JP Players healer feedback is...

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Originally Posted by Solakor

The question isn't if they will remove something but what. They have been doing this 3 expacs in a row. SB was the middle ground where we still had skill expression but it wasn't as punishing and everything after has just been making it worse and worse.
The new SMN shouldn't exist in the game period because it's not a caster and it's completely different job to what it was before.
DT will not make it better but propably worse. The question is how much.

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I mean if their end goal is to basically make the gameplay Everquest but without any of the interesting class mechanics then it's still going to get quite a lot worse. It's just a question of how long that process is going to take.

I've seen a lot of discussion of JP players in comparison to wester players, and I think it really comes down to the fact that the JP players seem to mostly focus on the cooperative aspect of the game and realize that everyone is playing together towards the same goal. Western players even in a game like this seem to play it as a competitive game, ranking each others DPS and performance against each other.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I mean if their end goal is to basically make the gameplay Everquest but without any of the interesting class mechanics then it's still going to get quite a lot worse. It's just a question of how long that process is going to take.

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The kind of tools and skills that classes have in Everquest are way more comprehensive than anything XIV has ever had.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I've seen a lot of discussion of JP players in comparison to wester players, and I think it really comes down to the fact that the JP players seem to mostly focus on the cooperative aspect of the game and realize that everyone is playing together towards the same goal. Western players even in a game like this seem to play it as a competitive game, ranking each others DPS and performance against each other.

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The thing with healers is the fact that we know that healers are too strong with their kits for the content and they also don’t really support nerfs to skills like bloodwhetting given their responses in tank threads so what are JP healers even doing

This feels more like a “I get to be a respected and desirable member of my team by playing a job easier than SMN so what incentive do I have to rock the boat and show I’m really not that skilled” which just comes off as selfish

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I've seen a lot of discussion of JP players in comparison to wester players, and I think it really comes down to the fact that the JP players seem to mostly focus on the cooperative aspect of the game and realize that everyone is playing together towards the same goal. Western players even in a game like this seem to play it as a competitive game, ranking each others DPS and performance against each other.

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This is a case of giving the finger and losing a hand. There is no end to this stuff unless you reel it back by force or don't do it in the first place. There are ppl that demand that the game needs to be easier and easier constantly and anything that causes them to use the 2nd braincell they have needs to be eradicated because they fear they actually have to learn something or take an ounce of responsibility. Theyr justifications are just a cloak they try to hide under or they have no idea what they are talking about. The classic trinity/rpg design was made for a reason and if you try to reinvent it you better have something revolutionary or you are just making it worse. Giving these ppl the benefit of a doubt is essentially agreeing that making the game worse is good design.
It has nothing to do with cooperation or competition. That happens everywhere to a different degree.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Tinfoil hat time:
JP has a way higher savage clear rate than both EU and NA, especially their pug raiding.
Now could this be because the JP playerbase in general is more skilled? Maybe, no idea.

But their way of raiding is absolutely like a conveyor belt, or like fastfood. Players are basically interchangeable, you queue for savage in duty finder, zone in, get a macro posted, pick your spot (the really are only 2 for healers) and never deviate from whatever the incredibly safe macro strat tells you, you kill the boss and move on.
And it seems to work quite well for them, so they probably want to keep it that way, make the individual players in your party matter as little as possible.
So it is in their best interest to keep individual responsibilities as low as possible, because if the healer is suddenly required to contribute, or even able to do, more than spam their completely overtuned healing kit it potentially throws a wrench into their perfectly functional conveyor belt.

This would also explain why tank responsibilities/difficulty have been reduced to basically nothing and why they're perfectly happy with their ridiculous self sustain, less chances for tank players to mess up, more convenient boss kills, the conveyor belt keeps running smoothly.

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Ok but let’s be honest here for a second. If I do content for the 25 time again and I’m getting bored to death while playing healer as a ex healer main back from the stone ages how aren’t the jp healer mains don’t feel bored? Are these people machines or dead inside ? Like even me being on depression meds and having really bad moments in my daily life and I still wanna not play any healer in pf savage, but I do it then because so many healer players are absolute ass on healer then you would think.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

To be fair, it's possible that the population we see currently active in JP forum nowadays weren't the same ones we would see years ago; say, ShB early launch era or even further back.

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This is very likely to be the case. We're quite deep into the content cycle, many raiders or log chasers who would have objections to the current state of job design are very likely unsubbed at the moment. So what we have right now is probably the same on the JP forums as it is on the EN forums, people who likely only really play healer casually who just want to heal basically.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I mean if their end goal is to basically make the gameplay Everquest but without any of the interesting class mechanics then it's still going to get quite a lot worse. It's just a question of how long that process is going to take.

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Look, i'd kill to have a Warden from EQ2. It had so much busted crap.
What do you mean infinite MP?
Tank gets regen proc on simply being hit.
Basically a dance partner.
Group immunity to bind effects just by being in the party.
Immunity to aoe for 30 seconds, save for the MT.
Death prevention (when targets takes lethal damage, hp can't be recuded below 1 and target gets a regen).
Group wide death prevention, yes, you read that right.
Targeted Hallowed Ground on a 5 min recast, why the fuck not. =)

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Tinfoil hat time:
JP has a way higher savage clear rate than both EU and NA, especially their pug raiding.
Now could this be because the JP playerbase in general is more skilled? Maybe, no idea.

