General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

This 100%. I started playing wow about a year ago and I love healing in it. 14's devs really don't have an excuse for their lack of creativity in job design. WoW has five tanks that all feel totally different and seven healers that all feel totally different. Yeah, balance issues and whatnot but I would happily trade balance for fun at this point. 14 has me just plain bored with its gameplay.

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The sad thing is there have definitely been times where playing SCH or even WHM felt as fun to me in dungeons as do the most active of healer specs in WoW.

That rhythmic element of setup and capitalization of building up a big Bane, layering up to 3 types of Aero, etc., felt pretty darn good, and they could have added so much more to that (not further ramp-up relative to HW, but further synergy and capitalization).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The sad thing is there have definitely been times where playing SCH or even WHM felt as fun to me in dungeons as do the most active of healer specs in WoW.

That rhythmic element of setup and capitalization of building up a big Bane, layering up to 3 types of Aero, etc., felt pretty darn good, and they could have added so much more to that (not further ramp-up relative to HW, but further synergy and capitalization).

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I feel this too...Being able to stack DoTs broke up the Holy spam, and SCH DoT potential was just glorious. I wish they would give us those abilities back and let us play the game the way we want to, or implement a talent tree system that would allow players to choose between Heal/DPS/Support builds. Let us have some control over our gameplay experience.

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Originally Posted by Valmaxian

I feel this too...Being able to stack DoTs broke up the Holy spam, and SCH DoT potential was just glorious. I wish they would give us those abilities back and let us play the game the way we want to, or implement a talent tree system that would allow players to choose between Heal/DPS/Support builds. Let us have some control over our gameplay experience.

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They can't even work out how to balance Crit as a stat vs the other substats (it's by far the best option, for basically every class bar BLM), I can't imagine they'd do anything as crazy as a talent tree, unless it was as part of an external system like Bozja where it's fully selfcontained. Though that does remind me of an idea I had of relic armor with set effects. Think Elemental Armor from Eureka, but you start at the start, and as you upgrade it you increase it's set bonus effect strengths. EG: GNB 2set: Blasting Zone now does +50/+100/+150 potency, or 'DRK 4set: Using Bloodspiller/Quietus grants Scourge for 15 seconds, increasing Haste by 1%. This effect can be stacked to a maximum of 10/25/40 times' (so rationing out Blood spending would let you keep getting faster and faster, till you hit max stacks and 1.50 GCD hardcap). Stuff like that, but the effects only happen inside of the hypothetical new Bozja-Eureka zone.

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Originally Posted by Valmaxian

or implement a talent tree system that would allow players to choose between Heal/DPS/Support builds. Let us have some control over our gameplay experience.

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I feel like that one's a can of worms, and has been since 1.8.

We started the game with "build your own job," even if its iteration was slipshod at best. By the time we switched from having classes/jobs (CNJ wasn't a healer so much as an elementalist who also healed, useful for cracking magic-weak fights; THM wasn't a healer or DPS so much as a resource-mover and nuker; GLD wasn't a "tank" so much as a defender and tag-teamer; etc.) to just having roles (and increasingly homogenized / template-heavy at that), any cross-role customization concepts have become largely dead by default.

Customization works in games like WoW because (in)equity works so differently there; there fights offer enough diversity that their jobs can offer unique advantages outside of just sheer fight-length DPS/HPS/SPS, especially at the higher (but not quite highest) difficulty levels. More importantly, because one will (or, has to) devote time towards each job (class > spec) in isolation, there is less of an expectation of transferrable output (be that through gear or skill), so people are more willing to take a good player through a fight for which their job underperforms slightly if that job at least also has some advantage later in the same raid. Similarly, people are typically less likely to discourage a difficult build that underperforms while learning so long as it's understood that there is potential payoff later along, as long as they're in some way benefiting from that future payoff (your improving sources players to their PuG pool later along / you're in the same guild or community / etc.). Because the parts aren't so immediately and easily exchangeable, there's a bit more lenience and a bit more of a long view.

In XIV, on the other hand, the parts are extremely exchangeable... as are the fights. With so little diversity in encounters' needs, there's little for jobs to uniquely offer. It's no surprise then that preferred job picks boil down basically just to whatever produces the most throughput over the given fight's length and that those throughputs so often follow what would be done on a striking dummy over that same time, nor that XIV players tend to avoid/bar jobs over far smaller percentage differences than is done on WoW.

I'd love to have a degree of customization... but I'd love also to have a game that could actually allow for it, and XIV isn't presently that. It'd have to go through some pretty fundamental shifts first, especially if even thinking about anything cross-/inter-role.

