Read the post i responded to and the OP first
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Yes and you still haven’t told me how people being decent enough at their job to abuse the tanks overpowered self regen and ignore the healer role will somehow create a meta of only brining meta jobs
The only reason this is even possible is because square is too scared to give healers any challenge or responsibility and an enrage timer in normal to dryer this sort of stuff is totally out of the question apparently
I just resent the idea that it would be normal, as in desired, that the best players omit healers
Where do you guys keep getting 3/5 from? UCoB was cleared with 8 tanks, TOP was cleared with only tanks and DPS, the other 3 all had at least 1 healer.
For the record, I'm not saying to not complain or that the healer situation isn't bad, I'm just saying to stop lumping in decent fights with badly designed ones. TOP is the issue as it's the only ultimate that has been cleared with no healers on patch. We should be criticising the design that's bad, not everything adjacent to it too. UCoB has some bite still, they had to do with 8 tanks because damage is still high enough and tank healing is still low enough that DPS jobs will die at certain points. DSR also has some high damage choke points, will tank and DPS healing even cover Akh Morn's Edge in p7 where everyone is spread into their own towers? TOP's design is the main problem, mechanics in that fight aren't designed to kill you with damage if you do them right, tank healing is only one part of the issue here.
I think it's more so because of Double Dragons. The DD phase is the only phase of any fight where tanks actually take huge amounts of auto attack damage to the point where cooldowns are actually really tight. Probably one of the most enjoyable phases in the game cause it forces you to lose uptime and not mindlessly burst on a single target, healers actually have to heal and tanks actually have to properly mitigate. Best design philosophy just because it's not afraid to fuck your rotation and muscle memory up.
Tangent but if they deleted every single Thordin phase and just replaced it with phases that has the same design principle as DD, DSR would probably be the best Ultimate.
what if, the two ppl who 'left the fight' early on the 8man casual raid were both dps, and then the 6 remaining ppl still cleared the duty? how would ppl feel about that? would it make you feel that DPS is unneeded to an extent?
i think a casual duty getting cleared while the dps is gone the whole fight is a common scenario. now another question is: why do ppl get bothered when a casual duty is cleared without healer, but not so much when its cleared without dps?
now what if the tanks are the one thats gone? on a lvl 90 dungeon last boss just now, the tank in my party gets DC the moment the boss were pulled, so only 3 of us fought the boss and we killed it anyway.
see, i think in casual content the duty is designed to be clearable even when some of the party members are gone, regardless the role.
when the dps is missing, the party's ability to deal damage is diminished, thus the boss takes longer to die, and the tanks & healers would have to work harder to make damage
when the tank is missing, the party's ability to control the incoming damage is diminished, thus the boss' AA & TB go to someone with low defense, and the dps & healers would have to work harder to survive
when the healer is missing, the party's ability to heal is diminished, thus the whole party is in higher risk to wipe, and the tanks & DPS would have to work harder to recover their health.
so when some certain role is missing, the party is crippled in a way, but would still be able to clear a casual content if the remaining party members are competent enough to carry the weight of the missing members.
I personally think that that's a good equality among the roles, since one role is not supposed to feel more important than the others.
and in the hardcore content, it's clearly shown how every role is just as important as the other, by having DPS check, healing check, & continuous TBs.
OK now before you ask, 'So what's the point of having roles?'
Well, I personally think that roles are not very important. The casual content would do just fine without having the holy trinity of tank-dps-healer. but it is helpful for the very casual player who don't really know how to play the game well, since having the normal party composition does make the content easier. For most hardcore contents, the roles matters a lot more though.
I feel like the trinity has grown stale to begin with. Being beholden to other players for your own survival works well in some ways, but it does begin to grate after a while. It's why more games have begun turning toward personal responsibility, by which I mean everyone is given all the tools they need to stay alive. Whether or not they can stay alive is then entirely up to them. If you die? Well, you've got nobody else to blame. Git gud.