But their way of raiding is absolutely like a conveyor belt, or like fastfood. Players are basically interchangeable, you queue for savage in duty finder, zone in, get a macro posted, pick your spot (the really are only 2 for healers) and never deviate from whatever the incredibly safe macro strat tells you, you kill the boss and move on.
And it seems to work quite well for them, so they probably want to keep it that way, make the individual players in your party matter as little as possible.
So it is in their best interest to keep individual responsibilities as low as possible, because if the healer is suddenly required to contribute, or even able to do, more than spam their completely overtuned healing kit it potentially throws a wrench into their perfectly functional conveyor belt.

This would also explain why tank responsibilities/difficulty have been reduced to basically nothing and why they're perfectly happy with their ridiculous self sustain, less chances for tank players to mess up, more convenient boss kills, the conveyor belt keeps running smoothly.

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From the few JP players who raid on NA; your Arthars and etc. The overall sentiment is the casual raid scene is actually worse than NA/EU. Or at the very least, comparably skilled. Their significantly higher participation rates are largely attributed to the mentality they should do the content because the developer's made it for them. JP has to truly despise something to wholly abandon it. Which is why Criterion really stands out as a colossal flop.

Otherwise, yes. They take whatever first week strats are used and adamantly refuse to make any adjustments. It's certainly an... experience watching JP raid compared to NA. You'll almost immediately notice the sheer amount of downtime forced on tanks and melee. The idea of say, changing to Kindred uptime for P11S would just... never happen. Perhaps a perfect example of the different mentalities between NA and EU would be fights like E12 or P10, where two light parties are knocked back. JP healers will not budge and you're expected to Tomahawk until the mechanic resolves. Meanwhile, NA tanks/melee have already cancelled knockback and zipped towards the boss--expecting the healers to move up into melee range.

And that's exactly it. The easier everything becomes, the safer it is. So they can get their reclears done and move on.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

Ok but let’s be honest here for a second. If I do content for the 25 time again and I’m getting bored to death while playing healer as a ex healer main back from the stone ages how aren’t the jp healer mains don’t feel bored? Are these people machines or dead inside ? Like even me being on depression meds and having really bad moments in my daily life and I still wanna not play any healer in pf savage, but I do it then because so many healer players are absolute ass on healer then you would think.

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JP doesn't tend to think that way. You're in a group environment. Therefore, you do what benefits the group and "not be selfish." Changing healers to have more focus on DPS only benefits them, which can be considered a selfish thing to ask for. Hence why they like massive tank sustain. It makes content smoother and more efficient.

Just to be clear, I'm sure plenty of JP players don't feel this way but it does seem to be the "average joe" mentality.

The fact that square enix bends to this design is just so stupid though

You could “make the content smoother” by giving every healer an AOE benediction with zero cast time 70% mitigation and cost No MP while every tank had an endless invuln and the DPS could two tap the boss

Where does the pursuit of this philosophy reasonably end

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

You could “make the content smoother” by giving every healer an AOE benediction with zero cast time

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Zoe + Swiftcast + Pneuma (crit) came into mind.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Honestly somehow the JP collective forums makes even less sense than the EN forums, of course nothing is a monolith and often there is clashing opinions but JP seems to be way more uniform than we are

They don’t want more damage buttons on healers, but they also support the disgustingly high sustain on tanks but they also want more to heal despite the fact that you could multiple succors potency by 10 and it still doesn’t change the fact the tank doesn’t need you and never will because you can’t outscale bloodwhetting

What are these people doing in an average dungeon and what are they actually trying to get out of healers because it makes no sense to me, “lazy sylphie” gets about the closest but I still don’t get it

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It's a classic case of players don't know what the fuck they want or need.
Meanwhile, Pld and War sustain is so high they enable 0 healer comps in the highest difficulty content. But hey, better buff them because Drk did a whopping 200 dps more and mr streamer got his ego checked.
If this trend continues, where tanks become unstoppable gods, then i'd start to expect seeing these 0 healer comps more in Dawntrail.
It is a problem that needs to be addressed but people get up in arms about nerfs to jobs that have become comically overpowered. (Looking at Warrior and Paladin) And will advocate to buff Drk and Gnb's sustain to match them instead.
But hey, i'm sure 5 more potency to your glare and DoT and a new shiny healing button you don't need will help, right?

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

Meanwhile, Pld and War sustain is so high they enable 0 healer comps in the highest difficulty content. But hey, better buff them because Drk did a whopping 200 dps more and mr streamer got his ego checked.
It is a problem that needs to be addressed but people get up in arms about nerfs to jobs that have become comically overpowered. (Looking at Warrior and Paladin) And will advocate to buff Drk and Gnb's sustain to match them instead.

