Can someone explain how healing in WoW is? Is it like literally just spamming some sort of cure button?
I really like the challenge of trying to dps and heal, it makes things feel faster.
Healer & Tank DPS (WoW vs FFXIV)
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07-30-2017, 07:37 PMNewmanxeno
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07-30-2017, 08:35 PMloreleidiangeloI'll give you an example using one of WoW's best-designed healing classes, IMO - the Restoration Druid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Newmanxeno
Restoration Druids are basically a pure healing-over-time healer with only one "burst" AOE heal on a whopping 3-minute CD. They are 100% the epitome of "World of Warcraft" healing in a lot of ways - unadulterated sustain heals with very little room for screw-ups and tons of ways to run your mana into the dirt if you're not careful.
Their basic kit consists of:
-Rejuvenation: Their bread and butter, a basic HoT of decent strength. Think WHM's Regen, but that's about as derp as the similarities between jobs go. This HoT should be rolling on everyone in your assigned heal group any time they take damage.
Regrowth: Another HoT that stacks with Rejuv, but has a small front-loaded heal attached to it. Aspected Benefic is similar in design. You will want this maintained on the main tank as much as you can, but its a bit expensive to use on DPS/in an AOE scenario.
Lifebloom: A fun and unique spell. Lifebloom is another small HoT, but when the duration on it expires it "blooms" for a moderate burst of HP. This is another "main tank" HoT, as you can only have one Lifebloom up at a time. It's a powerful heal, but pretty costly and it's very easy to overheal with if you don't have a good sense of the timing. XIV could use more "skill cap" heals like that, IMO.
Wild Growth: Very mana-intensive HoT that hits in a small area. The HoT starts out initially very strong but tapers down over time. Druid's best "answer" to AOE burst healing, but isn't nearly as good as what some other healers can do.
Efflorescence: A ground HoT a la Asylum, but on a short CD so intended to be used frequently. Only affects 8 people of your 20-man raid so the Druid will need to prioritize dropping it in a spot where it will be most effective.
Healing Touch: Resto Druid's only direct heal outside of Tranq. No CD, so can be spammed, but relatively weak and nowhere near as efficient as good HoT upkeep.
Tranquility: About as good as Indom, but on a 3-minute cooldown instead of 30 seconds (it's also a channel and also costs mana). In WoW terms though, it's actually one of the most powerful healer CDs in the game, so let that sink in lol.
So yes, a typical raid in WoW would play out with your healers mostly being assigned "groups" (since AOE heals don't just hit everyone in range, they have caps from anywhere to 5-8 players) and utilizing their basic heals to sustain said groups, while sometimes pitching in with healing the MT (or OT if he has adds). Cooldowns like Tranquility DO hit the entire raid, so they're coordinated and alternated between healers as responses to heavy damage phases, kinda like how healers do in XIV now. You have to be SUPER careful not to spam, because you only get 1 mana pot to use per raid attempt and it restores something like a tenth of your mana at most levels.
So say the raid takes some pretty moderate damage. You have to decide "how" to heal those players up from it. Is there a threat of more damage following, or is your group at critical levels of HP? You can't just blitz with Tranq because you're assigned to use it in 60 seconds and the whole raid is counting on you. So do you have time to put Rejuvenations on your team and have them stack for Efflorescence? Or do they need HP fast (or can't stack because of mechs), so you're forced to sack Wild Growth, Efflorescence on as many people as CAN stack AND targeted Regrowths on the rest, costing a good chunk of mana? Will you still need to spot-heal with Healing Touch after that? Don't forget to keep Rejuv and Lifebloom up on the MT while this is all happening, too! It's not like he magically stops taking damage while the boss lets you take a tea break.
This same scenario in XIV? Just Indom it, Med II it or Helios it, it's fine. Your HP can be dangerously low cuz you know the boss won't raid buster for another 30 seconds, and the tank just used Hallowed to give you some breathing room. It's entirely different in this game compared to WoW: mana is near infinite, your cooldowns are super powerful and short, and instead of regens being an entire class's gimmick like it is in Warcraft pretty much every healer has access to them here, as WELL AS big burst heals and "oh crap" buttons.