I wouldn't mind seeing the devs begin adding more healing tools to DPS (and DRK, since it has all the self-sustain of a quadriplegic toddler), more DPS tools to healers and (to a lesser degree) tanks, and repurposing healers in particular as support by giving them extra buffs and debuffs and access to some extremely potent emergency healing for tanks/DPS that do screw up.
Because we're not talking about a dungeon. We're talking about a raid.
We're not talking about missing party members. We're talking about straight up replacing a role in content because said content barely has anything for said role to do that the remaining 2 can't do without them.
Bosses in EW dungeons can be done without a tank yes. Raid bosses? Unless you want SGE and SCH to fully commit to using their GCDs constantly to attempt to keep a DPS alive (probably a DRG/RPR because after Fending Gear Maiming has the most mitigations correct?) you probably can't do them without a tank. There are mechanics in place for a tank's requirement. There are no mechanics in place for a healer's requirement.
Now I would bring up the double standard of SE fixing it so when Titan Egi was a thing it could no longer tank. But I wasn't around then, and I don't know first hand if it was possible or not.
So I'll just say this: I don't think its good quality for a holy trinity game (one that promotes tank/healer/dps) to make content casual or no that does not have mechanics for part of the trinity to shine in. Even more so when it is a raid - a piece of content where players are able to group up and accomplish a task.
And I'll also say that is very disheartening to hear that "no, healing requirements are so pitifully low your favorite role to play (healer) is not needed in X content".
Also Hardcore content has NOT shown how every role is important. As said hardcore content was cleared without 2 healers, without a single healer, and some of them on release.
Maiming has the most passive mitigation after fending, but those jobs don't necessarily have the best mitigation tools after tanks. They seem tougher because they won't get hurt as badly when taking things straight to the face, but some of the other DPS do have circumstantially decent mitigation due to their job tools. Granted, RPR is by no means a slouch in this area. RPR's shield is quite good if used appropriately. DRG, on the other hand, is basically just going to be taking everything raw.
It could tank, yeah. It wouldn't be as durable as an actual tank, but you could absolutely save a raid just by swiftcasting your Titan-egi after the tanks have gone down. Saw it happen many times back in the day. Taking that away from SMN was pretty crappy.
And what about games without the trinity where complexity wasn't sacrificed? Because those are a thing. You don't need the trinity to make your fights complex. If anything, forcing your players to be directly responsible for their own survival opens the way to increasing the complexity of your fights. It does however mean players who can't or won't improve aren't likely to progress as far as they would in a game still reliant upon the trinity.
Oh I was talking about casual content in general, regardless raid or dungeon. Well I wanted to stick with the topic of raid, but I never really have a firsthand experience where the tank is missing the whole fight, and I only have the experience in boss dungeon thus I mentioned that one. Honestly I really would like to see how a party of 6 without tanks clear a casual raid. If the 6 ppl are competent enough to carry the missing tank weights, I think it should be doable. might make the healers raise a lot & throw GCD heals a lot though, but should still be doable.
Regarding the holy trinity, I personally think that roles are not very important. The casual content would do just fine without having the holy trinity of tank-dps-healer. but it is helpful for the very casual player who don't really know how to play the game well, since having the normal party composition does make the content easier. For most hardcore contents, the roles matters a lot more though.
Talking about some of the hardcore contents that can be cleared without healers, well maybe those ones need some balancing fix. the game is not perfect, but I think the way 2 tanks & 4 DPS manage to clear a casual raid provided those 6 are skilled enough, is nothing to be concerned about.
Personally, the problem with healers unlike dps and tanks, is that their entire kits are mostly healing/shield spells, so when you never have to use said kit, and are left spamming 1 button, the feeling of uselessness is way eaiser to notice. If healers had more of a dps rotation, and took more of a support role, I think we would see way less complaining about this
There are 3 primary aspects that makes these situations meaningfully different:
- Damage determines when a fight is completed, healing determines if a fight is completed*
- DPS roles have lower responsibility than Healers
- DPS roles always has a job to do, while the job Healers have to do is determined by the encounter
Damage determines when a fight is completed, healing determines if a fight is completed*
In a fight without enrage, outgoing damage only determines when a fight is completed, not if. Because as long as you're alive, every class is capable of doing at least a tiny amount of damage, and over time even a mild amount of DPS will eventually lead to the death of the boss. However, you cannot take this same approach to healing, because below a certain rate of healing your group dies and you literally fail.
