to memorize the attack patterns of our foes to understand when extra healing isn't necessary would go a long way. So many healers just spam heals whenever damage happens leaving the party at full with 3 different Regens ticking away doing nothing. If they really wanted to make the game more accessible to healers and tanks then why don't we have tank swaps explained anywhere. Precasting heals for heavy damage is never mentioned. They did nothing to actually make healing more accessible beyond loading us up with healing abilities that get completely wasted by the average player. Then took away any complexity our DPS kits had to make it more obvious that healing requirements are low. We need more ways for people to learn how to be a good healer in game and not just a ton of skills that serve no purpose in 90% of content. Give us another accessory to boost experience gain for doing level 45/50/55/60 Guildhest. Create a Hall of the Intermediate for learning techniques to clear Extreme Fights and Savage Fights. If we help people become better healers across the board it will be safe to raise the bar for high end content.

There isn't a single answer to the healing requirement problem because there is so much that contributes to it. You can boil it all down to a lack of foresight from the dev team. As an example, this nearly all SMN run I heard about could be eliminated if they make Everlasting Flight so that the regen effect doesn't stack. To me, an issue like this is a glaring one that should have popped up during testing. Even if that is not the case, a lot of changes they make is a result of a design flaw that is exploited by the playerbase. Like electricity, players will find the path of least resistance.

No matter what they do to healing, players will track down the methods of how to get things done using the least amount of it as possible. It's just such a shame that this role gets stepped on during a player's path to greater power. We are needed the greatest when content is released, and the first to be outed as players obtain the better gear.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

No matter what they do to healing, players will track down the methods of how to get things done using the least amount of it as possible. It's just such a shame that this role gets stepped on during a player's path to greater power. We are needed the greatest when content is released, and the first to be outed as players obtain the better gear.

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Reducing healing has always been a part of the game, and optimizing mitigation and ogcd planning to squeeze an extra gcd has always been something uniquely fun about healing. doing so in past expansions felt more rewarding because healers had a limited amount of ogcds to heal the party with, so there had to be more creativity and thought put into planning stuff to get away with 0 healing gcds and minimal aetherflows spent. not to mention this was usually done while the MT was out of tank stance so you had to heal even more than was probably intended. Optimizing was more rewarding with less resources because you had to be smarter about how you used them.

however in shb we just have an overabundance of ogcds to heal (and pretty boring ones at that). to compound this, damage happens in intervals too sparse to even need planning in the first place. during extreme fights ive forgotten i have seraph or collective unconscious purely because any damage the party takes is so spread out that my other ogcds are already up by the time i need them. if the summoners managed to top off the party with everlasting flight, its not just because the heal can stack, but also because the fight itself has damage so infrequent that it ended up being sufficient. i highly doubt they wouldve cleared if phase 2 and phase 3 of titan were swapped. (they tank lb the first earhten fury and you can see how people start dying at the end of the clear vid)

i frankly dont think summoner is "overtuned", because nobody in regular play would use with titan egi and alter their rotation to hold phoenix like that, just like paladin isnt OP because nobody would normally spam clemency either. this run couldve probably been done with red mages vercuring themselves too, but perhaps at a higher ilv.

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Originally Posted by QooEr

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Something I feel goes unsaid, or only briefly touched on are the derp parties. Healing requirements are present, and a healer's kit has to be able to meet those requirements. However, I do believe that some of the reasoning with saturating healers with heals is to account for when things go wrong. I have never had any trouble running out of resources in pre-made parties aimed at higher end content. Ironic as it is, but this actually tends to happen in casual land filled with the randos.

You're never going to see the devs actually intentionally stretch a healer's resources in EX/Savage/Ultimate. A margin for error has to be allowed when multiple players are involved.

As for SMN, even SMN mains themselves are saying they're OP. IIRC, they have the strongest mitigation in the game through Earthern Ward on a very short CD; can increase raid damage; rezz fallen players; and their damage is comparable with BLMs. Then you add the stacked regens from EF... Oopsy! Hence, SMN nerf incoming.

Last expansion savages:
- Almagest
- Charbilis
- whitehole
- Timely heal and shield checks on god kefka heads, neo black holes, final omega patch
- Annoying single target heals on Dadaluma bleads, O6s tank autos, M&F double TBs

Probably forgetting some.

