Healer Q&A in PLL LXVIII

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Originally Posted by CrimsonGunner

The saying "you have clears without healers" means they were not needed for heals, making their healing contributions redundent and also in terms of enrage that just means healers are there to dps so basically 0 healing needed + must dps for enrage = green dps. So no matter content they are dispensible dps making the role feel the worse tnx to the data seeing devs.

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Are those moving goalposts I hear?

Some content can be cleared without needing 2 healers. Some content can be cleared without needing DPS. I believe P1N has been cleared with all tanks - meaning DPS is not needed (apparently), and thus NO JOB is a "-insert color- DPS". After all, CLEARLY their DPS contribution is "redundant" in terms of enrage, right? Is that really the argument you want to make here?

Not to mention that there aren't many clears without healers of any current content AND it generally takes a coordinated group to clear content without healers. Not only that, ALL current content cleared without healers is cleared with tanks, generally more than the standard number though not always. If what you say is true, ALL content should be clearable with 8x DPS, yet we never really see that. Most 0 healer clears are things like 8 tank runs.

So that does not, in fact, mean "healers are there to dps".

It means healers are there to heal, and the content is tuned low enough that 8 tanks can clear it with no healers OR DPSers if they are coordinated and know what they're doing.

So they aren't "green DPS" and tanks aren't "blue DPS.

We have RED DPS in this game. Then we have Green Healers and we have Blue Tanks.

Everyone can - and should - throw damage when their other duties do not take priority. But if as a healer you need to cast a GCD heal, that is what you do. That is what takes priority. Because you are a Green HEALER, and your DPS is secondary to your healing. Just as a tank trying to maximize a burst window that doesn't perform a tank swap because "I'm doing my DPS!!!" is a bad tank, a healer that does the same with damage is a bad healer. They aren't "blue DPS" or "green DPS" in those cases: They're bad players.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Correct, under the current model. The current model isn't inherent to the game, as it was not the way the game always was. And no, the DEVS do not treat healers - not objectively, anyway - "as green DPS". And no, not "every job" is a "-insert colour- DPS". Red Jobs are DPS. If the others were DPS, they would be named DPS in the game and by the Devs. They are not.

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Who decided the 'current' model? Did the playerbase once wake up and decide to point a gun at the devs' heads? Everything in this game revolves around DPS. You don't have to like it, but being delusional, arguing semantics and engaging in mental gymnastics to prove a point that is only in your head won't magically bring convincing arguments to you.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Rough percent of people that complete Savage raid tiers. Varies by tier, but around 1/8 players do so. Much of the playerbase doesn't complete Savage tiers. No content outside of Savage and Ultimate requires healer DPS to beat enrages. In fact, much of the content in the game doesn't even have enrages. Normal mode 8 mans don't have enrages. MSQ trials VERY rarely have enrages, and usually only for add phases before ultimate attacks, and when those do occur, they're extremely lenient. Extremes have enrages, but these are GENERALLY fairly lenient as well, and don't require healer damage in order to beat unless your DPS are bad. If your DPS Jobs are doing their role jobs, you can clear both Trial1 and Trial2 Ex in 570s without healers dealing any damage. As well as the bosses themselves.

Note that even some Savages are lenient here. P1S you can clear in 575 with no healer dps as long as the rest of your team is on point and your DPSers are doing their job.

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Ok, so that's a meaningless percentage and also very inaccurate as it doesn't include people that cleared the tier and didn't get the mount. It also significantly underestimates the percentage of people that plays Savage but doesn't clear the tier.
Weren't you accusing Semirhage of being dismissive a few posts ago? Yet, here you are with your "only xy% thinks that anyway, I'm an omniscient being so I know a large part of the playerbase thinks exactly like ME." When you elevate yourself as a weird kind of healer spokesperson and throw some random numbers around, the conversation becomes meaningless because so are your arguments.

Also, you were talking about fallacies a few posts ago too, yet you fell victim of a rather funny fallacy yourself. In order to confute that "Devs do see healer DPS as a necessity because you need it to clear content", you don't use a single, random, instance to prove a point. Yes, P1S has a very lenient DPS check. Very surprising for the Savage entry point. What about P4S? Could you clear the tier with no healer DPS at all? If yes, healing DPS is indeed just a bonus and that 15% of the playerbase just lives in a collective delusion. If not, the devs objectively (sorry, no mental gymnastics can change this) see healer DPS as a necessity and as a fundamental part of the healer role.
I can use your "logic" and claim that tanks are not necessary in this game because I can clear Sastasha - as well as many other duties - with no tank at all.

Lastly, what does 'green DPS' actually even mean? Why does playing the role as intended in hard content and optimally in casual content gains me the 'green DPS' nickname? Why does griefing your party in hard content and playing sub-optimally (thus wasting people's time) in casual content grants someone the status of great defender of the honour and pride of the healer role? You can call me 'green DPS' if you wish. In return, you can be a Sylphie, not a healer.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

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Nope ,changing goalposts mean to change a goal, in here it was never change the sad truth is the goal here to say "healers are not healers in ff 14".

Your trying to bend your logic so much ur almost a pretzel at this point.

1)To clear the content you MUST dps, there is no escape from it, tanks MUST DPS to gain agro right now its a fact, for dps its their job descriptions and both can not only self sustain where healers are not needed but also heal others to survive content and revive fallen ppl which means healers are not needed.

