A summary of healer issues

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

There is also the whole issue of the hitbox of the bosses which may cause tanks to miss dps buffs or mit if there is any mechanic that force the players to not enter the hitbox and the boss is big enough

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And in typical CBU3 fashion, instead of simply reducing the boss hitbox they made it more convoluted by increasing every single job aoe to 30y Except Asylum and Sacred Soil for some stupid reason. . .

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

And in typical CBU3 fashion, instead of simply reducing the boss hitbox they made it more convoluted by increasing every single job aoe to 30y Except Asylum and Sacred Soil for some stupid reason. . .

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You do realize that reducing the hitbox of already existing content is not as simple as moving a slider, right? For example in some of the content this fix is aimed for, like TOP, it would affect melee uptime and dps checks would have to be reevaluated, as well as mechanics and aoe ranges, to make up for that change in every single phase of the fight. DSR would have to be reevaluated too and even some savage fights with tight dps checks at min ilv would have to go through a process of reevaluation, it's not trivial stuff.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

And in typical CBU3 fashion, instead of simply reducing the boss hitbox they made it more convoluted by increasing every single job aoe to 30y Except Asylum and Sacred Soil for some stupid reason. . .

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If it's any consolation (hehe), Whispering Dawn remains at 15y. Which is funny, because the analog on SGE, Physis 2, IS 30y. But Physis 1 isnt. Does SE really think that the 10% healing boost is why Physis 2 should have more range? That would almost imply it's the heal boost people hit Physis 2 for, and not the extremely potent HOT effect, which is silly to even think about

Actually, looking at it, the fairy skill ranges are now all over the place. WD and the Seraph version are 15y. Everything else is 30y. Oh wait, there's one exception! Fey Blessing is 20 for some reason. And whatever that reason IS, it's not to mirror Indom's range, cos that is 15 too!

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

If it's any consolation (hehe), Whispering Dawn remains at 15y. Which is funny, because the analog on SGE, Physis 2, IS 30y. But Physis 1 isnt. Does SE really think that the 10% healing boost is why Physis 2 should have more range? That would almost imply it's the heal boost people hit Physis 2 for, and not the extremely potent HOT effect, which is silly to even think about

Actually, looking at it, the fairy skill ranges are now all over the place. WD and the Seraph version are 15y. Everything else is 30y. Oh wait, there's one exception! Fey Blessing is 20 for some reason. And whatever that reason IS, it's not to mirror Indom's range, cos that is 15 too!

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Putting effort into class direction and paying attention to changes for SCH has never exactly been one of SE's strong points ;)

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

You do realize that reducing the hitbox of already existing content is not as simple as moving a slider, right? For example in some of the content this fix is aimed for, like TOP, it would affect melee uptime and dps checks would have to be reevaluated, as well as mechanics and aoe ranges, to make up for that change in every single phase of the fight. DSR would have to be reevaluated too and even some savage fights with tight dps checks at min ilv would have to go through a process of reevaluation, it's not trivial stuff.

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You do realize that reducing the hitbox of already existing content is not as simple as moving a slider, right?

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Actually this depends in how it's implemented in some games it's even easier to declare than a slider by filling a range of hit parameter in which you just fill in one number in adjacent to a monster id in a markup language such as xml or Json. A lot of older games do this in fact that you would be surprised. You first develop the bare bones and then utilize that code to make your life easier. Game development nowadays isn't rocket science if you have the knowledge to do so, although it does take time to learn, I have already finished developing two games of my own in fact.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

If it's any consolation (hehe), Whispering Dawn remains at 15y. Which is funny, because the analog on SGE, Physis 2, IS 30y. But Physis 1 isnt. Does SE really think that the 10% healing boost is why Physis 2 should have more range? That would almost imply it's the heal boost people hit Physis 2 for, and not the extremely potent HOT effect, which is silly to even think about

Actually, looking at it, the fairy skill ranges are now all over the place. WD and the Seraph version are 15y. Everything else is 30y. Oh wait, there's one exception! Fey Blessing is 20 for some reason. And whatever that reason IS, it's not to mirror Indom's range, cos that is 15 too!