DPS roles have lower responsibility than HealersBecause of the previous point, DPS roles have a lower level of responsibility than Healers. If a DPS role slips up their rotation or even dies, their reduced DPS does not put the party at risk.* Reduced healing can put the party at risk of death and wipes. Thus, healers not only have the responsibility of preventing failure, but additionally share in the lesser responsibility that DPS roles have, since a Healer that allows a DPS role to die has played a part in reducing the DPS of the party.
In my opinion, I think it's a good thing that different roles have different levels of responsibility. Some players want more responsibility, some want less, and this lets them all play together.
DPS roles always has a job to do, while the job Healers have to do is determined by the encounterRealistically speaking, you cannot design a fight where DPS roles don't have a job to do; you would have to bend over backwards to do so. Because as long as there's an enemy — which is the whole point of every encounter — there is an HP pool that needs to be drained. By definition, until an encounter ends, there is a need to deal damage.
The same can't be said for Healers. A Healer's job is to keep the party alive. Any time the party isn't at risk of eventual death is a moment when Healers do not have a job to do. Put another way, the need for Healers is relative to the magnitude of harm the encounter deals to the party. Below a certain threshold, Healers will spend a significant amount of each encounter without a job to do. And below an even lower threshold, Healers won't even be needed to do what little job there is to do.
*The only exception to this is content where there is a time crunch mechanic that is guaranteed to wipe the party if some entity isn't killed quickly; in these specific circumstances, Damagers also take on the role of making sure that the encounter doesn't fail.
We have a game like that. Its called ESO. Healers are also not needed in content and are just more of a buffer for new/bad/inexperienced players.
ESO is not a Holy Trinity game. FFXIV however is.
Raids while having become casual content, arguably shouldn't be. They are supposed to have mechanics for each of the three roles. Not having them in a raid is a red flag.
Are you talking about FFXIV? Or about a game design that you think ideal? Or some other game?
Because this is definitely not the casual content in FFXIV is. The fact that the game gives some means of HP recovery to tank & dps is so the party can survive without healer. the game gives offensive skills to tank & healer so the party can kill the boss without dps. the game gives personal mitigation tools to dps so the party can survive without tank. the game is trying to make every role equal, so none of the roles feels more important than any other roles, which I personally think a good thing.
In casual content, all the roles equally don't matter.
In hardcore content, all the roles equally matter.
hmm I think first we need to separate between casual content and hardcore content. They literally make two different fight for each raids, one for casual (normal raid), one for hardcore (savage raid)
In savage raid we get all those 'mechanic for each of the three roles'. In normal raid we dont get them because it's catered toward the less skilled players, where each of the trinity roles don't matter that much.
If you like playing a raid where it has mechanics for each roles then stick to savage raids I guess? and avoid normal raid?
I encourage you to re-read the details of what I wrote and not just the bullet points; if you do, I think you'll find that what I described is how FF14 plays now. I didn't explicitly state it, but hopefully it's clear that when Healers have less of a job to do, they have proportionately less responsibility. Which leaves us where we are now.
These mitigation tools generally have a short duration and a long cooldown. They do not give DPS roles the ability to sustainably act as a tank in at-level content.
It's only in Endwalker that at-level content has been sustainably survivable with dead healers. And what the intent is, only the devs can say. But in previous expansions, your group wasn't going to survive for long with downed healers in at-level content.
This has been rather normal since 1.0, and every expansion/patch.
