Healing Focus or DPS Focus

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I mean Warrior's only barely more interesting than healers at this point. The healers constantly make me think about this joke, where DPS is spiciness, and all four healers respond the same way that she does. Warrior, I imagine, thinks the whole wheat is just the right amount of spice.

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WAR is the one that says they love the hot tabasco sauce you added .... but it's just ketchup.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

WAR is the one that says they love the hot tabasco sauce you added .... but it's just ketchup.

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I made a FFXIV DPS Scoville scale with references to real-world spiciness:

https://i.imgur.com/cqIj3OZ.png

I am aware that Jalapenos are not that spicy, which is exactly my point.

Man, it's just sad to see DRG being regarded as one of the more advanced/difficult jobs now, when just an expansion ago it was seen as the most accessible melee job. Like I was taken aback a few days ago when I fucked up during a raid and someone in the party made an excuse for me by pointing out I apparently play the most busy DPS in the game. When the fuck did that happen?

Because it's not DRG that has changed.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Man, it's just sad to see DRG being regarded as one of the more advanced/difficult jobs now, when just an expansion ago it was seen as the most accessible melee job. Like I was taken aback a few days ago when I fucked up during a raid and someone in the party made an excuse for me by pointing out I apparently play the most busy DPS in the game. When the fuck did that happen?

Because it's not DRG that has changed.

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To be fair, I kind of threw that together quickly, so I think the actual position of some jobs is absolutely something that can be discussed, or even just how far apart some jobs are from each other relative to their positions on the scale. Even looking back, I'm asking, "Is bard really that high?" I definitely feel like it is at least a tiny bit more complex than Monk, Red Mage, and Samurai, but it does look a lot higher than maybe it should be?

Black Mage is a really odd question as well, because the actual rotation is one of the most simple and straightforward rotations in the game. The challenge of Black Mage comes entirely in the need to know when you have to move ahead of time and plan your resources around anticipating mechanics, which no other job really asks for at that level.

Honestly I think it'd be fun to iron out the proper order and placement on the scale.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Honestly I think it'd be fun to iron out the proper order and placement on the scale.

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I don't really think there is a proper order per se, job difficulty will always depend on what the player is good at.

For example, I don't understand why people tend to rate NIN so high because I find NIN to be very easy. But I have trouble grasping how to play BLM, also I tend to mix-up my order when playing DRG and end up misaligning High Jump and Geirskogul.

Different people find different things easy or difficult, so there's probably not going to be an all-encompassing job difficulty placement.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I don't really think there is a proper order per se, job difficulty will always depend on what the player is good at.

For example, I don't understand why people tend to rate NIN so high because I find NIN to be very easy. But I have trouble grasping how to play BLM, also I tend to mix-up my order when playing DRG and end up misaligning High Jump and Geirskogul.

Different people find different things easy or difficult, so there's probably not going to be an all-encompassing job difficulty placement.

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Maybe it's not really about difficulty per say, but more about how much is really going on. How much is the player asked to keep track of?

With Ninja, I find it to be the most demanding simply because there is a lot that goes into each burst window, part of which is doing your Ninjutsus which you can't correct if you make a mistake unlike Dancer's steps. Also Dancer shows you the order of the steps while Ninja does not give you a Ninjutsu cheat sheet. It really isn't hard. It just requires practice, which is also why I only made the scale go up to Jalapenos.

I admit I suck at endless sets of double weaving and keeping a picture in my mind of what order to do those sets of double weaves so NIN/DRK/DNC/GNB/AST really don’t work well with me

Meanwhile I feel I’m above average at the ability to plan on the fly 5-6GCD’s out for jobs who aren’t always stagnant or alternatively jobs that are so rigid that you need to remember your exact GCD order so I tend to mesh well with BRD/old PLD/DRG/SCH/MCH/BLM

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I don't really think there is a proper order per se, job difficulty will always depend on what the player is good at.

For example, I don't understand why people tend to rate NIN so high because I find NIN to be very easy. But I have trouble grasping how to play BLM, also I tend to mix-up my order when playing DRG and end up misaligning High Jump and Geirskogul.

Different people find different things easy or difficult, so there's probably not going to be an all-encompassing job difficulty placement.

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Yeah, same. I agree NIN feels rather easy to play, if anything, BLM is the job I scratch my head anytime people praise it as the best constructed job to play because to me that's one of the jankiest, most inconsistent, largely not fun unsync jobs to play.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Maybe it's not really about difficulty per say, but more about how much is really going on. How much is the player asked to keep track of?