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A bit of a tangent and off topic at this point, but while there are certainly things I'd "adjust" on individual tanks and the role as a whole (which plenty of people would undoubtedly read as "nerf"), I'd prefer if straight up nerfs came secondary. My biggest gripe with WAR isn't the power of it's kit, but the fact that you get, quite literally, everything in that kit for absolute free with zero work involved. It's genuinely boring. Their beast gauge might as well not even exist, because they just get spenders for free, too. It's the primary example of devolving job design, and something every tank (and healer) suffers from. It's almost a shame that job gauges even still exist at this point in the game, because every time I look at them, I'm reminded of how they're both designed to represent a job thematically, and yet play such a miniscule part of in that job's overall kit.

The game desperately needs job design to be more focused, and more creative, with each job's core mechanic(s) involved throughout the majority of their kit, and to even have more than a single job mechanic. The fact that BLM has somehow managed to avoid being lobotomized tells me the devs KNOW this is an issue, and they KNOW how to avoid it. They just won't.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

It's a classic case of players don't know what the fuck they want or need.
Meanwhile, Pld and War sustain is so high they enable 0 healer comps in the highest difficulty content. But hey, better buff them because Drk did a whopping 200 dps more and mr streamer got his ego checked.
If this trend continues, where tanks become unstoppable gods, then i'd start to expect seeing these 0 healer comps more in Dawntrail.
It is a problem that needs to be addressed but people get up in arms about nerfs to jobs that have become comically overpowered. (Looking at Warrior and Paladin) And will advocate to buff Drk and Gnb's sustain to match them instead.
But hey, i'm sure 5 more potency to your glare and DoT and a new shiny healing button you don't need will help, right?

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To be fair with PLD self-healing is that their dps is majorly affected should they stop to heal themselves with Clemency. Also, Holy Circle and Confiteor combo heals only once regardless of the number of trash hit... *cough* Blood Whetting *cough*

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Originally Posted by rawker

To be fair with PLD self-healing is that their dps is majorly affected should they stop to heal themselves with Clemency. Also, Holy Circle and Confiteor combo heals only once regardless of the number of trash hit... *cough* Blood Whetting *cough*

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PLD barely needs clemency, the healing on the mage combo and on holy Shelton puts them within striking distance of WAR

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

PLD barely needs clemency, the healing on the mage combo and on holy Shelton puts them within striking distance of WAR

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The striking distance must be very far and wide since you barely need to heal a WAR to the point that you are doing exclusively mashing your dps spell.

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Originally Posted by rawker

The striking distance must be very far and wide since you barely need to heal a WAR to the point that you are doing exclusively mashing your dps spell.

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you barely need to heal a PLD either, PLD’s healing is just more spread out, when you heal a PLD you never feel like you need to heal them because they never lose health; WAR just pinballs between almost dead and immortal

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

you barely need to heal a PLD either, PLD’s healing is just more spread out, when you heal a PLD you never feel like you need to heal them because they never lose health; WAR just pinballs between almost dead and immortal

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fair enough. Let's just agree that both vanilla tanks are easier to heal than the remaining 2. :D

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

The kind of tools and skills that classes have in Everquest are way more comprehensive than anything XIV has ever had.

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That's why I specifically said "without any of the interesting class mechanics", because if you strip those away you end up with the most barebones gameplay imaginable.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The fact that square enix bends to this design is just so stupid though

You could “make the content smoother” by giving every healer an AOE benediction with zero cast time 70% mitigation and cost No MP while every tank had an endless invuln and the DPS could two tap the boss

Where does the pursuit of this philosophy reasonably end

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It really is odd because their philosophy doesn't hold up to scrutiny whatsoever. If I had to guess, they want enough to a system in place to feel as though they're contributing but nothing with much inherent risk once you delve deeper. To be entirely fair, that isn't necessarily unique to JP either. If I were to credit SE's healer design for anything, it'd be how they've built the entire foundation off little more than an illusion of choice. Healers at face value, look as though they have a massive amount of depth, what with all your oGCD tools and GCD options. And to a newer player, it will absolutely feel overwhelming at first. I suspect why we see such a huge disconnect is you really only begin noticing the cracks in that foundation once you start optimizing. Not to speed kill levels or 99% but just that little nudge towards being a more skilled player.

On a pure anecdotal side, I've been playing with some more casual friends recently and it's certainly been interesting to see some of them not only heavily rely on GCD healing but get frustrated their co-healer isn't healing. At least from their perspective. What's interesting is that none of them are inherently bad players but either risk averse or simply haven't tested just how much work you can get out of oGCD, especially in easier content. In general, the sheer amount of healers who still believe people will die without Regen/Medica II is shocking. It all goes back to the illusion you need healing more than you actually do.

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Originally Posted by kyyninen_kirahvi

What I've gathered from the JP forums is that they have this ideal way to see the jobs.

Healers only job is to heal. No damage what so ever, only the bare minimum. (I kinda agree. But I feel like there is a need for healer rework... at least for sage. [It's failure of a DPS healer])

Tanks need selfsustain more than anything. Actually there isn't enogh! (I know tanks need those skills but absolutely no nerfing of them of any kind?)

DPS is just DPS. All about damage.

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The issue with that ideal is it is absolutely not what the fight Design in FFXIV is built for.

