Ever since Shadowbringers I cannot on the life of me bring myself to want to touch AST beyond the bare minimum now (leveling it). Even as of 6.2 they've confirmed they still can't stop messing with it (albeit it still needs fixes, of SE's own fault).
My main healer is Sage now though it's not like it's perfect, I just have less complaints about it compared to the other ones. Back in Shadowbringers during a brief static with a friend I even showed reluctance to heal for it, so I didn't. Strange since I was more than happy to heal for a savage tier (though in Stormblood the only tier I did was delta). Healing has basically become a dungeon grinding job for me for fast queue times for tomes, when in the past it was more than that to me.
A summary of healer issues
Printable View
-
05-09-2022, 05:56 AMMesarthim
-
05-09-2022, 06:39 AMrewdSame, honestly. I'm curious to see what they came up with but I'm definitely not looking forward to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiralMask
-
05-09-2022, 07:49 AMglamazon
They need to hire a dedicated healer dev and fix all of them so we aren’t spamming one freaking button how hard is that? How can they think that’s fun? Makes no sense still.
-
05-09-2022, 12:21 PMBeddictHow it feels when Yoshi-P says his team is looking at another Job he deems "too busy/complicated" or whatever other bullshit excuse comes to mind at the time:Quote:
Originally Posted by rewd
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...46/unknown.png -
05-09-2022, 12:33 PMLyth
The updated OP from a few days ago is extremely well written and a significant improvement. I wish that it was presented in a fresh thread, such that the new upvotes would get the revision translated. As it stands it's easily missed.
-
05-09-2022, 03:15 PMRolder50Pardon me but wheres the door for Summoner?Quote:
Originally Posted by Beddict
-
05-09-2022, 03:41 PMQooEri think so tooQuote:
Originally Posted by Lyth
-
05-09-2022, 05:21 PMGrimGale
Just wanted to add something to the pile, it's just a copy paste of another post.
Currently, it is very hard to feel the impact of damage buffs/debuffs. Unless you have damage tracking software, the support abilities healers use provide very little feedback. What I mean is, in terms of feel, the game doesn't change much for an AST that has just used Astrodyne or Divination, or a SCH that has just used their Chain Stratagem on an enemy. The boss will still jiggle in the same way when its hit under Chain Stratagem, or the DPS will still look like they are just hitting things normally under a card.
It's very frustrating to see those supposedly signature abilities that have flashy animations only ring for a moment and then dissapear into numerical buffs that have a barely visually perceptible effect, beyond bigger damage numbers. To be clear I am not advocating for augmenting the potency of those buffs, just for their visuals to feel impactful.
For example, imagine if under Presence of Mind or Astrodyne, your Glare/Malefic spells had their animations changed or augmented with a screenshake and some additional particles, making them "feel" empowered. Imagine if the bosses flinched much more severely (Or grunted in pain) everytime anybody landed a critical strike under Chain Stratagem. Image the AST cards creating an elemental glow on the character weapons, adding some elemental particles to their attacks when under their effect.
The idea is to make support/utility abilities "feel" like they have an impact, rather than leave healers feeling hollow everytime they support their party with buffs. -
05-09-2022, 05:25 PMRecon1o6Surely Ast should be on the second door instead?Quote:
Originally Posted by Beddict
I agree with that but I couldn't work out where to put itQuote:
Originally Posted by GrimGale
Thanks. Though I admit I'm a bit unsure whether to put it in a new thread or not. On one hand new upvotes, on the other there's a not insignificant chance it won't get as much traction due to the massive volume of healer problems atm and given how many healers quit in EWQuote:
Originally Posted by Lyth
-
05-09-2022, 07:18 PMBeddictIt could definitely go on there, yeah.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rolder50
Yeah, it could be there for the loss of the old Cards. Could chuck WHM on the EW door a second time as well since the devs apparently forgot the Job existed at the start of the expac, BRD on the ShB door for when it's support kit got gutted going into ShB, MCH could probably go on every door, SMN for the rework that made the Job braindead. Wouldn't be able to see the damn doors if I chucked everything that's happened over the years on there so I opted to keep things simple.Quote:
Originally Posted by Recon1o6
-
05-09-2022, 07:21 PMRecon1o6Heres one I made just for Ast that I posted in the Ast adjustments threadQuote:
Originally Posted by Beddict
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4/ast_loss.jpg -
05-09-2022, 08:18 PMSunhwapark
It's been so long since we lost lumineferous aether & the other skills, I forgot what exalted detriment even looked like lol
-
05-09-2022, 08:26 PMSpiralMaskpain.pngQuote:
Originally Posted by Recon1o6
this post must have at least 10 characters. -
05-09-2022, 08:52 PMrewdIt's directly in the grave with MachinistQuote:
Originally Posted by Rolder50
-
05-09-2022, 09:37 PMLythI think that your reworked post absolutely deserves a new thread. The real question is when to do it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Recon1o6
Have a think about what changes can be practically resolved in the short term (i.e. in a major patch) vs. what can be resolved in the longer term (i.e. next expansion). Perhaps put your ideas out at /r/ffxivdiscussion and ask for feedback before you formulate the final version - I don't think I've seen a solid discussion on healer direction in the past few months at least. Ideally, a thread like this needs to build momentum during the lead in to a Q+A Live Letter, because then the issue becomes very topical. If you're considering taking a break, then perhaps liase with one of the regulars here to see if they can spearhead it. But I do think it's a worthwhile cause. -
05-09-2022, 09:59 PMRecon1o6My sub and as far as im aware my allowance for using this forum ends in 2 days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyth
I might be cynical but I really don't see much point sticking it on reddit tbh since they downvote any criticism to oblivion. I posted my original question from the q&a there and it was downvoted to bits
Anyone else is welcome to do so however if they think they can get btter luck -
05-09-2022, 11:26 PMNizziYour ability to use the forum lasts a bit longer than your sub, I was unsubbed and I could still use it for about 2 weeks IIRC last timeQuote:
Originally Posted by Recon1o6
-
05-09-2022, 11:29 PMLyth
As far as I know, it's based on your in-game log in times, not the sub itself. A flag is set after 14 days of not logging in, and there's a delay for a day or two for the system to realize that you've recently logged on when you come back from hiatus.