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Ehhh, I just place the fairy in the center, problem solved…

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Originally Posted by Katish

Actually this depends in how it's implemented in some games it's even easier to declare than a slider by filling a range of hit parameter in which you just fill in one number in adjacent to a monster id in a markup language such as xml or Json. A lot of older games do this in fact that you would be surprised. You first develop the bare bones and then utilize that code to make your life easier. Game development nowadays isn't rocket science if you have the knowledge to do so, although it does take time to learn, I have already finished developing two games of my own in fact.

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I'm not refering to the technical side but the gameplay design side. Something like a hitbox reduction implies that players may lose uptime during a mechanic that they previously didn't, creating imbalances across jobs and making the dps checks even harder and in some fights, like TOP as I mentioned, dps checks are tight enough that a change like that would require a rebalance of almost all phases. There are also mechanics whose safe spot are based on the boss hitbox and that would also create problems. While maybe in the technical side it is as easy as moving a slider the impact that has in gameplay would be deep enough to make that change a non trivial one.

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Something like a hitbox reduction implies that players may lose uptime during a mechanic that they previously didn't, creating imbalances

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Ah, thats what you meant. Well I kind of agree with you but at the same time I don't, hitbox expansion is one of the sole reasons this is meleewalker...and it's hard to balance around that because the end of the day question is should ranged be able to do as much damage as melee, with the hitboxes as they are I'd argue yes or at least close enough. That would be the decrepency in damage. I'd rather them increase melee potency during burst phase and lower the hitbox range as it makes moving a little more difficult and actually starts differianting dps (and of course I'd want less homogenizing but that is a pipe dream). Now that doesn't mean I want hitboxes to be impossible of course there is an extreme to everything but that is not what I'm advocating for.

Just had an A12 queue with a White Mage whose rotation was Medica 2! Medica 2! Medica 2! Medica 2! Medica 2! Medica 2!

Best design ever. *chef's kiss*, dunno how they could possibly improve on this.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Just had an A12 queue with a White Mage whose rotation was Medica 2! Medica 2! Medica 2! Medica 2! Medica 2! Medica 2!

Best design ever. *chef's kiss*, dunno how they could possibly improve on this.

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Just had an A12 E11 queue with a White Mage party whose rotation was Medica 2! have 5/8 people fall off on every Fire-charged BurntStrike.

My Dosis percentage, despite the fight being an absolute cluster, was still well above 50%

Best design ever. *chef's kiss*, dunno how they could possibly improve on this. idk either i think they've peaked, this is the pinnacle of healer design /s

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Just had an A12 E11 queue with a White Mage party whose rotation was Medica 2! have 5/8 people fall off on every Fire-charged BurntStrike.

My Dosis percentage, despite the fight being an absolute cluster, was still well above 50%

Best design ever. *chef's kiss*, dunno how they could possibly improve on this. idk either i think they've peaked, this is the pinnacle of healer design /s

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Not like spamming healing would have done anything. I give Expedience and a crit spreadlo to my whole team on Rubi EX and they still get RKO'd by the in-out-in mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

And in typical CBU3 fashion, instead of simply reducing the boss hitbox they made it more convoluted by increasing every single job aoe to 30y Except Asylum and Sacred Soil for some stupid reason. . .

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This has essentially been CBU3's modus operandi for this entire expansion, make a change for no reason (or for the sole reason of appeasing the absolute lowest common denominator), find out said change had a bunch of negative knock-on effects, sell us a solution to the problem they created in the first place.


Let's make giant hitboxes for basically no reason.
Oh no, now melees have 100% uptime with no effort required, better increase the dps checks.
Oh no, now certain party compositions can't mathematically clear the dps check, better nerf that into the ground and then buff them.
Oh no, because of our giant hitboxes people may occasionally miss buffs when they have to move, better increase the buff range to cover the entire arena to make it extra braindead.
Oh no, since melees have 100% uptime in every fight they are completely trouncing the ranged dps' output, better buff all of tho-...oh wait, they didn't do that, instead they just buffed Blackmage and told every other ranged to go pound sand.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

oh wait, they didn't do that, instead they just buffed Blackmage and told every other ranged to go pound sand.

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Ah, a fellow connoisseur of the art of watching a Monk sit on the floor for ten seconds, eat a weakness debuff, and still take a massive dump on your damage output despite having similar party utility I see. Truly the job balance that knows no parallel.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Let's make giant hitboxes for basically no reason.
Oh no, now melees have 100% uptime with no effort required, better increase the dps checks.

