I hate to, but I think I put down healing for now. Please make it engaging again, SE.

It's really telling when pre-50 and ShB content are just as "entertaining".

Between spamming 1 and using ED alone to keep the tank alive, and spamming 3 and using 4 CDs to keep the tank alive, there's not much difference.
I stopped at lv 78, it's a lot more fun to farm raids with my RDM instead.

I've been a healer in pretty much every online game where I could be one, and FFXIV is the first game that actively made me want to quit.
Maybe I'll change my mind in 6.0, who knows.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

The encounters are designed in a way to prevent players from catching up to their mistakes. A huge chunk of the mechanics involve instant death in some way. That's what makes encounters complicated. The problem is no amount of healing can solve those prevalent mechanics nor is it meant to. The mistake is bound to either kill the player or simply kill the party. So from time to time SE puts some scripted "heal checks" where healers need to keep the party from dying from unavoidable damage.

Those moments are an exception rather than a rule.

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What is a "heal check"?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

What is a "heal check"?

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A given output of damage in a reduced time frame. Meaning it checks that party members have been healed in between.
The one I remember best is Kefka where it would bring HP to 1, make people unable, an only give a few seconds to top people up before a raid wide.
White hole in ExDeath is arguably a heal check too, you had to Max everyone quickly, after a mechanic where people were running around.
Maybe the adds you had to heal to full during Shinryu Ext too.

I don't see strict healing checks in Eden, more like continued healing requirements... maybe the flares into share on Voidwalker... I haven't tried Titan though. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mansion

A given output of damage in a reduced time frame. Meaning it checks that party members have been healed in between.
The one I remember best is Kefka where it would bring HP to 1, make people unable, an only give a few seconds to top people up before a raid wide.
White hole in ExDeath is arguably a heal check too, you had to Max everyone quickly, after a mechanic where people were running around.
Maybe the adds you had to heal to full during Shinryu Ext too.

I don't see strict healing checks in Eden, more like continued healing requirements... maybe the flares into share on Voidwalker... I haven't tried Titan though. :)

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Titan's heal check is right at the end with his spamming Tumults spam, voice of the land, Tumult spam, voice of the land, Tumult spam, voice of the land, enrage, but all this could be bypassed if have high enough dps in group to kill before that part.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mansion

A given output of damage in a reduced time frame. Meaning it checks that party members have been healed in between.
The one I remember best is Kefka where it would bring HP to 1, make people unable, an only give a few seconds to top people up before a raid wide.
White hole in ExDeath is arguably a heal check too, you had to Max everyone quickly, after a mechanic where people were running around.
Maybe the adds you had to heal to full during Shinryu Ext too.

I don't see strict healing checks in Eden, more like continued healing requirements... maybe the flares into share on Voidwalker... I haven't tried Titan though. :)

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How much damage is a given output of damage?
What is the time frame? 4 seconds? 5 seconds? 6 seconds?
At what point does this stop being completely arbitrary?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

At what point does this stop being completely arbitrary?

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You got it : it doesn't. One could argue that it's just... healing. Just like a DPS check is just... DPS.
I don't know if you could consider gear gating too, as some very specific raid damage hit higher than HP pools so you simply need shields (Morn Afah, O12S enrage?) and mitigation.

Regardless of all of this, it boils down to "not letting people die", with some moment more intense than some other.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

How much damage is a given output of damage?
What is the time frame? 4 seconds? 5 seconds? 6 seconds?
At what point does this stop being completely arbitrary?

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Doom or White hole debuffs for example, you have 10 seconds top everybody who got the effects off or else they will be instantly killed/petrified.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Doom or White hole debuffs for example, you have 10 seconds top everybody who got the effects off or else they will be instantly killed/petrified.

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In Titan, is the combination of Pulse/Force/Weight of the Land into Earthen Fury during Uplift a heal check?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

In Titan, is the combination of Pulse/Force/Weight of the Land into Earthen Fury during Uplift a heal check?

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I wouldnt say it really is a hard one. You just need to pop on OGCD and then mitigate or heal after fury. Rarely have had issues with that unless people do something real dumb before hand.

The only real hard heal checks are in p3 with the spam of voice/tumults and a bit during the merry go round with everyone having a dot, tanks getting trucked and everyone moving/spread out, but it's not the worst thing.

