#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

guys please understand FFXIV is a side project that SE is working on they have a main project called NFT project that's the plan for SE for next 10 years

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

who cares if someone does more damage or has more healing or tanks better. the primary concern should be.. is it fun to play?

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Inter-role balance is important. It's not fun being the healer in a dungeon run when the tank can take care of all the mitigation and healing that's required.

Intra-role balance is important. It's not fun being told, "Aw, that's baby's first healer. All the other healers are just better."

The balance problem is, itself, one of balance. :p By all accounts, it's not been healthy for the game to try and balance damage output on a knife's edge, so that every possible party composition can clear an enrage with some seconds to spare. On the other hand, no amount of "gameplay" can make up for a job that's consistently the worst in its role.

It's fine if one job is simply better at some task or in some particular scenario. It just also needs to be the case that these opportunities to shine are spread out somewhat fairly across all the jobs.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

who cares if someone does more damage or has more healing or tanks better. the primary concern should be.. is it fun to play?

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I agree but be aware that there are players where more damage = more fun.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

I've had this mindset for job design for a long time; I don't care about the jobs being hyper balanced, but I do care about how fun they are. Now we're currently in a situation where not only are they not fun, but they're incredibly homogenous and badly balanced. We've got the unholy trifecta of bad design.

I'll take some balance hiccups in favour of highly diverse jobs any day of the week. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to have balance, but that balance should be secondary to engaging gameplay.

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i tend to agree. I play jobs because I like them, either play wise or aesthtically. I dont care if they are "the best", since that often changes next patch... (because people whine)

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

...Why, though? Why would competitiveness be bad for the game?

And why are we pretending that being a "competitive" game means less fun or job identity? WoW tends to be far more based around both than XIV, "competitive" or not. And that's just broadly -- not even focused on the far better healing experience.

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Competitiveness by itself isn't bad. But, the advisors to whom the job developers are listening too, were overly competitive. This caused Square Enix to focus on game balance over everything else.

Every job was simplified to make it easier for them to be balanced. Little or no thought was given to whether the jobs were fun to play. Certainly, no one in the outside player base was asked to evaluate how the jobs felt while playing through various content This left us in the situation we are in now.

It's similar to the old raiders versus casuals dynamic. Raiders tended to excessively push for every job's damage to be somewhat equal because their egos were on the line whenever those damage numbers popped. Casuals tended to focus on having fun. They didn't focus on what numbers posted up on the meters.

Idealistically, a game should maintain a balance between the two camps. However, I lost enough guilds and FCs to know, raiders are more vocal and love to harass people they feel are underperforming, even in content that doesn't matter. This either drove all the casuals out of the guild/FC or resulted in the guild disbanding because the officers hated the drama.

So, I'm not pretending that being a competitive game means less fun or job identity. I have nine years of experiences in WoW and over ten years experiences in FFXIV to rely on. So, I'm taking a hardline on this subject.

Competitiveness has led to the erosion of job identities and made FFXIV less fun.

There are enough competitive games out there for people who love focusing on their personal performances. The raiders and devs should let the people who just want to have fun enjoy their one game here without anyone worrying about their numbers on the forbidden website.

With the way Square Enix has designed their content, focusing on whether or not the jobs are enjoyable, over whether they are balanced, is the only way to bring back the healers who have left the game. It's not realistic to expect the devs to overhaul every instance and raid in order to make healing a better experience. It'd be far easier to release a new MMO than to redo FFXIV from the bottom to the top.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

I've had this mindset for job design for a long time; I don't care about the jobs being hyper balanced, but I do care about how fun they are. Now we're currently in a situation where not only are they not fun, but they're incredibly homogenous and badly balanced. We've got the unholy trifecta of bad design.

I'll take some balance hiccups in favour of highly diverse jobs any day of the week. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to have balance, but that balance should be secondary to engaging gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

i tend to agree. I play jobs because I like them, either play wise or aesthetically. I don't care if they are "the best", since that often changes next patch... (because people whine)

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These two posts demonstrate where I'm coming from. People who just want to have fun and their wants have been tossed aside in Square Enix's pursuit of job balance.

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Originally Posted by Schan

I agree but be aware that there are players where more damage = more fun.

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Yes but these players shouldn't have their fun at the expense of everyone else's. If they have super competitive personalities, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other games they can play to get their ego stroked.

FFXIV should be the one MMO on the market where fun is the focus. Ultimately this is why #FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE came to be.

Healers weren't enjoying their job anymore because of the changes the devs made to the game in pursuit of game balance.

Jobs became oversimplified because that's easier to balance. Dealing damage became more important than healing health. Individual performance became more important than working together as a group. Etc...

I seriously don't get all the raider hate and bashing, did you know that the people who have been criticising the state of the healer role for the longest are mostly raiders? This isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' situation, so kindly don't make it such.

As a former "evil high-end competitive raider" myself, the reason I quit being competitive is precisely because of the absence of fun. It's fun to work around fight and job limitations while still pulling off a good performance. It's not fun and never has been fun to spam filler for 100 (formerly 105) seconds and then pray all your big potency hits crit within the 20 (formerly 15) seconds of buffs.