2) clears also have time conditions to clear, reach certain hp threshold before mech are done, kill adds before boss cast is over, or kill them before their cast is over meaning in terms of gcd any non damage gcd you burn increase the chance your group wont make it simple.the amount of gcds is limited and any gcd that helps damage output counts.

3) gcd healing punish a healer when used, u cant spam it. Cast cost too big, some u cant wave after cast so u can miss timing. Your ogcd makes up for contributions as well such as keep damage gcd cast, mp free, increase others dps.

You are basically fantasizing why gcd need to be used bit that will never be the first cast cause a healer job is contribute to success and gcd healing doesnt, take away any aspect in the healer role description is taken by tanks/dps in self healing/healing others and ressing and you get healers are either green dps or flat out useless/removable for a party basically

If gcd healing were dps neutral or wont hinder, u can argue it needs to be used but the devs clearly not trying to test/design or even maintain the role by the lack of patch and fixes they needed througout expansions when they needed them most especially simple ones as mp costs reductions on gcd

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Originally Posted by Renathras

EDIT: Per FFXIV Collect, <10% have cleared P4S at the moment. Which is supposedly an "easy" Savage raid tier, to hear Savage raiders talk. P3S being a pita aside. I think we can be generous here and say 15-20% of people seriously raid Savage content. Looking at the Eden's Savage I clear achievements, they tend to look like around 20% consistently, if we consider that some clears have come since the level cap/ilevels were raised allowing easier clears for people going back to farm/etc. So 15-20% of people seriously clearing content, where these considerations actually matter, is probably pretty accurate. 60-80% of the population either doesn't do Savages or don't do them seriously to clear them. 60% as a floor, btw, would still be an easy majority of the player base. Fair enough?

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To quote the FAQ on FFXIV Collect:

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How are your ownership percentages calculated?

Ownership is calculated based on publicly available characters who have been updated on the site in the past 3 months and possess at least one collectable in a given category.

These percentages are not a reflection of the entire playerbase, but rather a subset of players who are interested in collecting things. If you are looking to collect competitively, then this is probably the data you want.

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In addition, the amount of players actually using FFXIV Collect is tiny. Again, from the FAQ:

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How many players are tracked by FFXIV Collect?

Users
86,314
Public Characters
230,033
Active Public Characters
85,500
Active Characters with Public Achievements
47,189

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FFXIV Collect accounts for a small portion of the player base and only cares about people who have cleared the tier. Like rewd said, it can't tell you anything about people that are still progging the tier. The actual amount of players participating in Savage is going to be a hell of a lot higher than what FFXIV Collect shows, but only SE has the actual data and they ain't sharing it.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Everyone can - and should - throw damage when their other duties do not take priority. But if as a healer you need to cast a GCD heal, that is what you do. That is what takes priority. Because you are a Green HEALER, and your DPS is secondary to your healing. Just as a tank trying to maximize a burst window that doesn't perform a tank swap because "I'm doing my DPS!!!" is a bad tank, a healer that does the same with damage is a bad healer. They aren't "blue DPS" or "green DPS" in those cases: They're bad players.

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Not that this argument is -ever- going to bed, because I see it rise from the void on a monthly basis, but good healers. Are aware. That you cast GCD healing spells. When necessary. This chicanery crops up every single time, and it's somehow no less exhausting. It's not as if top tier healers take their GCDs off their bar. They're just necessary so rarely in a halfway decent party that you don't press them. Because keeping people at 100% HP all the time is a waste of resources. It's not because Cure gives me hives. It's not because I immediately consign a party member to a dirtnap the moment I run dry on free heals. Healing in this game is boring. It'd be boring if you slightly raised outgoing damage. It'd be boring if you nerfed oGCDs. The healing kits are sleep aids. There's no skill to be gained in Cure 2. Cure 2. Cure 2. Cure 2. They've stripped debuffs away from the kits. WHM isn't -allowed- to have buffs. Cleanses see almost zero use. Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare is all that's left, and that's about two button prunes short of a walking simulator. If they added support, great. If they added interesting kit interactivity, even better. I don't play FFXIV to mash my 1 key like a preschooler. And I don't think *any* of the four healer jobs "deserves" to be cursed with such an awful excuse for gameplay. WHM is the only job in this game people CONSTANTLY advocate to play with zero depth, zero skill, zero fun allowed as intentional design, and it blows my mind. You're free to Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare away if the job gets actually well-designed in the future. Why design stupidification suddenly flips around to become a positive when it's WHM on the chopping block, I'll never know.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Everyone can - and should - throw damage when their other duties do not take priority. But if as a healer you need to cast a GCD heal, that is what you do. That is what takes priority. Because you are a Green HEALER, and your DPS is secondary to your healing. Just as a tank trying to maximize a burst window that doesn't perform a tank swap because "I'm doing my DPS!!!" is a bad tank, a healer that does the same with damage is a bad healer. They aren't "blue DPS" or "green DPS" in those cases: They're bad players.

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Here's where you're arguement falls, allow me to quote myself:

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

as an AST I have:

Horoscope, Neutral Sect, Celesital Opposition, Collective Unconciousness, (the occasional) Lady of Crowns, Macrocosmos and Earthly Star for oGCD AOE heals, (6-7)
2 charges of Essential Dignity and Celestial Intersection each and Exaltation for oGCD single target heals (5)
Synastry (which WHEN WILL YOU UPGRADE THIS SKILL TO BE USED FOR EXALT/ED/CI OR SCRAP IT ALL TOGETHER?)