You might find it boring - there are some on these forums who have played WoW and say that they do. But I think the skill floor for healing is way higher there, it's way more engaging even at the casual level, and you're penalized for overhealing/being a spammy hog unlike here where the best you get for overhealing is a gentle chide from your team to please do DPS in downtime. They also somehow manage to maintain this level of balance while still having their healing jobs feel unique, which honestly isn't something I can say about FFXIV sadly. :( -
07-31-2017, 01:25 AMRichardButteQuoted for emphasis.Quote:
Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo
XIV's healers all feel like the same basic healer but with a gimmick added on (fairy pet, cards). -
07-31-2017, 02:39 AMFreyyyHonestly tanks feel quite like that too in XIV. All the same basic tank with a gimmick added, every tank has % damage reduction CDs, a tank stance that is virtually the same (25% max HP roughly equals 20% mitigation), an agro combo, damage combos, a ranged agro move, some AoE damage/agro moves, some damaging oGCDs, damage steroids (Zerk, IR, FoF, Requiescat, Blood Weapon, Delirium), an invuln, a big "nuke" skill (Fell Cleave, Holy Spirit, Bloodspiller), some kind of self-healing, and some kind of on-demand short mitigation (TBN, IB, Sheltron). They only differ by their gimmicky mechanics which are mostly about the way they are DPSing (WAR having very bursty phases once every 2mins, PLD alterning between magical nuke phase and regular physical damage combos, DRK using MP and Blood to basically manually increase their potency-per-GCD instead of having steroids). They don't really feel unique when compared to each other. They could honestly all branch off from the same starting class. SE doesn't really like to take risks in order to create something truly unique, whether it be new content, or new jobs.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardButte
But I still really like tanking in this game, and I really like the tank/healer DPS meta. I've tanked in every trinity-based MMO I've played, and I really enjoy being able to dish out respectable damage while tanking efficiently. I don't want it to change. -
07-31-2017, 03:02 AMShurrikhanBut why "stay" in tank stance when you can survive just fine, at greater gains typically to your own DPS than available to your healer, after having already gotten plenty of aggro? To butter your "role" with a smattering of misplaced pride while actually contributing less?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sylvina
How is it more fun to need a near perfect allotment of healers or a bulwark of non-DPS just to get the simplest of things done? By all means, make that case for stronger mobs. (As it is already, in many a FATE or A-rank...) But why should I need a healer and a tank to kill dire-mite?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuwagami
Forcing players to cooperate because of painfully restrictive parameters does not make the overworld fun. Overworld designs that allow for creative cooperation does. And the funny thing about that... those things tend to work better without ripping out or neglecting prior mechanics (e.g. the near-complete removal of CC in dungeon content at 50+, leaving systems such as melee range detection on moving targets or pet responsiveness at dark age levels, etc.) and inflating mob damage and passive role distinction to force trinities on people. -
07-31-2017, 03:19 AMShurrikhanTangential:Quote:
Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo
My favorite fight I'd ever healed was actually T1 when first released, and not just because of how much damage was going out, but the varying rates to self, party, and tanks. I was on WHM, and of course mana was a fair bit tighter back then. Not to mention my Bard was rarely standing in range, and my SCH was panicking and contributing little more than the occasional Physic and Adloquiem before one of the tank's TBs... This left me with barely enough time to DoT, certainly no real time to fill with Stone II. I'm trying my best to proc Freecures in preparation for the TBs, with Regen ticking to top off while I Stoneskin, timing those to within the Overcure window so I can blow the raid back to full HP in one go, rolling Medica IIs out to catch the full raid minus the far side tank (all melee on my side), trying to keep the tanks alive while squeezing in enough healing to keep the poison-squatters up, etc., etc. There was a plethora of windows and rates to the damage taken, and the general intensity was enough to make each feel urgent.
I've rarely had that feeling since, apart from a min ilvl solo heal on Titan Ex. Even Savage modes just haven't quite had that kind of spread of damage rates and overall intensity. I really miss that.
Specific:
I actually feel like many WoW healers have homogenized further, however. With the exception of Discipline, the trimming of less raid effective tools has left many healers there feeling same-ish. Consider when Holy Light was actually the more expensive option, for its ridiculously massive healing, for a simplest example. Now it just works in the same basic heal Option A triple-cost-for-double-speed Option B has any other. Others used to be intended not only for more sustained damage, but for more sustained (longer) fights in general, with some gearing towards Spirit and others towards Intellect. That was problematic in its own right, but disappearance of that kind of variance is too.
As a collective, they're still head and shoulders above our own diversity, but even the best extant examples may not be any pinnacles of the concept at this point. I do wish SE would look at both sides of that progression, then, noting what more pragmatic changes occurred and why, along with the classes' original promise. -
07-31-2017, 03:25 AMNicodemus_MercyQuote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
While what I am about to say may not always be the case, consider that turning off tank stance might mean you're making your healer have to work harder to keep you alive and thus may well be reducing their own dps contribution for an overall net gain of zero, just to improve your own personal dps. -
07-31-2017, 04:16 AMHyoMinParkWhile a DPS performing suboptimally is most definitely at fault with regards to their low numbers, and definitely needs to work on self-optimization and self-improvement, a healer that sits at 0.00 DPS and minimum HPS for a particular fight does not have much room to talk, boast, or point fingers. While DPS certainly should not be playing poorly/sub-optimally, neither should healers. This is not to say that you are doing this, but I've noticed a trend with anti-DPS healers who seem to be perfectly fine with placing all the blame on others while they themselves are only playing at 50% potential, at best.Quote:
Originally Posted by Madepossible
No one in this thread is advocating at all for healers to neglect their primary duty (healing) in favor of a secondary duty (DPSing). People that are pro-healer DPS merely ask the healers remain active at all times during a fight (no emote spam or jumping around or alt-tabbing to Netflix) and to contribute fully and as much as they can to a group, especially when in a Savage raid setting, where every little bit counts. Especially early on in tiers when groups do not vastly outgear the content. Very few abilities in this game would be considered useless. Stone/Aero/Malefic/Combust/Bio/Miasma/Broil do not fall in this category. Healers were given tools and there is absolutely nothing in this game that dictates they be use purely during solo instances. Even the Hall of the Novice states that healers can weave in offensive spells between heals or if there is not much healing currently needed. I think that people just want others to play optimally and to use their entire kit. Just like these healers that are so quick to point out errors on parts of tanks (not using CDs) or DPS (shoddy rotations) about how they are not using their entire kit, healers are not immune from such scrutiny either. If you want to dish it out, be willing to take it.
On that note, I have never encountered a party that openly harassed and ridiculed a healer that did not DPS. While they may be mumbling under their breath on the other side of the screen, I've never seen people outright curse or act hostile towards non-DPSing healers, and I do sometimes wonder how grossly exaggerated claims of "insults and harassment and ridicule" are. Not to say there aren't cases; I'm sure there are. But how prevalent are they? Are they commonplace? Or outliers?