With Ninja, I find it to be the most demanding simply because there is a lot that goes into each burst window, part of which is doing your Ninjutsus which you can't correct if you make a mistake unlike Dancer's steps. Also Dancer shows you the order of the steps while Ninja does not give you a Ninjutsu cheat sheet. It really isn't hard. It just requires practice, which is also why I only made the scale go up to Jalapenos.

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It's basically the difference between a job being more complex because they have a mechanic you need to learn, like NIN's mudras, MNK 'zig zag' combos, or the old AST cards, and being complex because they're full of double weave windows you can't miss on without taking a dive, like MCH, BRD or GNB.

I wouldn't group AST with SMN, I'd still keep it closer , but to the right of SCH.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

I lean towards:

3. Bring back some DPS mechanics, and bring some increase to healing requirements.

The math for "healers should only heal" simply doesn't work if you want to make content clearable by imperfect players, but as many others have pointed out, there's still room for increased healing requirements before we overwhelm so-called "casuals."

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Yet other games seem to be able to design content that mostly requires healing and yet is still clearable.

Given how few players even make it into Savage content, I don't think it needs to be balanced around say the lower 50% of the population.

Healers should heal much much much more AND have enough of a DPS toolkit to contribute damage in a fun way. Even if normal content remains braindead, extreme and up should involve large amounts of unavoidable damage instead of tickling the tank and telegraphing incoming damage. We also should see MP become a resource to manage again.

A good model is WoW's Mythic dungeons: There is plenty of unavoidable damage and healers are healing the majority of the time as they progress, but healers need to dip into a robust DPS toolkit to clear the tougher keystones before the timer. I haven't tried WoW raiding in over a decade, but that was also balanced to require healing chops.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

A good model is WoW's Mythic dungeons: There is plenty of unavoidable damage and healers are healing the majority of the time as they progress, but healers need to dip into a robust DPS toolkit to clear the tougher keystones before the timer. I haven't tried WoW raiding in over a decade, but that was also balanced to require healing chops.

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I still find it hilarious that WoW originally had a 'healers only heal' format but went progressively leaning into healers doing more and more damage, while XIV kept stripping their healers off theirs. Who knows, maybe by DT we'll finally get our dots removed, because keeping an eye on applying it every 30 seconds is ~too stressful~

The point of maintaining multiple dots was that there would be no excuse for you to cast GCD heals as you have some damage ticking. All your DoTs, combined, do more damage than a single Ruin. That's another reason I love ARR SCH so much - Ruin had low potency.. I think even less than 100... 80. Can't remember. In today's standard, it is just a bit more than a dot tick. Ruin way back in the day is the very definition of a filler spell as it does low damage. You not hard casting Ruin was not as detrimental as losing out on your dots. I am not buying to the notion that maintaining DoTs is stressful.

In a previous life, I worked at a company that had the following guidelines for how users would perceive the responsiveness of our software:

• ≤ 1 second: The user feels like they are in control.
• 2–3 seconds: The user feels like they are having a "conversation" with a computer.
• ≥ 10 seconds: The user mentally checks out and goes to make a pot of coffee.

The problem with a 30 second DoT is that it's too easy to forget about it. A shorter duration would actually make it easier to remember.

I...was actually making fun of dots being "stressful" lol

I do like the idea of shorter, yet stronger dots tho. As it is right now I think a whole duration is only worth ~2 Glares or so? so it feels really weak, if not pointless unless you're chasing parses.

Not directing my statement to you though.. I kinda know where your stance is. I wish SCH also gets back to its DoT roots.

Sorry. They're taking away DoT because the game can't handle more debuffs/buffs. :(

Also them: adds RPR's death design and somehow leaves odd DoT buttons like Sonic Break & Bow Shock untouched.

:diesalittleinside:

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Originally Posted by Allegor

I still find it hilarious that WoW originally had a 'healers only heal' format but went progressively leaning into healers doing more and more damage, while XIV kept stripping their healers off theirs. Who knows, maybe by DT we'll finally get our dots removed, because keeping an eye on applying it every 30 seconds is ~too stressful~

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This is only for high level Mythic+ dungeons, due to their timer. If you look at parses for lower Mythics or raids, healers still heal:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...casts&source=6

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

This is only for high level Mythic+ dungeons, due to their timer. If you look at parses for lower Mythics or raids, healers still heal:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...casts&source=6

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Yes, healer damage is still optional (save for 3 specs) and is still lower than an actual dps, but my point is they can deal damage at all now. Before Legion or so, you would barely even be able to quest as a healer, you were worthless outside the kitchen dungeons/raids.