With Benefic 2 (and one if you want to go there), Aspected Benefic, Helios and Aspected Helios for GCD single target and AOE abilities respectively (4)

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Moving Macrocosmos to GCD heals and ignoring Neutral as it is a buff augment FOR GCD heals that is a total of 9-10 (because occassional Lady) oGCD heals that I am going to burn through first before I touch a single GCD heal aside from Macrocosmos and A. Benefic.

The ONLY healer that is strictly GCD healing past 50 is WHM and that is because lilies aren't oGCD.

We. Don't. GCD. Heal. Unless. We. Have. To.

Why is that so hard to understand? Our oGCDs come up so often (Exaltation comes up before every TB in all EW content it has access to actually and CI WELL before it) that we don't need to dip into our GCDs unless everything is down. And everything isn't going to be down unless people mess up (which, we do account for) because everything is scripted (enough for me to point out I'll next to always have Exal or CI for a tank buster - every 40 or 60+ seconds).

Healing is secondary to DPS because the fight design MADE it secondary to DPS when I can literally press a single button and not have to worry about another raidwide until said button is up. Or... y'know use the other 3 buttons available to me that essentially do the same damn thing. Which means I am going to be spamming Malefic upwards to 90% of a fight because my oGCDs are both powerful and frequent enough to handle most damage and I know that, and I'm going to do that instead of wasting a GCD on A. Helios when I could Celestial Opposition, Collective Unconciousness, Lady of Crowns, Horoscope or Earthly Star instead.

Whether you like it or not, that is a sign of a good healer.

Its always been a sign of a good healer: using your CDs properly.

In FFXIV that means barely GCD heal, spend your GCDs on DPS instead.

And before anyone says it, that does not mean you'll never GCD heal. It just means it is never your priority unless you have nothing else, your LAST RESORT.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

FFXIV WAS designed originally with more healing (RELATIVE TO our healing kits). It was designed for healers to use GCD heals. Remember at level 50 (ARR's level cap), WHM had exactly ONE oGCD heal, Benediction, an emergency panic button. SCHs had only one direct oGCD heal, Lustrate (it also had WD, but that wasn't up front healing.)

ARR was designed with GCD healing in mind and a higher amount of outgoing damage over shorter, more frequent times than today. So was HW. Both Coils and Alex were not designed like modern fights. We did have fairly large and relatively frequent unavoidable damage.

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I am not sure how much more healing there was in ARR, if you have tried the unreal trials in ShB, those could be similarly healed with oGCDs tho I agree Leviathan ex did have some nasty random stuff happening.

Anyway I don't see that huge of a difference between GCD and oGCD healing, so you do
glare > glare > glare+tetra > glare > glare > glare+assize > glare > dia
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stone > stone > cure > cure2 > stone > medica 2 > medica > aero,
just at a much slower pace and dealing less damage, is it more engaging or fun? I don't think so.

Also I think your perception of the past is wrong just because back then players mentality was different. Parsing wasnt so popular, the game was new so people just focused on mechanics and dps was secondary, dps checks were lighter and people still struggled to meet them because they sucked at doing big deeps, healers spam healing just to be safe. I even remember the trend of 'main healer' and 'off-healer' who would just spam damage (which is extremely suboptimal when you do the math) so yeah, it took time for people to over-optimize everything to maximum and now they are bored as they have been spamming the same formula for years and the number of offensive abilities has actually been reduced since ARR.

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Originally Posted by Dhalya

Anyway I don't see that huge of a difference between GCD and oGCD healing, so you do
glare > glare > glare+tetra > glare > glare > glare+assize > glare > dia
or
stone > stone > cure > cure2 > stone > medica 2 > medica > aero,
just at a much slower pace and dealing less damage, is it more engaging or fun? I don't think so.

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There was a lot more to it than that, I can assure you.
For starters, Protect was on the GCD and was absolutely mandatory to have on. While it did last for 30 minutes, you'd have to reapply it if someone died so they at least stood a chance of not getting killed immediately to the next raid wide because Weakness back then wasn't just a damage down to your DPS stats but a full on stat reduction across the board, meaning you had less health to survive damage as well. It was particularly true of DRGs because Physical and Magic damage was not standardized so each class took different amounts of damage, depending on if an AoE attack was physical or magic based but DRG's had PITIFUL magic resistance and would topple over almost every magical AoE unless they had Protect and maybe a Shield for good measure. Tank busters actually hurt like no one's business because enemies could actually CRIT you; At minimum ilvl, if you didn't have a Shield up on top of Mitigation, if you got Crit, you were dead. Then, you had Prey Mechanics that absolutely required you to shield people in order to survive them at all. Couple that with the fact WHM's MP economy being even worse than it currently is and that SCH's AoE healing was essentially limited to Succor and healing was legitimately more involved back then than it is now. There was MP to manage, Tank busters to shield, Cleric Stance Dancing to squeeze in DPS whenever possible, semi frequent raid wide damage.

It was fun though. Stressful as hell but it was always great when you pulled it off.