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And this screws healers even more because despite the vision being "healers only healing" healers are now expected to DPS even more to get clears.

"Yoshi, we do nothing but mash 1; what is your solution?"
Yoshi: "Healers should only heal."
The actual content: "Mash 1, HARDER!!!!!!"

I know we've heard a lot about body checks and their increasing prevalence, but I think the notion of a "soft" body check gets lost in the quibbling over what constitutes a "true" body check. Body checks, for the few people unfamiliar, are a functional-yet-obnoxious way to create difficulty. You design a mechanic in such a way that you kill the entire party if one person messes up or is dead. Towers in P10S is one; there are 8 towers. If ONE person is out of place or dead when the 8 slots open up, it explodes and basically kills everyone. There are no shields or mitigation that rescues it. You watch the empty spot, look at your healing and support kit and think, "well great. I can't do anything to stop this. We're all just going to die." Body check mechanics have been devaluing reactive play and caster raise utility all expansion.

What I'd call a "soft" body check is perhaps even more prevalent than "true" body checks. Sometime after Heavensward, I can't remember when, Square changed a piece of design philosophy, presumably to curb cheese strategies. E.g. if someone gets a stack marker and dies, the stack marker just moves to someone else. Light party stacks that target both healers: if one healer dies, well good luck. The other stack is going to hit a random person and you have zero way of telling or truly mitigating the effects from it. While the ubiquitous (and getting rather stale, come on Square) Healer Light Party Stack With Magic Vulnerability isn't exactly a body check, since you probably won't wipe to it, it's still yet another mechanic that the healer defensive kits can do sweet F-all about. Sure the party may or may not wipe...but some random Dragoon might get the party stack alone in the corner, with zero forewarning and a guaranteed instant death even if you unload what you can. Partner fire stacks in P9? If one person's dead, sucks to be you. Someone might take it alone and just die. It might move onto a random pair and just kill those two, no saving them other than the Raise afterward.

Difficult content should be difficult, sure, but Square's design philosophy hasn't done jack to alleviate the boring healer job design. As much as I harp on boring kit design (and BOY is it boring), the fight design is really hostile to player agency. Potential to rescue a flagging run is more often down to how fast you can raise people and heal them up, not how well you can keep the party actually consistently alive. That part is pre-planned. Mistakes are punished by death, followed by the unpreventable death of 1-7 more people because soft and hard body checks are waaaaaaay too rampant.

It's really bizarre, the way healers and content continue to be designed in opposition to one another.

They want healers to have the responsibility of repairing mistakes. We know this because of several reasons: regardless of the offensive tools available to healers, they output the lowest damage (including offensive support), so their value naturally has to come from what they do beyond damage, which is to say, healing and utility. Combat has been designed with the philosophy that unavoidable damage is rare and avoidable damage is frequent. The amount of healing required for unavoidable damage is low enough to where non-healers are capable of handling it in many forms of content, thus the extra healing and utility provided by healers seems intended to respond to avoidable damage. Yet difficult content largely makes avoidable mechanics result in wipes, so even when a party doesn't do something correctly, that excess healing can't resolve the problem.

It's not even like healers are actually designed to be that child-proof. In many ways, they have child-proofed various healer elements, but there are still several things that seem designed to hold back the novice healer while providing nothing of value to the experienced healer. Take MP for example. MP restoration is effectively automatic--it's sustained through the on-cooldown Lucid Dreaming and resource management systems of every healer with most actions that cost MP only costing incremental MP taxes that are otherwise resolved by the automatic MP you get from just playing your job correctly. An experienced healer isn't particularly concerned with running out of MP outside of raise-heavy circumstances, but the novice healer is the one who might sit on their resources or forget to use Lucid Dreaming. The vast majority of healing tools we get are OGCD healing tools which require weaving to maximize their value. Who's the one who's most likely going to idle or clip their GCD? The novice healer. If they really wanted to child-proof the healers, they'd do things like give Medica II a 15 second cooldown so you literally can't recast it until the regen has finished.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

It's really bizarre, the way healers and content continue to be designed in opposition to one another.

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The funny thing is that 1.x actually had something of an incidental mitigation for this issue:

All enemies had TP, and enemy TP was generated (variably) in the same ways that LB is now -- damage dealt, taken, mitigated, healed, or upon specific conditions, etc.