Now, could we possibly replace the bloated and lackluster Materia system with something more akin to a legendary effect or FF7R Materia? Sure. Though, there's a good chance that too will boil down to choice only on paper, not in practice. And I'd hate to see menu-play (swapping, by hand or by macro, materia for different types of content) become obligatory.

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A brief continuation: My hope is that XIV will eventually lean into that interchangeability by reducing the grind needed for omnileveling and omnigearing and use that to come to an expectation that, yes, some fights will have different(ly) advantaged jobs, and that that's okay because anyone will have at least a couple of those leveled already. The goal of course will still be rough parity across a given fight and across a given tier, but the fact that one can swap about should provide just enough lenience for significant experimentation in fight design. That walks a fine line, though, as we want people to be able to play what they want, even while jobs become unique enough that, say, a {Green Mage} might feel a bit expected for {Thornmarch Unreal} or a {Paladin} might have unique ways to cheese certain other fights.

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Originally Posted by Valmaxian

I feel this too...Being able to stack DoTs broke up the Holy spam, and SCH DoT potential was just glorious. I wish they would give us those abilities back and let us play the game the way we want to, or implement a talent tree system that would allow players to choose between Heal/DPS/Support builds. Let us have some control over our gameplay experience.

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I see the topic of skill/talent trees brought up once in a while, but I feel like that topic is kinda like saying "This chair is broken. What if it as a table instead?" Which is to say, while looking at a problem, your solution is not to fix the problem, but to just change the entire thing to something that's different. There's nothing wrong with FFXIV's approach to having linear toolkits on each of its jobs. That's not a negative quality, it's just being done in a way that is causing jobs to become flat and repetitive. That's a crime on the part of the job design, not the structure as a whole. Moreover, having skill/talent trees is not a fix and has countless ways that that can feel just as problematic if done poorly.

FFXIV is on a warpath for accessibility. At one point, this wasn't a bad thing either, but we've gone passed the threshold of "all jobs have nuance and varying amounts of subtle complexity, but are ultimately forgiving," to "every job needs to perform at near optimal levels regardless of how skilled the user is, and every change we make will push each job toward that end goal." Unless that job is BLM of course. This is stifling gameplay for many of the midcore and upward players in order to obtain a benefit to a casual audience that won't really appreciate those changes. Because so long as the job isn't punishingly difficult or has some aspect of clunkiness that isn't fun to play with (AST), a casual audience doesn't care if mashing buttons is getting them closer to DPS optimization. They don't care about avoiding GCD clipping or keeping their GCD rolling. They don't care about buff alignment. They don't care about proper action order. They just want to do their best and enjoy the game.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I see the topic of skill/talent trees brought up once in a while, but I feel like that topic is kinda like saying "This chair is broken. What if it as a table instead?" Which is to say, while looking at a problem, your solution is not to fix the problem, but to just change the entire thing to something that's different. There's nothing wrong with FFXIV's approach to having linear toolkits on each of its jobs. That's not a negative quality, it's just being done in a way that is causing jobs to become flat and repetitive. That's a crime on the part of the job design, not the structure as a whole. Moreover, having skill/talent trees is not a fix and has countless ways that that can feel just as problematic if done poorly.

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IMHO specs used to exist until the homoginezation went nuts

Tanks had the more defensive role/spec (PLD) the offensive role (War) and the magic role (DRK)
Healers had the basic healer (WHM), the complex healer (SCH), and the support role (AST)
Selfish dps vs support dps etc etc etch.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

IMHO specs used to exist until the homoginezation went nuts

Tanks had the more defensive role/spec (PLD) the offensive role (War) and the magic role (DRK)
Healers had the basic healer (WHM), the complex healer (SCH), and the support role (AST)
Selfish dps vs support dps etc etc etch.

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This was something I said before as well--your "tree" is the ability to switch jobs whenever you want. AST and SCH can be looked at as two different "specs" of healer. It's just peculiar that, in a game where you can play any job you want, that there's an apparent hatred for nuance between different jobs within the same role when, if anything, FFXIV's job system creates the absolute healthiest environment for job nuance. Having situations where one job clearly has an advantage in one fight, but a different job has an advantage in another, I think, is really cool as long as the unique advantages of specific jobs are able to see fights where they are preferenced in a fairly balanced manner. AST having a clear advantage over other healers in P3S, for example, is perfectly fine and cool if the other healers (mainly WHM) could also have fights where their unique qualities also shine. As long as those mechanics are still quite doable with all other healer comps, it not only allows some jobs to feel really good in some fights, but also empowers players who have job knowledge of multiple jobs within their role.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This was something I said before as well--your "tree" is the ability to switch jobs whenever you want. AST and SCH can be looked at as two different "specs" of healer. It's just peculiar that, in a game where you can play any job you want, that there's an apparent hatred for nuance between different jobs within the same role when, if anything, FFXIV's job system creates the absolute healthiest environment for job nuance. Having situations where one job clearly has an advantage in one fight, but a different job has an advantage in another, I think, is really cool as long as the unique advantages of specific jobs are able to see fights where they are preferenced in a fairly balanced manner. AST having a clear advantage over other healers in P3S, for example, is perfectly fine and cool if the other healers (mainly WHM) could also have fights where their unique qualities also shine. As long as those mechanics are still quite doable with all other healer comps, it not only allows some jobs to feel really good in some fights, but also empowers players who have job knowledge of multiple jobs within their role.