In other words, XIV is molding their healers into a playstyle that even WoW is expanding out from.

Yikes. That's a terrible direction indeed.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

Yes, healer damage is still optional (save for 3 specs) and is still lower than an actual dps, but my point is they can deal damage at all now. Before Legion or so, you would barely even be able to quest as a healer, you were worthless outside the kitchen dungeons/raids.

In other words, XIV is molding their healers into a playstyle that even WoW is expanding out from.

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I wouldn't say that XIV is molding healers into a "healers only heal" style. It's more like they're trying to make healers so easy that a toddler could play it.

A "healers only heal" style would necessitate high incoming damage, something the dev team is extremely hesitant to give us. They also won't give us more to do in downtime, they also say that healer dps is not required to clear fights.

They're basically treating the healer playerbase like toddlers. You're not allowed to have more to heal, you're not allowed to have a more busy downtime, you're only allowed to press one singular key for most of the fight so you can react faster when a DPS player steps in something they shouldn't.

Just curious though. Was CBU3 the same team that designed the jobs in ARR and HW?

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Originally Posted by rawker

Just curious though. Was CBU3 the same team that designed the jobs in ARR and HW?

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It's been the same team since ARR, iirc. At least the credits always show the same names in the battle design team.

I see. Now i wonder what drove the team to conclude that the current healer setup is right.. surely they have taken feedback. Must've construed it differently.. i dunno. I just find it hard to believe they screwed it up. Was it the loud minority that aren't healers and got heard?

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Originally Posted by rawker

I see. Now i wonder what drove the team to conclude that the current healer setup is right.. surely they have taken feedback. Must've construed it differently.. i dunno. I just find it hard to believe they screwed it up. Was it the loud minority that aren't healers and got heard?

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My theory is that it's a continued over-correcting of Heavensward. Back then, Cleric Stance's all-or-nothing nature made DPSing very stressful for a lot of people, because they were afraid of being stuck in Cleric Stance at the wrong time and killing their team. But even when that issue was resolved with the change to Cleric Stance in Stormblood, the Devs were scarred from the Heavensward arguments, so they just kept simplifying. Like seeing your house plants wilting, then killing them by drowning them.

The only thing about that line of thinking is that it doesn’t seem to account for the fact that tanks and healers had the same complaints about their role at the tail end of SB but square handled the two in the exact opposite way for seemingly no discernible reason

The “I like my role and I don’t want to just be a DPS but I also don’t like that my role responsibility is too reliant on the other roles and this often causes me to lose damage”

For the tank they functionally removed agro and agro combos as well as made tank stance an inherent permanent buff that generates incredibly huge agro, but they allowed them to maintain their DPS complexity, healers instead they seemed to have prescribed the playstyle of expecting large amounts of healing while DPS remains a third priority however due to this healers heal more than tanks tank so to speak

They have never seems to have explained their justification for why when they removed the last shreds of “everyone is a true DPS class but supports have to give up 50% of that damage to do their primary role” and transitioned to “supports now just do their primary role as a subsidiary of being DPS but we have baked the 50% less damage into their kits” they chose the opposing design ideas for the 2 supports nor will they acknowledge that one half of this equation definitely enjoyed the changes more than the other

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Originally Posted by rawker

I see. Now i wonder what drove the team to conclude that the current healer setup is right.. surely they have taken feedback. Must've construed it differently.. i dunno. I just find it hard to believe they screwed it up. Was it the loud minority that aren't healers and got heard?

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I think they're lacking in manpower to take good care of every job. So they end up focusing the majority of resources into making the DPS jobs fun because they're the most popular.

Meanwhile, parts of the healer kits are just designed entirely the same so it requires less time to balance, their end goal is probably to make healers functional, but fun isn't their priority here.

I assume that, with the coming of 2 more new DPS jobs and no news of the battle design team being expanded, they're probably going to start making the tanks bare minimum functional as well so they can put more resources into the DPS jobs.