The method that allows for it would change, but it was always possible, and I would encounter it at least once per expansion myself.
in 1.0, before dungeons, u would pull mobs, and try to chain them. But there was a method for LNC to mass pull far too many mobs for them to handle, barely survive, and insta kill the entire group, not needing tansk or healers (which might sound simple, comparing trash to bosses, but this was more akin to wall to wall pulling in a leveling dungeon (not Lv capped dungeon) w/o tanks. (also very undergeared)
in 2.0 I soloed most fights/dungeons as SMN, so this technically counts, not including the number of times me and my friends would work together to stay alive, if our random healer died. (It was either WARs self healing, or SMNs weak healing)
In 3.0 my groups would randomly die to bosses, and Id end up just soloing the boss as a DRK, only healing with Soul Eater (and the weak blood bath)
I think BRDs also had reasonable regen back then, but i forget, I didnt play one. (PLD got clemency)
in 4.0, it obviously had RDM, which can get a few heals out, before running out of MP, but with that, PLDs clemency, and other minor heals from other jobs, it happened a bit more frequently.
same story as above with 5.0 till today.
on occasion i had to rely on a combination of self heals, and potions, usually in low level content, such as ultima, when my party DCed, and I had to solo it.
The final boss of 3.0, i jokingly went in as a PLD Lv60 (didnt have tome gear yet) so I was Lv synced, and under iLv, and soloed the final boss. (granted the fight is a joke, but ppl pretend it was harder at release, when it wasnt)
which is an improvement, no? they seem to be moving toward the equality of the roles in terms of importance. you would rather have a game where a certain role has more importance than the other? despite it being inequal? each to their own I guess. but again I personally think it's just fair that a content that can be cleared without dps / tank, can also be cleared without healer.
yes, correct. but then the game gives tank & dps the capability of healing, to avoid getting to that 'below a certain rate of healing your group dies' in casual content, even when you have no healer. the same way the game gives the tank & healer the capability of dealing damage so the party can also clear it without dps in casual content. which is fair.
having different level of responsibility is fine. but making one role more important than the other simply because of their responsibility is something that FFXIV seems to be moving away from, again, to make all the roles equally unimportant for casual content, and equally important for hardcore content.
firstly theres no casual content (except the old ones) where the party can survive when the healers dont heal at all. (when they dont heal, the tank/dps do the healers job to heal for them). and when they dont have to heal, their job is help killing the enemy faster by using the raid buff & the offensive skills.
In my eyes at least, it cheapens and devalues the healer role because of how commonplace these sort of occurrences are and at least until Extremes, how low the bar is to pull this sort of stuff off.
Two ways to think about this:
Lets take a fairly typical dungeon boss, now lets assume 1 role just checks out on pull but the other 2 continue on. If we think about what issues the group will face with the loss of each role, for the tanks we're going to have a pingponging boss with little to no control over agro unless one of the DPS handily outstrips the other AND is doing enough DPS to keep the boss off the healer. If the boss has big cleaves or tank busters hard enough to be a real threat for the healer, that's a genuine issue. Meanwhile if we lose the DPS, sure it'll likely still be a clean and smooth kill, but it'll also be significantly slower assuming everyones playing to a similar standard since we're losing ~60% of the group's damage. Now if we lose the healer, what are we actually giving up? ~20% of the groups damage and a comfort blanket when it comes to mistakes by my estimates. If people play decently the comfort blanket amounts to just about nothing.
IMHO if you've been a long time MMO healer, it only feels worse too.
In Everquest, my Shaman was an absolute monster, if it didn't Death Touch and couldn't flurry me down in a single round, it couldn't kill me. I started PoG raids solo including managing and parking the Warders (Gogo VP snare stick), I soloed other Shaman's Rak tokens for them, I was an AA farm in a box, could add just about any combination of people and classes from the guild and could make it work. I felt powerful, I felt impactful and above all, I felt like I was the foundational rock that a solid group or raid could be built upon.
In FFXI, my bard was a 400hp/400mp support bag of tricks, by myself I was useless for just about anything other than running past/away from stuff, but I took average groups and turned them into merit farming machines and I turned annoying evasive or tanky mobs into squishy punchbags ripe for the picking. Whilst I didn't feel powerful in myself, my impact on the group was immeasurable, my contribution undeniable and the demand for my services was ceaseless.
