The Problem With Healers as a Role Withing FFXIV

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

There will never be a skill floor too low for the FFXIV community. I really wish the design team would stop chasing it.

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It reminds me of that saying: the moment you make something idiot-proof, they'll invent a better idiot.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

The gap between skilled and unskilled players in this game is gargantuan. I'm not even saying it to be snobbish, nor am I claiming to be a world first master of my job. I've met fellow players who think the 5.3 trial is too difficult to include in the MSQ. The QTE wasn't even their only concern. Having to remember which element imbued Coruscant Blade for the what, 15 seconds between the imbue and the cast was too hard for a story trial. Not SoS extreme, mind you. Story. The one where the element is a binary choice between fire and ice. A level of object permanence you normally test for in toddlers.

There will never be a skill floor too low for the FFXIV community. I really wish the design team would stop chasing it.

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Let us never forget the screaming and crying Shinryu caused during his relevancy. I was about to mention a thread decrying it but actually managed to find it. So... enjoy.

The sheer excuses people will make to justify why they can't do better never fails to amuse either. "They don't have the time!" Is always funny since they certainly have the time to complete all the story content, side quests and even farm several relics.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Let us never forget the screaming and crying Shinryu caused during his relevancy. I was about to mention a thread decrying it but actually managed to find it. So... enjoy.

The sheer excuses people will make to justify why they can't do better never fails to amuse either. "They don't have the time!" Is always funny since they certainly have the time to complete all the story content, side quests and even farm several relics.

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Ah, this reminds me of Steps of Faith as well.

That was one trial that went from fun to pants on head retarded in the span of a month or two.

I really wish that SE just made a good way to reset instead of nerfing it to the ground. Maybe have mechanic checkpoints that causes instant wipes if you ignore them.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Let us never forget the screaming and crying Shinryu caused during his relevancy. I was about to mention a thread decrying it but actually managed to find it. So... enjoy.

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I looked at the thread you linked and I saw very little "screaming and crying". The responses were overwhelmingly in disagreement with the OP. Judging by that thread, the vast majority of players felt that the difficulty of Shinryu Normal was fine.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

There will never be a skill floor too low for the FFXIV community. I really wish the design team would stop chasing it.

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This is very true. Certain players will always have a "bare minimum" attitude and no matter how easy you make something, they'll do the bare minimum of that and struggle.

If you made healers one button for raidwide healing, one button for dps and a rez, they'd ignore the dps button, wear the absolute minimum gear, ignore and die from most of the mechanics and let party members die while watching Netflix. Not even exaggerating. There will always be players with that mindset and lowering the bar only makes them play worse.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

I looked at the thread you linked and I saw very little "screaming and crying". The responses were overwhelmingly in disagreement with the OP. Judging by that thread, the vast majority of players felt that the difficulty of Shinryu Normal was fine.

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I was referring to the OP and people like them. This is one of several threads. Kotaku even made an article because so many people whined over Shinryu's being too hard.

For good or for ill, this is a trend started back in heavensward, where Alexander got it's normal mode. That, and they allowed coil to be unsynched, a decision which got alot of people amgry at the time. In the end, we not have story content and challenge content, in general.

Easy story content isn't going anywhere. But easy content can be fun... which is where the issue lies right now.

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Originally Posted by Dearche

Ah, this reminds me of Steps of Faith as well.

That was one trial that went from fun to pants on head retarded in the span of a month or two.

I really wish that SE just made a good way to reset instead of nerfing it to the ground. Maybe have mechanic checkpoints that causes instant wipes if you ignore them.

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Steps of faith was bad because:

1) If you failed you had to wait 10 min or so for the entire scenario to play out before you could try again.

2) And they gated an expansion behind it.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Steps of faith was bad because:

1) If you failed you had to wait 10 min or so for the entire scenario to play out before you could try again.

2) And they gated an expansion behind it.

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Those important design considerations aside (failing fast is a good thing after all), Steps is another shining example of that skill gulf I was talking about. The boss is -almost- a mobile training dummy. You have to avoid its feet, but there are very few mechanics to look out for. You can use the cannons and the dragonkillers if you want, but the encounter won't end if you miss them. There are some adds, but none of them have complex things to handle. Just fairly basic field mob dodging. The boss itself originally had the same amount of HP as the Avatar, the boss from T8. We were a full patch cycle/raid tier's worth of gear ahead of T8 at the time. So the community essentially complained that they couldn't beat a walking training dummy with almost no mechanics, with the HP of a previous raid tier's penultimate boss, using extra optional damage boosters conveniently available in towers along the way.