Generally speaking, when I party with people, I expect each and every one of them to contribute to their absolute fullest when it comes to content. Exceptions and allowances can, of course, be made to those who are new to content. But in static settings, raid progression settings, or farm party settings, I expect 110% from everyone, and I myself give 110%. If the group fails to clear or fails to meet enrage, I feel like the burden is something that is shared, not something that is the fault of a particular individual or group. Unless there is an extreme outlier (e.g., a DPS doing 1200 DPS when they should be doing double or triple of that for there level, ilvl, and the content; tank that is using NO defensive cooldowns; healer that is either DPSing too much, or overhealing to the point of resource exhaustion), the burden and responsibility of clearing falls on the group as a whole. Progression and success hinders on the entire group, not just a specific set of individuals.
While I've never been a fan of WoW, and FFXIV is the second MMO I have played seriously/for an extended amount of time, my mindset extends to both games. If I did play WoW, I would still expect 110% from everyone in a serious progression group. -
07-31-2017, 04:46 AMKacho_NachoInteresting analysis!Quote:
Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo
My take is that the designers don't think we are all noobs. They think the new players are new players. So, they made all the roles easy to learn at the beginning.
Understandably, this has made things too easy for the more experienced players. But, I have to side with SE on this point. Do we really want to see new players get overly frustrated with healing and tanking in the early part of the game?
Now, as far as damage dealt to the party/raid, a big factor is the long global cool down. Everything happens in 2.5 second increments which leads to these feast or famine moments. Not much can be done without changing standard global cool down.
As far as fully scripted encounters, isn't that true for every MMO? Every fight is scripted and a big part of the learning curve is in figuring out the script and how to respond to it.
Can this be fixed? Sure! Just have to add some RNG to what attacks the boss or mob uses. Let the bad guys mix it up a little. :D -
07-31-2017, 05:13 AMRemediWow bosses are not as much scripted bosses there usually use skills when their Cds is up (some have a 10 sec timer of when they decide to use skills)Quote:
Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho
also they have much less mechanics x phases then FF14
Bosses here are puzzles or dance if you will, you need to figure out how it work and then you are good to go
on wow most of the time it's a question of numbers and how few healers you can manage a boss fight.
that is one of the reason why the end game raiding of the 2 games is very different and shouldn't be compared as much as ppl do -
07-31-2017, 05:29 AMShurrikhanYes, as I said in the post before last, that happens. It's no so black and white. It'll also depend on your tank. It's more efficient to have the PLD heal and you Gravity spam as long as the PLD won't overcap on TP (assuming he will otherwise eventually TP starve at optimal crowd DPS). There are some very, very fine plateaus with RNG (Crit heals) atop them. When bristling with mana in a massive pull of weak mobs, the same is true of DRK and it's Abyssal Drain. But it's also rare that simply modifying the order in which cooldowns were used by healer and tank wouldn't already allow for the same window of healer opportunity for a Warrior or DRK, especially paired with a non-SCH, making the extension provided by tank stance redundant. And if you have a 7-Decimate spam ready to go, there's nothing your healer can do to compete with that contribution.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicodemus_Mercy
The point was "when" the gains are likely to be more for you than for the healer, one should adjust accordingly. It goes both ways, which is what's fun about it, imo. It's one of the (few-ish) things I really, really like about tanks and healers in this game, especially in speedy dungeon runs. -
07-31-2017, 06:57 AMzipzoWhile I won't speak for healing, I think the trade-off of unique-ness in order to slightly homogenize the tanks ultimately is still a more enjoyable circumstance in FFXIV due to other factors, namely, enmity management, and the introduced element of being required to put out respectable "tank dps". It is this expectation for tanks to do relatively good damage that has led to that homogenization because they want the tanks to be relatively close to one another in damage output. In this sense, you could say that FFXIV's current design is a bit lazy...it's not as if it's impossible to have balanced DPS numbers among 3 tanks while also at the same time keeping a unique identity to all 3 in terms of their play style, it's also a very difficult undertaking that it seems square seems unwilling to approach. Additionally, it's worth noting that tank DPS balance is completely ignored in WoW. The difference in damage numbers between the tanks in WoW, if existent here, would make the community cry.Quote:
Originally Posted by Freyyy
The conversation starts to tip over in to WoW though, and my opinion changes. Even when the tanks differ wildly in terms of their playstyle, the act of tanking in itself sans the ever-present pressure to provide competitive tank dps, nor the need to care about enmity (threat, in WoW), is vapid and boring. Tanking is downright brain dead in it's current form in WoW. Keeping aggro is a non-factor, and the only responsibilities that press you is the need to position the boss properly and avoid the same things the rest of the raid DPS (any kind of AOE or mechanics-based damage) does.
There's a very clear balancing act here that I think both games are failing to walk, in that sense, for tanking.
Now, for healing, I think a design where the healers feel compelled to moderate healing spells from start to finish seems more fitting in terms of what you imagine a healer does...which IMO makes the WoW model seem slightly superior.
So it's give and take for me. I think tanking is massive orders of amounts more fun in FFXIV, but at the same time I find the healing dynamics of WoW to be slightly more engaging in the sense that you are actively doing your chosen role of choice for the entirety of a given encounter, making healing feel much more interactive as a role. This as opposed to FFXIV where it feels like you are only a healer intermittently, and then the rest of the time you're trying to play catch up to the bottom of the meter (or maybe even higher, who knows).