Tanks at least still have tankbusters and tank swaps in savage to deal with, on top of getting dps rotations of varying complexity and apm.

DPS (well outside Summoner) get Interesting rotations with more or less room to optimize. And dps checks to Beat.

But healers are designed for dealing with fights we never See.

For one there's no mechanic I can recall in content I play (which tbf does not include ultimates or criterion) that needed non-tank spot healing.

There's no random dps chunking mechs you need to spot heal asap bc that dps getting hit by it again would kill them. It's always predictable and usualy party wide dmg.

Even on Tanks the healing needed is very predictable. Unless it's a tankbuster, or you cheese some mechs with the 'drop to 1' invulns, Tanks can wait for healing until you'd need to hit an AoE heal anyways for a raid wide.

There's also very few mechanics that actually need a lot of Healing through put to deal with. HH is the only one that jumps to mind this Tier, with styx as a runner up at least when the parties gear is meh.

But looking at the toolkits healers have rn you'd think they'd need to deal with raidwides needing heavy mitigation every 30s or so. Or ones needing a single healers mitigation every 15s. Tankbusters on both tanks about every minute or so. Etc.


And even then, there's few mechanics in game that would allow Healers to show their stuff beyond a binary 'fail to heal and wipe' and 'heal enough to pass'.

These days there's basicly no tankbusters in ffxiv where the party has a choice of when to do them. Imagine if the vulns given by tankbusters were less 'next hit instakills guranteed' and instead just ramped up all dmg taken by the Tank. So that skilled healers could drag that tankswap out longer than average healers. Potentially even so far that you could skip the Tank swap with two good enough healers and thus freeing up the second tank slot for a dps to speed up Runs. Or maybe even give the Off-tank a dmg buff equal to the vuln stacks the Tank has to just speed up the boss even with a standard comp the longer healers can keep the mt alive.

Show them this and let me see their responses:

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

https://i.imgur.com/tVNtVaC.png

https://i.imgur.com/V6vK1rj.png

https://i.imgur.com/EyWXbQx.png

https://i.imgur.com/uR1NHur.png

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The current design of the game doesn't really require healers as much as support that have healing skills. It's a completely different thing from having firehose healing and it sounds like the JP crowd are expecting traditional trinity firehose healing.

The two true recovery skills that have to exist...

1. A single target heal
2. An AOE heal

ALL of the support Skills that exist in FFXIV under healers...

1. Health Regeneration
2. Temporary HP
3. Shields (Which are really temporary HP without a healing component)
4. Damage Reduction
5. Damage Increase

So the issue is that they crammed all this extra junk in for exactly two healing skills because they changed how healing works once you get past a specific level, and then threw up a bunch of support skills and divided who gets what between the shield and the pure healers. Ranged DPS were supposed to handle the majority of the support skills but they got reduced to a dps rotation that buffs people, rather than having dedicated buff skills. And the reason this happened is because healer DPS is not supposed to matter, but then what do healers DO? Well, I guess they babysit and buff / shield people. So yay your support job tasks are now all on the healers shoulders. I guess I should say shield healers shoulders since they get the dps buff, because who the heck needs a mit when the tanks already do it with the caster DPS and melee DPS having dedicated mit buttons?

And FYI I am not attacking the development team of SE over the way that they have things setup right now. This sounds like a boatload of work to even begin to fix because the support skills that are on healer would have to be moved BACK to the ranged dps before they could make room to allow for more dps skills. If they add another attack button to the healers it gives the impression of fixing the problem, but the reality is it would make healer harder to play because now the healer has to balance a bloated healing kit with also managing more on damage on an MMO hot bar. Remember, EVERYTHING in this game is built on using multiple buttons to combo and make sure the player finds the game engaging, and that includes the healing. We got to combo 3 buttons just to free cast a rez, or combo 3 buttons to get a super shield up on a scholar.

I don't know, I just do not like either side of the arguments on healer. I don't like the idea of not having any way to do damage besides one button, but I also do not like the idea that now a healer would be expected to maintain a rotation when they got so much busywork to do just to get an effect off. The real crux of the problem is that because they engineered the healing to be a combo system they can't make the dps rotation too intense, even if the healer combos are only used sparingly across a fight.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

And FYI I am not attacking the development team of SE over the way that they have things setup right now. This sounds like a boatload of work to even begin to fix because the support skills that are on healer would have to be moved BACK to the ranged dps before they could make room to allow for more dps skills. If they add another attack button to the healers it gives the impression of fixing the problem, but the reality is it would make healer harder to play because now the healer has to balance a bloated healing kit with also managing more on damage on an MMO hot bar. Remember, EVERYTHING in this game is built on using multiple buttons to combo and make sure the player finds the game engaging, and that includes the healing. We got to combo 3 buttons just to free cast a rez, or combo 3 buttons to get a super shield up on a scholar.

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Sorry for being ignorant, but what support skills are on the healer are you referring to that has be moved back to the ranged dps before they can make room for dps skills?
You mean Chain Strategem? You mean Expedient (?) or Fey Illumination?
Lucid Dreaming (Shroud of Saints from WHM)?
The 2 flavors of Balance from AST?
Or are you talking about rescue and repose?