I miss the everyone hits 1 hp heal them mechanics. Hopefully we see them soon.

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And more on topic to the thread, I still love healing atm. I personally enjoy the "how low can people drop/little can I heal to do more dps". Finding the parts in the fight where I can let people sit at low health while things come off cd etc.

But that's just me. Would be interesting to do more than broil/glare spam, but I'm not looking to get into an ultra complex dps rotation as a healer. If I want a deeper dps rotation I just play an alt job.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xiun

But that's just me. Would be interesting to do more than broil/glare spam, but I'm not looking to get into an ultra complex dps rotation as a healer. If I want a deeper dps rotation I just play an alt job.

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I think most people aren't asking for healers to have DPS style rotations but definitely something more than Bio,broil ad ifintium.

When i can say if you strip nin to only having ninjutsu, no ninki, no other gcd, no role actions just Ten, Chi, Jin and ninjutsu, and it would still be more interesting than any healers downtime/solo experience currently then i think there is a bit of a problem on the engagement factor.

We could bring back support skills in a meaningfull way. Why give eveey healer such homogenized tools? Point blank aoe heal, single target heal and stronger single target heal.

The most unique healing spells are rarely used or have long CDs. Im talking about Cure 3, Excogitation, Synastry, Plenary Indulgence, Horoscope.

They have all unique and interesting effects/ conditions. Make more of those!

Hell even Sacred Soil/ Earthly Star/Asylum type of heals.

Imagine fields of healing that pulse and heal everytime you cast the appropriate spell. Imagine a heal/shield that jumps around your party after it is spent. Imagine proximity based heals that become stronger the closer you are to your target. Imagine placing a dot on your target that causes it to heal the players attacking it. Imagine giving everybody in your raid an enchantment that causes them to drain HP off their targets.

More interesting healing mechanics please.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

We could bring back support skills in a meaningfull way. Why give eveey healer such homogenized tools? Point blank aoe heal, single target heal and stronger single target heal.

The most unique healing spells are rarely used or have long CDs. Im talking about Cure 3, Excogitation, Synastry, Plenary Indulgence, Horoscope.

They have all unique and interesting effects/ conditions. Make more of those!

Hell even Sacred Soil/ Earthly Star/Asylum type of heals.

Imagine fields of healing that pulse and heal everytime you cast the appropriate spell. Imagine a heal/shield that jumps around your party after it is spent. Imagine proximity based heals that become stronger the closer you are to your target. Imagine placing a dot on your target that causes it to heal the players attacking it. Imagine giving everybody in your raid an enchantment that causes them to drain HP off their targets.

More interesting healing mechanics please.

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The dev team heard your plea, and healers will get a new and original healing CD, unlike any other spell before it: 715 potency on a 62s cooldown!

Please look forward for more in 7.0!

The dual aspects of the healer jobs don't interact with each other. Why not design healers as to have their specific healing types synergize with the other parts of their kit?

AST cards exist completely separate from their healing. Give them skills that heal and extend those buffs. Card that heals or a heal that buffs!

WHM has lillies that sorta sinergize with healing, but why make it so obtuse? Make lillies act as oGCds so that they can be woven into damage spells and viceversa. Give them more skills like assize that heal and damage both at the same time.

SCH's strategistic nature is reduced to a single debuff, why not emphasize on that while expanding on the uses of the faerie gauge?

I am very happy with healers right now. They are fun and engaging. This is of course my opinion but the folks I play with are in broad agreement with me. As far as I'm aware it's a few forum posters - few as in very small numbers of the community ever go anywhere near the forums or even any other online community outside the game, if people I know are anything to go by. Naturally this is anecdotal but I have to draw my conclusions from somewhere and I see a large discrepancy between the forums and the people in game - so yeah, a few forum posters who are the unhappy ones.

Of course I could well be mistaken but I imagine SE has access to better data on the subject than anyone else, and will make changes or not accordingly.

I would prefer them to continue in their current mode

I think healing combos would be a good idea.

For example, since SCH got neutered in low level play when a tank is taking massive damage I have to result to alternating Adlo for a maintenance shield > Physic to keep him alive. It works better than you think it would.