In the end, I main a tank, so the rest is history... -
07-31-2017, 07:15 AMloreleidiangeloI'm not a tank main, but out of curiosity - what responsibilities do you think tanks have in this game that isn't just "hold aggro and position the boss correctly, use cooldowns when appropriate"? I think the things you listed in WoW as being vapid and without depth are pretty much a non-entity here in XIV too, but I suppose if your caveat is that you can at least maintain decent numbers here DPS-wise then that's fair enough. Just curious to get a tank's perspective on how the two games differ, especially since tanking design in WoW is sometimes praised on the tank subforums here.Quote:
Originally Posted by zipzo
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07-31-2017, 07:25 AMzipzoIt's the added responsibility of maintaining respectable DPS and (probably the bigger one) threat/enmity management.Quote:
Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo
Tanking lost it's soul in WoW the moment threat management stopped being a factor in tanking (in my opinion, which many will disagree with I'm sure). To me, threat management was the entire bread and butter of tanking gameplay. You could easily separate the wheat from the chaff based on which tanks could hold threat on a boss through whatever type of open burst your raid could put out, or the tank that could manage to keep aggro on a group pull, while picking up stragglers or patrols without losing party members in the process.
The way it is now, CC is unnecessary so it's simply a matter of AOE tanking everything, and since all tanks possess some form of mass AOE and threat is a literal non-factor anymore, it takes the entire element of managing threat out of the equation. In WoW, the only way to gauge a good tank from a bad one is basically how quickly they can move through a dungeon I.E. do they know the pulls and pack skips. That, to me, is vapid.
BTW FFXIV in this comparison is for tanking in DPS stance. Tanking in tank stance makes enmity pretty simple, while still not nearly as brain dead as it is for WoW, it's rather ignorable to a degree.
Tank damage is probably the secondary factor. Just the sheer presence of that responsibility, makes the role more demanding in terms of what your peers expect of you, thus, properly executing your role's responsibilities comes with a higher accomplishment factor (in FFXIV).
This is how I, personally, would evaluate the tanking situation between the two games. -
07-31-2017, 12:37 PMximxim
Probably, those who trash talking about how lame the DPS of tank and healer contribute is because they (DPS) are trying to throw the fault of their own DPS rotation to tanks and healers.
This community is getting toxic and toxic everyday... what lame excuse saying that healers and tanks do not need high skill play while DPS only have one job which is DPS and they can't even do it right HAHAHAAHA!! -
07-31-2017, 12:53 PMWindwalker
Tanking in fun fun fun, easy to farm gear with. Rush in there, grab a pack of mobs and just mow them down. Im never in Tanking stance while dealing with bosses, only using it while gathering packs of mobs. Makes the run a bit faster. As a tank you notice what your team is doing, what abilities they don't use and if they mess up on mechanics. A dps job is to keep your tank goaded while actually using the abilities you have, seen so many dps who have no idea what they are doing, no matter how many times you tell them to do certain things. Theres also the issue of people never using sprint, spam that shit to make the run faster and keep up. I seen one badass healer once in my hundreds of runs while leveling tanks, a whm who spammed holy and did some amazing dps, halved the time of the run.
The reason people want to go faster is because they want to improve and not fall asleep in the dungeons. WoW is a borefest in comparison to FFXIV. Where everyone mindlessly spams 3 buttons. -
07-31-2017, 01:04 PMRichardButteThis is fairly spot-on.Quote:
Originally Posted by zipzo
I honestly wouldn't even mind the huge chunks of healing downtime if healers had some interesting methods of doing damage instead of just usually one DoT and one damaging spell.
I wanted to main AST because I wanted the cards as an added complexity to healing (just to have SOMETHING else to do), but I've actually grown bored with that as well. -
07-31-2017, 09:44 PMloreleidiangeloAt a cursory level (and I freely admit that I might not be getting enough context here), it seems like WoW tanking is actually pretty similar to XIV tanking, except that in XIV you arbitrarily have the ability to "turn off" your tanking for a moderate increase in DPS. Does that mean that if WoW introduced something similar (aka old gladiator stance for Warrior?) that you'd find tanking in that game enjoyable again?Quote:
Originally Posted by zipzo
For what it's worth, when tank enmity underwent a rough patch a few weeks ago in regards to how Stormblood changed damage modifiers, there was a pretty big stink on the forums about threat issues, which seems to tell me that the players in this game don't really want these hugely epic battles to maintain top enmity on mobs. I get that the tank community isn't one collective Borg voice, but what are your thoughts on that specifically?
From my noobish perspective, to me good tanking has always been about excellent positioning and cooldown usage more than threat bars, so to see enmity wars held up as a kind of challenge mode for tank mains is a little strange to me. I guess an apt comparison would be healer mana, and its management - it's part and parcel of being "good" at the role, but hardly what defines it (IMO, of course).
Sorry for all the lengthy back-and-forth. I just like both games, and it's rare to see anyone willing to discuss them objectively on any subject. -
07-31-2017, 10:33 PMRemedi
wow tanking is akin to what PLD in 2.0 was as in your dps rotation is your threat rotation, now you can manage it with various tools, there is a thing called making use of threat leads on FF that it doesn't exist on wow, also of note the active mitigation of wow is not exactly what we do against TBs here.
Also of note bosses on wow don't really have TBs in the same way we have them, neither bosses in general make right use of split dmg technisques correctly, they are immunized or split with the least amount of ppl that have either powerful self Cds (hello rogues).
I wouldn't really consider wow healing to be that better compared to FF14, if you think that FF14 jobs are homogenized because they have an efficent heal, a strong heal and an aoe heals, well that's the same in wow, take notice that they weren't able to make work of a shield healer something that we have, that alone makes the healing scene different enough from them to not beign really comparable, not to mention that on mythic healers are the class you cut the most to get trough dps checks, because once you have enough healers to bypass the healing check they are effectively useless -
07-31-2017, 10:34 PMClaire_PendragonRight and Wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by kattzkitti
They have done both, and said both.