Nowadays, I sit and spam Glare for the majority of the fight. No shields to keep up, no prey mechanics to watch for, no tank buster too powerful to OHKO tanks, no Cleric Stance Dancing to optimize my DPS, nothing.

What's always driven me mad about the "no, don't fix downtime! Just make healing happen more" line of thought is that it completely misses some fundamental truths about healing that ultimately mean it doesn't solve the problem. Absent an unorthodox system that rewards healing throughput for whatever reason, healing is nearly always a waste of time. No, really. Yes, if you need a party member to survive the next X seconds, it's what you need to do. It's the most important thing you can do at that moment, in fact. Healing is paradoxically both the first priority you learn as a healer and the last thing you want to do once you know more about how to play your job.

Think about it. It's an action that requires that you expend resources (whether that be MP or a cooldown). It requires that you spend time, one of the scarcest, most precious resources in FFXIV, on it (this is crucially true if it's a GCD, less so oGCD). I'd compare it to a turn-based combat game because the GCD is so long that you may consider it as essential to conserve time as you would save a turn. All of those costs and attendant opportunity costs are tied to performing this action, and it'd better do something beneficial. If that character is going to die next turn, then it is. You've conserved countless future turns for your party. If not? Maybe you couldn't get to healing their next turn and thought ahead; I dunno. Because healing is one of the only activities that doesn't contribute to furthering the encounter. It's an activity that's best served outside the heat of combat if you can manage it. You could have just killed the thing attacking your party, which is far more damage prevention than simple healing. You could have stunned it, which in some ways is just as good as killing it. You could have silenced it and reduced the hell out of available options your enemy had to attack you. You could have strategically teleported it away. You could have hit it hard enough to scare it into wasting time performing its own triage instead of attacking your party.

Healing is the most important thing you can do. Until it isn't. Then it's among the least important things you can do. This is where downtime comes in. Because it's so important when the combat makes it essential, you have to give lower-skilled players a buffer to complete their task before the party member dies. Said buffer doesn't need to be anywhere near as large as it is in FFXIV, but it's still there even in games with far higher healing requirements. Downtime will always, always, always be the thing players spend large portions of their time on. It's because healing is among the most useless activities -by definition-, most of the time.

You need to sleep in order to survive. It's one of the most important things you can do. You'll die unless you don't. Should we try sleeping as often as we can? Why not? Is it because the activity is essential when required, and otherwise a useless waste of your time that you could fill with an infinite number of more productive things?

Healing is like sleeping. Or eating. Some people need to do it more than others. Nobody needs to do it even close to 100% of the time. Leaving downtime activities in a boring state is unacceptable. Increasing your downtime is the healing success state. A reward for success should never be tedium.

I see a lot of complaining about these "no healer clears" or "all tank clears" but people not taking into account that these players are pretty good at what they do, and this isn't something average players are accomplishing. In contrast if you bring up the fact that maybe if people actually optimized on their job, they wouldn't feel like its just 1111, you get regarded as an elitist. If you really think healing is boring and all you do is 1111, you are either 1. standing around with half the CPM you should be doing 2. just bad at the job, or 3. This isn't the role for you.

Yes, the healers have issues. Yes, the current content is severely under-tuned. Was the game more fun with virus, protect, and cleric stance? Not really. If anything, it was a bit more boring because of the lack of oGCDs and the fact that healer DPSing was not common practice. I don't understand the visceral reaction people are having by being told to go play harder content when most have literally not cleared said content. At this point you are bored by your own volition.

Here we go again.

I've cleared an Ultimate. On a healer. My last clear had an abysmal personal damage rating. You know what I spent the absolute majority of my time doing? Stone stone stone stone stone. This is for several reasons.
1. Healing requirements are drastically lowered if people are executing mechanics properly. Since most mechanics in Ultimate just kill you if you don't do this, the probability that your party is going to reduce your healing burden is higher, not lower.
2. Downtime is 211111111. This has nothing to do with "low CPM". Are you high or something? Low CPM healers tend to spam their healing spells more, and spend more time overhealing. A SKILLED healer spends more time pressing 1111111. This argument makes no sense.

Is it truly that hard to wrap your heads around the idea that downtime is plentiful in ALL content, and that your downtime activity is literally Dia Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare? It's not even rocket science, the pathetic excuse for a "rotation" exposes itself through a two second skim of the tooltips. Healing. Is. Boring. It's boring in MSQ solo duties. It's boring in the field. It's boring in dungeons. It's boring in trials. It's boring in Savage. It's boring in Ultimate. All this energy directed into forcing oneself to believe that Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare is "fun", or "self-inflicted", or a result of "playing wrong" in the face of all the blatant evidence in game and kit design right in your faces, I swear.

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Originally Posted by Lasciare

I see a lot of complaining about these "no healer clears" or "all tank clears" but people not taking into account that these players are pretty good at what they do, and this isn't something average players are accomplishing. In contrast if you bring up the fact that maybe if people actually optimized on their job, they wouldn't feel like its just 1111, you get regarded as an elitist. If you really think healing is boring and all you do is 1111, you are either 1. standing around with half the CPM you should be doing 2. just bad at the job, or 3. This isn't the role for you.

Yes, the healers have issues. Yes, the current content is severely under-tuned. Was the game more fun with virus, protect, and cleric stance? Not really. If anything, it was a bit more boring because of the lack of oGCDs and the fact that healer DPSing was not common practice. I don't understand the visceral reaction people are having by being told to go play harder content when most have literally not cleared said content. At this point you are bored by your own volition.