The downside (or upside, in this particular case) of this is that the faster your burned down an enemy, the faster their damage potential would be dealt back to you. While you could fudge this on mobs by TP-draining them or stunning them before a would-be big hit as you finish them off, on bosses, higher raid DPS could very easily equate to higher raid/tank damage taken.

Of course, we could say the same also for damage quickly coming out at the start of each %HP-based phase, with protections against later damage spikes being so easily skipped over by pushing into the next (each phase opener hitting harder than later spikes therein). But alas, we've since embraced our lord and savior, the statically timed script.

It’s also worth noting that 2.x content frequently had anti-DPS checks. Bosses had phases based on remaining HP, and if you pushed them too fast, they’d just wipe the party. I remember encountering this while farming Ifrit extreme especially. Farm parties were often still messy, and I recall even just the echo boosting damage a little too much that everyone needed to stop DPS and let the boss do the next Hellfire before continuing.

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

And this screws healers even more because despite the vision being "healers only healing" healers are now expected to DPS even more to get clears.

"Yoshi, we do nothing but mash 1; what is your solution?"
Yoshi: "Healers should only heal."
The actual content: "Mash 1, HARDER!!!!!!"

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Come now, sometimes we mash 2. Occasionally 3.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

This has essentially been CBU3's modus operandi for this entire expansion, make a change for no reason (or for the sole reason of appeasing the absolute lowest common denominator), find out said change had a bunch of negative knock-on effects, sell us a solution to the problem they created in the first place.


Let's make giant hitboxes for basically no reason.
Oh no, now melees have 100% uptime with no effort required, better increase the dps checks.
Oh no, now certain party compositions can't mathematically clear the dps check, better nerf that into the ground and then buff them.
Oh no, because of our giant hitboxes people may occasionally miss buffs when they have to move, better increase the buff range to cover the entire arena to make it extra braindead.
Oh no, since melees have 100% uptime in every fight they are completely trouncing the ranged dps' output, better buff all of tho-...oh wait, they didn't do that, instead they just buffed Blackmage and told every other ranged to go pound sand.

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Extremely correct. Like, legitimately, no sarcasm, this is exactly right.

The thing is, all the "initial" changes are for no good reason or don't actually do the thing they were supposed to do. At that point, the answer SHOULD be to revert the changes, instead, they go through several iterations of "fixes" for what could have been solved by a mere reversion.

They also are weird in that SOME changes they are willing to go back on - often the ones that are mostly fine and just need some little tweaks. But the changes they really SHOULD go back on, for whatever reason, they stick to their guns on THOSE. I honestly have no idea why they stick to their guns so hard on some of the most inane stuff, but then stuff that's more or less fine, they decide have to be changed. Or perhaps worst of all - where they change one thing but not another like thing, even though the change makes perfect sense. Like how Crafter scripts now stack to 4,000 as does Hunt currency, but Tomes, even Poetics, are still locked at 2,000. Like...WHY?!

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

If they really wanted to child-proof the healers, they'd do things like give Medica II a 15 second cooldown so you literally can't recast it until the regen has finished.

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In a hilarious twist, during 12S prog I found that, during Limit Cut (yes another one) the range on Medica is not enough at 15y to reach the other side of the arena to heal between LC dashes. My workaround? To use Medica 2 and purposely clip the HOT, because it has 5y extra range (and matches Rapture's range). The boss isn't targetable during the phase, so the 'loss of damage' isn't a factor, and people have to be healed between each damage instance such that the 3 (maybe 4 cos of chargetime) Lilies you get are not enough. So if Rapture/Med2 are 20y, why is Med1 still 15, is my question. And if it's for parity with AST (Helios/AspHelios/CO are 15y), then why was Rapture made to be 20? Confusing my poor brain. But yeh point being, my 'strategy' wouldn't work if I had a 15s CD on Med2 as suggested, and I'd have to do something else for it. I can't go more middle cos there's proximity baited lasers, so it's kinda weird to work around. I have taken to purposely holding Asylum and Temperance both for that part, just in case I'm still missing people with the casts because I'm too busy looking at numbers and dashes and lasers to see if I'm hitting everyone with my heal, which is probably not optimal but hey it (was) week 1 so optimal can bugger off for a few weeks