Its why 3.0 was so hard. They expected more DPS push in savage from healers (less so from tanks, since tanks were alrdy doing dps in tank stance, but it was still considered.)
Also, most ppl werent used to the changes to DPS yet, so by the time the community got the swing of things, SE already tried to make things easier. -
07-31-2017, 11:28 PMloreleidiangeloSo Discipline Priest has either a.) magically been deleted from the game from the last time I checked or b.) somehow isn't a shield healer anymore, according to you. Care to elaborate on this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Remedi
As for "homogenization", there's what? 3 healers out of 6 who have some variant of the "slow cheap heal" and "fast expensive heal"? XIV basically has those too; your "heal" and your "heal II", and your "sustain/small damage on tank heal". Except I'd hazard I could find a lot more different about Chain Heal and Prayer of Mending than Helios and Medica, and Holy Shock vs Holy Word: Serenity compared to Essential Dignity and Tetragrammaton. Or Blessing of Protection vs Guardian Spirit, compared to...uh, we don't even have equivalents to those spells in this game, lol.
In truth, had SCH remained as it was in 2.0 with its clearly-defined niche, WHM got their regens nuked or taken away and maybe some more power put into their burst healing, and AST was introduced as a pure HoT healer with buffs we wouldn't be having this discussion. But SCH got a CD-reliant Medica and an almost-Cure III with better range and WHM got Lustrate with a CD and a more conditional Adloquium and AST is just an awful rip-off of both of them so here we are.
To me it's less about which abilities are DIRECTLY the same between healers and more about how healer kits in XIV don't have any niches because boss design is rather bland (tank/raid busters or totally avoidable mechs gg). -
08-01-2017, 12:29 AMZarabethI make sure to always compliment tanks who do their job. As a healer there's nothing worse than a tank who can't (or doesn't even try to) hold hate. I always give my commendations to tanks who do their jobs well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sylvina
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08-01-2017, 12:48 AMKaonis
It's a mix of things. Firstly, the lack of AI. Mobs in this games have no AI, everything from the toughest raid boss to the weakest rabbit run off of a script of timers. In boss designs this means the big hits are predictable, so every healer/tank knows when to use their abilities to mitigate the big hits. Healers are also pretty powerful and able to full heal someone from the brink of death without much issue, more so when you know when it's coming to save the big CD's for. Outside the big predictable hits there isn't a whole lot else of meaningful damage. For a lot of fights the regens/fairy/oGCD heals are enough to keep the tanks healthy until the next predictable tank buster. And this leads to healers with a lot of down time.
For tanks, it's much of the same issues compounded with gear. Until recently the only tank secondary stat was parry, and it was nearly worthless with little return and parry not being an effective mitigation tool. So the only good options tanks had gearing up was to take DPS stats. Even with tenacity now, most of the sub stats a tank can grab are pure DPS related. Compared to SWTOR (which I tanked a bit in) you had 3 separate stats for mitigation; evasion, shield proc rate, and shield % damage reduction. When I tanked there, damage was less predictable and so tanks would do what they could t mitigate as much damage as possible, coupled with the fact that healers weren't as powerful.
And this is in raid content, for dungeons it gets to be much more of a contrast as things hit pretty weak in there. Before SB, especially, healers could let regens/SCH fairy heal for most of a dungeon while they DPS, more so if the tank did the 'intended' pulls in a dungeon. The only time I had to focus solely on healing in a dungeon back in HW/ARR was when the tank pulled every mob they could, and sometimes I could still manage an odd AoE inbetween heals. -
08-01-2017, 02:17 AMRemediDiscipline has been changed to the battle priest archetype, now their toolkit is more centered towards the dmg=healing type (I don't remember that passive skill) ppl whined enough that discipline was "stealing" their healing that they changed the playstyle lol, so yeah they failed to actaully implement and balance an absorb type healer, wanna also know why? because it was only 1, there's a reason why AST can shield and regen, it can be either of the existing healer so that content can actually be designed towards the need for mitigation.Quote:
Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo
That said FFXIV healers do play differently in their planning and their utility, yes they might have the same base toolkit but so what? -
08-01-2017, 02:26 AMRichardButteThey do feel much more "samey" than WoW's healers, by a long shot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Remedi
Some of WoW's healers have no real AoE heals at all, but make up for it in faster, mana-efficient heals that they can use to restore the whole party very quickly. A Resto-druid plays completely differently from a Disc priest, which plays completely different from a Holy priest, which plays completely different from a Mistweaver monk, etc.
Also, thanks to the 1sec GCD in WoW, healers can press their buttons a lot more often so damage can be more consistent and less spiky.
In XIV, damage is either "a tickle" or "75% of your HP" with almost no in between. This is designed around the 2.5sec GCD which dictates that healers can only do so many actions per second.
XIV healers all have the same basic healing spells (small heal, large heal, AoE heal), and while some of WoW's healers have at least the small and large heals, the differences in playstyles from there on in are much larger and more varied than XIV's healers. -
08-01-2017, 02:38 AMRemedi
I repeat samey because you have a basic toolkit to not be a burden in the most cases, which is the same for wow too, but they have different quirks to them when played to their fullest and lest not to forget, wow has no pet healer class either.
edit: btw remember when druids could only casts hots? that was not that great -
08-01-2017, 02:50 AMAwfulYep this is very true, bosses are very scripted in FFXIV if you've got to X phase you can reach it or as was in Creator Savage you can skip it whereas WoW you just gotta make sure your healers/tanks/DPS are all doing well and doing adequate damage and healing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Remedi
Not to mention tanking in WoW is all active mitigation and FFXIV is all pro-active CDs that you can pop ahead of time with abilities like Addle/Reprisal/Feint, all the tanks are pretty similar as well, they all have gauges, a tank stance, with something extra to distinguish themselves. Tanks in WoW is mainly play style and they're all different with talents/artifact weapons/traits and tier set bonuses.