The main /r/ffxiv subreddit is not the best place for a long post, because it's favors short memes with witty comebacks and threads have a relatively short lifespan. You'd be more successful posting a single line question with a cute picture and leave a link to a thread in the comments if you wanted to go that route, because most people won't have the attention span for it. But while you'd get a lot of feedback, I'm not sure how illuminating the responses would be. The /r/ffxivdiscussion subreddit would be where your thesis would make more sense, because there's a slower overall pace to the discussions and they prefer more in-depth, thoughtful answers. That's why it exists in the first place.
I don't think it's really about getting support for your ideas at this point. I think most people would find a change in direction to be refreshing. But I'd really like to see a proposed plan come together from the community. What are the issues holding healers back? What can be done next major patch? What can be done next expansion? If I put you in charge, how would you fix this mess, in broad strokes? -
05-10-2022, 12:55 PMColt47
The problems they have right now are with the direction they took on simplifying jobs back in shadowbringers, and while they are polishing up what they worked on, the game kind of went into major combo spam territory and homogenization of the roles. Healers have way too many buttons dedicated to healing skills and not dps / utility skills. I don't need seven ways to OGCD heal a single target, and that's what put me off about healing and made me basically temp quit the role entirely.
-
05-18-2022, 11:48 PMD6DamagerAll the Summoners are in the PvP hallway...first door on the right called Frontlines.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rolder50
-
05-21-2022, 02:54 AMRobynDaBank
... Can I put a "lack of more suave coats in AF gear especially WHM and AST" down here as a healer issue? It's been an hour or so since I Fantasia-d and I already feel the pinch...
Edit, update me already Lodestone! -
05-21-2022, 04:03 AMThorneDynastyLet alone completely giving up on healers getting anything but re-colored casting gear. I actually said "are you joking?" out loud when I realized the FF4 set is just Rydia's gear. How lazy can you be, you literally have half the work done for you for Rosa's outfit. I understand it's not always a (immediate) money issue, but this one is just peak "small indie publisher". Hiring another 3D character modeller for already designed and once-rendered stuff is definitely not a 1-year-orientation-at-minimum issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by RobynDaBank
-
05-21-2022, 04:29 AMRayneBoemir
We definitely need more damage buttons to push considering that’s what we spend doing most of the time in groups.
-
05-23-2022, 09:46 AMNemuNemu14
I was an AST main in stormblood, then scholar main in shadowbringers. Now I main no healers this expansion. I can't stand one button spamming, and sometimes I consider quitting the game overall because I feel they are just making every job braindead... I hate it...
-
05-25-2022, 11:12 AMSargeTheSeagull
I hope whoever goes to the next media tour brings up how bad healers are to Yoshi P. It's at the point where as a tank I am starting to have 5+ minute wait times for roulettes bc nobody wants to heal.
-
06-02-2022, 03:05 PMRolder50It's been tried before but he always hand-waves it with junk like "just play ultimate lol"Quote:
Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull
-
06-06-2022, 11:02 AMRenathrasI think part of it comes up to how the question is asked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rolder50
If it's "(some) healers are bored" or "healers suck", there's not much to say other than "Oh well?"
But the flip side is, if people are proposing total and complete reworks, that probably won't go over well, either, especially mid-expansion. Moreover, many people actually DO like healing as it exists in the game right now. The amount of people that complain about it is probably a minority of the playerbase. Passionate and vocal, mind you, and I'm not saying minority = wrong, but still the majority are playing and either loving or at least tolerating it.
It's why I always say any change should leave at least one healer with a system much like now, so that people who love that can play it. (Let's face it, probably WHM, given that it's the most straightforward healer by design)
.