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Precisely when you optimize the job is when they feel more like 1 1 1 1 1 1 spam, besides there is downtime everywhere. I could compare week 1/2 clears with my highest damage clears and the only difference is like a 2-9% difference in the cpm of dosis (in fact, will do), lets not act like pressing the aoe gcd of your job is a game changer when there is barely a difference

P1s: 56,76% dosis (week 1), 65,9% (highest)
P2s: 51,23% dosis (week 1), 59,25% (highest)
P3s: 49,56% dosis (week1), 50,17% (highest) [lets remember for this one that damage to adds is not counted]
p4sp1: 55,46% (week1), 59,15% (highest)
p4sp2: 55,11% (week2), 58,87% (highest)

The more optimized the more 1 1 1 1 happens and even if you don't the majority of what you do is just pressing 1 over and over and over again, this is not a cpm thing, nor a skill issue, its how the job is designed

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

There was a lot more to it than that, I can assure you.

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Yes, we used to have more dots to manage, cleric stance and that's what healers want back, just more things to do especially in dps department and i fully agree with that.

Protect is imho a bad example, it was just an automatic thing to press, zero brain activity involved.
Mitigation? So WHM presses glare > temperance, SCH broil > soil, done. Before the scholar would press succor + soil and WHM just pray to god.
Again I think it all comes down to players experience and after years and years of playing and reading about optimization, even ARR fights would be fully mapped out by healers today, just by pressing a few more GCD heals.
As long as the fight has a predictable timeline, then after enough repetitions you just find the correct order of your spells to use and incorporating one esuna or cure II will not change much.

What we need is randomized incoming damage/randomized mechanics to keep healers on their toes.
Second option is fun dps rotation and keep the healing as it is now.

I just don't see how slightly more incoming PREDICTABLE damage changes anything, you just swap glare for medica, or one prey mechanic exactly at 1:25 where you just press one regen followed by one GCD heal.

One of the problems with healers is that this is the only role that is rewarded with boredom the better you get at your job/optimization.

DPS straight up get better because you see bigger numbers and things die faster. Tanks use less mitigation but they can optimize their respectable damage rotation and still have fun. Healers use less healing and keep spamming 11111111.

It's beyond me how someone could state that we only complain about 1111111 because we didn't optimize.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I agree with...your last sentence.

You very much oversell your Nerf GCDs while making a ridiculous caricature of the Nerf oGCDs case.

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Not exactly. WHM is a unique case with lilies, but in general certain GCD heals are just far too good. As I said, AspHelios and AspBenefic are 1000 and 1500 potency. You'd very rarely need much else in any sort of decent group. Sure, you might have to jam out some Cure II's in a messy run, but that doesn't make gameplay exciting when you learn a fight. It's basically the Cure vs Cure II issue. You're told to ignore Cure because Cure II is more potency per GCD. If one heal is superior to the others, it becomes your main option.

It's not as simple as "nerf GCD heals, oGCD's are good" either. There are so many factors wrong with healing that fixing one aspect still leaves lots of other flaws and creates a few new ones. There's still too little incoming damage. Downtime lasts too long sometimes. There's the issue with 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 gameplay. However, I don't feel GCD heals should be stronger than oGCD's, they should be your last resort "ran out of resources" option. So even if you nerf oGCD's, I'd tone down Medica II, AspBenefic and the like until they're slightly worse than oGCD raid heals, so inexperienced players don't just lean on them as a crutch.

Also, how much do you nerf oGCD's? To be honest, things like Normal, EX and even the first 2 Savage bosses are just overheal war with a good co-heal even spamming dps the whole fight. You'd probably have to quarter their potency to get good players to lean heavily on GCD heals. In which case, newer players would 100% ignore them and lean on the big aoe GCD's if there were no other changes. Still doesn't fix 1 spam for downtime either.

Basically, it's a very careful balance with a lot of factors and issues.

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Originally Posted by Dhalya

Yes, we used to have more dots to manage, cleric stance and that's what healers want back, just more things to do especially in dps department and i fully agree with that.

Protect is imho a bad example, it was just an automatic thing to press, zero brain activity involved.
Mitigation? So WHM presses glare > temperance, SCH broil > soil, done. Before the scholar would press succor + soil and WHM just pray to god.
Again I think it all comes down to players experience and after years and years of playing and reading about optimization, even ARR fights would be fully mapped out by healers today, just by pressing a few more GCD heals.
As long as the fight has a predictable timeline, then after enough repetitions you just find the correct order of your spells to use and incorporating one esuna or cure II will not change much.

What we need is randomized incoming damage/randomized mechanics to keep healers on their toes.
Second option is fun dps rotation and keep the healing as it is now.

I just don't see how slightly more incoming PREDICTABLE damage changes anything, you just swap glare for medica, or one prey mechanic exactly at 1:25 where you just press one regen followed by one GCD heal.

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WHM had Stoneskin for mitigation which was a GCD shield just like Succor.

Random incoming damage doesn't really do anything different than predictable damage because you just swap from Glare to Medica regardless if it's predictable or not.