I kinda think it's SE trying to make their hardest content more approachable, to justify spending as much resources on them as they have been

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I seriously don't get all the raider hate and bashing, did you know that the people who have been criticising the state of the healer role for the longest are mostly raiders? This isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' situation, so kindly don't make it such.

As a former "evil high-end competitive raider" myself, the reason I quit being competitive is precisely because of the absence of fun. It's fun to work around fight and job limitations while still pulling off a good performance. It's not fun and never has been fun to spam filler for 100 (formerly 105) seconds and then pray all your big potency hits crit within the 20 (formerly 15) seconds of buffs.

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This, competitive and fun aren't antonyms; high end raiders would stop being high end raiders if they didn't find raiding fun (although some probably wouldn't, but that's another story).

Many of the changes Square has made weren't necessarily in the name of perfect balance either, but rather to "reduce stress" and to "make it approachable". If anything, that sounds much more like they're NOT listening to highly skilled raiders, but rather people who didn't want to improve their skill but still wanted the rewards from high skill.

SCH didn't need to lose Miasma, Miasma II, and Bane to achieve perfect balance, it just needed potency adjustments. The loss of Miasma and Miasma II were purely because "SCH is a healer, you're supposed to heal", "It's easier for someone to play than tracking all of those timers. Imagine if they tunnel visioned and someone died because of that!"; "I don't want to think, I just want to play the game", etc.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I seriously don't get all the raider hate and bashing, did you know that the people who have been criticising the state of the healer role for the longest are mostly raiders? This isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' situation, so kindly don't make it such.

As a former "evil high-end competitive raider" myself, the reason I quit being competitive is precisely because of the absence of fun. It's fun to work around fight and job limitations while still pulling off a good performance. It's not fun and never has been fun to spam filler for 100 (formerly 105) seconds and then pray all your big potency hits crit within the 20 (formerly 15) seconds of buffs.

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You don't get it because you've not experienced it from the casual end. Again, I am leery of raiders specifically because I have seen them consistently destroy guilds and FCs because other players weren't meeting their standards.

If you weren't guilty of this, then bravo for you. But, it's been my decades of experience that raiders fall into toxicity far more often than casuals.

Raiders may have been criticising the state of healers but they also were pushing for their damage dealers and tanks to make those big hits and be able to brag about their rankings on the forbidden website. The devs decided the current model was the best way to deliver what the raiders wanted.

We now have to spam filler forever and a day then pray for big hits within a small window precisely because of raiders pushed hard for damage numbers the various jobs within each role to be equal. The fact this also made the game unfun is precisely my point. Healers were made the fifth wheel because the amount of damage each job could potentially deliver was made such a big deal.

Guess who doesn't care so much about making all the damage dealing equal for each role? Casuals.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

You don't get it because you've not experienced it from the casual end. Again, I am leery of raiders specifically because I have seen them consistently destroy guilds and FCs because other players weren't meeting their standards.

If you weren't guilty of this, then bravo for you. But, it's been my decades of experience that raiders fall into toxicity far more often than casuals.

Raiders may have been criticising the state of healers but they also were pushing for their damage dealers and tanks to make those big hits and be able to brag about their rankings on the forbidden website. The devs decided the current model was the best way to deliver what the raiders wanted.

We now have to spam filler forever and a day then pray for big hits within a small window precisely because of raiders pushed hard for damage numbers the various jobs within each role to be equal. The fact this also made the game unfun is precisely my point. Healers were made the fifth wheel because the amount of damage each job could potentially deliver was made such a big deal.

Guess who doesn't care so much about making all the damage dealing equal for each role? Casuals.

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I'm pointing out that this is precisely the kind of attitude that will garner pushback from parts of the community that wouldn't have pushed back otherwise. It also risks harming the strike itself as it's made up of all kinds of players, raiders and casuals alike.

I'll say it again, this isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' thing, so please stop bashing an entire subsection of the community because you had bad experiences with some people who claim to be part of that subsection.

Raiders are not a monolith, none of the high-end raiders I played with wanted what ShB onwards did to the jobs. Just like casuals aren't a monolith, as some of them have voiced out that they love current healers precisely because they're easy to play and fun is secondary to them.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I'm pointing out that this is precisely the kind of attitude that will garner pushback from parts of the community that wouldn't have pushed back otherwise. It also risks harming the strike itself as it's made up of all kinds of players, raiders and casuals alike.

I'll say it again, this isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' thing, so please stop bashing an entire subsection of the community because you had bad experiences with some people who claim to be part of that subsection.

Raiders are not a monolith, none of the high-end raiders I played with wanted what ShB onwards did to the jobs. Just like casuals aren't a monolith, as some of them have voiced out that they love current healers precisely because they're easy to play and fun is secondary to them.

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You are right. I'm having a bad bout of "fibro-flu". It's made me irritable and I'm acting out.

Not all raiders are like the bad ones I've encountered. It's clear many of them, perhaps the majority of them, are just as unhappy with the current state of the game as I am. I apologize for bashing them.

I'm going to sit back, take my pain meds, and chill.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

We now have to spam filler forever and a day then pray for big hits within a small window precisely because of raiders pushed hard for damage numbers the various jobs within each role to be equal. The fact this also made the game unfun is precisely my point. Healers were made the fifth wheel because the amount of damage each job could potentially deliver was made such a big deal.