Are you referring to WHM's Divine Seal turning into Temperance? Healer's largesse being removed? Or the Single Target Nature's Minne from BRD becoming multi-target and basically a second MNK mantra?
I cannot tell what support skills you're talking about that originally belonged to ranged DPS. It feels like every role got more support utility instead (melee dps & caster dps Addle/Feint got better for instance). If anything, ranged DPS lost things like TP&MP regeneration (Tactician/Refresh), but most jobs don't use either resource anymore. They still have damage mitigation. DNC still has healing and a regen/shield skill baked into its toolkit. MCH still has dismantle (mitigation). BRD's DPS utility got nerfed, but that's because it was spread to every job with a dps buff, not healers. They still have Nature's Minne, Warden's Paean, and Radiant Finale as their support utility.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Sorry for being ignorant, but what support skills are on the healer are you referring to that has be moved back to the ranged dps before they can make room for dps skills?
You mean Chain Strategem? You mean Expedient (?) or Fey Illumination?
Lucid Dreaming (Shroud of Saints from WHM)?
The 2 flavors of Balance from AST?
Or are you talking about rescue and repose?

Are you referring to WHM's Divine Seal turning into Temperance? Healer's largesse being removed? Or the Single Target Nature's Minne from BRD becoming multi-target and basically a second MNK mantra?
I cannot tell what support skills you're talking about that originally belonged to ranged DPS. It feels like every role got more support utility instead (melee dps & caster dps Addle/Feint got better for instance). If anything, ranged DPS lost things like TP&MP regeneration (Tactician/Refresh), but most jobs don't use either resource anymore. They still have damage mitigation. DNC still has healing and a regen/shield skill baked into its toolkit. MCH still has dismantle (mitigation). BRD's DPS utility got nerfed, but that's because it was spread to every job with a dps buff, not healers. They still have Nature's Minne, Warden's Paean, and Radiant Finale as their support utility.

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This is thinking way too into the weeds with it. Think of a group of players like a band with most of the skills all being designed as personal buffs that people end up using when they are running solo. The idea that SE has is to have all the jobs come together and line up the buffs when they play together naturally, so the band is greater than the sum of its parts. Now think for a moment about healer and ask yourself what does it do as part of a rotation that syncs with the group and also syncs with itself? Chain stratagem?

The grand plan that they have is that the healers need to time heals based on raid mechanics and then that should sync with what they are doing in dps and raid buffs, but they have absolutely no way to do that because healers have to account for people who are bad at playing the guitar or the drums. Some guy goes and dies when the healer is supposed to be just using a group regen and saving his cooldowns for the next big attack, or your in a 24 man and it is chaos every couple of minutes because people forget how to do Hashmal for the 100th time.

Ultimates don't need healers because the players are so coordinated they do not even need anyone there, because no one is getting hit. Why do healers need to exist in savage fights?

Because the bosses are doing massive unavoidable AOEs that no one can heal through with their individual skills. The design just doesn't make any sense at all. If everyone can survive a fight with just the minimal self heals available to them and maybe a little support, then we have guild wars 2. If bosses out DPS the self healing that people can use, then we have firehose healing. But what they are doing is trying to justify healers existing by taking a huge chunk out of everyone at once, so healers are spending most of the time dpsing but then have to have extremely big healing skills to deal with these perfectly timed mega hits, disregarding the fact that others might get hit by smaller things or forget to put a mit up. It's like being stuck in this tug of war between two ways of doing things.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that people who are generally discussing healer and want more engaging damage rotations are pushing towards a system where everyone is basically a damage dealer, and the only unique thing they have is some specific set of actions that dictate what their role is. People who are trying to say they don't want the system any different than now are wanting healers to be different from the other two roles in their entirety.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Guess what I'm trying to say is that people who are generally discussing healer and want more engaging damage rotations are pushing towards a system where everyone is basically a damage dealer, and the only unique thing they have is some specific set of actions that dictate what their role is. People who are trying to say they don't want the system any different than now are wanting healers to be different from the other two roles in their entirety.

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How are you ever going to achieve that practically, though, especially with 4 expansions worth of healing-lax content to rework? It just seems like a completely insane amount of core design that should be completely overhauled for healers to have something else besides DPS to do for 90% of the time.

The only thing I can think of is crank up boss auto-attack damage up to eleven, but how much better is constant babysitting of the MT really?

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Guess what I'm trying to say is that people who are generally discussing healer and want more engaging damage rotations are pushing towards a system where everyone is basically a damage dealer, and the only unique thing they have is some specific set of actions that dictate what their role is. People who are trying to say they don't want the system any different than now are wanting healers to be different from the other two roles in their entirety.

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But in the current system healers aren’t different than the other roles, we are still damage dealers but our damage rotation is just ungodly boring

Bole makes a great point, in the early days the DPS rotation was more complex but ironically you were less punished for GCD healing because everyone accepted it was a necessity to survive because of the limited amount of oGCD’s and the fact they generally only did one thing (who decided a regen on sacred soil was a good idea)

Square has pushed healers into the “forced damage dealers” mindset because they have made it possible to heal without GCD’s which is why you get punished if you heal with GCD’s

So one camp is stuck wanting to optimise something because oGCD’s are boring and gets 111111111111, the other camp wants to heal but can’t because the oGCD’s are so strong you get flamed for being a medica 2 mage. Who is this current system designed for

I remember looking over there shortly after I made some posts a long time ago.

