Another Yoshi interview: Healer DPS, Sage, Scholar, etc (MTQ)

https://youtu.be/kAbCjPPS1RQ?t=157

This one's release was delayed a bit from the media embargo, but it offers some more questions and discussions around the current healer topics so I thought people would want to see it. (But spoiler: It's along the same lines as the others).

There is a bit in there where I think "okay, let's wait and see" because YoshiP says that the damage we will be receiving will be a little more intense therefore more healers will be more busy. I guess I could watch the dungeon run people did and observe to see what the incoming damage is like, but I don't want to spoil the dungeon for myself.

As I've been saying since the ShB media tour our current toolkits are better suited for higher intensity healing. But he doesn't give an indicator on how they're doing it or the extent they're doing it. But the fact he's addressing it this way could be a positive. We'll obviously see what that is in practice, because if that's the goal they achieve then downtime is less of an issue, so DPS options are less of an issue. But I am skeptical, because it really matters on how they're trying to achieve this.

But if they do achieve it, then I think it would create a situation where SGE and SCH are more shield dependent because they'll probably spend their other heals more frequently. And it could mean the shield/pure heal divide works.

However, until I see how they have approached this then I will remain skeptical.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

There is a bit in there where I think "okay, let's wait and see" because YoshiP says that the damage we will be receiving will be a little more intense therefore more healers will be more busy. I guess I could watch the dungeon run people did and observe to see what the incoming damage is like, but I don't want to spoil the dungeon for myself.

As I've been saying since the ShB media tour our current toolkits are better suited for higher intensity healing. But he doesn't give an indicator on how they're doing it or the extent they're doing it. But the fact he's addressing it this way could be a positive. We'll obviously see what that is in practice, because if that's the goal they achieve then downtime is less of an issue, so DPS options are less of an issue. But I am skeptical, because it really matters on how they're trying to achieve this.

But if they do achieve it, then I think it would create a situation where SGE and SCH are more shield dependent because they'll probably spend their other heals more frequently. And it could mean the shield/pure heal divide works.

However, until I see how they have approached this then I will remain skeptical.

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That’s the same talk they gave us start shadowbringer. Lvl dungeons gonna be a bit spicy and after that we gonna be resident sleeper again for 99.9 % of the content.

Well in term of raid damage what should really be added is more continuous burst ala E11S DoT aoe or E12S soft enrage AND more damage on tank which are not tank burster.
Raid burster are strong enough, even as low as the first tier and they tend to be split into two categories such as : hard hitting but not deadly (share, spread, mid phase rb) and deadly without mitigation (phase transition)
Usually people tend to go overboard with the phase transition mitigation which makes use of our mitigation tools and just overheal the rest, the issue is that there aren't enough "rest".
They are too spread apart OR just pile one above another wich in both case means that all your heal/mitigation tools are just back or can take care of the whole set, for instance E9S starts with a set of triple RB which at min ilv actually hurts quite decently but because they're all so close together, as long as you keep enough to survive the transition, all your cd will be back before the next set of raid burster which is mid forest (and even their it's not that demanding)
One thing that seems to be lacking imo are small but frequent raid damage and slightly randomize in contrast with the current scripted-to-the-second raid burster.

Additionnaly damage on tank should be ramped up quite significantly to make good use of their new toolkit as well as healers' one.
Currently, boss cast too much and when they cast, they don't attack which in turn makes them take very little damage. Constant AA are actually harder to heal than TB because you need to constantly keep an eye on them. Add a few "tiny tb" which would do about 50-60% of a tank's health without mitigation and you actually end up with significant tank damage that requires close attention.
Taking for instance E5S ramuh, this boss casts so much that you can effectively keep your tank alive just with raid heal/mitigation and a few ogcd there and there. Reason is simple, everytime he casts a mech, he's not attacking, everytime he's doing a raidburster, the tank overally take less damage than 1-2 AA and gets heal from group heal.

Ironically, the one moment Ramuh actually starts wrecking the tank is when he effectively does nothing but spam AA (when you have to dodge ground marker and get thunder aoe on top of you). If you've every progged that one in pf, you should know that's where tank usually get pretty damn low... because of AA.


While it is on another level, I will take UcoB for example (just the healing requirement with the current powercreep from skill/food which makes it easier to heal than first week E11S/E12S)
In P1, Twintania never stop AA except for regular TB and small TB. Most of its other abilities are either "weaved" (like it can shoot fireball at your range AND AA your tank) or have very short cast.
The same goes for a Nael where constant HoT and attention are required to heal the tank from the frequent big and small TB as well as her incensant pocking.

With all the new tools we get, raid damage have to be closer to what's done in lv70 ultimate as well as tank damage to at the very least make all our future toolkit relevant. (i'm not especially refering to very very hard hitting RB like golden bahamut, more like P1 P2)
Anything below that (especially after the first boss) would result in the same "Glare spam" boredom fest. I'm not saying "CureII" spam is better but we have plenty of tools that are already untapped before that situation would get remotely close.