Guess who doesn't care so much about making all the damage dealing equal for each role? Casuals.

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This may not be a relevant snippet anymore (due to your later post) but I want to focus on this for a sec. We used to have, for example, SCH with Bio, Bio 2, Miasma and Shadowflare as its DOT repertoire (in HW). In SB, they merged Bio and Bio 2, such that the former upgraded to the latter, and Shadowflare changed from a 100% uptime GCD, to a 'press this once per minute' OGCD. These two changes vastly decreased the amount of 'timer juggling' that a player had to do, but apparently it still wasn't enough. If some players are to be believed, even the single 30s DOT we have now is still too much and that should be removed too.

But SE seems to take a hammer to every issue (especially for healer design), even when a screwdriver would work just fine. For example, back in HW, SCH's potencies were (according to consolegameswiki, via waybackmachine):

Broil: 170
Bio (18s): 240
Miasma (24s): 300
Bio2 (30s): 350
Shadowflare (30s): 250

Rather than removing DOTs entirely, the DOT potencies could have been reduced, and that potency redistributed into Broil. Here's some exceptionally fast and dirty maths. As it stands, we do 4 Biolysis per 2min, and the rest of our GCDs (44) are Broils. Biolysis is 700p total, and Broil 4 is 310p. So, we have a total possible potency-per-2min of 16,440 (via GCDs, and ignoring Chain/Baneful). So in a hypothetical rebalancing to make a more HW or SB style kit work with current DPS checks, that's the number I'd be trying to aim for. To prevent confusion between Bio1 and Bio2, let's create a more SB-style kit as an example to aim for with this hypothetical balance experiment, so we'd have just 3 DOTs: Biolysis, Miasmalysis, and Shadowflare. So, in each 2min window how about, and bear with me on the potencies, there is reasoning to them:

Broil 4: 340p
Biolysis: 370p (as 35p per tick, plus 20p on cast)
Miasmalysis: 360p (as 10p per tick for 24s, plus 280p on cast)
Shadowflare: 350p (as 50p per tick for 15s, plus 100p on cast)

(This assumes Art of War remains at 180p. If AOW were made stronger, more of the damage of Shadowflare could be moved out of the DOT portion and into the 'initial cast' portion)

These DOT values would, assuming 'optimal play' (which would mean 8 Shadowflares, 5 Miasmalysis and 4 Biolysis per 2min), have a total-per-2min potency of 16,620, almost within 1% (it's 98.9%) of the current design's per-2min output from GCDs (again, ignoring Chain/Baneful as critrate complicates maths too much for 'quick dirty example'). But at the same time, due to the small difference in potency-per-GCD of each of the DOTs, ignoring them entirely in favour of simply using another Broil, means that using 48 Broils in 2min (instead of 31 Broils, plus 4B/5M/8SF) is a total per-2min potency of 16,320. This means that, a player who decides to just use Broil for their rotation and forgo the DOTs entirely, would function at 99.2% of the Dawntrail design's potential output (IE using the DOT perfectly on time and not losing a single tick), and at 98.1% of the 'use all the DOTs perfectly optimally' output of these values. And we see differences in DPS output of around 5-8% between SMN/RDM, versus BLM PCT due to 'the res tax', so a mere 2% on a healer is not going to make or break any enrages.

Also, you may notice the seemingly bizarre potencies of Miasmalysis in the example. By frontloading the DOT potency so hard, it allows the DOT's total 'per GCD' potency to still be 360, thereby making it more 'worth it' to use in the rotation than a Broil (if you're looking to optimize), but the exceptionally low potency per tick means that it's great for movement (as you'd lose less potency to an early refresh), which allows us to replace Ruin 2 as a button (which has not seen an animation update since ARR, and probably ought to be replaced). Additionally, Shadowflare's low base cast potency means it functions in the opposite way, it can be used for SingleTarget and AOE combat situations (being more damage per GCD than a Broil), but refreshing it early is not good. This means that, in AOE situations like a dungeon pull, you would want to use it and maintain the DOT effect, but NOT to outright replace Art of War with it as the 'spam action' (as that doesn't solve the 'one button' issue for AOE, just moves it to a different button).

Lastly, by having a simple trait that upgrades Energy Drain to Bane at, say, Level 42-46ish (and returning Aetherflow/Energy Drain to Level 6 where they belong, SE please and thank you), ED would find actual use in AOE situations, by spreading Bio/Miasma like the 'good old days'. This would take the potential AOE button count from 1 (AOW) to 5 (AOW, Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare, Bane). I'd argue that it'd actually be a good design choice to leave off the additional effect Bane had in SB, where 'the durations of Bio and Miasma are reset when spread'. By making the durations carry over as they are (eg: you have 10s left and spread the DOTs, the spread copies have 10s left), we can replace the 'reset' effect with a much better/cooler one: 'Chain Stratagem can be spread with Bane'. By doing this, we can turn Chain Stratagem into an AOE raidbuff, which then synergizes with Baneful Impaction also being an AOE action


So I hope I've been able to demonstrate that SE's approach to balance, of 'remove X gameplay element entirely' (in SCH's case, the DOT management), is not the only solution

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

This may not be a relevant snippet anymore (due to your later post) but I want to focus on this for a sec. We used to have, for example, SCH with Bio, Bio 2, Miasma and Shadowflare as its DOT repertoire (in HW). In SB, they merged Bio and Bio 2, such that the former upgraded to the latter, and Shadowflare changed from a 100% uptime GCD, to a 'press this once per minute' OGCD. These two changes vastly decreased the amount of 'timer juggling' that a player had to do, but apparently it still wasn't enough. If some players are to be believed, even the single 30s DOT we have now is still too much and that should be removed too.