Random damage would make the GCD rhythm differ each run though, so that would be a plus, assuming nothing else changes in the kits. I'd imagine a fight with a main boss on a timeline, and random events inserted in to cause complications. You can learn and practice these events, but sometimes a DPS will be chunked before a raidwide and the healers have to deal with that.

That said, this still leaves easier content out to dry, so eh.

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Originally Posted by Lasciare

I see a lot of complaining about these "no healer clears" or "all tank clears" but people not taking into account that these players are pretty good at what they do, and this isn't something average players are accomplishing. In contrast if you bring up the fact that maybe if people actually optimized on their job, they wouldn't feel like its just 1111, you get regarded as an elitist. If you really think healing is boring and all you do is 1111, you are either 1. standing around with half the CPM you should be doing 2. just bad at the job, or 3. This isn't the role for you.

Yes, the healers have issues. Yes, the current content is severely under-tuned. Was the game more fun with virus, protect, and cleric stance? Not really. If anything, it was a bit more boring because of the lack of oGCDs and the fact that healer DPSing was not common practice. I don't understand the visceral reaction people are having by being told to go play harder content when most have literally not cleared said content. At this point you are bored by your own volition.

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Gameplay was more fun with 0 oGCDs and more dps spells yes. If you're not pressing 11111, it means you are in the early phases of progging, and that's basically 1 hour of fun as a healer when you actually need to monitor people's health beyond predictable dmg. Once everyone is doing the strat it's 11111111111111.

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Originally Posted by Lasciare

If you really think healing is boring and all you do is 1111, you are either 1. standing around with half the CPM you should be doing

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What do I do during the vast majority of the fight when no healing is necessary? Glareoilaficosis spam. Occasionally weaving an oGCD heal into that spam doesn't magically make the spam go away, or make it any more engaging.

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Originally Posted by Lasciare

2. just bad at the job,

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LOL, that was a funny joke. Oh, wait, you were serious? In that case, let me laugh even harder!

Healing turns into 211111 spam specifically because healers optimize their play, moving their healing off the GCD. It's the people who suck at the role who spam their GCD heals endlessly, overheal like mad, and save their oGCDs for "emergencies" that never happen, because everything is scripted.

Compare the percentage of Glareoilaficosis casts in top-1% logs vs. bottom-1% logs for any Savage raid. Who is spending more time 211111-ing, the bad players or the good players?

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Originally Posted by Lasciare

or 3. This isn't the role for you.

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So...healing is supposed to be the childproof role for the short-bus crowd? YoshiderP seems to think so, anyway.

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Originally Posted by Lasciare

I don't understand the visceral reaction people are having by being told to go play harder content when most have literally not cleared said content. At this point you are bored by your own volition.

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Shorter Lasciare: "It's good game design for an entire role to be boring to play in 95% of the game's content!"

You Sylphies all read from the same script, I swear. And none of you, none of you, are able to answer one simple question: Why is it somehow okay for healers to be boring to play in the MSQ, dungeons, normals, EXs, and Savages, but not okay for tanks or DPS jobs to be boring to play in the MSQ, dungeons, normals, EXs, and Savages?

The double standard is as obvious as it is stupid.

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Originally Posted by Punslinger

The double standard is as obvious as it is stupid.

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well if it wasn't obvious before ,this interview sure as hell made it more obvious then any before.

unless u white knights sylphies are able to justify that the only test group for dungeons containing yoshida himself as a tester replacing a healer cause he is "too good" and by too good i mean the best he done is primal EX is actually caring and proper testing the healers role and design for any bugs and gameplay issues?

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

Precisely when you optimize the job is when they feel more like 1 1 1 1 1 1 spam, besides there is downtime everywhere. I could compare week 1/2 clears with my highest damage clears and the only difference is like a 2-9% difference in the cpm of dosis (in fact, will do), lets not act like pressing the aoe gcd of your job is a game changer when there is barely a difference

P1s: 56,76% dosis (week 1), 65,9% (highest)
P2s: 51,23% dosis (week 1), 59,25% (highest)
P3s: 49,56% dosis (week1), 50,17% (highest) [lets remember for this one that damage to adds is not counted]
p4sp1: 55,46% (week1), 59,15% (highest)
p4sp2: 55,11% (week2), 58,87% (highest)

The more optimized the more 1 1 1 1 happens and even if you don't the majority of what you do is just pressing 1 over and over and over again, this is not a cpm thing, nor a skill issue, its how the job is designed

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I honestly don't feel that way. All the jobs have been simplified, I'll agree with it being a design choice, but I don't find it as problematic as people are making it seem. I stay healer because I find it far more interesting that any other role. In both EXs and all the savage floors, I do zero GCD healing (outside of the boss being untargetable), and that's what I enjoy pushing. Keeping my dmg high and my GCD heals low, without griefing my cohealer. BRDs can complain about 1 button spam, SMN could complain about 1 button spam, Tanks could complain that 1-2-3 spam isn't that much more interesting. Yes, they have things to break up the monotony, but then so do SGE, AST and SCH. That's also where the oGCD heals come in. Its why I find it to be a weird gripe like simplicity is something that specifically affects healers. WHM can probably get the closest to complaining about boring game play, but boring dmg is just part of the long list of issues WHM has. I don't use WHM as a base point to argue interesting healing kits.