Current expansion:
- Timely heal and shield checks: Voidwalker double flare, shiva knockback mirrors
- Annoying single target heals on Voidwalker dps 1hp before puddle, furor conflag maybe?

And errr that's all I can think of and I'm already pushing it a bit. Week 1/2 shiva was pretty rough on heals, not because of any checks but because of how optimized you had to be to carry enough dps.

In terms of the current expansion I'll raise first week titan clears cause of the ending with voice of the land into tumult spam at the end but thats all else I can think of. For stormblood there was also

• Bahamut Trios in Ucob
• Add phase in Ucob
• Garuda Cleanses in Uwu
• Post Predation in Uwu
• Primal Roulette in Uwu

There are really hardly any heal checks in the two extremes that came out and nothing really in hades or ruby weapon that come to mind given how many ogcds we have to deal with it.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

You're never going to see the devs actually intentionally stretch a healer's resources in EX/Savage/Ultimate. A margin for error has to be allowed when multiple players are involved.

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i mean, i get that. but the margin of error should be placed at least on gcd heals, since thats what theyre arguably for. if i can heal a fight And the mistakes with minimal gcds thats not really exciting

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Originally Posted by QooEr

if i can heal a fight And the mistakes with minimal gcds thats not really exciting

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You feel like hardcasting heals is inherently more exciting? That those buttons are just, what, the fun ones to push?
I'm not really sure I can agree that making us heal with more GCDs = better design.

Having to weigh the necessity of GCD heals, rather than discounting them in 95% of circumstances, would be more interesting that what exists now.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

You feel like hardcasting heals is inherently more exciting? That those buttons are just, what, the fun ones to push?
I'm not really sure I can agree that making us heal with more GCDs = better design.

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In a vacuum? No. Spamming Cure II is equally as boring as Glare. But as QooEr said earlier, it's the planning aspect that made GCD healing more interesting. In the past, we had significantly less tools to work with, thus you had to plan out where to use specific oGCDs.

Since I tank more than heal, I'll use that as a reference point. Cooldowns are essentially a button press but I enjoyed having to strategize their usage; if I use Vengeance now I won't have it for this buster. I can get a Feint there and use Rampant later. While it might seem like nothing. That small interaction with my cooldowns and potential coordination with the DPS made things more interesting. Nowadays, I barely pay attention to my CDs since I know I'll always have something given how infrequent busters are. Hell, Leviathan was so bad. If you didn't cheese his dash, you could literally throw Vengeance, Thrill and Rampant off your bar. Holmgang and Raw/Nascent could pretty much carry you through everything. Obviously, you'd still want to mitigate autos but that's about it.

This is even worse in normal mode. E2S literally does not have a tank buster. As a MT, you're just there to hold aggro and nothing else. The OT may as well be a fifth DPS. Healers feel similar in that they're gimped DPS more than healers. I appreciate they want to make things easy and "accessible." But there's such a thing as going to far. They haven't just crossed that line, in my opinion. They sailed over it full speed ahead.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

In terms of the current expansion I'll raise first week titan clears cause of the ending with voice of the land into tumult spam at the end but thats all else I can think of. For stormblood there was also

• Bahamut Trios in Ucob
• Add phase in Ucob
• Garuda Cleanses in Uwu
• Post Predation in Uwu
• Primal Roulette in Uwu

There are really hardly any heal checks in the two extremes that came out and nothing really in hades or ruby weapon that come to mind given how many ogcds we have to deal with it.

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Ah yes titan. I was skipping ultimates.

I mean, this is pretty standard Final Fantasy healing if you think about the single player game series.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

You feel like hardcasting heals is inherently more exciting? That those buttons are just, what, the fun ones to push?
I'm not really sure I can agree that making us heal with more GCDs = better design.

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casting benefic 2 while someone has low health and hoping it goes off before damage goes out is alot more exciting than Instantly healing them

or casting aspected helios but i have to move for this mechanic is still more exciting than moving while pressing celestial opposition


im not saying theyd be gamebreaking but theyre definitely moments that i at least used to get in heavensward and sometimes stormblood and now they're completely gone

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Originally Posted by ItMe

You feel like hardcasting heals is inherently more exciting? That those buttons are just, what, the fun ones to push?
I'm not really sure I can agree that making us heal with more GCDs = better design.