But outside of a major combat system redesign, I'm not exactly sure what they can do with healing, really, that won't just lead to EVEN MORE complaints. -
06-06-2022, 01:56 PMQooEr"im bored" should not be responded to with "do ultimate". ever, really. difficulty should not be conflated with how engaging or fun something is. UCOB is one of the hardest fights in the game, and i think the fight is miserably boring for the first 11 minutes of the fight. conversely i actually had fun doing titan and shiva unreal. hell, i used to have fun doing leveling dungeons as scholar back in HW and stormblood.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
someone in another thread said something that i think should be taken more into account when telling the devs that we find healing insufficient.
if healers feel healing is boring, thats probably the most concerning feedback they can get. they can have all the participation metrics in the world, but without so much as even a survey they cant really tell if the majority are enjoying healing, or if as you yourself put it, merely tolerating it. i dont think the LL question itself was worded perfectly, mind you, but thats because its ONE persons feedback thats representing many who at the very least agreed on the sentiment that healers are boring.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elesh
if anything we should be telling the devs that healing, is in fact, still boring even in ultimate. glare and broil and dosis and malefic 150 times is boring. pressing a single spell more times than every other skill combined is boring, no matter the difficulty of the fight. -
06-06-2022, 02:22 PMRenathrasI guess what I mean is "I'm bored" isn't a course of action. I was in the military and something my bosses were fond of saying is "Don't come to me with problems; if you see a problem, DO come tell me, but come armed with a proposal for a solution."Quote:
Originally Posted by QooEr
I think one big problem in this discussion is that not all healers ARE bored. And many who are not bored aren't bored all the time - during prog, people often say, healing is far more engaging and not boring since mistakes are being made and chaos is everywhere, so healers actually have to use their healing tools and don't have the (boring as all hells) "healing plan" set up yet. Once those things are no longer true, THEN healing becomes boring. When you're actually having to hardcast heals because all your oGCDs are on CD, you aren't just pressing 1 button over and over. The viewpoint from these people is that healing is fun UNTIL farm, and that the better their team gets, the more bored they get healing.
A second problem/third group of people is that many players LIKE that style of healing and don't like being damage dealers - if they did, they'd be playing damage dealers. They enjoy simplistic rotations allowing them to focus on healing and boss/fight mechanics.
The issue is that a solution has to address all three perspectives - those who are bored, those who are sometimes bored, and those who are not at all bored - and simply saying "I'm bored" or "Give us more DPS buttons" doesn't do any of that. It's also why my solution always involves doing something for each group of people. -
06-06-2022, 03:26 PMQooErthat might work in the military, but we are customers. when designers come up with a product they start with dozens of things that could work, and then they narrow it down based on different criteria. they dont need us telling them how to fix healers. they only need us to tell them if we liked their final product. laymen are incredibly uneducated and i for one wouldnt appreciate my clients telling me how to do my job unless i can see that they know what theyre talking about. and guess what? Despite proposals being unneeded and perhaps even unwanted, people in these forums have suggested a lot of things for many years. not all good, not all bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
and i would say i share the sentiment about healing being fun in prog. but that presents a pretty big flaw with the inherent design of healers: healer enjoyment has an expiration date.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
this game asks you almost by design to do the same duties over and over and over. you farm dungeons to level, you farm expert to get tomes, you farm trials for mounts, you farm raids for gear, etc etc etc. you even do the same phases over and over in ultimate before you can clear it. healers, as much as any other job, ought to be designed to be fun when farming in a game that expects you to farm. healers are the only role where the replayability value gets worse over time.
its a multifaceted problem that cant be solved with a simple solution. but its not up to us as customers to find solutions. its up to us to give feedback. indeed every camp should be considered and catered to, and the reason you see so many people saying "Give us more DPS buttons" is because that camp is not just not being catered to, its being actively avoided for the most fallacious reasons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
-
06-06-2022, 05:01 PMRenathrasTo the first: Well, yes and no. I remember reading on the WoW forums the Devs saying this same thing. Whether they DID IT OR NOT was a matter of debate, but they said that they tried to actively engage in and take feedback in threads where people were making and discussing suggestions, not merely saying they hated a thing or were bored, etc. When you're making detailed suggestions ("add more DPS buttons" isn't detailed, "SCH: Add Miasma and Poison as two more DoT spell lines. Add Bane (spread) and Fester (damage based on active DoTs). Have Art of War inflict a DoT and either a Heavy or a Slow (heavy might make tank positioning more annoying for them; in other words, old Miasma 2 just with another name and some tactical effect, as befits a SCH). Remove Energy Drain, have Lustrate upgrade to be a heal + shield (so you can burn excess AF stacks on it and the shield will actually be useful, something akin to "Divine Benison, the Aetherflow ability"), give Sacred Soil a Shadow Flare effect. I think collectively that would work well. Remove Dissipation, having it instead be some lower level ability to be a proto-Seraph that upgrades to Seraph at 80. Maybe something like "for the next 20 seconds, boosts the potency of all Eos's spells or adds a shield for 50% of the amount healed, something like that. Either scrap Faerie Gauge or...make it actually useful. I was hoping they'd remove the CD for Fey Blessing and make it just cost 30 gauge, since that way I could use it for burst AOE healing...but instead they kept the dumb CD. I'd either reverse that or just delete Gauge and make Fey Union just a powerful HoT like the one SMNs get when Phoenix is out that you can just fire off on the tank and forget about it." IS rather detailed.)Quote:
Originally Posted by QooEr
This doesn't mean they will DO those things, especially if they have a specific goal in mind (e.g. "DoTs are taxing on the servers and there's a maximum that can be placed on bosses, we want less of them not more of them"), but it does mean "Okay, we see that players find X fun while finding Y boring".