In WoW, my shaman was an nigh unstoppable war machine, at some point or another, if you looked behind every single last High Warlord Warrior on my server, you'd see me keeping them alive, protecting them and buffing their damage. Even if the Alliance rarely caught sight of me as I was generally hiding in a ditch, around a building or behind a tree, I was there and whilst I was still standing, we weren't ever going to lose.
In FFXIV, there's not enough to heal, my damage sucks and is boring and if I keel over and die, the group barely bats an eye lid. I have a huge amount of raw healing potential and it just feels... wasted outside of those first few weeks of prog. Outside of that, what else do I bring to the table? I lost my virus chains, I lost my stellar aoe dps, I lost my impactful buffs. All I have left is a bloated bag of heals and oh so many naff nukes.
Why can't I have a big bag of genuinely useful tricks and debuffs like my EQ and WoW Shaman? Why can't I have genuinely impactful buffs like my FFXI Bard and WoW Shaman?
The trinity is fine. It's just that FFXIV's execution of it is absolutely terrible at this stage. This is an MMO, we are supposed to be beholden to other players, that's the whole point of the genre IMHO. The true magic of this genre are when you come together with others and pull of something special, be it your first EX/Savage/Ultimate clear or simply having fun with a few friends spamming chests.
It's not even that the tanks need less heals.
It's just we asked for increased difficulty and they responded by making any small mistake essentially a death if not an outright wipe this expansion. Which isn't what we asked for either, tbh. What's the point of healing if a single hit is essentially a wipe or a death?
disclaimer: this is a reply to your whole message, only quoting the first part of it to save space
Oh yes of course you feel powerful as a healer on those games you mentioned. because not only you are powerful, but you are also more powerful than the others, to the point that as long as you're standing, your party wouldn't lose, and you felt like you're the foundational rock of the party. which means, you are the most important part of the party, or at the very least, you're more important than the other roles in the party. which proves that there's an imbalance in the importance of the roles, which is FFXIV is trying to avoid.
Because when a role is more important than the other, there's another role that is less important than the other.
I don't know what makes you think that in FFXIV, when you die as a healer, the group barely bats an eye lid. Even in casual content the healer is the top priority to be raised when they die. And in hardcore content the healer is very important since when both healers die it can be guaranteed a wipe. For casual content though, its more possible to push through when the healers die, because it is the easier content.
What I see from this whole discussion is, healers complain because they feel they are less important than the other roles, when the fact is healer is just as important as every other roles already. And I think asking to be made more important than the other role is simply not fair.
I play every roles btw. I cleared the current savage firstly as healer, and recleared as tank & dps. so I can assure you that my opinion is not biased toward the non healers.
honestly I agree with this. the whole party gets punished when someone makes an oopsie is a bit much. Also I think healers need more damage neutral GCD heals (like WHM's lilies), so that the game can force them to use GCD heals without compromising their DPS output.
hmmm actually looking how the tanks increasingly get more ability to heal, its just fair if the healers also increasingly gets more ability to deal damage. hopefully healer's dps rotation is improved in dawntrail. also maybe improve the self damage mitigations tools for the DPS too to make it fair, so all three of the roles are improved in terms of doing the other role's job.
Healers don’t need to do more DPS, they need more interesting ways to do the level of DPS they do
Think healers do 60% of a true DPS pressing 2.5 buttons and 95% of a tanks damage pressing the same
The ratio of simplicity to damage output the healers are right up there with SMN for “so far ahead of every other class it’s an actual joke”
Is that really true though? Was I really more powerful?
In FFXI, by myself I was literally nothing. It took me 15 minutes+ to solo a trash mob that was barely above grey to me. Calling an FFXI bard powerful is completely misunderstanding the job because they were anything but. What they were was an amplifier and enabler. We took bad matchups and made them good, we took good matchups and made them great.
For WoW, was I really the powerful than the warrior who was one/two shotting our victims? By themselves, the Warrior was vulnerable and an easy target. By myself I was a brick wall but also little more than an annoyance if simply ignored. Together, we were devastating and synergised perfectly.