The tanks already pretty much fall into the “barely functioning in terms of kit” design

They basically all just play as simplified melee DPS but when a melee DPS would push an attack button a tank will instead push a defensive

If you took the tank timelines and replaced every press of a defensive with a random 4-600 potency attack or a button that generated a small combo extender you’d basically be playing a true melee DPS

Healers just get the “bare minimum to be functional” tanks get the “start with a melee DPS and rip 5-6 damage buttons out of it”

I feel like Aggro management for tanks should've just removed the reliance on DPS and healers to manage their aggro. For what it's worth, I don't really feel like Quelling Strikes as another button to use basically on cooldown most of the time is all that enthralling of a gameplay mechanic anyway. But the tanks themselves could absolutely continued to have tools that interacted with Aggro more than just Provoke and Shirk.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The tanks already pretty much fall into the “barely functioning in terms of kit” design

They basically all just play as simplified melee DPS but when a melee DPS would push an attack button a tank will instead push a defensive

If you took the tank timelines and replaced every press of a defensive with a random 4-600 potency attack or a button that generated a small combo extender you’d basically be playing a true melee DPS

Healers just get the “bare minimum to be functional” tanks get the “start with a melee DPS and rip 5-6 damage buttons out of it”

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Oh I don't think tanks have hit bare minimum yet.

Healers barely need to do their main role, their only reason for existing in the party is to be the target of light party stacks. They have no optimisation to speak of and they're not allowed to have anymore.

Tanks do still need to pick up aggro, they do still need to mitigate damage and they're still allowed to be a point of failure in the party. They have a decent rotation to juggle while being given the responsibility to help protect the party with Reprisal and their party mitigation.

But they are getting tanks to bare minimum. Like how in modern normal and alliance raids, tanks (or the off-tank specifically) don't need to hold aggro because the bosses are coded to target the tanks for tankbusters. I think the next step would be bland homogenisation of their damage kit and parts of their defensive kit. Like giving every tank Bloodwhetting and Vengeance.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

In a previous life, I worked at a company that had the following guidelines for how users would perceive the responsiveness of our software:

• ≤ 1 second: The user feels like they are in control.
• 2–3 seconds: The user feels like they are having a "conversation" with a computer.
• ≥ 10 seconds: The user mentally checks out and goes to make a pot of coffee.

The problem with a 30 second DoT is that it's too easy to forget about it. A shorter duration would actually make it easier to remember.

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I forget my DoT all the time... like basically I don't pay attention to it. I just mentally know where it's durations ends and when I need to recast it. (Or when I can't slide cast)
But when doing Ex trial or expert roulette, I just forget to refresh it as I get drowzee from spamming malefic x_x.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

Yes, healer damage is still optional (save for 3 specs) and is still lower than an actual dps, but my point is they can deal damage at all now. Before Legion or so, you would barely even be able to quest as a healer, you were worthless outside the kitchen dungeons/raids.

In other words, XIV is molding their healers into a playstyle that even WoW is expanding out from.

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You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

And healing spec absolutely could do damage at all and quest successfully, just more slowly. I leveled my first character resto 1-60, before further improvements to healer damage output. Indeed, WoW healers have always had a stronger DPS toolkit than FFXIV ones. It's just that FFXIV isn't tuned to require healing, so the community fixates on damage output from healers instead of passing healing checks. Which makes the "one dot and single nuke spam" even more egregious.

FFXIV healers wish they had WoW's healer damage toolkits. Like my druid can literally turn into a cat and start a full DPS rotation, where my FFXIV healers just spam the 1 key.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

And healing spec absolutely could do damage at all and quest successfully, just more slowly. I leveled my first character resto 1-60, before further improvements to healer damage output. Indeed, WoW healers have always had a stronger DPS toolkit than FFXIV ones. It's just that FFXIV isn't tuned to require healing, so the community fixates on damage output from healers instead of passing healing checks. Which makes the "one dot and single nuke spam" even more egregious.

FFXIV healers wish they had WoW's healer damage toolkits. Like my druid can literally turn into a cat and start a full DPS rotation, where my FFXIV healers just spam the 1 key.

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The greatest advertisement for WoW is the healer experience in FFXIV. It's quite impressive honestly. If someone told me that the healer experience is intentionally designed for unfun, I would call it a masterpiece.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

And healing spec absolutely could do damage at all and quest successfully, just more slowly. I leveled my first character resto 1-60, before further improvements to healer damage output. Indeed, WoW healers have always had a stronger DPS toolkit than FFXIV ones. It's just that FFXIV isn't tuned to require healing, so the community fixates on damage output from healers instead of passing healing checks. Which makes the "one dot and single nuke spam" even more egregious.