.
To the second: Yes and no. To some people (most people?) things SHOULD be easier and easier as you get better and better at them. Imagine if writing a paper was as hard at 30 as it was at 5 when you could barely even think of how to spell the words you were using. But some other people want things to be consistently "challenging" to them. It's a different mindset, but both exist simultaneously.
.
EDIT:
To the third: More or less agreed. One problem is that camp WAS once catered to (exclusively), which cased a ton of problems. In SB, they kind of catered to both groups (SMN and AST were complex, WHM simple), and the complex players complained endlessly that they wanted to get more REWARD for what they were doing. "not being bored" wasn't rewarding in their minds, they needed to also do more damage. Since the Devs were balancing around healers doing a given amount of damage in line with each other, that was out of the question, so instead, they nerfed complexity to end that argument.
If we gave, say, SCH (say DoTs) and SGE (say RDM's caster rotation with each damage spell healing via Kardia) and/or AST a more complex rotation now while leaving WHM and maybe 1 of the others as simple, would that not lead to the exact same issue of complaint once again? I call this the "This is why we can't have nice things" problem. "I don't want to be bored" VERY QUICKLY changes to "I should be rewarded since I'm 'working harder'", even when said person ASKED to work harder! I think that's the tightrope here.|
.
And no, the answer isn't just to cut off the players that want and enjoy the simpler rotations from the game - they make up a majority of the healers. The reason that they even went that way in the first place was because of rampant healer shortages and people saying healing was too hard while non-healers also complained that healers weren't doing enough damage or Cleric Stance dancing enough to their liking.
As I've said many times before, the reason for all the "dumbing down" changes were because, in one way or another, the community asked for it. Either directly ("Healing is too hard and we can't find healers! Make it easier!") or indirectly ("We have to do more work than WHM and do less damage! If we have to do more work, increase our damage!" = "so now you all have less work and simple rotations! FIXED!"; "Healers don't use Cleric Stance enough/Healers don't cast damage spells!" = "Now Cleric Stance is removed (after a brief time of being a short duration CD) and healing is so minimal there are plenty of GCDs to use the super simple healing DPS rotations! FIXED!"), and this has resulted to the situation we're in today. NOTE ON THIS POINT: This isn't JUST healers. This includes Tank and DPS roles and Jobs. Not ALL, but MANY of the changes we've seen to FFXIV, and the bulk of the homgenization and dumbing down, came from the community asking/demanding it, either directly or in a "corrupt-a-wish" indirectly way.
It's like 343 Guilty Spark said to Master Chief in Halo 1 "You were with me every step of the way as we managed this crisis. Why would you refuse to do what you've already done?" -
06-06-2022, 06:11 PMQooEri much rather outright say waht i find fun and what i find boring and let them decide what to do with that. i like ast because its busy, i dislike that it is shallow. i miss the time magic, i miss scholars dps spells, i think fey blessing is pointless bloat, i think the fey gauge is extremely underutilized, i think kardia and eukrasia are a bunch of wasted potential, etc. i dont need to redesign the jobs to identify their shortcomings. when i give feedback i dont just say "im bored" because like you said its not conductive to anything. im saying "im bored of pressing malefic 150 times in a single fight. im bored that almost none of my skills have any interaction or synergy. im bored because my cards have been reduced to shallow busywork every 2 minutes. im bored because theres barely anything to heal even in ultimate". in fact the LL question itself didnt just say "healers are boring lol", it tried saying why they felt it was boring (in that specific case they said there was barely any damage to heal so we just spammed our one dps spell for 90% of the fight, and it used the healerless clears as evidence of there being barely any damage).Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
now im not telling you or anyone not to give suggestions or solutions, do as you please. i just dont think we as customers have the duty to tell the devs how to fix the problems we identify.
you are conflating difficulty with fun. i used to have a blast spreading dots with bane in some ARR dungeon and managing my fairy so i never needed to leave cleric stance in the whole dungeon. im nearly falling asleep on the first half of p3s because theres almost nothing to heal between mechanics, and all i do when not healing is spamming X on my controller. what is harder, brayflox longstop or asphodelos savage?Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
healers need to be designed so that they are fun when not healing too. the game expects you to farm, the game has solo duties, the game actively rewards doing less healing, and people get better with experience. the class design needs to match the gameplay loop and stop pretending its something else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
when are we talking about? because in stormblood the main complaint wasnt that ast and sch needed to do more damage. they were already doing more damage. the complaint was that they were so good that they were overcentralizing, and meanwhile WHM was completely awful and had nothing going for it.
in HW the main complaints were that cleric stance made dpsing scary or whatever and that "my cohealer is chadding me !!!!!!"
it was only after shadowbringers busted sch and asts kneecaps that the complaints about damage performance started happening.