Anyway we'll see, I'm very excited to see how healing will be this time around, slightly disapointed SCH and WHM didn't get a single new dps skill (I don't consider AoE rank2 a new dps skill)
I really tought some sort of new DoT for SCH and a tiny GCD-on-cd burst-like skill for the whm would have been nice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mortex

That’s the same talk they gave us start shadowbringer. Lvl dungeons gonna be a bit spicy and after that we gonna be resident sleeper again for 99.9 % of the content.

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I don't recall the talk from the devs suggesting that. Maybe I missed it during that media tour. But if the case, then yes, more skepticism.

However, I do recall it being my concern that content won't match the healing kit, which turned out to be true and I still have that concern because we don't know how they're trying to deal with it this time.

BUT it does seem YoshiP recognises in that video that the iLevel difference can create a problem here, which it does. It's one thing I've remarked about the ShB levelling dungeons, the first time I was like "I might be actually having fun on SCH" but doing them in good gear and I'm like "I'm so bored". So I hope that is taken into consideration with this stat crunch and I feel if they are going to make a change like YoshiP has said it would be during a stat crunch because if they're going to have to rebalance things anyway, why not better balance things for healers in the process?

That said, I think to address this issue it's not just going to be stats that'll fix it but instead alleviate some of it, but mechanics needs to be considered and it may mean mechanics are better in EW, we don't know and if they follow their track record then 'no'.

But this is the most coherent I've heard YoshiP talk about healer problems, so I'm like that may be a good thing, and this is why it's making me thinking "wait and see" now because to my mind how they do this will make or break whether the healer design works without making people bored as heck.

If it's as you say then yeah, it won't do much.

Note that YoshiP referenced healer design for "5.X and beyond," so the current content is the "more intense" design that keeps healers "more busy" which they are targeting for EW.

But that said we don't want to make the content impossible for players with not as high skill level to clear. Because if we make it too intense, the number of people who can clear the content will be very limited. We don't want to have a situation where somebody is just healing the whole time, like All the time all the time, or like we have to HAVE to manage MP constantly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

There is a bit in there where I think "okay, let's wait and see" because YoshiP says that the damage we will be receiving will be a little more intense therefore more healers will be more busy. I guess I could watch the dungeon run people did and observe to see what the incoming damage is like, but I don't want to spoil the dungeon for myself.

As I've been saying since the ShB media tour our current toolkits are better suited for higher intensity healing. But he doesn't give an indicator on how they're doing it or the extent they're doing it. But the fact he's addressing it this way could be a positive. We'll obviously see what that is in practice, because if that's the goal they achieve then downtime is less of an issue, so DPS options are less of an issue. But I am skeptical, because it really matters on how they're trying to achieve this.

But if they do achieve it, then I think it would create a situation where SGE and SCH are more shield dependent because they'll probably spend their other heals more frequently. And it could mean the shield/pure heal divide works.

However, until I see how they have approached this then I will remain skeptical.

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If fights actually had constant damage to the point finding time to press your damage abilities is challenging i'd be okay with 1 button rotations
They can't have low damage predictable fights and boring rotations though. I hope they actually choose one eventually, because whats the point of new healing abilities if damage stays the same lmao

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

Note that YoshiP referenced healer design for "5.X and beyond," so the current content is the "more intense" design that keeps healers "more busy" which they are targeting for EW.

But that said we don't want to make the content impossible for players with not as high skill level to clear. Because if we make it too intense, the number of people who can clear the content will be very limited. We don't want to have a situation where somebody is just healing the whole time, like All the time all the time, or like we have to HAVE to manage MP constantly.

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Oh no, you are right, I rewatched it, I must have missed the '5.x' (maybe my brain adjusted it to 6.x). Then damn...then it does make me worried if this is what they consider more intense.

Following on from that, it sounds like they're still trying to make it so healers are doing more heals in encounters and says it's what they are trending towards, so it sounds like they acknowledge they're not where they want to be in that regard?

And then highlights that item levels also make this hard, because 4 weeks out, 6 weeks out etc people's hear will be better and this affects heals, which is a point I can say "fair enough" on because I've said in other threads that when I did most of the ShB levelling dungeons first time on SCH that I was actually enjoying it, but our iLevels weren't that great. And how overtuned we are is present across a wide range of content, where previously challenging or semi-challenging stuff is a cakewalk, particularly in old content when we just roll mechanics.

Another example I've remarked before is that whilst Cape Westwind is so much of a cakewalk that it's memeable in roulettes, but after we got our Titan Savage clear we thought it'd be fun/funny to try min iLevel run it and I was focusing a lot more on healing and the heals were more frequent than it was doing Titan Savage (though obviously not as complicated or difficult, because I don't want to suggest the two are comparable).