FFXIV healers wish they had WoW's healer damage toolkits. Like my druid can literally turn into a cat and start a full DPS rotation, where my FFXIV healers just spam the 1 key.

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I ommited it because I didn't think it relevant at the time. It was because of the Legion artifacts, I'm assuming, when they balanced it so you wouldn't "need" to switch to dps to actually do stuff anymore. I remember loving leveling as holy then, whereas in previous expansions I'd feel forced to play as shadow.

The closest thing XIV has is SCH and SMN - why would you ever want to be a SCH outside a dungeon if you level it for free by leveling SMN, right? except....there are lots of people who don't like SMN, or even have it unlocked, and would rather play SCH at all times. Are their preferences not as valid? and that's not even mentioning that WHM, AST and SGE don't have a dps counterpart to fall onto for 'free leveling.'

That said, I do agree XIV healers dps kit is embarrassing next to WoW's. I think the most simple healer is resto shaman, and even they have a "Fire III" proc to break monotony (not to mention talents to lean deeper into an offensive playstyle) but since both games have fundamentally different encounter designs, it's not like they even have much downtime to say their gameplay is monotonous in the first place
/shrug

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Originally Posted by Allegor

I ommited it because I didn't think it relevant at the time. It was because of the Legion artifacts, I'm assuming, when they balanced it so you wouldn't "need" to switch to dps to actually do stuff anymore. I remember loving leveling as holy then, whereas in previous expansions I'd feel forced to play as shadow.

The closest thing XIV has is SCH and SMN - why would you ever want to be a SCH outside a dungeon if you level it for free by leveling SMN, right? except....there are lots of people who don't like SMN, or even have it unlocked, and would rather play SCH at all times. Are their preferences not as valid? and that's not even mentioning that WHM, AST and SGE don't have a dps counterpart to fall onto for 'free leveling.'

That said, I do agree XIV healers dps kit is embarrassing next to WoW's. I think the most simple healer is resto shaman, and even they have a "Fire III" proc to break monotony (not to mention talents to lean deeper into an offensive playstyle) but since both games have fundamentally different encounter designs, it's not like they even have much downtime to say their gameplay is monotonous in the first place
/shrug

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"I'd feel forced to play as shadow." But not because WoW's healer toolkit is inferior to FFXIV's. It's because you had easy access to an alternate spec while leveling healing. FFXIV just takes away the alternatives so people level with 1 nuke and 1 DoT.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

"I'd feel forced to play as shadow." But not because WoW's healer toolkit is inferior to FFXIV's. It's because you had easy access to an alternate spec while leveling healing. FFXIV just takes away the alternatives so people level with 1 nuke and 1 DoT.

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I'm...not sure what your point is tbh. I felt 'forced' to play shadow because I don't like shadow, I wanted to play as holy, which is a choice I was granted eventually and was happy about. That's like...my whole point? that I find it funny how WoW acknowledged people like healers to be more than healbots in dungeons and were given more freedom of choice, whereas XIV takes away that choice for the sake of simplicity.

I just wanted to mention that there's a lot of discussion concerning WOW. Not to slight WOW at all, and I'm not surprised given WOW's popularity, however there are other MMOs with healers.

It isn't unusual in at least several other MMOs that I've played for healers to have specs/trees/etc so that they have options varying from complete healing, to full DPS, or a hybrid of healing and DPS. This game has really been the most constrained for me, in terms of skill selection (i.e.- NONE). It's saving grace is that all jobs can be played on one character.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

I just wanted to mention that there's a lot of discussion concerning WOW. Not to slight WOW at all, and I'm not surprised given WOW's popularity, however there are other MMOs with healers.

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As much as I'd love to soy over scrapper from GW2 as one of my favourite healers in an MMO ever, the ARR relaunch was directly inspired by WOW CATA so its a good comparison since the game has had WOW influence before.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

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I play WoW to this day, and it's balance b/t healing and dps is actually fantastic. FF14 isn't even close to this.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

As much as I'd love to soy over scrapper from GW2 as one of my favourite healers in an MMO ever, the ARR relaunch was directly inspired by WOW CATA so its a good comparison since the game has had WOW influence before.

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Yes, I'm aware of that, however my point was that there are other MMOs out there, and since you brought WOW's impact on this game, this is another reason why having a design team that keeps getting jobs added is likely stripping out complexity- how do they even make time to research other games, even worse when they don't have anyone as a dedicated healer designer.