i personally would not be complaining unless whm was somehow top dog while pressing 1 key and astro had 40apm only for it to be always worse. but thats a balance problem, not a gameplay one. numbers can be easily tweaked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
either way i dont think whm being simple means it needs to be simplistic. PLD's rotation is simple, and yet you have probably heard the jokes about PLD being an microsoft excel main. black mage is a simple job with the highest skill ceiling in the game.
a job can be simple without it being shallow, and things can be easy without being boring. -
06-07-2022, 06:55 AMRenathrasThe thing is, healers are supposed to be healers, not dps-lite or green DPS (no matter how much the community insists otherwise). Take any old-school FF game and you'll often see WHMs with ONE damage spell, or rarely two, and their gameplay loop is generally "autoattack when not healing" until learning Holy late in the game. Now, I'm not saying it should be the exact same in an MMO (different formats/combat systems), but that this is kind of what healers have traditionally been.Quote:
Originally Posted by QooEr
In WoW I healed on Paladin, Holy Priest, and Druid from BC to...I think Mists when I quit when Warlords launched. MOST of your button presses were heals, because the healing requirement was higher.
I think it was in Cataclysm when Druids got Wrath [of Nature] (their Glare) at 0 MP so you could cast it freely when you didn't need to heal. Because of how MP5 (mana per 5 seconds) worked in that game (you would regen more the larger percent of that 5 seconds you weren't casting), healers would actively NOT take any actions when not healing because it was necessary for MP regen. I remember the Wrath change because it meant I could deal damage without gimping my healing, as before then, you legitimately wouldn't cast damage spells or just the odd Moonfire (instant cast DoT). Indeed, WHM is often likened to WoW's Resto Druid, and its damage kit today is comparable to Resto Druids' when I played WoW. The difference is, in WoW, my Resto Druid had to lean a lot more on its healing kit...and oGCDs weren't a thing (I don't think...), so those heals all counted towards your GCD presses. The healing Druid damage kit as basically Wrath (Glare) and Moonfire (Dia), and they even worked the same, with Wrath being a low MP cost spamable nuke and Moonfire being an instant cast DoT.
My buddy who played a Resto Shaman noted that their version - Lightning Bolt - actually regenerated mana. Though I don't remember Shamans having a second damage spell at all, so it was JUST Lightning Bolt over and over when they had no healing to do.
In Wrath of the Lich King, Holy spec Paladins (Healadins) were a one button pony. You would target one tank and put Beacon of Light on them (copied all your heals to them), target the other tank and spam Holy Light for most of the fight. You'd use an instant cast Judgement spell on the boss every 20 seconds or so to keep up one of two buffs for the raid (usually you'd have two Paladins with each doing one of the buffs), either a HP regen on hitting the boss or an MP regen on hitting the boss. So imagine WHM with just Dia and Cure 2 and you chaincast Cure 2 for 90% of the fight. That was Paladin healing in Wrath. This was actually optimal due to their kit and spec (stack crit, regen MP spent on spells due to crits, and spam Holy Light for days without running out of mana), moreso than mixing it up with Holy Shock (an instant cast medium heal that could also be an attack when used on enemies) or Flash of Light (a smaller heal that was more MP efficient) since you had all the MP regen going on from Holy Light use anyway.
All of which is to say:
1) If we actually had to heal more (and use GCDs to heal), then the healer "filler" kits wouldn't feel so stale.
2) The current dps kits on FFXIV healers isn't really that different than DPS kits on other MMO healers circa 2014, we just have far less TO HEAL, far more oGCD heals to weave instead of using GCDs, and so we lean on the DPS GCD kits much more.
They WERE doing more damage. The complaint was they weren't doing more damage ENOUGH for the "more work" they felt they had to put in. This was entirely what the ShB kit gutting was predicated upon.Quote:
when are we talking about? because in stormblood the main complaint wasnt that ast and sch needed to do more damage. they were already doing more damage.
EDIT:
Correct, which is why it was eventually just made into a damage CD and then eventually just removed.Quote:
in HW the main complaints were that cleric stance made dpsing scary or whatever and that "my cohealer is chadding me !!!!!!"
It most certainly WAS NOT. The complaints were the reason the kits were gutted. That and to address the healer shortage the Devs decided was from healing being "too hard" (which is why boss damage was reduced relative to the power of the kits). THEN the complaints morphed into "Well now I'm bored", at which point we got the "Oh, don't worry, this is just the first tier and later tiers of the expansion will require more healing and stress your kits more". And...they ended up not doing that so much. Of course, now that has morphed into "Just play Ultimate"... <_<Quote:
it was only after shadowbringers busted sch and asts kneecaps that the complaints about damage performance started happening.
But the reason the kits were nerfed IN THE FIRST PLACE was a combination of the "healing is too hard", "my healer isn't DPSing enough for my liking", and "SCH/AST have to do more work than WHM but don't do enough more damage, buff our damage since we have to do more work", collectively.