But SE seems to take a hammer to every issue (especially for healer design), even when a screwdriver would work just fine. For example, back in HW, SCH's potencies were (according to consolegameswiki, via waybackmachine):

Broil: 170
Bio (18s): 240
Miasma (24s): 300
Bio2 (30s): 350
Shadowflare (30s): 250

Rather than removing DOTs entirely, the DOT potencies could have been reduced, and that potency redistributed into Broil. Here's some exceptionally fast and dirty maths. As it stands, we do 4 Biolysis per 2min, and the rest of our GCDs (44) are Broils. Biolysis is 700p total, and Broil 4 is 310p. So, we have a total possible potency-per-2min of 16,440 (via GCDs, and ignoring Chain/Baneful). So in a hypothetical rebalancing to make a more HW or SB style kit work with current DPS checks, that's the number I'd be trying to aim for. To prevent confusion between Bio1 and Bio2, let's create a more SB-style kit as an example to aim for with this hypothetical balance experiment, so we'd have just 3 DOTs: Biolysis, Miasmalysis, and Shadowflare. So, in each 2min window how about, and bear with me on the potencies, there is reasoning to them:

Broil 4: 340p
Biolysis: 370p (as 35p per tick, plus 20p on cast)
Miasmalysis: 360p (as 10p per tick for 24s, plus 280p on cast)
Shadowflare: 350p (as 50p per tick for 15s, plus 100p on cast)

(This assumes Art of War remains at 180p. If AOW were made stronger, more of the damage of Shadowflare could be moved out of the DOT portion and into the 'initial cast' portion)

These DOT values would, assuming 'optimal play' (which would mean 8 Shadowflares, 5 Miasmalysis and 4 Biolysis per 2min), have a total-per-2min potency of 16,620, almost within 1% (it's 98.9%) of the current design's per-2min output from GCDs (again, ignoring Chain/Baneful as critrate complicates maths too much for 'quick dirty example'). But at the same time, due to the small difference in potency-per-GCD of each of the DOTs, ignoring them entirely in favour of simply using another Broil, means that using 48 Broils in 2min (instead of 31 Broils, plus 4B/5M/8SF) is a total per-2min potency of 16,320. This means that, a player who decides to just use Broil for their rotation and forgo the DOTs entirely, would function at 99.2% of the Dawntrail design's potential output (IE using the DOT perfectly on time and not losing a single tick), and at 98.1% of the 'use all the DOTs perfectly optimally' output of these values. And we see differences in DPS output of around 5-8% between SMN/RDM, versus BLM PCT due to 'the res tax', so a mere 2% on a healer is not going to make or break any enrages.

Also, you may notice the seemingly bizarre potencies of Miasmalysis in the example. By frontloading the DOT potency so hard, it allows the DOT's total 'per GCD' potency to still be 360, thereby making it more 'worth it' to use in the rotation than a Broil (if you're looking to optimize), but the exceptionally low potency per tick means that it's great for movement (as you'd lose less potency to an early refresh), which allows us to replace Ruin 2 as a button (which has not seen an animation update since ARR, and probably ought to be replaced). Additionally, Shadowflare's low base cast potency means it functions in the opposite way, it can be used for SingleTarget and AOE combat situations (being more damage per GCD than a Broil), but refreshing it early is not good. This means that, in AOE situations like a dungeon pull, you would want to use it and maintain the DOT effect, but NOT to outright replace Art of War with it as the 'spam action' (as that doesn't solve the 'one button' issue for AOE, just moves it to a different button).

Lastly, by having a simple trait that upgrades Energy Drain to Bane at, say, Level 42-46ish (and returning Aetherflow/Energy Drain to Level 6 where they belong, SE please and thank you), ED would find actual use in AOE situations, by spreading Bio/Miasma like the 'good old days'. This would take the potential AOE button count from 1 (AOW) to 5 (AOW, Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare, Bane). I'd argue that it'd actually be a good design choice to leave off the additional effect Bane had in SB, where 'the durations of Bio and Miasma are reset when spread'. By making the durations carry over as they are (eg: you have 10s left and spread the DOTs, the spread copies have 10s left), we can replace the 'reset' effect with a much better/cooler one: 'Chain Stratagem can be spread with Bane'. By doing this, we can turn Chain Stratagem into an AOE raid buff, which then synergizes with Baneful Impaction also being an AOE action


So I hope I've been able to demonstrate that SE's approach to balance, of 'remove X gameplay element entirely' (in SCH's case, the DOT management), is not the only solution

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You have, quite well, Forsaken Roe. I am happy you took the time to dive into this.