What I noticed was: The healer forum was largely empty. One new post every few weeks. Looking at it again, not much has changed.

Last posts on certain topics: 3 posts in January, 6 posts over a 4 month period

So no, I don't take what they say seriously at all.

Reoh
01-25-2024,

chamfer
01-19-2024,

Pyonko
01-06-2024,

chamfer
12-14-2023,

Miso
10-19-2023,

3 posts in January, 4 posts over a 4 month period

So no, I don't take what they say seriously at all.

The thing about the JP forums is that if a thread already exists on a topic, they just reply to that thread vs making a new thread to garner attention.
Granted, the JP forum's mods would lock thread's with repeated topics and direct people to the older thread (no clue if they still do this or not).
That's why the JP forums have large unofficial threads for each healer and the healer role as a whole.
Supposedly the devs are more likely to look at threads and replies with more likes then seeing the same sentiment repeated in multiple threads and replies.
wow~ ( ⊙o⊙)

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

The thing about the JP forums is that if a thread already exists on a topic, they just reply to that thread vs making a new thread to garner attention.
Granted, the JP forum's mods would lock thread's with repeated topics and direct people to the older thread (no clue if they still do this or not).
That's why the JP forums have large unofficial threads for each healer and the healer role as a whole.
Supposedly the devs are more likely to look at threads and replies with more likes then seeing the same sentiment repeated in multiple threads and replies.
wow~ ( ⊙o⊙)

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Whereas we like to make new threads or push the old threads to the top of the home page with meaningless drivel trying to keep them in the conversation which leads to most of our big general threads being pretty dead

But then again we also (much more than Japan) like to say our opinion even if it’s already been said, whether that’s repeating an opinion from 15 pages ago without shouting it or just saying “yeah I agree with the general sentiment of this thread” people will want to reply, in the JP forums people will just upvote a single post from 300 pages ago they agree with and that’s the entirety of their contribution to the discussion

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Whereas we like to make new threads or push the old threads to the top of the home page with meaningless drivel trying to keep them in the conversation which leads to most of our big general threads being pretty dead

But then again we also (much more than Japan) like to say our opinion even if it’s already been said, whether that’s repeating an opinion from 15 pages ago without shouting it or just saying “yeah I agree with the general sentiment of this thread” people will want to reply, in the JP forums people will just upvote a single post from 300 pages ago they agree with and that’s the entirety of their contribution to the discussion

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Like I said though, back-in-the-day the JP forum mods enforced it by locking threads and redirecting people to older threads. No clue if they still do that nowadays... (´･_･`)

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Like I said though, back-in-the-day the JP forum mods enforced it by locking threads and redirecting people to older threads. No clue if they still do that nowadays... (´･_･`)

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Oh sorry should have clarified, I was just leading on from your comment, I don’t disagree at all, just adding more context so to speak

I was browsing the JP Healer commentary and going through some of the posts I saw with the highest likes, and honestly even if the JP audience doesn't agree with us I do think some of the ideas sound pretty nice. Like there was this one guy who said that tank mits/heals could convert regular damage into a DOT instead. I think this gives room to make them more reliant on healers without punishing inexperienced or unskilled healers too much, especially if they could reflect the DOT on the UI a bit like how shields show up. Maybe even reward skilled healers by allowing them to reduce the DOTs value based on their healing (essentially allowing them to undo the damage before it occurs). Under a system like that, skilled healers would essentially be able to earn DPS windows while inexperienced healers could be punished by having to focus more on healing. But, overall, it would make it so that healer skill would matter more for clear speed than whether or not they singlehandedly determine the fate of the entire party. This could particularly be the case even for solo content if healers could have damage to DOT conversion as a form of utility they could use on allies or themselves. I know of course the damage is kind of everything in this game so inexperienced healers still need a way to DPS, but I definitely think there's solutions to that too like by making healers more focused on DPS buffing party members through healing, having healing cause damage splashes around the target, giving healers ogcd damage skills (with cooldowns balanced so that gcd damage is still more important), etc.

Anyway bigger point is that even if they don't agree with us on the details, I think there's a not insubstantial part of that community which would support changes that make for more interesting healer gameplay so long as it doesn't punish casual players too harshly.

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Originally Posted by INovemI

Anyway bigger point is that even if they don't agree with us on the details, I think there's a not insubstantial part of that community which would support changes that make for more interesting healer gameplay so long as it doesn't punish casual players too harshly.

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Maybe I'm the only one that doesn't get it, but as much as casual/hardcore gets brought up as a big point for why the role is the way it is right now, I cannot tell where the line for casual and hardcore is. It doesn't seem to be the same between the JP and US communities, as well as the devs. Is it the type of content? Would a casual player still do extremes, savages and ultimates? I guess a casual player and casual content aren't necessarily the same either.