Meanwhile parties doing Final Coil were just killing it without touching the cannons or the dragonkillers.

Again, I don't think Steps is a well-designed trial. But it's got that juicy skill gap story right there.

Honestly the main problem was the time failure before you could retry. Notice how every msq final boss since has a fall or arena kill (except tsuki I think) The cannons were mainly there to stun the boss for more uptime and get rid of the annoying adds (since aoe back then was hella expensive in cost)

Gating an expansion wasn't a bad thing for the playerbase since HW was designed to be harder. The problem was that it was group skill rather than individual player skill. Then again, this was also the time when groups didnt disband on the 1st wipe.

Boy did it feel satisfying clearing it pre nerf.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Steps of faith was bad because:

1) If you failed you had to wait 10 min or so for the entire scenario to play out before you could try again.

2) And they gated an expansion behind it.

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I addressed the first point in my post, but I don't think the second is an issue.

Odd mechanics are things which keep things fresh, and the ones in steps of faith really made you feel like the Dragonsong War was something we'd struggle to fix alone. If they made it so that you'd automatically fail if you didn't do enough of the special mechanics by certain checkpoints, there'd have been a lot less whining.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Those important design considerations aside (failing fast is a good thing after all), Steps is another shining example of that skill gulf I was talking about. The boss is -almost- a mobile training dummy. You have to avoid its feet, but there are very few mechanics to look out for. You can use the cannons and the dragonkillers if you want, but the encounter won't end if you miss them. There are some adds, but none of them have complex things to handle. Just fairly basic field mob dodging. The boss itself originally had the same amount of HP as the Avatar, the boss from T8. We were a full patch cycle/raid tier's worth of gear ahead of T8 at the time. So the community essentially complained that they couldn't beat a walking training dummy with almost no mechanics, with the HP of a previous raid tier's penultimate boss, using extra optional damage boosters conveniently available in towers along the way.

Meanwhile parties doing Final Coil were just killing it without touching the cannons or the dragonkillers.

Again, I don't think Steps is a well-designed trial. But it's got that juicy skill gap story right there.

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Geez, I never realized how bad it was. As long as you got the dragonkillers, the HP didn't really matter anyways, so I didn't realize that it was just a target dummy shaped Avatar.

Though as long as I had two others who knew what they were doing, it was easy to carry the rest of the party in that trial.

I don't think that you are going to specifically make healing more interesting by raising the average mechanical difficulty of fights. Instant oneshots and raidwipes generally aren't your problem. What is your problem is when deaths from unavoidable damage (tankbusters, raidwides) translate into wipes. This is where triage, prioritization, and resource management come in.

I think that it's comfortable to focus in on dps gameplay as a healer. You don't have the actual competitiveness of playing a real DPS, so you can get props from your friends while simply competing against a section of the playerbase that, for the large part, isn't actually competing with you. Simply disagreeing with the Sylphie mantra pushes you well above the average.

But as the devs whittle away at the impact of tank and healer damage output, this sidequest matters less and less. What you need to be asking for is wipe potential. You should have fights where your teammates turn around to you and are genuinely glad that you've got their back and not someone else. Without genuine wipe potential, healers just aren't going to matter, and good players aren't going to want to stay on healer.

Right now, insufficient dps is what causes wipes. You can stick any clown on tank or healer, they're just there to lower queue times. Bosses tank themselves, healing checks are trivial. You want carry potential, you want first pick on gear, you want to be valued, then you play a real DPS. It's awful, shortsighted design, but that's the way things are now. You want to reverse this trend, then healing checks and tank checks need to make or break whether your raid group clears fights.

I’m still curious why they don’t give healers good dps rotations. People that don’t wanna dps don’t do it even with a single button you need too press. Like if you don’t wanna dps you aren’t forced too like now so it shouldn’t even be a problem for player that wanna play like this only .And people that try to play the job as good as possible die of boredom because you hit 1 button 150 times in a fight forcing you to buy a new keyboard every major patch

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Originally Posted by Mortex

I’m still curious why they don’t give healers good dps rotations. People that don’t wanna dps don’t do it even with a single button you need too press. Like if you don’t wanna dps you aren’t forced too like now so it shouldn’t even be a problem for player that wanna play like this only .And people that try to play the job as good as possible die of boredom because you hit 1 button 150 times in a fight forcing you to buy a new keyboard every major patch

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Easy. None of the devs play a healer. None of them know how to make healers or even make engaging mechanics for them. They lack creativity in ways healing can be done and, for some reason, they seem to think that being a healer is scary. Yet... tanks get all the achievements, tanks are constantly in demand, etc... Why don't tanks get 1 button to press for their damage rotation and 500 buttons for mitigation? Then more people will play tanks... right?