We all have a basic heal and a better heal. Casting the basic heal should buff or activate the better heal. We sort of already have that in Asylum / Sacred soil with their +healing modifiers

But if we REALLY wanted to get crazy, introduce a Chloromancer (from RIFT) type healer. A healer that does leech healing as a % base of it's damage with a few decent heals thrown in.

I enjoyed Astrologian so much in Stormblood, one direct damage attack, one dot and one aoe is not the only issue.. It's not just a lack of rotation that will upset people, for me it's the way that utility and gameplay depth not stemming from doing damage was also reduced.

I would not be as upset with the changes if they hadn't lied about healing being hard enough that you have to focus on it. I was actually really excited when 5.0 arrived and I had to manage cooldowns on my Astrologian, and watch the party carefully knowing that I needed to have tight timing to overcome the weakened healing if more damage came in - but that turned out to be a tuning glitch, not intended design. It was a short lived experience.

Now after a few months of play time, it's very clear.. Potencies were scaled down, but the new ogcds make it so easy to just not only ignore that completely but to make healing seem more potent than ever, and to just erase raidwides and deal with spot healing without a second thought. None of the new content is any more challenging than it was in prior expansions in the end. Healing is likely easier at this point than it was in Heavensward or late ARR.

Astrologian lost interesting gameplay elements like making spell combos using time extension, the new card game is mind numbingly unengaging and offers nothing but a straight damage boost. I find Scholar much less interactive to heal on. Eos / Selene are so sluggish and unresponsive, and heal whether they're moving or not. The fun of working with your mini co-healer is gone, and the new gameplay around this central class mechanic is like "press regen before melting her down into a few more ogcds".. White mage got um.. A nuke?..

We were told that these changes were to make way for a new healing focused design. The end result is that we didn't get it. People who enjoyed their damage rotations lost them, people who loved working with Eos ended up with broken Eos, Astrologian became "damage buff bot" and healing is no more engaging.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I think healing combos would be a good idea.

For example, since SCH got neutered in low level play when a tank is taking massive damage I have to result to alternating Adlo for a maintenance shield > Physic to keep him alive. It works better than you think it would.

We all have a basic heal and a better heal. Casting the basic heal should buff or activate the better heal. We sort of already have that in Asylum / Sacred soil with their +healing modifiers

But if we REALLY wanted to get crazy, introduce a Chloromancer (from RIFT) type healer. A healer that does leech healing as a % base of it's damage with a few decent heals thrown in.

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You remind of the great moments running around as either Chloromancer, Druid or Warden in that game and the playstyles they brought as an invasion descended on a zone.

I was always under impression we did have a combo: Order Embrace on same target you're casting Adlo og Physick on, covering for the low health restoration on those. Now imagine that concept taken to town: Lily gets buffs or additional effects on spells if you use a pet hotbar skill when you're casting. Or even, the longer you're casting. Lily can feel the deep concentration you're in when hardcasting ressurection for 8 seconds in Copied Factory and her movement, potency and effects increases. Throw back more use for and more spells with cast time, making your own movement and placement near as important as BLM's, but not only advised but encouraged to put Lily to more use when standing still. Or hell, Fey Union only works on us and increases spell casting speed to accomodate all this standing around and other stuff, but then still makes her vulnerable to aoes and unable to do anything else. An actual cooldown spell with some risks like Dissipation that instead puts your partner at risk.

SB AST job was unique because his cards system brought unpredictable elements into predictable fights which means, you could do hundred of times the same dungeon, the same trial, the same raid, you would never be bored.
Each content and their situations with team composition change your way to play the cards drawn (Draw, Sleeve Draw was a very fun mini-puzzle to resolve quickly).
This was the job with the most playstyles because of the richness and depth of the cards system where you were learning and trying new things every months.
Adding the Time abilities to his kit and you obtained a very good synergy and a fun gameplay to play with.
If you look at the ShB AST, you can remove everything I have said.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elladie

Of course I could well be mistaken but I imagine SE has access to better data on the subject than anyone else, and will make changes or not accordingly.

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Yeah someone who actually trusted that to happen would be exhibiting blind faith at this point. The evidence is to the contrary, and if you've ever had to make a group decision in a company, you'd know that firms are not rational actors.