BLM is hard due to positioning and fight knowledge requirements. Its core rotation isn't really all that simple when you get into optimizing it. Contrast SMN, which IS simple.Quote:
i personally would not be complaining unless whm was somehow top dog while pressing 1 key and astro had 40apm only for it to be always worse. but thats a balance problem, not a gameplay one. numbers can be easily tweaked.
either way i dont think whm being simple means it needs to be simplistic. PLD's rotation is simple, and yet you have probably heard the jokes about PLD being an microsoft excel main. black mage is a simple job with the highest skill ceiling in the game.
a job can be simple without it being shallow, and things can be easy without being boring.
PLD's rotation isn't simple (though it's not particularly complex, either); WAR's rotation is simple. PLD's is just rigid, though GNB's is more so.
One problem is "boring" is up to personal taste. I find current healing pretty engaging when I'm doing Extremes or Savages, but I don't have a static and so don't have anything on "farm", either. -
06-07-2022, 02:32 PMQooEri never said theyre not supposed to heal. im saying healers dont always need to heal, and thus need to be fun when not healing too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
i dont want to be a dps-lite or a green dps, but there needs to be something interesting to fall back on because you cant demand 100% efficient healing 100% of the time from everyone.
i want you to think about this: what separates a good healer, from a bad healer? and im talking about only healing here. what differentiates skillful healing from unskillful healing?
just keeping people alive isnt skillful, its the bare minimum. how can you go above and beyond that? maybe you heal them up faster! maybe you keep them alive using less resources! maybe both!
ok so once you learn to heal efficiently, whats next? what are you going to do with the extra time and extra resources you saved from healing well? maybe you use the saved time & resources to play safer, but are you just going to waste the time you bought yourself by doing nothing?
eventually youre gonna get so good, that youll put that extra safety to good use and do something productive with it.
the reward for healing well is getting to dps more. thats not me wanting to be a green dps, thats just the product of becoming more efficient at healing. even in the most basic rpg thats what happens when you maximize efficiency & survivability.
currently the reward for getting better at healing in ffxiv is...... you get to spam 1 miserable dps button for nearly the entirety of the fight. on all four jobs.
gonna start with #2 so i can go on a tangent for #1Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
2) this isnt even relevant anyways because ffxiv is its own game with its own design implications. older mmos also had like, actual triage and resource management. i sure as hell would love if ffxiv had triaging, resource management, moment to moment decisions. but sadly it does not. incidentally let me remind you that a lv 16 conjurer in ARR in 2013 had more dps skills than a lv 90 whm does now. fun !
1) the filler kits feel stale because they are stale. people will inevitably notice them. the very fact that theres easy content and hard content means that if you do easy content for any reason youll notice it. the game literally revolves around repeating duties for one reward or another. thats why there has to be something to fall back on to keep healers engaged regardless of skill level. (inb4 "do ultimate")
speaking of ultimate, even ultimate doesnt make healers gcd nearly as often for me to not notice how bad the filler spells are.
below is an excerpt of the first 2 minutes of TEA. living liquid is one of the most heal intensive phases of any fight in the entire game. surely this will keep healers busy and not dpsing! uh wait a minute
https://i.imgur.com/Mct1hyT.png
still 75-87% of gcds were dps spells. and this is when the party is collectively taking an entire HP bar worth of damage every gcd.
do you have any idea just how ridiculous the damage intake would have to be for not just 1 but both healers to truly dedicate themselves to gcd healing the majority of the time? for me to even consider even touching a gcd heal, the fight needs to exhaust all of me and my cohealers ogcd heals, and then do even more damage so that i finally need to cast a single gcd. and if you want me to keep at it you better throw even more damage because my ogcds are coming off cd soon and youre gonna have to do it all over again! if even the hardest fights in the game dont do this, i think its fair to say its far from realistic to expect the devs to up the healing requirements in normal or even extreme content so much that i cant look at my hotbar and think "wow i sure wish i had something else to cast than malefic for the next 27 seconds!"
and im happy for you. now if only the role had more playstyles so more kinds of players could enjoy healing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
-
06-07-2022, 04:19 PMRenathrasLast thing first: Which is why I continually propose that there should be 4 different levels of play for the 4 healers so everyone has at least one they enjoy.Quote:
Originally Posted by QooEr
To the 1 and 2: Note that 2 is based on 1. That was kind of my point. You can't treat it in isolate. Based on 1, noting that 2 means FFXIV is comparable to other MMOs in healing from that time makes sense. And to be fair, it's not like it was ever hyper DPS intensive - WHM in SB only had one more single target DoT (Aero and Aero 2, Aero 3 was for AOE, not single target). If we were using a substantial number of GCD heals, then having few GCD damage spells wouldn't be noticeable since you don't sit there pressing Glare over and over again very often.
As to your note about what damage would have to be - it's less damage would need to be ridiculous and more (a) oGCD heals need to be toned down AND (b) healing needs to be more continuous/sustained. The current healing model is that healing generally comes in bursts, then periods where no healing is needed (absent mistakes). What this means is that the bursts can never exceed party health pools (at least with mitigation), as they would just KO everyone. This then allows one or two oGCDs to be used to get the party back to survivable health before the next damage spike. If the oGCD heals were weaker, this would require GCD heals (you simply wouldn't have enough oGCDs for them all, and so oGCDs would assist, not replace, GCD heals), or alternatively, if damage was more continuous but SMALLER, you'd have to use GCD heals since most oGCD heals are spikes all at once with only a few being HoTs. That is, if you take 50% damage then no damage for 30 seconds, an Assize will do the job. But if you took 5% damage every other GCD, you'd run out of oGCDs 30-40 seconds into the fight and then have to cast GCDs - more realistically, you'd space out oGCDs or hold them for bigger hits and use things like Medica 2 augmented with Solace/Medica to deal with the tick damage and the oGCDs for larger attacks.