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It also encourages players to play other jobs within the role and not be stubborn and stick with a single one. Broadening your horizons is generally a good thing IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

It also encourages players to play other jobs within the role and not be stubborn and stick with a single one. Broadening your horizons is generally a good thing IMHO.

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What's funny is that there's a very easy way to create anchoring throughlines in role while allowing jobs to be distinct and to have as much cross-role reach as seems organically reasonable: Just have all primary stats be (differently) relevant --instead of 4 names for "Power"-- and allow anyone to use any type of gear so we're picking between balanced of STR, DEX, INT, and MND instead of just "the only type usable by my job" vs. "the only type usable by my job".

There will still be some actual viability issues, as things like Plate set might always provide enough STR to meet the penalty of their added weight, thus making a Plate-wearing White Mage a bit ridiculous outside of a fortified add-beacon (Medica spam go) and a cloth Warrior a massive waste of cloth's lack of focus-penalty on spellcasting (as it has no spells anyways), but the healer-centric play one learns in playing a traditional MND job will also transfer proportionately to playing a MND-based support-style Monk, etc.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This was something I said before as well--your "tree" is the ability to switch jobs whenever you want. AST and SCH can be looked at as two different "specs" of healer. It's just peculiar that, in a game where you can play any job you want, that there's an apparent hatred for nuance between different jobs within the same role when, if anything, FFXIV's job system creates the absolute healthiest environment for job nuance. Having situations where one job clearly has an advantage in one fight, but a different job has an advantage in another, I think, is really cool as long as the unique advantages of specific jobs are able to see fights where they are preferenced in a fairly balanced manner. AST having a clear advantage over other healers in P3S, for example, is perfectly fine and cool if the other healers (mainly WHM) could also have fights where their unique qualities also shine. As long as those mechanics are still quite doable with all other healer comps, it not only allows some jobs to feel really good in some fights, but also empowers players who have job knowledge of multiple jobs within their role.

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I agree fully with your points. I think the issue arises when some people play only specific classes, and feel excluded from particular content. They start complaining that healer X can do Y while they cannot, so then the devs feel compelled to homogenize everything so people stop complaining about "broken" classes.

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Originally Posted by Succor

I agree fully with your points. I think the issue arises when some people play only specific classes, and feel excluded from particular content. They start complaining that healer X can do Y while they cannot, so then the devs feel compelled to homogenize everything so people stop complaining about "broken" classes.

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Then the solution is not to homogenize things, but to give classes within the same role different things they're 'better' at within the same tier. AST was mad good for Life's Agonies because of Macrocosmos, yes, but on the flip side, WHM was amazing at Fountain of Fire. The issue being, WHM's suitability for FoF was not as obvious, as AST could handle that with Earthly Star, and if you had a SCH, Seraph Consolation/Whispering Dawn after the first tower gave the healing buff was a GG EZ. This tier, SGE/WHM have a good kit to fight the many bleeds, with Lilybell and Panhaima basically being made to counter bleed damage. But AST still has like 4 different regens it can apply, which also work well against bleed damage, and SCH can mitigate the bleed down to more manageable size ticks, so again, not as obvious as 'wow Macrocosmos literally deletes a savage mechanic!!!!!'.

Personally, my (potentially hot take) suggestion would be to knock Lilybell's CD down to 90s, and remove one charge (so it pulses 4 times instead of 5) to compensate. This would give it a 'niche' over Macrocosmos, that of 'availability'. It'd also help WHM with it's struggling OGCD count. Also, Asylum 2 charges (so you can hold one for emergency healing if needed cough UCOB) and Tetra 2 charges thanks

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This was something I said before as well--your "tree" is the ability to switch jobs whenever you want. AST and SCH can be looked at as two different "specs" of healer. It's just peculiar that, in a game where you can play any job you want, that there's an apparent hatred for nuance between different jobs within the same role when, if anything, FFXIV's job system creates the absolute healthiest environment for job nuance. Having situations where one job clearly has an advantage in one fight, but a different job has an advantage in another, I think, is really cool as long as the unique advantages of specific jobs are able to see fights where they are preferenced in a fairly balanced manner. AST having a clear advantage over other healers in P3S, for example, is perfectly fine and cool if the other healers (mainly WHM) could also have fights where their unique qualities also shine. As long as those mechanics are still quite doable with all other healer comps, it not only allows some jobs to feel really good in some fights, but also empowers players who have job knowledge of multiple jobs within their role.