They're both vastly different they share the same ideas as a core MMO but how tanks and healers are handled are so very different as well as raid comps when it comes down to it. -
08-01-2017, 02:56 AMloreleidiangeloSCH's fairy is basically the heals that a Disc Priest does via Atonement, tbh. It's more usable insofar that it has a great extra kit, but Embrace heals for about what Shadow Word: Pain heals on an Atoned tank in WoW.Quote:
Originally Posted by Remedi
Either way, my complaint isn't that XIV healers have "a basic toolkit", it's that they have a TON of overlap in their cooldowns and abilities that makes them great picks for any situation. There's nothing inherently wrong about that, so no need to be defensive, but it IS homogenization in the name of "balance". Every healer has answers to single target burst healing, oGCD healing, AOE sustain healing, mana management, etc... They don't have any particular strengths or weaknesses except what players in this game classify as "utility" (which is mostly just "any ability that isn't a healing one or a DPS one"). That's why AST was targeted out for almost all of 3.x - the devs tried to make a scenario where AST DIDN'T have the answers for heavy damage scenarios in order to make their party buffs have some kind of tradeoff, but healers in XIV were so spoiled already with WHM being a powerhouse and SCH being given a bunch of WHM tools in Heavensward so no one bothered to try to make it work, they just hollered for AST to get the same level of healing as the other two. Then when that happened, AST dominated the raid scene because there was no counterbalance to its insanely good utility.
I just think that WoW doesn't have that much of the same problem, likely because of how their damage in raids comes out and how the healers are designed. Holy Pally doesn't have an answer to redonk back-to-back AOEs, but they make great tank healers because of stuff like Blessing and Lay on Hands. Disc Priest doesn't have an answer for constant AOE damage either, but has pretty good tank shielding/healing too and has the bonus of doing moderately decent damage too. Resto Shaman doesn't have an answer to mana problems, and Druid doesn't have an answer to any sort of burst healing requirements whatsoever, but those two classes are pretty good at raid healing, just in their own unique way (Shamans through powerhousing, Druids through consistency). To be honest, healers like Disc Priest and Holy Paladin would never have a space in FFXIV content above casual dungeons (maybe 24-man raids), because this game is pretty much all about the health-spiking unavoidable AOEs, and damage on the tanks tend to come in the form of infrequent low-damage autos and easily mitigated tank busters, which makes single-target sustain a lot more valuable than single-target burst healing, which is those two class' niche. -
08-01-2017, 08:49 PMzipzoNo, because it would still be lacking any sort of enmity/threat management element that it used to have.Quote:
Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo
For the record, it's important to get the right perspective on what I'm saying. I'm not saying that I like doing lots of DPS as a tank. I am saying that I enjoy the pressure of needing to meet a DPS threshold as a tank. There's some nuance there but these are two different things. One is simply the enjoyment of big numbers in a role not necessarily intended (traditionally) to put them out, the other is the enjoyment of pushing the class to it's limit DPS-wise even though that isn't prime directive #1.
I would not have been one of those people contributing to said stink. The enmity "mini-game" (if you will) is something I've always loved about tanking. My only theory is that this is a concept that more veteran older MMO players like, but newer more modern MMO tank players would prefer it to be a non-factor so they can focus on killing the mob and collecting mobs. That's a complete theory with nothing to back it up but anecdotal experience in discussing MMO mechanics with other players/guildees/groupies or what have you in all games or forums. Threat management was incredibly important in WoW from vanilla until late Cataclysm or so when it became a non-factor, so several expansions. I don't know what specifically the design team's perspective is on threat management mechanics in the MMORPG space, but it clearly wasn't a priority to maintain it within the game. This killed tanking for me in WoW on all fronts.Quote:
For what it's worth, when tank enmity underwent a rough patch a few weeks ago in regards to how Stormblood changed damage modifiers, there was a pretty big stink on the forums about threat issues, which seems to tell me that the players in this game don't really want these hugely epic battles to maintain top enmity on mobs. I get that the tank community isn't one collective Borg voice, but what are your thoughts on that specifically?
#whynotboth?Quote:
From my noobish perspective, to me good tanking has always been about excellent positioning and cooldown usage more than threat bars, so to see enmity wars held up as a kind of challenge mode for tank mains is a little strange to me. I guess an apt comparison would be healer mana, and its management - it's part and parcel of being "good" at the role, but hardly what defines it (IMO, of course).
I do not reject the assertion that positioning and CD usage is an important element of tanking...but tanking is flat out boring when those are the only elements of tanking. Those things + threat/enmity are what makes tanking fun for me, because it deepens the complexity of your role, which ultimately gives a higher feeling of accomplishment when you do it well.
The healer mana comparison is a good one. Threat/enmity can vary in its importance depending on how whatever game's developers want to balance it, same for healer mana, but for the most part, yeah.
The way I see it, enmity/threat is a bit more of a role-defining job than you seem to think of it though. Think about it...so you're a tank? What's your job? Get the mob to attack you.
Why should the mob attack you? What makes you special? This is where enmity/threat comes in. You are executing a chain of attacks specially designed to piss said mob off more than any other player in the raid, even players doing more damage than you. Reason? You have the shield, you need the mob to attack you so that other less durable fighters aren't taking the fury. So how do you get that mob to attack you, of all people?.