Point is - at the very least - the current encounter design is garbage for healing.
...in one way or another, I assume we can agree on that.
EDIT: I should also note that FFXIV HAS HAD fights like this at various points in its history, to mixed effects. The king Behemoth in Labyrinth of the Ancients, for example has a constant electric damage on all party members. Back when synced party members didn't outheal it basically just on natural regeneration, it would require things like Medica 2 (since WHM had no AOE oGCD heal at the time) and the like to keep the party from being whittled down to death. -
06-08-2022, 03:38 AMQooErwe do agree on these two points. i wouldnt call them "levels of play" but yes, more variety in healer gameplay loops is overdue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
and yes damage patterns need to change. if we had sustained damage on top of the usual spikes that would be a lot more fun.
aero 3 was used in single target too, and fluid aura still dealt damage. the only healer in SB with the barebones rotation we have now was ast.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
and youre right, healers were never super dps intensive, but for some reason people love to pretend like returning to 2-3 dots would tear the fabric of society or something?? healers can only have 2 dps buttons from lv 4-90 because anything else is too much ???
people back in stormblood said they liked whm because it was simple and straightforward. why is having 2 dots suddenly such a high standard now?
this is where i think we disagree. look back at heavensward ast, where its only ogcd heals were essential dignity and CU every 90 seconds. you had to gcd heal pretty much everything. and while i think that was fun on its own, even with so many healing gcds there was still more depth to the dps kit. ast had aero, combust, combust ii and malefic. if i had nothing left to heal at a given moment, i still had more going on to make the not-healing interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
healing alone cant be the Entirety of the enjoyment of healer jobs, it sure can be the primary source of enjoyment, but there still needs to be something else for when youre done. and i dont say this just because i like optimization; even when i was new to healing i would get that one cohealer that just spams medica ii the entire time, or that one paladin that kept using clemency, or that one dungeon boss that barely does any damage. theres always going to eventually be a time where healing isnt needed for one reason or another. theres also the issue of how difference in healing skill/efficiency affects your healing uptime. healing in ffxiv wont ever be nearly half as gcd heal intensive to justify such an awful dps kit, because on one side of the spectrum you have cure spammers and on the other you have guys that manage to solo heal ultimates and still have time to dps. how do you keep the vets entertained on healing alone without making it impossible for newbies to clear?
the reason healers are so bad now isnt just because theres so much downtime OR because the dps kits suck. its because theres too much downtime AND the dps kits suck. both problems need to be fixed. -
06-10-2022, 07:28 PMRenathrasI say this with all sincerity: I'm glad. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by QooEr
I'll have to find some archive of the potency somewhere, but I was thinking Aero 3 was a DPS loss on one target? It has been literally years, though, so I may not be remembering right. I still miss that animation (and Stoneskin/SS2)Quote:
aero 3 was used in single target too, and fluid aura still dealt damage. ... and youre right, healers were never super dps intensive, but for some reason people love to pretend like returning to 2-3 dots would tear the fabric of society or something??
Compared to SCH and AST.Quote:
people back in stormblood said they liked whm because it was simple and straightforward.
Somewhat, though I think less than you might think. Personally, I hate DoTs. So the solution to healers being "Just throw some more DoTs at them" seems iffy to me. Not to mention the Devs said something about DoTs being computationally intensive on the server backend and that was why they wanted to move away from them on SMN. Me personally, I'd rather have a 1-2-3 rotation with an oGCD (think MCH's core rotation with Gauss Round) instead of 1-3 DoTs. It's also why, if we really are just forcing DoTs on healers, I would rather one Job that has just one, since I personally hate them so much. But this is ALSO why I personally propose having a DoT healer, a DPS rotation healer, a 1-2-3+oGCD healer, and a Glare+Dia WHM. Having it spread out that way would allow people who like each style to have one they can enjoy playing.Quote:
this is where i think we disagree.
Some other sub/roles already do this well. For example, Ranged has a rigid rotation (MCH), proc heavy (DNC, sorta like RDM), and DoT heavy (BRD) Jobs in it. I see no reason why this isn't possible in a slimmed down way with healers with something like AST being rigid rotation (the better to weave cards between), SGE being proc heavy with a DNC/RDM(caster phase) level rotation, and SCH leaning into DoT gameplay. Just add Glare+Dia WMN as the fourth and we've got a quartet that has at least one that would appeal to players of any skill level or complexity desire. The vets could gravitate to whichever flavor of complex suits them more and your Cure 1 spammers (which I've never personally seen, at least not since ARR - I'm not saying they don't exist in a game with 5 million players, but I feel they're more rare than how often they're thrown around in arguments...) would have their Job over in the corner that they could still clear content at passably.