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By Yoshida's own words, there is a significant proportion of "one trick" players in the game. They have no interest in other jobs and your proposal simply feels (and in fact is) an unfair punishment for liking the "wrong" job. Maybe if we had something more than five relevant fights once every 8 months you point would hold more merit. As it stands, waiting more than a year to have that one fight your job might be good at is not fun.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Maybe if we had something more than five relevant fights once every 8 months you point would hold more merit.

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Or if we had more than one style of deliberately crafted content (8-man, in a regularly shaped arena, only ever one by reducing Unit A's HP to zero).

Granted, I'd gladly pay ~a third more to get those things, regardless of job diversity.

The problem is that if there isn't even the faintest ambition for gameplay diversity in the long run, then there's no point in building in diverse mechanics, let alone diverse settings (in encounter genre, form, or features).

In that way, job diversity isn't just an offshoot unlocked by making the game less stale/stagnant, but likely a necessity for making content, too, more varied. The two would probably have to arrive, and be planned for, together.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

By Yoshida's own words, there is a significant proportion of "one trick" players in the game. They have no interest in other jobs and your proposal simply feels (and in fact is) an unfair punishment for liking the "wrong" job. Maybe if we had something more than five relevant fights once every 8 months you point would hold more merit. As it stands, waiting more than a year to have that one fight your job might be good at is not fun.

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There's a difference between 'has an easier time with' (WHM vs AST in Fountain of Fire) and 'only one of the two choices can completely delete the mechanic' (AST vs WHM in Life's Agonies). Ideally we would have more of the former, where any class can pretty effectively handle the mechanic, but some have a tool more suited to it, such as Panhaima and Haima vs the many bleeds this tier. SCH can also complete the fight, but watching my SCH friend's prog as she handles the raidwide bleed in P8S is a far cry from my 'Physis, Kerachole, Panhaima and ignore' as SGE. Granted, this might be because she's not actually finished the prog yet, but SGE's kit seems a lot more equipped to handle 'many, smaller hits' where SCH seems more 'one big massive hit'. So the ideal fight design would be one that mixes up these two, so SGE has moments to shine, and SCH also has moments to shine. Similarly, long stretches of consistent but low damage is good for AST, with it's multiple ways to apply OGCD regens, such as Collective and Celestial Opposition. However, in situations where everyone gets smacked around a lot several times in quick succession, with not much time between for regen effects to tick (so, Inviolate Purgation as example), Lilybell's throughput helps keep the party stable even during the heavy movement.

Of course, this is all theoretical, as we all know that whichever combo of healers brings more potential damage is the one that people will insist is 'good' and the rest are trash and dead and lmao tier

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Originally Posted by Azuri

They have no interest in other jobs and your proposal simply feels (and in fact is) an unfair punishment for liking the "wrong" job.

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As such a player who, essentially, chooses to main a job rather than play them all, I would like to throw a penny or two into the fountain and say that I wouldn't ever view this as punishment; however, I should think that, in lieu of everyone simply having the same tools to surpass a challenge, it would be best to enable each job to have unique tools and allow the player to construct their own way towards success. I won't specifically state whether or not I agree with the methods put forth by ty_taurus, but I will say that, if that's the goal, we're going to have to have moments where one job has it easier than the others simply because their unique abilities have a direct answer to a problem vs other jobs having indirect answers to that same problem.

Really, the actual issue is that we, as healers, currently, have 2 (maybe 3) answers to give for the 2 problems the development team spares for us, regardless of the job chosen. That would be the reason why having a job be "not the very best for a specific situation" should be "not fun" for those that aren't just wanting their job to be bestest-most-greatest job at all times: we need to be able to construct more answers.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

By Yoshida's own words, there is a significant proportion of "one trick" players in the game. They have no interest in other jobs and your proposal simply feels (and in fact is) an unfair punishment for liking the "wrong" job. Maybe if we had something more than five relevant fights once every 8 months you point would hold more merit. As it stands, waiting more than a year to have that one fight your job might be good at is not fun.

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Except my example of P3S was entirely doable by all healer comps including SCH/SGE who has “bad burst healing” apparently. Sure it was harder because you don’t just have a literal undo button, but doing the first tier in PF as a healer, i cleared it as a SGE with plenty of WHMs and SCHs throughout the weeks.

If someone wants to throw a hissy fit because their job is entirely capable of clearing the fight but just isn’t the favored job of that particular encounter, that’s a them problem.