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On the contrary, GCD healing is exactly how you make it engaging. I feel like this is the answer that is right in front of the dev's face: Increase the power of GCD heals, and reduce the power of ogcd heals. The meta is aimed at maximizing damage through efficient optimization of your tool kit, and because our ogcd heals are so powerful and we have so many, we are bored to tears with whack-a-mole healing while mindlessly spamming one of our two DPS GCD skills.

Healers right now are forced to smash button 1 because there is literally nothing else for them to do. With this change, you will force healers to have to use their GCDs on healing the party, and healing immediately becomes more interesting because with their ocgd heals exhausted, healers will no longer be able to comfortably allow health gauges to get as low as they do now. If the devs have to loosen up DPS checks, then frickin' do it.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

On the contrary, GCD healing is exactly how you make it engaging.

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Why on earth would forcing us to spam Cure over and over and over and over and over again be somehow more engaging than spamming Glare over and over and over and over and over again? The GCD kits aren't exactly engaging either.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Why on earth would forcing us to spam Cure over and over and over and over and over again be somehow more engaging than spamming Glare over and over and over and over and over again? The GCD kits aren't exactly engaging either.

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I assume its because, With the mentality of healing as less as possible, it would force players to try to find windows of opportunity for their DPS again as opposed to seeing it with the frequency of Don Quixote seeing giants in windmills.

Also would bring more use to their other cooldowns like Horoscope and Temperance.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

On the contrary, GCD healing is exactly how you make it engaging. I feel like this is the answer that is right in front of the dev's face: Increase the power of GCD heals, and reduce the power of ogcd heals. The meta is aimed at maximizing damage through efficient optimization of your tool kit, and because our ogcd heals are so powerful and we have so many, we are bored to tears with whack-a-mole healing while mindlessly spamming one of our two DPS GCD skills.

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I'm not sure how this would make things more engaging with how low damage intake is right now. GcD heals are already quite strong, if you increased their power we could just Medica II each Raidwide, throw an occasional Regen on the tank and mash Glare for the rest of the fight. Also do we count damage neutral instant-cast Gcd's like Rapture as GcD's, because then even less changes. Damage just happens far too infrequently. Look at fights like e7s, where you spend the first 2 minutes barely needing a heal. If you force me to Medica II the Empty wave and maybe consider a Regen after the TB, then spam Glare for the rest I'm not going to suddenly feel engaged.

so it would seem that Square Enix has 2 choices for healer design:

1. make healers heal constantly and keep their dps toolkit the same, which requires an overhaul of the last 6-7 years worth of content and a new direction for the future game design, but would keep the homogenised healers balanced and allow anyone to press cure 1 to beat savage

2. give healers back their DPS options, which requires reintroducing buttons and consolidating some abilities to keep the balance, but would once again bring back job identity and skillful gameplay that new players could strive to achieve

I wonder which one they will take for 6.0. with the current state of affairs, I wouldn't be surprised if they removed the dots on healers because they're taking up the slot a new healer would use for a cure 1 cast.

I have no idea how SE can fix this tbh...
I think they either did not see how raids changed the healer role and/or they have been too slow to react.
There was no new healer this expansion so they could fix the current jobs and the healing community is even more divided than ever...

Really can't wait to see if the next expansion finds a solution that would be suitable for most or creates an even bigger rift

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Originally Posted by bundythenoob

I wonder which one they will take for 6.0. with the current state of affairs, I wouldn't be surprised if they removed the dots on healers because they're taking up the slot a new healer would use for a cure 1 cast.

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Please don't give them ideas, the only reason we haven't lost glare/broil/malefic is because they have a requirement that every job completes the msq

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Please don't give them ideas, the only reason we haven't lost glare/broil/malefic is because they have a requirement that every job completes the msq

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That, and they know the healer community would implode if they actually took away the option to DPS. Why even play the job at that point? You'd be doing almost nothing for 70%+ of most fights.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

That, and they know the healer community would implode if they actually took away the option to DPS. Why even play the job at that point? You'd be doing almost nothing for 70%+ of most fights.