I'm relatively newer-ish to the game, having started in 5.3, so I never got to experience StB healers and can only imagine how it was back then. Did healer dps matter to reaching clears as much as it does now?

Also like... I assume playing MSQ stuff and/or leveling jobs falls into casual gameplay, but I really can't say the current healer design caters to it either. It was a honestly a little bit annoying watching friends level and learn new attacks and combos while I learned yet another healing spell. It probably would've been a very different ride if I had access to Cleric Stance, Break, and Aero III considering the most fun I had with a healer was in Bozja with Lost Seraph Strike. They probably would've given me the incentive to learn how to make use of all the healing tools earlier than I did too.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

Maybe I'm the only one that doesn't get it, but as much as casual/hardcore gets brought up as a big point for why the role is the way it is right now, I cannot tell where the line for casual and hardcore is. It doesn't seem to be the same between the JP and US communities, as well as the devs. Is it the type of content? Would a casual player still do extremes, savages and ultimates? I guess a casual player and casual content aren't necessarily the same either.

I'm relatively newer-ish to the game, having started in 5.3, so I never got to experience StB healers and can only imagine how it was back then. Did healer dps matter to reaching clears as much as it does now?

Also like... I assume playing MSQ stuff and/or leveling jobs falls into casual gameplay, but I really can't say the current healer design caters to it either. It was a honestly a little bit annoying watching friends level and learn new attacks and combos while I learned yet another healing spell. It probably would've been a very different ride if I had access to Cleric Stance, Break, and Aero III considering the most fun I had with a healer was in Bozja with Lost Seraph Strike. They probably would've given me the incentive to learn how to make use of all the healing tools earlier than I did too.

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The complexity of the healers DPS kits is basically inverse to their expected contribution to the raid over the years

Healer DPS was explicitly not included in damage calculations for coils and was only factored into the very very early weeks of prog in Midas and creator (the 5 tiers where healer DPS was the most complex), as the healers became slightly more simple in SB more healer DPS was expected, you were expected to DPS at all levels of prog, but your contribution generally wouldn’t make or break the raid if you parsed green rather than orange, by ShB and EW healers are now expected to between them contribute about 15-20% of the raids total damage coinciding with their horribly boring kits

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

I'm relatively newer-ish to the game, having started in 5.3, so I never got to experience StB healers and can only imagine how it was back then. Did healer dps matter to reaching clears as much as it does now?

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To give you a summary of how healing has changed throughout the years...

During ARR, the running theme was underestimating how strong healers actually were. Because as a new game, we didn't really understand it as intimately as we do now. And the content landscape was different. Bosses could crit, tankbusters were instant and untelegraphed (and could also crit), bosses would auto attack through their casts, and tanks had far less sustain, so even though the damage profile of ARR fights vs now isn't all that different, it was more unpredictable at times. Add to the fact that MP management was also a lot trickier, particularly for white mage. Ethers were actually a regularly used resource for healers, because there were almost no sources of OGCD healing. Need to heal? That's very often going to eat 1/10th of your MP or so if not more sometimes. So while healers absolutely had time and wiggle room to be very aggressive if they wanted to, casually, many players just didn't. Even in the coils, which was the more experimental attempt at harder content, many players would rather play safe, especially for a first clear. And back then, fights didn't demand healer DPS. Fights were also more about soft enrages and mid-battle DPS checks rather than tight, hard enrages. And with Cleric Stance being as scary as it was for many a casual player, DPSing wasn't that big back then despite being very manageable.

As time went on, our understanding of the shear power of healer DPS gradually became more well known by the later half of ARR, and by the time we reached HW, you could say the community was largely aware of how important it could be even without being required. Scholar could out-parse a Ninja back then, to give an example. HW added more OGCD healing and made it easier to manage MP, but the new savage raids still didn't require healer DPS to meet DPS checks yet. I believe by the second savage tier (though Sebazy or someone with more familiarity with on-release raiding at the time can correct me on this), the hardcore community started really valuing the healer's ability to help the party skip more mechanics through their DPS. You started to see it become more the norm where before, a slower, safer clear where healers would stop DPSing early in the fight to focus on topping off the tank was more common. Meanwhile in the casual circle, there were more heated discussions about it. Many would describe not DPSing as griefing, or more specifically, the act of idling when no healing was needed. Some people were not against DPSing, but were more afraid of doing it at the wrong time and not being able to heal in Cleric Stance, while others simply took the stance that healers shouldn't have to DPS because that's not their job. And it was the later example that started forum fights.

Then came Stormblood. Cleric Stance was reworked into just an insignificant DPS buff, and healer DPS was changed to scale off MND. In addition, each healer lost a DOT as Aero was changed to upgrade into Aero II, as was Bio into Bio II, and Combust into Combust II. DPSing became easier than ever to perform because now there was no polarizing Cleric Stance to scare the casual healer, and a lot of that "DPS or no DPS" bickering quieted down. It's also when healer DPS really started being a requirement for harder content. Now there was no excuse for not DPSing, and presumably they didn't want healer DPS to enable the party to skip so much of the end of a fight, so despite Yoshi P maintaining a stance that healers shouldn't feel like they're forced to DPS, the game absolutely did if you wanted to do things like extremes or savage, or at least if you wanted to do so when those fights released. Gearing could make it possible without. But healers still had a decent amount of DPS options. White mage was also absolutely dreadful during SB by the way. Its gauge mechanic was a joke, about as terrible as Sage's Addersting if not a little worse. I took a look at old Omega clears, and from the sample I checked, only 1% of teams used white mage for the last tier.