EDIT:
Going back to the very first thing I quoted you as saying:Quote:
the reason healers are so bad now isnt just because theres so much downtime OR because the dps kits suck. its because theres too much downtime AND the dps kits suck. both problems need to be fixed.
We agree.
I've been saying this for a while. My personal solution would be less downtime. My secondary solution would be to shake up 3 of the DPS kits. Fair enough? -
06-10-2022, 09:08 PMIrenia
Whatever solution the devs come to, as long as easy content is still fun for healers, I'm good. I despise the "just do Savage" response from Yoshida - I didn't want to feel punished for helping my friends.
Unfortunately, I feel easy content in this game will always have low healing requirements. Perhaps this should even be expected; healing should have a difficulty gradient too. But healers should also work when the party's skill is way above what the content demands. -
06-11-2022, 01:09 AMQooErah, i guess i misunderstood as just one Or the other, but not necessarily both. tbh these forums are really hard to follow, theyre less like a forum and more like a bunch of posts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
naur it was definitely a gain on single target. you dont really need an archive, just find some old footage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5CKRr89YFsQuote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
i also miss the animation, it was so satisfying and the little variety in animation added to the fantasy too.
i think suitable replacement for dots is what blue mage has-- those weird GCDs with a longer cooldown. theyre like dots in the sense that they are GCDs and you cant spam them, but theyre unlike dots in that theyre literaly not dots. i think getting more skills like those would be neat. phlegma is already this, but we kinda need more than just 1 if its going to be any interesting to use imo (like blu).Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
i do think thatd be a good idea, but i would personally at least see whm get *something* else. not something huge, just something simple on the surface that you can optimize a bit, so its damage ceiling can be closer to the others without people complaining about the effort : performance ratio. theres a lot of subtle optimization that goes over most people's heads. e.g. a dancer can switch their dance partner around for maximum benefit (nin has a higher burst, blm has higher sustained dmg). ast can hold cards for reopeners, etc. i wouldnt necessarily want whm to have like some big overarching rotation, just a simple trait or buff or extra attack that lets you squeeze a bit more damage with a little planning. like if, idk, using certain skills gave you a proc or a cd reduction on assize, or a trait like thundercloud.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
i dont think many people wouldve even considered stb whm to be hard or distracting by any metric, which is why i think even the tiniest depth beyond dia glare would be for the better.
ive always thought healers could have like the arr class version of a job's rotations, especially the ranged and casters. theyre very simple and theyre decently entertaining.Quote:
Originally Posted by Renathras
archer is just 2 dots + a proc + a short ogcd .
thaumaturge is 1 dot + fire / blizzard spam + transpose
arcanist has that 3-phase rotation thing -
06-11-2022, 03:18 PMRenathrasAgree on sometimes being hard to follow. And I'm honestly up for most changes as long as they retain AT LEAST ONE healer that is more or less as today. I don't think that's a tall ask, honestly. Or shouldn't be, anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by QooEr
Well, the reason I say what the potencies were - people had a lot of interesting...ideas...about what was and wasn't a DPS gain back then, many of them being wrong. The theorycrafting stage of FFXIV's evolution really came into its own in SB, with fits and starts before then and a lot of people doing things that were sub-optimal. So I'm never quite sure "here's a person using it" means it was good or not. BLM's used Blizzard 2 sometimes. :p Jokes aside, I think even WHM's could cross-class it. Did NOT get the MP regen effect, though.
Agree on BLU. I like things like that. The thing is, they need to be GCDs with shortish (15-30 sec max) CDs. Otherwise we end up with Assize weaves. But the trick is also not to fill Jobs with needless button bloat. MCH, for example, has 4 "big CD" buttons, each a separate button...but you effectively use them on CD outside of some very niche optimization. Drill, Air Anchor, and the new sawblade one. They could honestly replace them with one button that cycles through each every 15-20 sec (this is literally how PvP MCH works) and nothing of value is lost other than unneeded hotbar bloat. So there's kind of a careful balance there. And I don't mind stuff like Phlegma for but Hydaelyn's sake, don't make it melee ranged! I HATE melee ranged stuff on my caster/ranged classes (and healers are a caster). I already dislike that on RDM, but it's part of the class fantasy there, at least. It isn't with Jobs like WHM. SCH/SGE is a bit more of an argument...
I'm a bit confused what you mean by damage ceiling being closer without people complaining. I thought the point of making healer rotations more busy was so that people who are bored could be less bored, not to push people who enjoy simpler rotations out of being competitive/raise the skill ceiling? Which is it? The first I'm willing to support, the second I'm not. If people are just going to complain that someone has an easier time, then we might as well stick with what we have now as we don't have to worry about THOSE complaints with the present system - which is how we ended up with it in the first place. :)
Besides which, there already IS some WHM optimization, people just tend not to get it.
Yeah, a bit of nuance isn't bad. But as I say, if we give players that with 3 Jobs, why must we with all 4? Especially if 1-2 of said Jobs are going to be a good bit more complex than they are now?