Overall, FFXI is a particularly good case study to look at. It's not that one role was more important than the others, but rather that the game played into the trinity HARD.
Simple merit farm mobs would literally 1 shot a caster and the DPS/support wouldn't fare much better, maybe 2-3 rounds if it doesn't use a damage WS on you? No tank? No go.
Tanks, Healers and Supports did somewhere between little to no damage and in most cases, it was actually detrimental to allow a non tank or DPS to even touch the mob unless it was dots as you'd feed TP allowing it to potentially do considerably more damage. No DPS? No go.
Supports were vital to enable DPS to reliably connect on IT rated mobs. Without those BRD/Cor/etc buffs, you'd be missing/bouncing often enough that you'd have to step a tier down which was a HUGE loss in exp. No Support? No go.
Healers were similarly important. Even tanks would still get tied in knots by some mob weapon skills and no matter what gear you had, you'd need a healer babysitting you even up against a simple merit farm trash mob. No healer? No go.
Meanwhile in mainstream FFXIV content, Healers can survive tank busters and deal damage. Tanks can heal and deal damage. DPS can heal and survive tank busters. See the problem here?
FFXI was an MMO through and through, you relied on other people just as other people would rely on you.
FFXIV has evolved into a single player game with an MMO dressing over the top of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6MvwQWBMVg&t=471sQuote:
I don't know what makes you think that in FFXIV, when you die as a healer, the group barely bats an eye lid.
Here's a favourite example of mine. Some fun facts about it:
Look closely at the CD usage, the healing wasn't particularly well timed and key cooldowns were missed/wasted across the group. This wasn't some MLG pro gamer save by any stretch.
Also note the instance timer, this wasn't their first pull. Go figure that after wiping a bunch, they actually cleared after the healers had died. I sure bet those healers felt great about their role++
That's because in large swathes of the game, we are do indeed feel less important than the other roles. In the casual end game we are a comfort blanket that's honestly not needed if people are awake, have some gear and know what they are doing, and unlike tanks or DPS, if people are good enough to do the content without us, the group is likely *better* for it.Quote:
What I see from this whole discussion is, healers complain because they feel they are less important than the other roles
A competent group chewing up an expert dungeon without a tank is going to be fun, but messy and sketchy. The same competent group chewing up an expert without dps is going to be glacially slow and dull. The same competent group chewing up an expert without a healer is likely going to be faster than a traditional trinity group, by a decent margin too.
That's a problem IMO =(
In ff11 jobs were more complex then simply fitting into a tank/dps/healer role like modern mmo games. FF11 jobs were a lot more complex with much bigger kits then most modern mmos. And there was a lot more strategy to get job combos to work unless you were a beast master which they were off solo.
(Note that my PoV is up primarily up to the 75 cap, I was pretty hardcore during Zilart-CoP but did come back midcore for Aht Urhgan and Wings). IMO that complexity was more a case of job confusion. Many jobs slotted into roles that just made no sense or just didn't perform like you'd expect in group/raid play, eg Nin being a Tank, SMN being a healer/MP battery etcetc. The key difference is that support was very much it's own unique role and it had a ton of variety beyond BRD+Cor.
Maybe 15/20 Gauge then.
Nascent and Clemency do need some sort of adjustments to curb this kind of behaviour
The fact that current expansion High end content is being cleared without a subclass of Jobs just because WAR and PLD have such powerful healing should be a cause for concern.
It's not like P12S or ToP are casual content, it's some of the hardest end game content in the game.
Those numbers were just random numbers I thought of at the time.
The idea healers were ever in a good spot. In ARR using cross class skills thaum could heal up to stone vigil same with arcanist. Healer has some sort of meltdown and leaves off to the boss we go. I also miss early heal for tanks from cross class.
The game should probably decide if they even want healers almost at this point. And the tiny percentage needed at the high end is not how games should be designed around. If all melee became some version of war heals and all mages some version of pld heals it wouldn't be the end of the world. Already see lots of PF no healer runs.