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Originally Posted by Dearche

Ah, this reminds me of Steps of Faith as well.

That was one trial that went from fun to pants on head retarded in the span of a month or two.

I really wish that SE just made a good way to reset instead of nerfing it to the ground. Maybe have mechanic checkpoints that causes instant wipes if you ignore them.

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The problem with Steps of Faith wasn't it's difficulty (it wasn't difficult), it was the fact that once your good players who could teach people got their clear, they would bail upon seeing Steps of Faith. Bailing on content that you didn't want to do was very much the norm in ARR, and we'd find imaginative (and non-imaginative ways) to avoid doing any trial or dungeon that was seen as a pain in the ass. Design decisions today have echoed from what we did.

So, no, it wasn't a skill problem, it was a 'the vets fucked off and left new players high and dry so after a few days it'd take days before you'd get your stupid clear' problem.

If it was as 'fun' as the 'vets' claimed, you'd not have had that problem.

And... this was nerfed before they 'gated an expansion' behind it. They should not fix that trial to appease players who want to 'play it when it was fun' but are clear from their language they didn't actually experience it when it was 'fun.' Players who started

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

The problem with Steps of Faith wasn't it's difficulty (it wasn't difficult), it was the fact that once your good players who could teach people got their clear, they would bail upon seeing Steps of Faith. Bailing on content that you didn't want to do was very much the norm in ARR, and we'd find imaginative (and non-imaginative ways) to avoid doing any trial or dungeon that was seen as a pain in the ass. Design decisions today have echoed from what we did.

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This. And while I understand it's a more fundamental issue at heart, it's a little sad that there were so few attempts to just, idk, increase the bonus reward from new players, maybe even allowing for partial stacking if 1 new player would be irrelevant while 2 would damn near necessitate wipes. Or, heck, they could have dealt with the fundamental issue with roulettes' non-scaling daily bonuses long ago and we'd have likely have less homogenous content now.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

This. And while I understand it's a more fundamental issue at heart, it's a little sad that there were so few attempts to just, idk, increase the bonus reward from new players, maybe even allowing for partial stacking if 1 new player would be irrelevant while 2 would damn near necessitate wipes. Or, heck, they could have dealt with the fundamental issue with roulettes' non-scaling daily bonuses long ago and we'd have likely have less homogenous content now.

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You know what I miss?

Healing the NPCs and having my own personal army poking that dragon in the bum. 80 damage per auto attack doesn't seem like much until you have 60 of them present.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

You know what I miss?

Healing the NPCs and having my own personal army poking that dragon in the bum. 80 damage per auto attack doesn't seem like much until you have 60 of them present.

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Yet another reason to want smart-heals on AoEs (up to X total potency across wounded allies in range, party member or otherwise, favoring party members > most wounded).

(Ideally, make the max total healing of AoE heals a bit less in turn, as to make them less absurdly strong in general, though.)

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

So, no, it wasn't a skill problem, it was a 'the vets fucked off and left new players high and dry so after a few days it'd take days before you'd get your stupid clear' problem.

If it was as 'fun' as the 'vets' claimed, you'd not have had that problem.

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That's not the vets fault. They cleared it, they had their fun already. There's no rule against bailing from duties you dislike.

New players are not entitled to carries from experienced players. How did the vets get their clear in the first place when it was new and there was no one to teach them? They patiently figured out the fight by trial and error, learned it, researched and beat it. There's no reason new players cannot do the same. This applies to any difficult fight, including those entitled rants you see regarding "Duty Complete" PF's for endgame.

If you want to beat a difficult fight, progress it and don't be lazy and sit back complaining that vets won't walk you through.

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

So, no, it wasn't a skill problem, it was a 'the vets fucked off and left new players high and dry so after a few days it'd take days before you'd get your stupid clear' problem.

If it was as 'fun' as the 'vets' claimed, you'd not have had that problem.

And... this was nerfed before they 'gated an expansion' behind it. They should not fix that trial to appease players who want to 'play it when it was fun' but are clear from their language they didn't actually experience it when it was 'fun.' Players who started

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If newbies need the vets to carry them that's on the newbies, not the vets. The content wasn't so hard it couldn't be done, most just didn't even try to coordinate it.