I mention the CPM thing because looking at some of the people who are posting here, their CPM is actually very low. Or other posters who don't even have a single healer fully leveled. Or haven't touched high end content. These are half baked arguments that I have a hard time taking seriously and not just reading them as regurgitated talking points that have been passed down through their echo chamber. Its honestly not worth responding to these types of people because they also seem to be the rudest in this thread.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

Random damage would make the GCD rhythm differ each run though, so that would be a plus, assuming nothing else changes in the kits. I'd imagine a fight with a main boss on a timeline, and random events inserted in to cause complications. You can learn and practice these events, but sometimes a DPS will be chunked before a raidwide and the healers have to deal with that.

That said, this still leaves easier content out to dry, so eh.

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This is absolutely what I would love to see. This game lacks any real dynamic fight design. Even the fights that vary up their sequences eventually become predictable.

I'm not sure if implementing true RNG fight design would be good for general content, as there is a good amount of the player base who play at a very casual level, but I would really enjoy true RNG concepts in mid to high end content.

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Originally Posted by Lasciare

I mention the CPM thing because looking at some of the people who are posting here, their CPM is actually very low. Or other posters who don't even have a single healer fully leveled. Or haven't touched high end content. These are half baked arguments that I have a hard time taking seriously and not just reading them as regurgitated talking points that have been passed down through their echo chamber. Its honestly not worth responding to these types of people because they also seem to be the rudest in this thread.

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Let me get this straight. Healers are so wretchedly, terribly designed that even low CPM players run into the 111111111111 issue.

And it's hard to take them seriously because of this? This isn't an indication that healers are so poorly designed that even casual players can see how poorly designed they are, it's an indication that they haven't gained enough skill? Why the hell would they want to? Anyone with a functioning brain can see that getting better at healing would make them 11111111 more, and likely chase them away from the role. Because it's boring.

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Originally Posted by Lasciare

I mention the CPM thing because looking at some of the people who are posting here, their CPM is actually very low. Or other posters who don't even have a single healer fully leveled. Or haven't touched high end content.

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Maybe, just maybe, the reason I don't have a healer fully leveled is because the role has been boring for years, has suffered these same problems for years, and the dev team shows no awareness whatsoever that the problems even exist, let alone any inclination to actually fix them. How long have you been playing healer? Because I mained SCH from when I started in August 2014, and then AST from about 3.3 until 5.0. Five years.

Seeing what they did to healers, especially AST, in ShB, I dropped the role and switched to DPS, because that's what the dev team obviously prioritizes. (Yes, I'm still salty about losing the old card system, why do you ask?)

As for "haven't touched high end content?" DPS and tank jobs aren't boring to play in lower-end content. Your DPS rotation isn't cut back in complexity just because you're fighting a dungeon boss instead of an Ultimate. So why is it that healers are the only role expected to find a static and commit to a strict raiding schedule in order to have any fun in the game? Why is it okay for healing to be boring in everything outside of Savage?

While I may not be a Savage raider, I have healed at least a few EXs while they were current. In fact, if somebody of rather average skill (like me) is able to find healing boring and see the problems with the role's design, that speaks to just how bad the issues are, doesn't it? I can have fun on my DNC in any content. I can go to my alt, GNB, when I want fast queues and still have fun. But if I want to have fun on healer and do anything other than be a Malefic-bot, I have to find a static willing to accept somebody who hasn't really done Savage before, and then regularly run the hardest content in the game with them? How is this even remotely acceptable in a game where the vast, overwhelming majority of content does not rise to that level of difficulty?

If you put Glare on three separate keys, you get to press 1-2-3. There, problem fixed.

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Originally Posted by Ixon

If you put Glare on three separate keys, you get to press 1-2-3. There, problem fixed.

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The reverse argument also works and SE could simply merge every 1-2-3 combo on every job into a single button press like they did the Continuation combo on GNB but that doesn't address the problem which is a lack of engagement.

The overwhelming majority of jobs have something that their job is building up to. MNK is building Nadi to use Phantom Rush, RDM is building Black/White mana to do their Melee combo, etc. There is interplay within the toolkit in a meaningful way. Healers don't have that. Our healing and DPS toolkits don't intersect at all, with the Lily System and Addersting being the only interaction between Healing and DPS that intersect on any of the healers and both are DPS negative. Imagine if using Midare Setsugekka on SAM was a DPS loss to use over just using your 1-2-3 combo. That's how it feels to use Misery or Toxicon.It's not some reward for doing my job, it's a consolation prize for not getting the Mega Cactpot. Glare, Regen, Asylum, none of these skills is doing anything at all in terms of gameplay. They don't build up some gauge for a huge skill, they're not giving me anything to manage, they're fire and forget skills that I use because I literally have nothing else to do. I don't have procs like Thundercloud to watch for nor a Wyrmthrust to build up towards. I just have Glare sitting there, bound to my 1 key on the verge of breaking from overuse.

So please go back to complaining about GNB issues and leave the healers to complain about Healer issues.

Ixon's a concern troll from the General Discussion thread about Ultimates. He has all of the bog standard arguments that ignore healer complaints in favor of "your complaints aren't actually constructive", " you're just being dramatic", responding to calls for actual kit interactivity with "you just want 123 combos", and on and on. Anyone reading this thread has rebutted every single one of these dismissive "1111111 isn't that bad you're just craaaaaaazy also healers should heal only" BS a thousand times.