If you wanted to 'childproof the healers' and stop people from clipping their HOT by spamming Medica2, rather than 'forcing it' ie with a CD, massively incentivize the alternative. For example, we see people using Freecure because they see they got a trait that says 'oh you have a chance to get a Cure2 for free!'. So add a trait that says 'When you are affected by Medica 2 or Regen, your Cure3's MP cost is halved'. Ok, so now you're incentivized to, instead of spamming Med2, put up just one for the party regen, and then you can push more Cure3. And because Medica2 is 250p on cast (or maybe it's 150 when you first get it, idk anymore cos of that 85 trait), and Cure3 is like 550 (later 600), the BIG GREEN NUMBER from Cure3 will tickle the newbie healer's dopamine receptors and make them go 'yes I am god' moreso than the smaller green number being caused by Medica2 spam

MP economy discussion is a whole other can of worms

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Or perhaps worst of all - where they change one thing but not another like thing, even though the change makes perfect sense. Like how Crafter scripts now stack to 4,000 as does Hunt currency, but Tomes, even Poetics, are still locked at 2,000. Like...WHY?!

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We've had our melee die to using LB when the boss in 12 doorboss takes away platforms, because DRG/MNK LB moves your character's position. This, in the same patch that fixed HighJump and Jump to specifically NOT do that. I guess they thought 'oh DRG can't do it's burst on time if Jump is delayed by a bind' but they didn't consider they could accidentally fall through the damn floor if they LB at specific times in the fight, classic SE oversight.

As for tomes, I assume the reason they don't up the cap on uncapped (so, astronomy last tier, currently causality), is that, for example one week ago when the patch went live, I could trade my 2000 stocked Astronomy into 500 Causality, allowing me to effectively stockpile 2500 'uncapped tomes' for crafting stuff. If that limit was upped to 4000, even for uncapped only, that'd go to 3000. Maybe it doesn't affect much of anything but SE probably sees it differently. Poetics has zero excuse, since it's for old stuff only and you can get like 400 at a time by just doing MSQ roulette each day. It'd help people with older relic grinds too, being so stocked on poetics when they decide 'you know what, I kinda like the look of the bingo ball AST wep from HW'.

Now, you want a 'real' tome related change, here's what I'd do: change the name of Poetics to 'Allagan Tomestone of Histories', to link it to how it's for old stuff. I get that Poetics was the final tier of tomes from ARR but come on, have some theming about it

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

As for tomes, I assume the reason they don't up the cap on uncapped (so, astronomy last tier, currently causality), is that, for example one week ago when the patch went live, I could trade my 2000 stocked Astronomy into 500 Causality, allowing me to effectively stockpile 2500 'uncapped tomes' for crafting stuff. If that limit was upped to 4000, even for uncapped only, that'd go to 3000.

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To be fair, they could just cut the exchange rate of old tomes to the "new-old tome" by half. Instead of 2,000 Astronomy for 500 Causality (4:1 exchange rate), it could be 4,000 Astronomy for 500 Causality (8:1 exchange rate) and the result would be the same.

I never did figure out why they locked the "legacy tome" at Poetics instead of one of the others (say, the very first one), though. I feel like that would have made more sense, though I don't remember what the very first one was at this point...

The moving the character is kinda funny/sad. Is that also true of DNC? I always thought that was more visual effect, not actual, like how the DCN can shoot off the platform/out of the arena boundary when they do the three dashes before jumping back to their starting position.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Extremely correct. Like, legitimately, no sarcasm, this is exactly right.

The thing is, all the "initial" changes are for no good reason or don't actually do the thing they were supposed to do. At that point, the answer SHOULD be to revert the changes, instead, they go through several iterations of "fixes" for what could have been solved by a mere reversion.

They also are weird in that SOME changes they are willing to go back on - often the ones that are mostly fine and just need some little tweaks. But the changes they really SHOULD go back on, for whatever reason, they stick to their guns on THOSE. I honestly have no idea why they stick to their guns so hard on some of the most inane stuff, but then stuff that's more or less fine, they decide have to be changed. Or perhaps worst of all - where they change one thing but not another like thing, even though the change makes perfect sense. Like how Crafter scripts now stack to 4,000 as does Hunt currency, but Tomes, even Poetics, are still locked at 2,000. Like...WHY?!

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SE seems to be notorious for digging their heels in on bad decisions; for example, look at bow mage.

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

SE seems to be notorious for digging their heels in on bad decisions; for example, look at bow mage.