If the paragraph above doesn't make threat/enmity out to be a role-defining element of tanking, I don't know what would. Snap aggro abilities in MMORPG's are often even referred to as a "taunt". So, you're just yelling something offensive at the mob, or something lol.
To me, proper CD usage and positioning are the 2ndary elements of tanking. These two concepts are easy to learn and very simple to execute in the short term. Maintaining good threat/enmity on bosses in high burst situations with little waiting on the DPS part, or maintaining the attention of many mobs in huge pack situations, these IMO are more role-defining and also more fun than the concept of using CDs at the right time and positioning.
Np. At the end of the day I'm not 100% neutral myself as I've recently stepped away from WoW for a veritable list of reasons, one of them being that I think tanking is just in the gutter as a role there. I can do my best to compare them objectively though.Quote:
Sorry for all the lengthy back-and-forth. I just like both games, and it's rare to see anyone willing to discuss them objectively on any subject.
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08-01-2017, 11:56 PMRemediI think you should go back and watch everything wow has right now because some of your infos are outdatedQuote:
Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo
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08-02-2017, 04:39 AMShurrikhanWhile I see where you're coming from, to me the enmity itself can never be a meaningful function or role unless paired with mitigation and positioning, just as personal mitigation (used on behalf of the raid) and positioning are impossible without having the mob's attention. You've met the investment cost, but then done absolutely nothing with it—all of the waste of taking a tank, and none of the bonus.Quote:
Originally Posted by zipzo
The tank's indirect contribution comes from increasing raid dps dealt while decreasing raid dps taken. They adjust input and intake. They are essentially a multiplier, much like Trick Attack or Palisade, but with far more numerous and more sustainable levels of contribution, and even more dependent upon the party than Trick Attack is. If they cannot manage that, being instead just a different player being hit, at most they amount to a faint increase to healer convenience (they can just keep spamming one concentrated target to deal with ST damage, rather than centering on the enemy and using target-of-target, or using their party lists). There's no way that slight convenience alone, with no multipliers, could make up for the reduced damage or sustainability from not taking a non-tank. -
08-02-2017, 04:47 AMCanadane
I mean if you aren't healing right now, as nobody needs it... And you're not getting good hit with a tank busters right now...
Then what are you doing!?
Standing around idle is not a good way to spend the groups time. -
08-02-2017, 07:50 AMzipzoI don't reject the idea that enmity/threat, defensive cooldowns, and positioning work in sort of a triad, complimenting one another. I think when you take away any one of those 3 things you make the entirety of the role less interesting. I wouldn't want to give up any of the 3.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
Just in my case, taking away the necessity of enmity/threat management would be (is) the most egregious cut, which WoW did.
There can be different things we like about a role, that's ok, but that doesn't mean I don't value the other remaining elements of the role, or think we could do without them. -
08-02-2017, 08:26 AMRichardButteIt's exactly this.Quote:
Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo
Because most of XIV's dungeon/raid damage is bursty, the healing classes are all primarily designed around healing bursty damage (or they at least NEED answers for it).
And on the subject of healers being samey, let's not forget that AST is essentially an amalgamation of WHM/SCH with a toggle switch to decide which one you're going to be more like, plus cards.
Recovering mana so you have enough of it to heal the next big damaging AoE?Quote:
Originally Posted by Canadane
WoW shifted the paradigm into tanking not being as much about maintaining aggro so much as doing your rotation to put forth as much active mitigation as possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by zipzo
Every tank in WoW has loads of either self-healing, self-shielding, self-armor buffing, or evasion buffing, all of which they generate through their respective rotations. -
08-02-2017, 08:58 AMShurrikhanAnd for me it's definitely the least painful amputation of what traditionally makes up a tank, mostly because it has only ever been one of three rotational or stance-based concerns, as a triad of damage, protection, and threat. Now, that protection can still come in a myriad form. The damage also can come in self-investment or target-investment, and as damage multipliers, DoTs / stat buffs, or, in the latter case, direct damage. But enmity can only ever be enmity. The more you focus action on enmity, especially purely upon enmity, relative to the number of other paths of action, the more you homogenize internal gameplay. Now, shades or pairings of enmity growth, as often the design concept behind WoW tanks (even the solo-pathetic Sunder Armor), can avoid that problem to an extent, but even if that were perfectly baked into the surrounding toolkit to allow for the most variance possible, you are still deferring or balancing concerns of damage, mitigation, self-healing, damage investment, mitigation investment, healing investment, utility, and so forth in order to ensure that you have a sufficient margin of an incredibly bland metric—enmity. It doesn't vary with different mob behaviors (except in threat wipes, if you can even call that variance), and provides no variance to said behaviors (unlike HP thresholds and so forth). You manipulate nothing but a consistent target via a flat threat table.Quote:
Originally Posted by zipzo
As long as enmity remains that dull, I'm not sad that other things have been given room to rise to the fore in WoW tanking. At most, I'm a bit sad that tanks have gotten so strong, both passively and by normal rotation, that there's rarely reason to strip mobs off my tank and kite them briefly, being able to provide damage shifts and support as a non-tank... not that I still can, given that streamlining has occurred not only from the tank side through enmity increases, but also the DPS side through ability pruning. -
08-02-2017, 09:53 AMzipzoI wouldn't really call what they did a shift. It was more like a gutting. And like I said before, why couldn't we have both? Did it make the role too complicated?Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardButte
Tanks were just as focused on constant active mitigation even in vanilla (see: holy shield for Paladins and shield block for Warriors). Some important elements were passive (e.g. Gearing to be uncrushable or uncrittable) but all the way through Cata there was still a short cd defensive cooldowns that you needed to use intelligently.