Honestly, I wish the job devs would take a step back and take a look at the state of all the jobs from the perspective of players instead of designers. Square Enix has said many things about these changes being made to make the jobs less stressful; but, they're just making these changes to make the jobs easier to balance for their job designers.

There were different things the devs could have done instead (as you have demonstrated many times) to have maintain balance and keep jobs interesting. They just chose to remove things instead. It's frustrating.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

While there's nothing wrong with playing difficult content as intended, it's been made clear multiple times that a majority of the playerbase will not attempt things beyond their skill level and *will* leave said content to gather dust, and thus comes the deluge of Square-Enix's design decisions to bring said content down to an "approachable" level and sure enough, jobs get caught in the rain too. I do not know how one can make dynamically shifting difficulty though to make sure players can partake in all content, and instead we end up with patch cycles that specifically cater to "casual" or "hardcore" content with the obvious flaw that it always leaves someone out (like how this last patch was very much geared toward the raiding scene and everyone else got scraps if anything).

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And this is precisely the fatal flaw of segregating each subsect of playerbase into their own level of content.

Let's say I'm a savage raider, I like doing savage. Now let's say they make savage easier next patch, where do I go now? Extremes are still a step below and ultimates might be too high, so where does one in that position go when their content is taken from them?

Now let's say they implemented a nice mix of difficulty distributed across job and content. Let's say I'm a casual player in this scenario, I play SMN, I enjoy flashy skills and breezing through MSQ stuff. Now next patch, they increased the optional ceiling of the SMN job, so I, as the casual who enjoys SMN, still get to fire flashy spells and breeze through MSQ content, nothing changes for me.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Jobs in particular would be even harder to keep dynamically able to move from pick-up play to complex, because players can and will ignore jobs and even entire roles they don't like because they're either too hard or too easy, and nobody wants "their" job to end up in a basket that doesn't appeal to them, with healers right now being a perfect example when toning down gets taken too far.

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I don't see why they can't implement a spectrum of difficulty, just look at the caster role before EW, it was designed really well. RDM was the introductory caster that was simple to pick up but also has some intricacies to master. SMN was the middle ground, a bit harder to get into but rewarding when played well. Then we have BLM, very hard to play well but had tons of little tweaks you can do to your rotation which you'll benefit from if you're smart about it.

In this sliding scale scenario, we can also change jobs to better suit the content. Perhaps I can only do up to extremes on BLM but if I reduce my mental load by swapping to RDM, perhaps I can go up one difficulty tier to savage content.

I do thank this game for making me appreciate my main game, Gw2 more for being significantly more innovative if still janky and frustrating at times. Even if all the classes can basically be any role, now (which I don't mind since we can't swap classes), they are infinitely more exciting to play due to the fast paced combat. Even healer builds give me that long craved dopamine hit after coming back to it. Don't even get me started on the leagues better race design, fashion and revolutionary mount system.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

The problem I imagine is that the "optional ceiling" ceases to be optional when encounter design necessitates that you can't get away with just being flashy and breezy. Dawntrail for example upped the ante on what the typical normal-content-only player had to do in order to advance and it wasn't met well by some of them.

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The "optional ceiling" here has little to nothing to do with Dawntrail's perceived increase in difficulty. There aren't any DPS checks. There aren't any healing checks. I'm 100% certain I dropped multiple GCDs in a row, interrupted multiple casts, etc., etc., the first (and second, and third...) time I cleared Dawntrail's dungeons and trials.

Dawntrail's MSQ didn't ask you (the generic "you") to play your job better. It asked you to become more observant with respect to the tells for incoming attacks and to dodge them.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Why exactly encounters became the "hard part" while jobs didn't, I can only assume it's because they didn't want anybody's favorite job to feel like it couldn't participate in certain content, so every job had to be made viable even if that resulted in homogenization or over-simplification. "No jobstone left behind" and such.

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Hot take: Encounters became the "hard part" in a way that ignores the existence of roles and jobs. Spread. Stack. In. Out. Go left. Go right. Do the hokey pokey. None of that cares whether you're a tank, healer, melee DPS, or ranged DPS. Every job becomes viable when all that an encounter requires is that whatever warm bodies exist not stand in the bad.

Add in a DPS check, and maybe we start to care that everyone can maintain uptime. Add in a tank buster with a Damage Up debuff, and maybe we start to care that there's a second tank. Add in a "hard hitting" raid wide, and maybe we start to care that there's a healer around somewhere.

Rather than design encounters so that the jobs in the roles and sub-roles each have their part to play -- which would be a meaningful form of participation -- it would seem that SE has decided to see how far they can go with turning jobs into generic warm bodies.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Hot take: Encounters became the "hard part" in a way that ignores the existence of roles and jobs. Spread. Stack. In. Out. Go left. Go right. Do the hokey pokey. None of that cares whether you're a tank, healer, melee DPS, or ranged DPS. Every job becomes viable when all that an encounter requires is that whatever warm bodies exist not stand in the bad.

Add in a DPS check, and maybe we start to care that everyone can maintain uptime. Add in a tank buster with a Damage Up debuff, and maybe we start to care that there's a second tank. Add in a "hard hitting" raid wide, and maybe we start to care that there's a healer around somewhere.