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...Of all the possible examples... ???

They didn't "dig their heels in" on Bow Mage. They refused to do more than a single buff's worth of reiteration and instead threw a tantrum, getting rid of it outright and fully re-saddling physical ranged with their then-unmitigatable "mobility tax".

Example of actually "heels dug in": doubling down on changes favoring the lowest denominator when the first few rounds of changes having affect the floor less than the ceiling, to further reduction of the skill ceiling; doubling down on homogeneity between jobs when prior homogenization and difficulty decreases left no differences of note between jobs of most roles except their overall damage; homogenizing encounter design further after initial homogenizations make players consider every job as interchangeable to the point of featuring "take the job, not the player" biases despite even minute differences; doubling down on decisions to make MP a non-mechanic via oGCD bloat because actually using the oGCDs they decided to make the center of healing gameplay... is apparently too hard for their imagined average healer; neutering tank agency further just because they couldn't previously be bothered to balance rDPS gains of even sparse defensive play; refusal to deal with the game adding roundtrip ping's uptime cost to every action (ignoring obvious highly lucrative QoL fixes) and instead GCD- or stack-ifying everything; etc.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

...Of all the possible examples... ???

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They refused to go back on it for an entire expansion, same thing with "main tank/off tank" in ShB. Yes, that is "heels dug on".

"favoring the lowest denominator" isn't what "heels dug in" is defined as.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

They refused to go back on it for an entire expansion, same thing with "main tank/off tank" in ShB. Yes, that is "heels dug on".

"favoring the lowest denominator" isn't what "heels dug in" is defined as.

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See the difference between "reduce the floor, no matter the cost to ceiling" and that, though? One lasted only one expansion; they took a step, and then stepped off. The other's "solution" has only ever been to dig further.

Seen them go back on designs favoring the lowest denominator at almost any expense any time lately?

This thread needs more attention. *BumP*

I am not very hopefull for any change because nobody of the SE Staffs, with decision power, plays healer (i know some claim to but the changes and plans for healer tells me otherwise). Period. It is desigend from the perspective of a DPS/TANK that needs healing because the "holy trinity" demands it. A slot to be filled. If people of the Dev-Team would play active healer they would know about the GLARING problems but it is ignored. Remeber SCH is sooo good now they don't even know what to change ??? Like what ?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Seen them go back on designs favoring the lowest denominator at almost any expense any time lately?

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That would mostly depend on how you define that. For example, unifying the buffs does not favor the lowest denominator, since it favors groups that coordinate their buffs since them being ABLE to be aligned means doing so generates a huge boost in performance over those who do not. That very much does not favor "the lowest denominator".

Melee have been able to do more damage than Ranged for at least 3 expansions now, and it was debatably intended in HW, they just mucked up the tuning on a lot of Jobs. The explicit reasoning for this is "Melee are harder" (even though that's highly debatable these days). The design intent there is to give advantage to the harder thing over the easier thing. That also is not favoring "the lowest denominator", as if the intent was to favor "the lowest denominator", it would be the Ranged allowed to do more damage. And they've stuck with that one for 3 expansions and counting, despite it being entirely ridiculous to do so in this expansion due to the massive hitboxes and reduced positionals in Meleewalker.

BLM is also consistently kept as higher damage output over RDM and SMN because it's harder. It was kept over SMN in ShB (despite SMN being on par with its difficulty) to keep that going. While this one is a two part thing (it's the difficulty argument + the Raise argument), part of that IS the difficulty part, and thus not favoring "the lowest denominator".

They consistently lock really cool rewards (gear, glam, mounts, and minions - all things that are highly desired) behind high end content. This is also not favoring "the lowest denominator" and has been their practice for 5 expansions now.

So clearly, they often stick with things that do not favor "the lowest denominator". What they do and don't stick with seems decided by a blindfolded person throwing at a dartboard, not a preference for "the lowest denominator".

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Originally Posted by Renathras

They refused to go back on it for an entire expansion, same thing with "main tank/off tank" in ShB.

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They never DID MT/OT though, they said they were planning to in Fanfest interviews and such, and then it was quietly dropped before launch after they couldn't work out how to get it to work well. Presumably, the fact that there's tankswaps in fights, and a OT focused tank with few selfdefensives and many 'cover the ally' defensives, would struggle to survive if they had to tank a boss for a while due to tankswap debuffs. So yeh, that one's not a great example.