I think the team as whole need fresh blood inside their ranks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PondHollow

Yeah someone who actually trusted that to happen would be exhibiting blind faith at this point. The evidence is to the contrary, and if you've ever had to make a group decision in a company, you'd know that firms are not rational actors.

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I concur with this. I think people can give people higher up in corporations too much credit for how informed they are. Some people in higher positions can be pretty clueless and data can be bad. I can say from experience where I have worked for such a company.

I don't think the dev team is as bad as what I had, but I think it is plausible that the dev team could base decisions on bad data.

For instance, if 90% of people who played healers in their original design were happy with it. What statistics would show this? Very few people post anywhere that they are satisfied, they just play it. I mean, it's taken me until 5.0 to give any feedback on healer play and I've played healer since BETA and was a satisfied healer during most of that time since.

Then take those who're dissatisfied. Take, for example, people who keep forgetting about Cleric Stance or people in parties with healers who forget Cleric Stance and wipe. People then complaining about cleric stance, it's too clunky, it causes wipes, it leaves room for easy mistakes and so on. And if this is all you see about Cleric Stance, then it's plausible the data would suggest "Cleric Stance overwhelmingly bad" and then remove it.
But there are many of us who liked it, who thought whilst yes it could be improved but it should not be removed. This voice didn't come out until after Cleric Stance was removed. Again should people complain their healers DPS too much or are making too many mistakes with their DPS focus, without people saying "I like how this works" it looks more likely the right thing to do is simplify how they DPS.

And chances are, if say, they were to look at the forums now for people's satisfaction, what they're going to see is the complaints about those who're dissatisfied, rather than what's working and why for those who are satisfied.

I hope their means of data gathering is good, however, I'm not sure that it is. But I'd see no shame in them putting out surveys to gather such data before making decision. I think it'd be a more transparent approach and if the survey is well constructed then people could have the opportunity to provide more meaningful feedback than say, our anecdotal rants on the forum. Whilst anecdotal rants on a forum are great and putting things into context for certain complaints, it's not good for statistical data about what people like/don't like.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I hope their means of data gathering is good, however, I'm not sure that it is. But I'd see no shame in them putting out surveys to gather such data before making decision. I think it'd be a more transparent approach and if the survey is well constructed then people could have the opportunity to provide more meaningful feedback than say, our anecdotal rants on the forum. Whilst anecdotal rants on a forum are great and putting things into context for certain complaints, it's not good for statistical data about what people like/don't like.

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A well constructed survey is what I'd love to see. SE needs to get more community involvement from outside the forums. As it stands now, we're completely left in the dark, and it seems they are too. I'm not sure if it's a pride issue of the dev team, or if it's a fear of embarrassment, but I just want to know if they're making informed choices.

Healer is boring because we're not really "healing" anyway. The only tool the devs have to make players lose is one-shot, thus we're playing around with a gauge called health, but the things that actually matter are one-shot and vulnerability down (which can't be cured).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EwokAssassini

A well constructed survey is what I'd love to see. SE needs to get more community involvement from outside the forums. As it stands now, we're completely left in the dark, and it seems they are too. I'm not sure if it's a pride issue of the dev team, or if it's a fear of embarrassment, but I just want to know if they're making informed choices.

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I'd love more involvement on healers period.

In the run up to Shadowbringers across all the stupid "influencer" interviews there were a total of ~96 questions asked. Three. . . THREE of them concerned healers and they were all brushed off.

I hate to be an alarmist but it really does seem like either

A) The development team simply doesn't care about healers, or

B) They don't know how to properly balance them.

Either of which is equally concerning.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I'd love more involvement on healers period.

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I'd like to throw in a third possibility: They don't know their audience has a problem with the state of healers or they think it's overblown.

The
1. Lack of interview questions
2. Dismissive tones of some questions regarding healers ("As for the job balance, setting aside healers...")
3. Lack of healing influencers
4. The selection of live letter questions (and lack of healer questions being asked)

Means there isn't much pressure being put on the devs from the English community's front. It might be different for the Japanese side, but I'm not sure as I can't read it or check the places they congregate to discuss FFXIV.

If there's not much pressure, it's not as important and doesn't need to be fully addressed. Those who are complaining obviously don't mean or know much since they're not generating much pressure.