I attempted to assist multiple groups trying that fight. Hands down the best strat was for the off healer and the off tank to man the cannons so the dps could focus on the dragon and the adds. Off tank / Off Healer much higher aoe damage via the cannons than they would have normally.

Guess how many people actually did that? Hell most people ignored the cannons all together (when it was new and the cannons / dragonkiller were pretty much mandatory).

At some point it's not worth the headache to try and help people who actively will NOT listen.

That's for each player to decide. But if you have enough bad group experiences in certain content, I can't blame people for seeing "Steps of Faith" pop up and they bolt.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

If newbies need the vets to carry them that's on the newbies, not the vets. The content wasn't so hard it couldn't be done, most just didn't even try to coordinate it.

I attempted to assist multiple groups trying that fight. Hands down the best strat was for the off healer and the off tank to man the cannons so the dps could focus on the dragon and the adds. Off tank / Off Healer much higher aoe damage via the cannons than they would have normally.

Guess how many people actually did that? Hell most people ignored the cannons all together (when it was new).

At some point it's not worth the headache to try and help people who actively will NOT listen.

That's for each player to decide. But if you have enough bad group experiences in certain content, I can't blame people for seeing "Steps of Faith" pop up and they bolt.

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Personally, I rarely had problems finding someone to get the other cannon when the trial was new. The issue was that it was hard to find a third to hit the dragonkiller when we went for the tethers.

For me, it felt like it was more an issue of people who've already played the trial but never bothered to learn it, then getting it in roulette and still not bothering to learn it. I didn't really think it was really a big deal that first timers just coasted. The issue was that since it was by far the most common trial anyone would get in the months leading to HW's release, yet most people never did anything but blindly DPS.

Maybe if Vishaps had an invulnerability shield at the beginning and the first gate had a dragonkiller that broke the shield, people might've learned that this was actually a gimmick fight and it wouldn't have been nerfed. I don't see people failing Lakshmi so badly despite the orbs basically being the same sort of mechanic. Most of the time, the bad parties just meant that it took longer to beat her, rather than actually failing it.

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Originally Posted by Dearche

Maybe if Vishaps had an invulnerability shield at the beginning and the first gate had a dragonkiller that broke the shield, people might've learned that this was actually a gimmick fight and it wouldn't have been nerfed. I don't see people failing Lakshmi so badly despite the orbs basically being the same sort of mechanic. Most of the time, the bad parties just meant that it took longer to beat her, rather than actually failing it.

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While not causing a full wipe, I still see people routinely die by not pressing their duty action button on that fight.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

While not causing a full wipe, I still see people routinely die by not pressing their duty action button on that fight.

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Yea, but the difference is the number of players that fail to press that button. You only really need like 3 people to succeed at it to beat Lakshmi, though the fight'll take forever to beat, it'll still get done. But with Vishaps, you often don't even get that three. Presuming that you yourself is one of the people actually doing the mechanics right, you needed two others to do so as well as you can't really use both snares and the dragonkiller with only two people.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

While not causing a full wipe, I still see people routinely die by not pressing their duty action button on that fight.

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To be fair Duty Actions don't even exist until that fight happens. I queued up and had no idea what people even meant when they said Duty Action and being on PS4 I couldnt follow their directions to click the duty action either which defaulted to a postion completely seperate from the hotbar I use to access all my actions. It was unbelievably confusing for someone who considers themself very comfortable with using a controller. I think Duty Actions are easy now but I know firsthand how easy it is to be stumped by things you've never encountered before.

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Originally Posted by NobleWinter

To be fair Duty Actions don't even exist until that fight happens. I queued up and had no idea what people even meant when they said Duty Action and being on PS4 I couldnt follow their directions to click the duty action either which defaulted to a postion completely seperate from the hotbar I use to access all my actions. It was unbelievably confusing for someone who considers themself very comfortable with using a controller. I think Duty Actions are easy now but I know firsthand how easy it is to be stumped by things you've never encountered before.

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I feel like Duty Actions would catch far fewer people off-guard if they were at least used on occasion in the open world.

Think of those quest items whose tiny icons have to be clicked if on M&KB, or require you to pan through the Key Items menu on controller, to use. Why don't those simply pop up, where applicable, as "Duty Actions?"

Or even just introduce them earlier in instanced fights, in an encounter where its use has lower stakes.