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Originally Posted by Lasciare

snip

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Not gonna argue about the general simplification of the jobs, is fact but there is a point where simplification becomes too much and with healers it seems someone saw that point and said "let's keep going and see what happens". Your experience is your experience but personally I don't find minimizing the gcds that enjoyable because that's basically a given, outside maybe the latest floors of savage and ultimates there is no much thought behind the heal gcd removal, if there is a gcd heal to remove at all, and in the end its just replace [bland generic gcd heal] with [bland generic dps spell]. Since said fights are less than 1% of the content of the game I think its pretty clear why a lot who think like me are heavily displeased with what the current design leads to.

Your point about Brd and tanks are kinda flawed imo, reason being for those jobs their 1 spam or 1-2-3 combo are means to an end. Brd for example has procs out of their 1 spam and in general the action is around 35% of their cpm this means that the 1 spam is not that much present over the rest of their kit while for healers the 50%+ cpm of nuke spam just says that pressing 1 is the majority of what they do. Tank's case is the most interesting of all, they use their 1-2-3 a lot and thats undeniable however their 1-2-3 is not all they have, is an engine for the rest of their kit to work which makes them not feel bad when used (atonement is gained through the combo, blood and mp for drk, cartridges for gnb and beast guage for war), glare/malefic/dosis/broil can hardly say anything like that due to their no interactions at all with anything, we're stuck with buttons that are over 50% of what we do on a daily basis that do not serve any purpose nor interact with out kit, they're the end and even if some of the jobs have small gimmicks to break the monothony they're so underdeveloped compared to what any other job does that they can't achieve the same effect.

(Will show something interesting about whm later on)

Smn raises an interesting point that leads to a question, its true that their design leads to a huge amount of 1 button spam, which is why even tough the population increased the rework was divisive. Now the thing I wanna talk about SMN is how it works related to the rest of their peers in the caster role, smn may be a 1 button spam job but rdm is not, it has melee phases and procs and blm is all about mp management and line optimization to stay in fire phase, they are all casters and 1 of them is a 1 button spam job but the gameplay of all of them changes wildly from one to the next, why then must all healers all have the same design of 1 button 1 dot? why not have different playstyles between them instead of all spending a huge % of their cpm doing the same basic thing? casters show its possible to have a role with different playstyles and with maybe a job reliant on 1 button spam, why healers do not deserve the same?

I don't take those people that do not do savage or have low cpm or not even a max level healer lightly, for me the point of them would be "this is so apparent that you don't need to know much to see it, just play it a bit and understand a few of the basics" and honestly is not that they're wrong, we could have so much from an ast with actual card management, a sch dot based with the 2 fairies back to even a whm that uses missery not as a loss and a sge that is not sch2.0 yet here we are and someone does not need to clear savage to see it

and now the whm thing I said earlier, you said how whm can get the closest to boring as if it was a different animal:
https://i.gyazo.com/9c7a74badb5e90ff...142eacf652.png
https://i.gyazo.com/5fd70114ab6f99e1...32b4b10ca9.png
(both from savage ofc)

...I wish whm was the only problematic child

RIP WHM, bloody "buffs"

how do we delete a job from our char ? I want to delete the whm now.

ROFL at this change here. Y "All healers will get MP changes, skills will cost less" According to the translators on the Reddit forum.

Why have piety at all if this is the case?

For those who don't know, during the letter, they showed that the only "buffs" WHM will be getting is that Cure III and Asylum will be increased to 10 yalms and that you can manually detonate Bell for heals AND they'll be nerfing SCH's Expedience effect time from 20 seconds to 10 and increase Sacred Soil's range to 10 yalms.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

ROFL at this change here. Y "All healers will get MP changes, skills will cost less" According to the translators on the Reddit forum.

Why have piety at all if this is the case?

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Piety has always been a junk stat just like Tenacity. Avoided at all costs

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Piety has always been a junk stat just like Tenacity. Avoided at all costs

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Tenacity at least has some fringe benefits. Piety is purely for MP regen with no bonuses to DPS, healing potency, or survivability at all. It's the worst substat in the entire game

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

For those who don't know, during the letter, they showed that the only "buffs" WHM will be getting is that Cure III and Asylum will be increased to 10 yalms and that you can manually detonate Bell for heals AND they'll be nerfing SCH's Expedience effect time from 20 seconds to 10 and increase Sacred Soil's range to 10 yalms.

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It wasn't a exhaustive list. But it's fair to assume the devs think Afflatus Misery works perfectly fine right now.

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

It wasn't a exhaustive list. But it's fair to assume the devs think Afflatus Misery works perfectly fine right now.

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And it's equally fair to say F them.

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

It wasn't a exhaustive list. But it's fair to assume the devs think Afflatus Misery works perfectly fine right now.

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And taking account of their history of tinkering with the green icons into consideration, it's not an esotericism to have 0 expectation out of the full list by 11st later.

If any, I'm preparing myself for another wave of disappointment despite having close to zero expectation.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Piety has always been a junk stat just like Tenacity. Avoided at all costs

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Yeah, Piety is awful, just like healer's job design lol

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Originally Posted by Caduagm

Yeah, Piety is awful, just like healer's job design lol

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You can see exactly how awful it is too if you are willing to violate tos. The forbidden launcher has tool that displays effect of stats on character screen (something game should already do).