That's part of why in the past I started a (dead) thread inquiring about current or potential healer influencers for future Media Tours and interviews. As someone who works in P.R., as much as many people dislike them, influencers are important in judging an audience's current opinions and though processes. Getting one that can operate on a larger stage, has a sizable following, or interact with the devs in some manner like we have for other roles would go a long way to having concerns recognized.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Genz

Healer is boring because we're not really "healing" anyway. The only tool the devs have to make players lose is one-shot, thus we're playing around with a gauge called health, but the things that actually matter are one-shot and vulnerability down (which can't be cured).

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Yes, healing gameplay and strategy revolves around reacting to or preparing for incoming bursts of damage, hence why healers are given very strong "burst" healing type of tools like Assize, Indomitability and such.

Damage is never random, it comes at very specific moments, it's scripted.

With potent burst healing and encounters with scripted damage, healers often find themselves with nothing to do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shalan

I'd like to throw in a third possibility: They don't know their audience has a problem with the state of healers or they think it's overblown.

The
1. Lack of interview questions
2. Dismissive tones of some questions regarding healers ("As for the job balance, setting aside healers...")
3. Lack of healing influencers
4. The selection of live letter questions (and lack of healer questions being asked)

...

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We're basically invisible, yup. We always represent 25% of any given group, yet we don't deserve anybody's time.

Not gonna lie, I felt like I received more attention as a RDM in one patch than as a healer since 5.0. AST had been bandaged until it suffocates because it was hot garbage after launch, and that's all we got.

I have become a dps now, it's the only role the devs seem to care about. If I want healing to be interesting, I have other games to play.

I remember when SCH in FFXI was first released. It was the worst healer in the history of Final Fantasy. There was so much wide spread sweeping complaints that SE redid that job from the ground up in the next update lol. Unfortunately that dev team died with the death of 1.0.

Id prefer the ED charges be moved up to 70..and yes bring aoe cards back.

I think the mostly read general discussion and yerp we tend to get a boat load of DPS changes, but tanks/healers a bit uncommonly. Not to mention, we got a ton of DPS jobs. 6.0, 2 DPS, 0 tank/healers, please look forward to it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shalan

I'd like to throw in a third possibility: They don't know their audience has a problem with the state of healers or they think it's overblown.

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The extreme lack of healers in content (healer in need bonus constantly) should give them a good idea that people are dropping or have dropped the job.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

The extreme lack of healers in content (healer in need bonus constantly) should give them a good idea that people are dropping or have dropped the job.

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I'm pretty sure they have their own figures on their side, that's not the problem.

It is a possibility that they think the players' response is not reasonable too. They said they wanted to balance healers before adding a job, so maybe they will only look at (or prioritize) this data. I think this is the case since 5.1, AST numbers have raised and all healers are close to each other (althoug the lower number of AST clears might make the data unreliable). They can still adjust things here and there to iron out the differences (fix fairy issues for SCH for instance)

All in all, I think they just made a mistake with 5.X healing direction, and changing it would require time and resources that are already allocated in patch cycles. So I guess healing will stay how it is until 6.X. That does not mean that there won't be slight adjusments on jobs or later fights to create an illusion of healer engagement. But the system is not likely to change between two patches.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I'd love more involvement on healers period.

In the run up to Shadowbringers across all the stupid "influencer" interviews there were a total of ~96 questions asked. Three. . . THREE of them concerned healers and they were all brushed off.

I hate to be an alarmist but it really does seem like either

A) The development team simply doesn't care about healers, or

B) They don't know how to properly balance them.

Either of which is equally concerning.

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¿Por que no los dos?

Nobody on the dev team plays a healer. All communication about healers from Square seems to be from the POV of the healed, not the healer.

At the same time, they genuinely don't seem to understand how their approach to encounter design paints them into a corner when it comes to healer design. They don't know how to properly balance healers because they're working from knowledge of WoW-style healing and trying to apply it to FF14-style scripted fights, or because Square's left hand (the job design team) has no clue what the right hand (the encounter design team) is doing, or both.

This ties back to the fact that nobody on the team plays a healer, because if they did, they'd quickly recognize that tanks had some of the exact same boredom/homogenization issues before Square caved in and made them Blue DPS in ShB. At a minimum, you'd think that if somebody on the dev team did play a healer, they'd report how boring it is to play the MSQ that way. They don't know how to design healers because they don't play healers in their own game, so they don't understand what the role needs, in order to be engaging given the encounter design in the game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I hate to be an alarmist but it really does seem like either

A) The development team simply doesn't care about healers, or

B) They don't know how to properly balance them.