Rather than design encounters so that the jobs in the roles and sub-roles each have their part to play -- which would be a meaningful form of participation -- it would seem that SE has decided to see how far they can go with turning jobs into generic warm bodies.

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That's it. You hit the nail on the head.

Wasn't that a little bit what Hydaelyn EX's add phase was? DPS needing to breaking crystals while tanks kite adds and healers keep the tanks alive.

Guess they could've put in some raidwides during that but iirc the adds hit pretty hard as it was. Then ILs went up and we eventually got solo tank/healer runs going

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Hot take: Encounters became the "hard part" in a way that ignores the existence of roles and jobs. Spread. Stack. In. Out. Go left. Go right. Do the hokey pokey. None of that cares whether you're a tank, healer, melee DPS, or ranged DPS. Every job becomes viable when all that an encounter requires is that whatever warm bodies exist not stand in the bad.

Add in a DPS check, and maybe we start to care that everyone can maintain uptime. Add in a tank buster with a Damage Up debuff, and maybe we start to care that there's a second tank. Add in a "hard hitting" raid wide, and maybe we start to care that there's a healer around somewhere.

Rather than design encounters so that the jobs in the roles and sub-roles each have their part to play -- which would be a meaningful form of participation -- it would seem that SE has decided to see how far they can go with turning jobs into generic warm bodies.

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And the sad thing is that you can absolutely have healing, tanking, and damage-dealing matter in less immediately obvious / all-or-nothing ways in encounters, even just through the combination of positional tendencies and differing outputs, if only you had some undermechanics to allow for interception and more granular short-term checks (such as through something dealing as much damage as it has health remaining, debuffs ignored so long as they don't drop you below X% HP, DoTs that tick until raised above X% HP, etc).

Gettin pretty close to 1000 pages innit. And healers only get worse.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Gettin pretty close to 1000 pages innit. And healers only get worse.

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986 pages and 9857 posts. At this point, it is clear Creative Studio III is going out of its way to ignore us. There is no way the forum moderators would not mentioned this thread to someone.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

986 pages and 9857 posts. At this point, it is clear Creative Studio III is going out of its way to ignore us. There is no way the forum moderators would not mentioned this thread to someone.

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I feel like the fact that the playerbase happily blames other parts of the community for any faults they see with the game means that SE can eternally hide behind their shield of "Players don't know what they want and can't agree on anything, that's why we can't change anything!".

I think if we're capable of presenting a united front of "We want changes for this thing because it's just badly designed, we don't care about the details, just change it", that would be much harder to ignore.

Unfortunately, trying to get the community to present a united front is effectively impossible (because people understandably put importance on different things, like some people want everything just balanced with 0% deviation with no regard to fun), so we're unlikely to see any changes until the dev team does their experiment in 8.0.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Unfortunately, trying to get the community to present a united front is effectively impossible (because people understandably put importance on different things, like some people want everything just balanced with 0% deviation with no regard to fun), so we're unlikely to see any changes until the dev team does their experiment in 8.0.

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I doubt the "8.0 experiment" will be all that much of a change. whether or not we all agree on the same thing, as consumers of the game, the fact that a single thread has gotten this large with zero acknowledgement from SE tells me they are in their ivory tower, healing in their mind is perfect and needs no changes. thats fine, they are entitled to think that, and once I feel thy no longer earn my money, I will stop giving it to them. I have left far bigger games than 14, and never looked back.

8.0 job identity isnt even real

IMHO that's just a smokescreen. Something to get players off their back before they continue to remove something else yet again. What would that be I wonder? :P

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Originally Posted by Oizen

8.0 job identity isnt even real

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It's a little microcosm of why I think they're so silent about the Healer Strike.
Yoshi'p merely hinted that they'll try to focus on Job identity in 8.0, and suddenly it gets Telephone-Game'd into people thinking we're getting an every job full rework in 8.0 where they'll consult with fans across the world to make every single class perfect.
I think they'd rather just keep things close to the chest and figure out a way to help us without setting any expectations. Just have it come out of nowhere so our first impression is just what we get. If they tell us "we're working to make healers more interesting in 8.0" then you'll start to have all sorts of brainstorming on everything they do. To the point that anything less than everyone's wildest dreams is just a disappointment.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I feel like the fact that the player base happily blames other parts of the community for any faults they see with the game means that SE can eternally hide behind their shield of "Players don't know what they want and can't agree on anything, that's why we can't change anything!"

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Hey! I apologized!

/em sticks out tongue

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I think if we're capable of presenting a united front of "We want changes for this thing because it's just badly designed, we don't care about the details, just change it", that would be much harder to ignore.

Unfortunately, trying to get the community to present a united front is effectively impossible (because people understandably put importance on different things, like some people want everything just balanced with 0% deviation with no regard to fun), so we're unlikely to see any changes until the dev team does their experiment in 8.0.

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Yeah, trying to herd healers is like herding cats. We're a chaotic good bunch.

But, I feel, collectively, the healer community has done pretty well in conveying how unhappy we are with the current state of our jobs and roles in this expansion.

Yes, there have been trolls, some of them quite determined to derail our movement. But, if the mods ever got around to deleting those posts, you'd see we've been pretty united.

Yoshi has said there won't be any real changes until 8.0. So, I wasn't expecting a mid expansion overhaul of the white mage, scholar, astrologian, and sage jobs.