Something like 'they left NIN DRG BRD MCH as the absolutely best comp for way too long' in end of HW/part of SB, now that's something more like 'heels dug in'. They could have changed MNK to piercing type, to give at least a choice between a DRG and MNK for one of the slots, but nope

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Originally Posted by Renathras

For example, unifying the buffs does not favor the lowest denominator, since it favors groups that coordinate their buffs since them being ABLE to be aligned means doing so generates a huge boost in performance over those who do not. That very much does not favor "the lowest denominator".

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This part isn't true at all. Groups that were capable of aligning buffs were already aligning it, with or without the change, they gain no net benefit from this change at all. Unifying timers just forces the regular players to align naturally by simply pressing on cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

This part isn't true at all. Groups that were capable of aligning buffs were already aligning it, with or without the change, they gain no net benefit from this change at all. Unifying timers just forces the regular players to align naturally by simply pressing on cooldown.

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Yep, and by making them all 2min, the potential choice of 'ok blow 90's and 2mins here, hold 3's we won't have another use of them so keep them till the pot window' is gone. In it's place, we have two options, everyone holds, or everyone blows em on CD. And the best part is, people still can't keep stuff aligned, because fight design gets in the way. Even with 30y range, the final fight has people spread so far apart for one of the 2min windows you can't hit everyone, which means a SCH or NIN can put their debuff on the boss just fine, but the DRG and BRD can't get their stuff out till a couple seconds later when the mechanic is out of the way.

So ofc, the SE solution is likely going to be 'Brotherhood range increased to 50y'

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Yep, and by making them all 2min, the potential choice of 'ok blow 90's and 2mins here, hold 3's we won't have another use of them so keep them till the pot window' is gone. In it's place, we have two options, everyone holds, or everyone blows em on CD. And the best part is, people still can't keep stuff aligned, because fight design gets in the way. Even with 30y range, the final fight has people spread so far apart for one of the 2min windows you can't hit everyone, which means a SCH or NIN can put their debuff on the boss just fine, but the DRG and BRD can't get their stuff out till a couple seconds later when the mechanic is out of the way.

So ofc, the SE solution is likely going to be 'Brotherhood range increased to 50y'

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This. Good groups were already aligning their raid buffs, so all these changes did, at least in theory, was take most of the planning out of it by simply making all buffs have the same cooldown.


The same goes for the melee changes. Yes melees still deal more damage than ranged dps but a big part of the difficulty when playing melee came from keeping uptime with the relatively limited melee range while dealing with mechanics.
The changes to boss hitboxes eliminated that aspect of playing a melee dps entirely, so who was this change made for? Clearly not the people at the skill ceiling that were already capable of keeping uptime as much as possible.

The fact that melee dps still perform significantly better than ranged dps however is a case of them digging their heels in for no justifiable reason.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

The fact that melee dps still perform significantly better than ranged dps however is a case of them digging their heels in for no justifiable reason.

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The justifiable reason is that range is still an advantage, even with huge EW hitboxes. Melee is the most populous dps role, with the most individual jobs. If physranged were equal to melee in damage there would be no reason not to run 2 of them in every fight. So melee dps being ahead of anything with range and mobility is healthier for pf and (theoretically) for job playrate distribution. Are there other solutions? Obviously, but the difference isn't completely nonsensical.

How Ranged tax should work in general is that the tax should compensate for the damage melee jobs otherwise lose due to needing to move around--or more specifically, the average amount of DPS that melee is expected to lose. Optimal melee gameplay would still make melee overall stronger than ranged, particularly the better your teams strategy gets at maximizing uptime.

A solution would be, even with these massive hitboxes, that melee have more damage swing. Between +5% over a ranged, and -5% over a ranged, based on how competent the melee player is at doing melee-specific things like, idk, positionals? So if you just stood on the boss's arse as a melee, you'd do the same damage as a same-skilled, same-geared ranged. If you do the positional dance, you eke out a little extra damage from your class. Except SE is deathly allergic to things that give players a way to express skill like positionals, hence they keep adding more ways to avoid having to deal with them, up to and including having bosses that just don't have any at all

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Originally Posted by tearagion

The justifiable reason is that range is still an advantage, even with huge EW hitboxes. Melee is the most populous dps role, with the most individual jobs. If physranged were equal to melee in damage there would be no reason not to run 2 of them in every fight. So melee dps being ahead of anything with range and mobility is healthier for pf and (theoretically) for job playrate distribution. Are there other solutions? Obviously, but the difference isn't completely nonsensical.