---

This is one of the best examples I've seen that illustrate the concept of a false dichotomy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

The extreme lack of healers in content (healer in need bonus constantly) should give them a good idea that people are dropping or have dropped the job.

---

I'd love to see the set of data you used to draw this conclusion. It will be extremely interesting.

100% Agree with the original post. Same exact mindset. I ended up unintentionally taking a break from the game itself and still feel even less attachment for it than I ever have before. Once the MSQ was over, I really didn't feel compelled to play at all, which is pretty unusual for me. I play SCH on my alt, and AST as my main. I can't even get myself to AST at all because I find the new draw/play as separate buttons way too clunky and inefficient. On top of an unrewarding card system? Yeah... Not my cuppa tea. I also found that I actually heal less. In regular content, I really don't need to use Benefic or Benefic II, rarely ever need Helios. All I need to do is spam combust/malefic then pop one of my healing cooldowns once tank or other gets less than 75%HP and bam. Good to go. AST never even had a great DPS skillset (unlike SCH). It had more support skills which made the class more engaging. Like, for example, our stun that is now yet another cool down heal. I used that whenever we had a big mob with lots of AoEs. If anything, I would've liked that to have a shorter cooldown to be more effective gameplay-wise. Not be turned into another cooldown heal (we don't need more of those. Really.).

And it's not just healing, either. My other class, Bard, has so many empty slots (I pre-assigned all of its skills to hotbar) that it feels unrewarding to play. I liked the juggling and strategy - however small - to both my AST and BRD classes. I liked the support skills. They stimulated my brain, kept my hands dancing on the gamepad, kept me from getting bored, and made me feel like I was contributing something to the group that not every class could contribute to.

For games or any hobby, I think it's important to have that satisfaction that you're actually contributing something, that you're good at it or feel good doing it at least. Overcoming challenges and getting good at XYZ is rewarding. But if something is too easy and isn't fulfilling like that, then... it's really not worth doing.

As for interview questions.. seems we dont get the opportunity to ask Yoshida questiond directly anymore.. but sure we can talk to other members like the sound director :/.

I wont say they dont play healers. You cant come up with a well working heal formula all willy nilly untested, at least this is what I learned from my RPG maker days. You gotta know a bunch of crap about the damage of mobs and actually take damage to know how strong you want the heals to be. They cant godmode through heal testing.

The thing that gets me, is that the designer of trusts must have designed the ability set for Alphinaud/Urianger, saw that they barely needed to heal and just spammed the same ability over and over for most of the fight, and though ‘Ok this how an ffxiv healer plays, perfect.’

Like, at some point someone must have realized that healing is such a poorly designed ‘mechanic’ in ffxiv.

I don’t get how someone looked at them and said ‘yes, this is quality work, ship it immediately’. Like, you’re laden with super powered oGCDs for healing, if you’re not an Astrologian you have nigh-infinite MP, you aren’t allowed to actively support the party with spells, and you’re only allowed one attack spell and one damage over time spell.

I know it’s cynical but I think they don’t care because it doesn’t really affect subscriptions if people aren’t playing healer long-term. New players who don’t know what the role is like will still subscribe expecting it to be some kind of healer, and by the time they realise and unsubscribe, two other new healers have just begun their subscription. So the healer population at the end of the game (max level) is extremely low, and healer retention is extremely low, but they’re still making their money in the long run, so it’s a non-issue to them. So basically they can just ignore the healing role for as long as they’re getting more subs than they’re dropping

That’s probably why they refuse to acknowledge it and try to explain how it got to this stage. Because if they do, it’ll put potential healer players off subscribing to the game (‘id rather just play an game where I can heal people’). But since they aren’t interested in keeping those players once they‘ve subscribed and bought the game, they don’t intend to actually resolve the issues they’ve been sweeping under the rug.