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[Sarcasm]
No man, don't you see?
Taking away DPS skills would lead to the most intense version of the healers yet, because in order to contribute to the groups DPS you need to autoattack like a maniac.
Can you imagine how RAW it'd be if all the healers suddenly needed to chase the boss and live inside melee range?
Highly dangerous!
Most excellent!
[/Sarcasm]

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I'm not sure how this would make things more engaging with how low damage intake is right now. GcD heals are already quite strong, if you increased their power we could just Medica II each Raidwide, throw an occasional Regen on the tank and mash Glare for the rest of the fight. Also do we count damage neutral instant-cast Gcd's like Rapture as GcD's, because then even less changes. Damage just happens far too infrequently. Look at fights like e7s, where you spend the first 2 minutes barely needing a heal. If you force me to Medica II the Empty wave and maybe consider a Regen after the TB, then spam Glare for the rest I'm not going to suddenly feel engaged.

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This is talk right out of the echo chamber. How do you feel about mechanics that reduce HP to critical and inflict Doom like in Hades EX, or having to take big damage in order to remove a debuff like in E5S, or many other savage/EX encounters in the game? Don't talk like healing isn't required, while it doesn't scale correctly and ilv bloat will increase sustainability along with DPS this couldn't be more false. When players talk about increasing healing requirements, it specifically talks about raising the bar from wherever the standard is currently set for any particular encounter. It's not going to be same in all content.

Anywho, the idea is to make healers rely less on their ogcd heals. With these potency decreases and/or CD increases, healers would be forced to fall back on their GCD heals. The potency increases wouldn't be across the board, and would likely only affect their base ST and AoE heals. You can forget about regen taking care of the job as well. They would only restore enough HPS to assist the healing requirement. It becomes more engaging because for a job like WHM, you might not use PoM solely to increase the amount of Glares you dish out anymore. You'll have to think about it first instead of just mindlessly keeping it on CD.

The only problem with this I see is the reluctance to accept it from both the devs and players alike. You've already shown your own objection to the idea using one of the worst fights to encompass the healing requirements of the entire game. Do you want healing to be more engaging as a healer, or not? Anyone whose fallback is to just give us more DPS buttons to push is just defaulting; just like the devs when it comes to the design of healer jobs. The way you engage healers is to push their heals. This is simply a matter of the devs growing some freaking balls, and just doing it. Coddling the lowest common denominator has got to stop.

You have to understand that healing right now is at the point where it would be easier for the devs to cave and get rid of the role than it is to actually fix it. We are not far off from being healers by name only, and they need to turn the ship around before their simplification has an adverse effect, and the only healers left to do Savage are all the ones who have been handed their clears.

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Originally Posted by Hysterior

There was no new healer this expansion so they could fix the current jobs and the healing community is even more divided than ever...

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English media used the word 'balance.'

I don't think there's the will to 'fix' them.

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Originally Posted by PondHollow

English media used the word 'balance.' I don't think there's the will to 'fix' them.

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I have no idea how SE can fix this tbh...
I think they either did not see how raids changed the healer role and/or they have been too slow to react.
There was no new healer this expansion so they could balance the current jobs and the healing community is even more divided than ever...

Really can't wait to see if the next expansion finds a solution that would be suitable for most or creates an even bigger rift.

Not sure if that changes anything in my message but I hope it makes you happy at least. Have a great day.

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Originally Posted by Hysterior

There was no new healer this expansion so they could balance the current jobs and the healing community is even more divided than ever...


Really can't wait to see if the next expansion finds a solution that would be suitable for most or creates an even bigger rift.

Not sure if that changes anything in my message but I hope it makes you happy at least. Have a great day.

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I'll clarify what it changes then. Balance is not and has never really been a particularly significant issue with the healers, and isn't relevant to how fun they are, but that's what SE focused on. It wasn't asked for, but it's what they decided to do. Accordingly, the healers are boring and thus in a broken state, but balanced.

They did not try to fix the healers.

There is no indication that they were or are going to try.

There was no opportunity cost to be paid to fix the healers because that was never on the table and hasn't been publicly mentioned.

They tried to balance them - in the simplest possible manner I should add, by making them very similar. And they got a resounding success at the expense of making fun jobs.

This of course might be an artifact of the official translation, as it's just one word, but if the word choice of 'balance' in the English media was faithful to what they intended to communicate, it is telling.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

This is talk right out of the echo chamber. How do you feel about mechanics that reduce HP to critical and inflict Doom like in Hades EX, or having to take big damage in order to remove a debuff like in E5S, or many other savage/EX encounters in the game?

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Hades Doom debuff is great, though not sure what you're talking about in e5s? Stormcloud isn't that bad. The fight overall is slightly more interesting than e6+7 to heal. But I'd like more Doom's, Almagests, ticking DoTs that need to be watched and so on. E7S could easily have added a heavy aoe bleed DoT somewhere in P1.