But, it would still be nice to have #FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE acknowledged. Even a statement along the lines of "We've heard you and your concerns will be taken into account when we make changes to the jobs in the next expansion," would somewhat allay our fears healers will remain in their current state or worse.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

But, it would still be nice to have #FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE acknowledged. Even a statement along the lines of "We've heard you and your concerns will be taken into account when we make changes to the jobs in the next expansion," would somewhat allay our fears healers will remain in their current state or worse.

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This is the thing : they won't aknowledge the healer state because, it would be the same as aknowledging that their beloved tank and some of their beloverd DPS are too OP and need to be nerfed. And also, that they used Powercreep to try to hide thoses facts (but,too bad for them : It didn't work for this Add-on).

And seriously, who still believe in the 8.0 at this point?

I wouldn't be surprised if the healer role disapear and the current healer become either DPS or Support job.

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Originally Posted by Lorika

*snippity snip*

And seriously, who still believe in the 8.0 at this point?

I wouldn't be surprised if the healer role disappear and the current healer become either DPS or Support job.

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I remain optimistic about 8.0. It's far too early to discount it. We'll have to wait until the big reveal of the next expansion before we truly know if it has been all a smokescreen or not.

I doubt they'll erase the healer role completely.

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Originally Posted by Lorika

I wouldn't be surprised if the healer role disapear and the current healer become either DPS or Support job.

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This is more or less what I expect of them, it feels like when a government wants to get rid of something people like - They make it terrible, people complain that they made it terrible, "we understand that this is terrible so we're getting rid of it".

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

I doubt they'll erase the healer role completely.

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When you look at the 7.0 Monk and at the Picto (Earth Reply and Starry Muse), it smell like the GW2 Route (Add War Shake It off and some of the dancer skill, and it smell the GW2 route even more)

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

We'll have to wait until the big reveal of the next expansion

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Ah yes - wait and see how they're going to keep healers in the status quo and not change a damn thing; or break SCH(Stormblood), or make AST a monster like has been for the past 6 years every expac, or keep WHM boring and heavily uninteresting.

While I haven't been as vocal, I have been watching - and I'm in the boat along with a few others that nothing will change so long as they never listen. The 'wait and see' crowd is already smokescreen for 'we're going to give you more heal bloat!' next expansion since that's what they've always done - even though they've tacked on a button to the 2m window here. And when the Healer community figures out that they've been had again after waiting and seeing, they'll get angry again while SE doesn't listen for the next 10 years.

6 years of waiting and seeing, only to see that the waiting is basically SE stonewalling us in every aspect while Tanks and DPS are the only jobs that matter.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Ah yes - wait and see how they're going to keep healers in the status quo and not change a damn thing; or break SCH(Stormblood), or make AST a monster like has been for the past 6 years every expac, or keep WHM boring and heavily uninteresting.

While I haven't been as vocal, I have been watching - and I'm in the boat along with a few others that nothing will change so long as they never listen. The 'wait and see' crowd is already smokescreen for 'we're going to give you more heal bloat!' next expansion since that's what they've always done - even though they've tacked on a button to the 2m window here. And when the Healer community figures out that they've been had again after waiting and seeing, they'll get angry again while SE doesn't listen for the next 10 years.

6 years of waiting and seeing, only to see that the waiting is basically SE stonewalling us in every aspect while Tanks and DPS are the only jobs that matter.

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The part of this that I disagree with, is 'the next 10 years'. I can't see the game living that long, if SE continues to ignore Healer design issues as they have for several years now. We're already reaching a critical juncture, where content creators are making videos outright bashing the current Healing paradigm in the game, and threads on here, Reddit etc. are popping up more frequently, from veterans saying 'I'm tired of pressing 1' to new players asking 'is there more to healing at higher level than just pressing 1?'

If SE doesn't change course, and soon, then the role's population will wither to the point where it needs an ARR style 'big promotional event' to say 'hey we've completely revamped it please give it another go'. A Role Reborn, as it were. But maybe that's the real reason they're adding all the Duty Support, and Trusts, so that the population problem of Healers will remain obfuscated, and they can keep Healers designed as... whatever you'd call this.

Both sides are equally right here: we have to keep expressing our dissatisfaction (if we are dissatisfied, players who enjoy current healers should say so too) to show SE that (if we're the dissatisfied ones) something needs to change, but also, it's basically going to be a waiting game of 'does 8.0 actually take any of what we've been saying to heart'. And if it doesn't, I expect there will be a sudden dip in Healer population, roughly around the same time as the Media Tour Embargo being lifted, where players either move Role to Tank or DPS, or outright quit the game

Sticking heads in the sand is not a solution, SE

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Originally Posted by Lorika

When you look at the 7.0 Monk and at the Picto (Earth Reply and Starry Muse), it smell like the GW2 Route (Add War Shake It off and some of the dancer skill, and it smell the GW2 route even more)

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There is no doubt that Guild Wars 2 influenced the job developers at Creative Studio III. However, I don't see Square Enix throwing out the trinity. It'd be too much work to rebuild every job in the game to make it happen. It'd be much easier to leave the role in the game and fix healers.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Ah yes - wait and see how they're going to keep healers in the status quo and not change a damn thing; or break SCH(Stormblood), or make AST a monster like has been for the past 6 years every expac, or keep WHM boring and heavily uninteresting.