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If that were the case, why are casters behind melee? Endwalker Standard Fight Design is rapid, constant movement back and forth across the arena, left foot in, left foot out, left foot in, turn around, hokey pokey move move move move move gameplay that throws caster gameplay into the dirt, yet casters are balanced as if they're significantly easier to play than melee.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

If that were the case, why are casters behind melee? Endwalker Standard Fight Design is rapid, constant movement back and forth across the arena, left foot in, left foot out, left foot in, turn around, hokey pokey move move move move move gameplay that throws caster gameplay into the dirt, yet casters are balanced as if they're significantly easier to play than melee.

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because we have one physranged pretending to be a caster, and a half-caster that is permanently shackled to them for all balance decisions. BLM dps is about where it should be imo.

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Originally Posted by tearagion

because we have one physranged pretending to be a caster, and a half-caster that is permanently shackled to them for all balance decisions. BLM dps is about where it should be imo.

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See also the "But Verraise" thread in the DPS section. RDM is being thrown to the wolves for utility Square has done its level best to make as irrelevant as possible, while also creating movement profiles that hate hardcasts with a passion. Monk has similar utility to RDM, and yet it gets to do way more damage. Because lolMeleewalker, all fight design absurdly caters to melee and Square gifts them huge damage bonuses they keep buffing more and more with each patch, for difficulty they keep stripping out more and more each patch.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

That would mostly depend on how you define that. For example, unifying the buffs does not favor the lowest denominator, since it favors groups that coordinate their buffs since them being ABLE to be aligned means doing so generates a huge boost in performance over those who do not. That very much does not favor "the lowest denominator".

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Previously, you'd hold CDs variably and coordinate compositions. Now, if you open even just not-too-stupidly, your CDs are synced to raid buffs automatically, because everything shares the same timers.

That's... objectively simplified.

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The design intent there is to give advantage to the harder thing over the easier thing. That also is not favoring "the lowest denominator", as if the intent was to favor "the lowest denominator", it would be the Ranged allowed to do more damage.

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Not at all. If people were enjoyed added difficulty, itself (at least as importantly, including whatever extra they may saddle their party with in their shortfalls while learning) there would be no need to incentivize the jobs that are harder to learn with greater on-paper damage so that they have parity for the average player while content is still relevant.

Rewarding what's harder allows you to have even significantly easier jobs --for better or worse-- without reducing the breadth of job choice available to even less-skilled players (who would otherwise feel pushed only towards whatever's easiest -- say, MCH/BRD/EW SMN).

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

See also the "But Verraise" thread in the DPS section. RDM is being thrown to the wolves for utility Square has done its level best to make as irrelevant as possible, while also creating movement profiles that hate hardcasts with a passion. Monk has similar utility to RDM, and yet it gets to do way more damage. Because lolMeleewalker, all fight design absurdly caters to melee and Square gifts them huge damage bonuses they keep buffing more and more with each patch, for difficulty they keep stripping out more and more each patch.

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I'm not debating balance, I'm inferring what I could reasonably believe SE's balance policy to be based on role distribution and developer comments, which is admittedly still spotty especially in RDM's case. Either way I don't think it contradicts my original assumption.

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Originally Posted by tearagion

I'm not debating balance, I'm inferring what I could reasonably believe SE's balance policy to be based on role distribution and developer comments, which is admittedly still spotty especially in RDM's case. Either way I don't think it contradicts my original assumption.

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I thought your original point was that melee's favoritism wasn't nonsensical, which it -absolutely- is given Square's systematic stripping of role-specific difficulty from them. "Range" isn't an advantage when there are five square yalms in the entire arena unreachable from max melee, which mechanic design never forces the whole party into (or makes the boss untargetable and forces downtime on everyone if ranged classes could possibly get a single GCD of uptime that the melees couldn't).

Advantages are only advantages if the game lets them be advantages. Square has spent all of Endwalker insisting that Range is an advantage large enough to justify a huge DPS cliff between melee and non-melee, while designing an expansion's worth of fights that let you punch bosses from the next city over and pretend that's not "range".