I'm not entirely disagreeing, but I fail to see how heavily nerfing oGcD heals alone but making no change to any fight design will suddenly fix everything? Sure, some fights might get a little more interesting, like e5, but you'll still have the e6s, e7s, Titana, Inno and so on with those huge gaps where literally no healing is needed and you're back to Glare spam. I still feel Medica II's would cover nearly everything in a lot of cases.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Anyone whose fallback is to just give us more DPS buttons to push is just defaulting; just like the devs when it comes to the design of healer jobs. The way you engage healers is to push their heals.

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I'm not sure you read all my post? I'm not pushing for moar dps (though a few extra buttons wouldn't hurt), I'm saying the fights with huge downtime should also throw more threats at us that demand healing and that needs changing too.

But sure, I'm interested. Maybe list all the changes you'd make to potency for one of the healers to illustrate the point?

i think its both things compounding each other. we have more and stronger ogcds to heal and also less damage to heal in fights. its not like we havent gotten any heal checks in recent fights but theyre really far in between and the other unavoidable damage usually happens once a minute.

i would honestly love if they somewhat nerfed ogcds and made things hit a bit more frequently. i did some min ilv coils of bahamut and for example, the tankbuster flatten in t13 was followed by 2 more hard hitting hits, which meant that rather than just topping the tank with an ED and forgetting about it you had to spam heal for a while. on top of that dps get hit by earthshakers shortly after so you kinda wanna save that instant heal for them too.

i cant really think of any recent fights where damage happens often enough to worry about things like that

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Originally Posted by Gemina

When players talk about increasing healing requirements, it specifically talks about raising the bar from wherever the standard is currently set for any particular encounter. It's not going to be same in all content.

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This is an inherent problem when it comes to Healing in general. Increasing healing requirements does not serve to fix the problem with the lack of incoming damage. Pushing damage intensity too far up just forces Healers to play almost perfectly to function at the minimum item level, which is almost impossible for the average player. Similarly, pushing for more frequency on the incoming damage too far does the same thing.

Always consider how it would impact the encounter and player resources. If we push for less downtime between incoming damage, then it punishes heavily for any mistakes made i.e. raised with no MP and 25% weakness, or any KO’s in general with the heavy cost on Raise spells. Granted, stacking as much Piety as humanely possible and dumping them as you get better gear may possibly end up being the trend (hmm..). It isn’t going to fix the Healers—they’re just not designed to be able to accommodate high frequency & high intensity sustained healing for an extended period of time.

Hahahah wow...
Looks like they had to add a cutscenes there just so the healers MP and cooldowns could recover :D

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Originally Posted by AdamFyi

Pushing damage intensity too far up just forces Healers to play almost perfectly to function at the minimum item level, which is almost impossible for the average player. Similarly, pushing for more frequency on the incoming damage too far does the same thing.

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nobody is asking for normal content to be dealt like this. people usually ask for higher healing requirements in high end content, where dps ALREADY have to play almost perfectly at minimum item level to clear.

besides its not black and white, its a spectrum and we're leaning way too much over one end.

as for the resources, i get what youre saying, but when people make gearsets around the idea that they wont be casting more than 1 gcd heal per minute because they seriously dont expect to do more than that its telling. imagine if piety was a stat worth caring about

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Originally Posted by QooEr

nobody is asking for normal content to be dealt like this. people usually ask for higher healing requirements in high end content, where dps ALREADY have to play almost perfectly at minimum item level to clear.

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If the goal is to make playing a healer more engaging then only increasing the healing requirement in high end content would be rather pointless. As much as I enjoy doing savage I still spend most of my time doing "normal" content and I'm sure I'm not the only one, so this would still leave me bored out of my mind in 90% of the game.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

If the goal is to make playing a healer more engaging then only increasing the healing requirement in high end content would be rather pointless. As much as I enjoy doing savage I still spend most of my time doing "normal" content and I'm sure I'm not the only one, so this would still leave me bored out of my mind in 90% of the game.

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I'm in a similar boat. I enjoy doing "normal" content yet the sheer amount of Glare casts I can get away with is comical. I'm not a healing 90% of the time, I'm a gimped DPS with a single button. This is a big reason you're seeing more and more complaints from non-Savage raiders. They're even more bored since they aren't interested in raid content.