While I haven't been as vocal, I have been watching - and I'm in the boat along with a few others that nothing will change so long as they never listen. The 'wait and see' crowd is already smokescreen for 'we're going to give you more heal bloat!' next expansion since that's what they've always done - even though they've tacked on a button to the 2m window here. And when the Healer community figures out that they've been had again after waiting and seeing, they'll get angry again while SE doesn't listen for the next 10 years.

6 years of waiting and seeing, only to see that the waiting is basically SE stonewalling us in every aspect while Tanks and DPS are the only jobs that matter.

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You misunderstand. I was not saying "wait and see." I'm saying "wait until they give us some inkling what they're going to do." We cannot provide any feedback on something on which we're completely in the dark.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

The part of this that I disagree with, is 'the next 10 years'. I can't see the game living that long, if SE continues to ignore Healer design issues as they have for several years now. We're already reaching a critical juncture, where content creators are making videos outright bashing the current Healing paradigm in the game, and threads on here, Reddit etc. are popping up more frequently, from veterans saying 'I'm tired of pressing 1' to new players asking 'is there more to healing at higher level than just pressing 1?'

If SE doesn't change course, and soon, then the role's population will wither to the point where it needs an ARR style 'big promotional event' to say 'hey we've completely revamped it please give it another go'. A Role Reborn, as it were. But maybe that's the real reason they're adding all the Duty Support, and Trusts, so that the population problem of Healers will remain obfuscated, and they can keep Healers designed as... whatever you'd call this.

Both sides are equally right here: we have to keep expressing our dissatisfaction (if we are dissatisfied, players who enjoy current healers should say so too) to show SE that (if we're the dissatisfied ones) something needs to change, but also, it's basically going to be a waiting game of 'does 8.0 actually take any of what we've been saying to heart'. And if it doesn't, I expect there will be a sudden dip in Healer population, roughly around the same time as the Media Tour Embargo being lifted, where players either move Role to Tank or DPS, or outright quit the game

Sticking heads in the sand is not a solution, SE

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/em points up

This! A thousand times, this!

Ignoring us isn't going to make us go away, Square Enix. If you think this all will blow over, you are sadly mistaken. Your bottom line is at risk.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

There is no doubt that Guild Wars 2 influenced the job developers at Creative Studio III. However, I don't see Square Enix throwing out the trinity. It'd be too much work to rebuild every job in the game to make it happen. It'd be much easier to leave the role in the game and fix healers.

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Would that I shared your optimism. When I look at the game I see an environment where all the work is done already to remove healers from 60+ content, shifting some tank skills around and giving a few potency buffs to make ARR/HW reliably doable is all that's left.

Also, ignoring us WILL make us go away, it just takes a while.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

You misunderstand. I was not saying "wait and see." I'm saying "wait until they give us some inkling what they're going to do." We cannot provide any feedback on something on which we're completely in the dark.

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Yeah, and if you rollback to pre-Stormblood, Healers were extremely unhappy with WHM because the Lily System was heavily criticized before it was even released from the Media Tour. They've been VERY radio silent ever since about any job changes to prevent their team from actually taking criticism before the work is done instead of course correcting in stride, but I can understand how it would affect morale if you had an angry gamer criticizing you over XYZ feature or something minute. That's what the Forums originally were for - feedback.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

The part of this that I disagree with, is 'the next 10 years'.

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It was an over-exaggeration on my part since I've been a bit jaded for a while starting back in Shadowbringers after we figured out SE has WHM-ified AST/SCH. Still, I agree with your points. Tanks were kinda dead for a good chunk of early early ARR because of the fact that nobody wanted to really play it(and they were sparse, just like Healers were with ARR's old systems). This is why we had the Tank Mounts added - to get people to do it for the mount. It's part of why you see at least every tank once usually, but with Healers they seriously need to provide an incentive to do so, if not in the same vein. I feel they're partially afraid to do so because of development resources being diverted from other projects within XIV's team to create these mounts would take some time(though to be honest, they could do without adding anything to the Mog Station for a while...)

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Hey! I apologized!

/em sticks out tongue

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I wasn't trying to dig at you for that again. I was pointing out the general state of the community discussion.

Some raiders blame RPers, some casuals blame raiders, some RPers blame the hidden modders.

It would be nice if people just admitted that we're just not being given enough content longevity rather than tearing into each other for scraps.

Anyway, as for the healer situation, I'm apathetic to it. I've already basically quit healing anyway. If they manage to surprise us in 8.0, great, if not, then it is what it is.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Either that or ignore all the complainers and let Astrologians be Astrologians. It's individuals excessively obsessed with job balance who bent the job designer's ear and led us to where we are now.

It's also important to note, given the sheer amount of odd or unasked for changes in our jobs, these individuals were highly likely to have been family members or co-workers of the job designers than anyone from outside of Square Enix's workforce.

We're in a classic ivory tower situation all around.

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Can't wait for the day we find out all the job changes in FFXIV are because some clueless exec is telling them to do stuff based on their kid's awful ideas or something like that.