The only thing that has changed drastically more lately is that tanks now possess the ability to contribute massive self-healing, making the necessity for a healer only reserved for very hard hitting bosses and extremely high level mythic+ dungeons where the scaling is set so high that mobs hit for boss-level amounts. In their current state, tanks can solo (easily) pretty much all content in the game that isn't current raid content or high level difficulty dungeons. Think bloodbath Warriors in HW (that's the best comparison I can think of to FFXIV).
Personally I don't see the positive contribution of giving tanks such abilities in the first place. I think that tanks should be reliant on healers, healers reliant on tanks, and both be reliant on DPS to end the fight. That's the magic of the trinity...they should all work in tandem, and when you start gifting abilities of one to the other (in this case, the ability to heal on a tank excessively) you start to corrupt that trinity and ultimately it leads to imbalance (IMO).
Here's how I see it. Enmity/threat is the only element of the 3 that can present a varying experience from 1 time to the next. Positioning is just where you put the boss/mob. Cooldowns is just timing. People in this very thread have complained about how things are too predictable, and it leads to just popping the cooldown at the precise time it's most effectively used and that's it. What you have then is a completely forgettable element of the gameplay of being a tank because it becomes automated.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
Enmity/threat is not an automated element of the gameplay. You actively need to perform your threat gains effectively, and the experience is going to differ usually every single time you do a given piece of content because you'll likely be paired with different DPS. Maybe holding aggro is easier to this group, maybe holding aggro is tougher, it completely depends on the people in your group.
Hence, aggro management is the only interesting element of tanking because it stands to be the only part of tanking that creates the potential need for you to improvise, or make good decisions, and play well.
Positioning and CD usage are just one and done elements of tanking. You put them in the right spot, forget it, you make yourself aware of the best time to use a CD, and forget it.
Enmity you can't forget, there may always be somebody climbing the chart faster than in your other groups either because of spectacular DPS or because you flubbed your perfect threat rotation. It's a wild card element, and hence, the most interesting and potentially exciting. That is why threat/enmity/aggro management is single-handedly the most interesting part of Tank gameplay, and why when it is removed, tanking becomes boring. -
08-02-2017, 11:41 AMDkDerek
As a raid leader and tank in wow for the last 10 years....I can assure you when evaluating a tanks performance....all that really matters is dps.
Its assumed the tank can tank. After that, literally the only important thing is damage. -
08-02-2017, 11:56 AMaxetotheface
I am a Resto shaman in WoD and Legion but stopped playing after killing normal blackhand and normal xavius.In WoW a healer can get away by just casting "heal" and of course i add some lava burst combo during my downtime but no one seems to care, but in FF 14 a healer that can calculate when to do dps or heal are an assets
There is one rule in caster : "If you just stand there doing nothing, you are bad", also avoid mechanic and master your rotation and cooldown.
Right now iam playing warrior and i will never go to dps stance if i can't survive the "tank buster" -
08-02-2017, 12:46 PMPenthea
Disclaimer: not played WoW since the end of WoD, but as far as I know the healing has changed very little.
I was a hardcore raider healer in WoW. FFXIV's healing is very different.
The mana efficiency of healers in FF far outpaces WoW, so that allows FF healers to weave in dps. Healer dps is very effective in FF but it hits like a wet noodle in WoW. In WoW unless you have specific healing/defensive/mana gaining mechanics that use dps abilities, there is little to no reason for healers to dps in combat as it's a waste of precious mana and a gcd wasted on stupidly low numbers. (unless you greatly outgear the content)
Additionally out of combat hp and mp regen is several times faster in FF, so there is far less downtime between pulls. If a tank doesn't wait for you to regen mp in WoW you may need all the mana you have for just healing, whereas in FF due to the higher rate of mp regen you are more likely to have a higher percentage of mana at the next pull which leaves more room for dps. -
08-02-2017, 01:41 PMShurrikhanAt best, that is true of some fights in this game alone, and only if one excludes all the ways to optimize both your and your healers' dps.Quote:
Originally Posted by zipzo
Yes, there is little to no active mitigation in this game beyond pre-planned cooldowns popped per specific events... in this game. That is failing of the game, however, not of the very concept of mitigation mechanics. And it's why there are quite a few people who have been suggesting more integral systems by which to involve mitigation.
That said, enmity in this game is one thing and one thing only: the GCDs of inferior output to be used when they least get in the way of personal (tank) DPS. Yes, there are fewer when you have a Ninja and an off-tank using VokeShirk. Yes, there are a lot more when you have a Samurai who refused to use Diversion. But nothing about the concept changes. The impact is no more than that of positioning dungeon mobs with chained zone AoEs as to minimize loss of positionals for your melee jobs. It's no more than matching your CDs to Apoc, Feint, Palisade, and healer CDs. They are all equally shallow, each essentially automated. It's literally just increasing or decreasing the amount of reduced-efficiency GCDs required in order to maintain your passive increase to raid input/intake efficiency. In a sense, that can be interesting. But XIV is far from executing it in any particularly interesting way. It's essentially a system in place to increase the raid DPS offered by Ninjas and add another obligatory DPS CD in the form of Diversion (and Shirk, for that matter).
Don't get me wrong; I want enmity to really be a thing. But as long as it's just a threat table, and its related skills pure (or amounting to pure) enmity bonuses, it's not going to be anything more than a flip-side of tank DPS, meant to differentiate good from bad tanks (and far less by who holds aggro as much as while maintaining how much personal output).