Then we reached ShB where Scholar had literally everything related to its identity removed, and Astrologian's card system was turned into the convoluted mess that it still mostly is. It did change a bit in EW, but the basic concept of all cards being the same 3%/6% DPS buff was established. And the rest is as you know it pretty much.

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Originally Posted by INovemI

I was browsing the JP Healer commentary and going through some of the posts I saw with the highest likes, and honestly even if the JP audience doesn't agree with us I do think some of the ideas sound pretty nice. Like there was this one guy who said that tank mits/heals could convert regular damage into a DOT instead. I think this gives room to make them more reliant on healers without punishing inexperienced or unskilled healers too much, especially if they could reflect the DOT on the UI a bit like how shields show up.

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I don't remember when it was, but I did think about how it'd be an interesting idea for a tank to have a system like that. WOW has one in Brewmaster, 'staggering' damage into a DOT. I figured back then, and doubly so now thanks to the changes since then, that DRK would be the ideal candidate for such a design. It'd give DRK an actual identity again, since it no longer has one beyond 'its a WAR clone but with edge'. Call it 'Anguish' or 'Suffering' instead of 'Stagger', have some CDs that improve how much of the damage is converted to a DOT (it can have 20% of the damage taken converted as a passive, then have eg Dark Mind increase that to 50%, Oblation increase it to 30%, etc, with some CDs being flat mit still, eg Shadow Wall and Rampart can remain as 30/20% damage mitigations), TBN synergises by 'pausing' the DOT while it holds/removes some of the damage (and the DOT means it's much more likely TBN actually breaks), and maybe throw a bit more lifesteal into the kit to help balance the selfsustain out vs the DOT's ticking (maybe by adding some lifesteal to Edge/Flood of Shadow, or just making Abyssal Drain unlinked from Carve, and giving it a MP/Blood cost again)

I'd also have made Living Dead be 'makes you immune to damage for 10s, and also gives you a 300s DOT that hits you for 1% of your max HP per tick, for a total of 100% of your Max HP.' The DOT cannot kill you, but can be paused by a new move that replaces Living Dead on the hotbar while you have the DOT active, called 'Borrowed Time'. However, upon the DOT expiring or you using 'Borrowed Time' again to resume taking the DOT damage, the built up damage you should have taken will hit all at once, so you would only want to pause the DOT when it's necessary (eg for a 'is your HP full' check like White Hole). I mathed it out once a while back, Souleater alone is enough to regen through the DOT. Would be more thematic IMO than what we have now

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Many would describe not DPSing as griefing, or more specifically, the act of idling when no healing was needed. Some people were not against DPSing, but were more afraid of doing it at the wrong time and not being able to heal in Cleric Stance, while others simply took the stance that healers shouldn't have to DPS because that's not their job. And it was the later example that started forum fights.

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Small addition to this part: Not everyone expected you to do any damage in HW not only because of Cleric Stance, but also because of the accuracy stat. If you didn't meld a single bit of accuracy, you'd miss about 30-70% of your attacks depending on where you were relative to your target as you had different accuracy caps for front, flank and rear (I forgot the exact hit chance numbers). So using attack spells without accuracy melds doesn't actually contribute much, some healers back then also opted to meld determination because the tanks did get slapped hard.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Then came Stormblood.

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As for SB, my memory isn't 100% exact, but I remember that the dps checks were not that hard for extremes even on release day, so healer dps wasn't strictly required back then even though they did make it easier to do. Of course, if you wanted to do savage then healer dps was required, for example, the O8S P1 dps check was notoriously tight early on for pug groups even with healer dps included. Healer dps basically only became expected and required of every healer come ShB because they made it so easy to do up to 70% of your maximum dps output.

Funny that, by majorly simplifying healers, SE made it so that healer dps became an expectation rather than a bonus, the very thing they wanted to avoid.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Funny that, by majorly simplifying healers, SE made it so that healer dps became an expectation rather than a bonus, the very thing they wanted to avoid.

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At the time of Stormblood, I made the argument that the change to Cleric Stance was SE taking a stance in favor of healer DPS. They have always tried to stay neutral on the topic, but when arguments between whether or not healers should DPS, taking away the biggest obstacle that made healer DPS challenging to me is a clear statement of telling players to DPS, not the opposite. And you also make a good point about accuracy... the removal of the accuracy was almost exclusively there to support healer DPS, because accuracy was built into DPS gear and tank gear, but not in healer gear. While healers had to meld accuracy in Heavensward, the removal of it effected them the most going into Stormblood. Every single change we saw in Stormblood pointed toward SE indirectly telling players that healer DPS is expected and is something they should engage with.