My post got a bit ‘tinfoil hat’ but with the radio silence from devs since the start of the expansion, conspiracy theories and general speculation are pretty much all we have lol

Clearly, healers are designed with a burst model in mind. Meaning they only truly have to use GCD heals when heavy damage comes (which happens at very specific points in an encounter) and they usually use them in tandem with oGCDs. (Meaning that at some point, your oGCDs get powerful enough to not require the use of a GCD for healing without causing overheal)

So during those long stretches of healing downtime, what are healers supposed to do? In the past, they would use cleric stance and deal damage. That was their only way to contribute to the party when healing was not needed.

Now, with most of their damaging abilities being cut, healers still have long periods of healing downtime. To contribute, they cast damaging spells.

Healing downtime has been part of the healer gameplay since the beginning (In more or less mesure, though it began being prominent in 3.0) And yet, the part of our healing kits that allows us to contribute to party progression has been simplified for no reason. Each healing job has an identity regarding their non-healing contribution: WHM is a nuker. Lacks support skills but deals massive personal DPS. SCH is a debuffer. Had a bunch of weakening CDs, like virus, EfaE, Miasma and Shadowflare and now has only CS. And AST has cards which now have lost most of their interesring mechanics.

Encounters still have prominent moments of healing downtime yet our kits lost the complexity ( and arguably the fun) that came from contributing to party progression from taking advantage of those moments.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mansion

It is a possibility that they think the players' response is not reasonable too. They said they wanted to balance healers before adding a job, so maybe they will only look at (or prioritize) this data. I think this is the case since 5.1, AST numbers have raised and all healers are close to each other (althoug the lower number of AST clears might make the data unreliable).

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AST still hasn't recovered from their extreme shortages.


E4S Parses:

Astrologian 11,707
White Mage 36,033
Scholar 30,555

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/29/#class=Any

Hades EX

Astrologian 5,483
White Mage 14,534
Scholar 9,691

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...1049&class=Any

They're still nowhere near the other two.

Ast also has a lot of Stigma to get past as well

-Healer stigma in general of being dull 1 nuke 1 DoT for downtime when heals aren't needed.
-New card system is underwhelming
-The reward is not worth the effort over the competition
-Controller issues especially when optimising
-Gameplay doesn't reflect lore

The devs have only addressed one of these, that being the reward/effort with Ast now being the strongest healer but the biggest one keeping Ast numbers so low is the controller issues, this problem needs to be addressed asap yet they will not even acknowledge it and thus the stigma will remain for most of the expansion alienating people before touching it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Ast also has a lot of Stigma to get past as well

-Healer stigma in general of being dull 1 nuke 1 DoT for downtime when heals aren't needed.
-New card system is underwhelming
-The reward is not worth the effort over the competition
-Controller issues especially when optimising
-Gameplay doesn't reflect lore

The devs have only addressed one of these, that being the reward/effort with Ast now being the strongest healer but the biggest one keeping Ast numbers so low is the controller issues, this problem needs to be addressed asap yet they will not even acknowledge it and thus the stigma will remain for most of the expansion alienating people before touching it.

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Funny because AST damage rotation was pretty much the framework for the Shadowbringers damage re-work and no AST would have wished their pre-ShB rotation on anyone.

Regarding their lore, I find it funny that basically that their lore is essentially useless now with the current changes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Funny because AST damage rotation was pretty much the framework for the Shadowbringers damage re-work and no AST would have wished their pre-ShB rotation on anyone.

Regarding their lore, I find it funny that basically that their lore is essentially useless now with the current changes.

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Yep it is just the combination of it all that really really stinks about current Ast.

Heck our dps rotation in HW(most complex Ast was) was only combust, combust II and malefic II not exactly much but its card system very much mitigated this something the current card system cannot do, it is too simplified and so the current dps rotation sticks out way more.

If SE wanted to simplify dps on healers they needed to have offshoot this with something else that is engaging, yet they didn't do this, they instead decided to simplify everything else as well, lilies are now on timer so no more managing whm cds (really the only positive due to how lilies were generated before but still a simplification), the best the pet system had been and deciding heals or damage for sch was removed(only energy drain back so it has that only), Ast lost old card system and the time manipulation tied to it. All healers lost something in tandem with simplified dps rotations, this shouldn't have happened, the thought process should have been ok we are simplifying dps on healers how can we improve engagement elsewhere on each healer this is where the devs have gone wrong and where they need to see what they have done to the healer role.