So I feel there is truth here. The stat squish is a good opportunity to address this I think...I just hope they have, especially as its clear YoshiP is aware of this problem.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

And then highlights that item levels also make this hard, because 4 weeks out, 6 weeks out etc people's hear will be better and this affects heals, which is a point I can say "fair enough" on because I've said in other threads that when I did most of the ShB levelling dungeons first time on SCH that I was actually enjoying it, but our iLevels weren't that great. And how overtuned we are is present across a wide range of content, where previously challenging or semi-challenging stuff is a cakewalk, particularly in old content when we just roll mechanics.

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I don't think this is wrong or anything but I want to point out that this has been something discussed here on the forums for years and years. Yes, part of the problem is that if you stay current on ilvl - not even cutting edge by weekly capping, even somewhat close - you'll be a good 20 or 30 ilvls above the minimum for a new dungeon when it releases.

And then raids are a bit spicier because new gear releases at the same time, but people who raid are especially likely to weekly cap everything, so those ilvls fly by.

And then, ironically, yes, leveling dungeons are relatively spicy (people warn to be cautious of large pulls in Bardam's Mettle to this day) because their ilvl sync keeps things from getting out of hand as much.

So, I mean, it's nice to see Yoshi acknowledge it, but this isn't a new discussion point. Even by half-a-decade standard.

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That said, personally, I don't think they can really address it without doing more of an overhaul than they'd be willing to do. The nature of the design around burst damage and burst healing and the GCD means even if very healing-intense content, like say ultimates, you just can't be healing most of the time. Most of the time meaning most GCDs here. People just wouldn't survive if the model is "Miss a GCD, everyone dies". But if it isn't that, then the metagame is always going to be to use every spare GCD to DPS.

SE did nerf healing strength relative to % of maximum HP restored (which I think is the reference to tuning up healing requirements they made), but the burst model just means it takes an extra GCD or 2 to heal up. Perhaps not even that, with oGCDs.

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Lastly, one bigger problem I have with Yoshi's comments:
Healer DPS is not a case of throwing out a spare GCD of damage here and there. In high end content, healers are expected to meet DPS content. For example, a group might expect a 10k minimum in E12S phase 1, though typically forgiving less with deaths/other issues, but perhaps expecting even 13k+ if things go smoothly. Talking about it like it's just a little bit of DPSing here and there feels a bit out of touch with the game's meta and expectations.

Even in a dungeon, people aren't going to be happy with a healer that does maybe a holy/gravity/art of war or 2. And it's understandable - not doing these things means a high amount of idle time.

It's nice that people are talking about it at all - compared to past media events where healing got little to no coverage - but this particular interview point didn't reflect the reality of healers being "green DPS" hardly at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I don't think this is wrong or anything but I want to point out that this has been something discussed here on the forums for years and years. Yes, part of the problem is that if you stay current on ilvl - not even cutting edge by weekly capping, even somewhat close - you'll be a good 20 or 30 ilvls above the minimum for a new dungeon when it releases.

And then raids are a bit spicier because new gear releases at the same time, but people who raid are especially likely to weekly cap everything, so those ilvls fly by.

And then, ironically, yes, leveling dungeons are relatively spicy (people warn to be cautious of large pulls in Bardam's Mettle to this day) because their ilvl sync keeps things from getting out of hand as much.

So, I mean, it's nice to see Yoshi acknowledge it, but this isn't a new discussion point. Even by half-a-decade standard.

-

That said, personally, I don't think they can really address it without doing more of an overhaul than they'd be willing to do. The nature of the design around burst damage and burst healing and the GCD means even if very healing-intense content, like say ultimates, you just can't be healing most of the time. Most of the time meaning most GCDs here. People just wouldn't survive if the model is "Miss a GCD, everyone dies". But if it isn't that, then the metagame is always going to be to use every spare GCD to DPS.

SE did nerf healing strength relative to % of maximum HP restored (which I think is the reference to tuning up healing requirements they made), but the burst model just means it takes an extra GCD or 2 to heal up. Perhaps not even that, with oGCDs.

-

Lastly, one bigger problem I have with Yoshi's comments:
Healer DPS is not a case of throwing out a spare GCD of damage here and there. In high end content, healers are expected to meet DPS content. For example, a group might expect a 10k minimum in E12S phase 1, though typically forgiving less with deaths/other issues, but perhaps expecting even 13k+ if things go smoothly. Talking about it like it's just a little bit of DPSing here and there feels a bit out of touch with the game's meta and expectations.

Even in a dungeon, people aren't going to be happy with a healer that does maybe a holy/gravity/art of war or 2. And it's understandable - not doing these things means a high amount of idle time.

It's nice that people are talking about it at all - compared to past media events where healing got little to no coverage - but this particular interview point didn't reflect the reality of healers being "green DPS" hardly at all.

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Yeah, everything you've said is spot on. I've seen the iLevel conversation come up on here a few times and even made my own suggestions, though flawed ones at that.

But yeah I think the refreshing point is seeing these points discussed because we're so used to silence on the healer side and it means we know they are in the devs' consideration, whether they alleviate or solve the problem of course remains to be seen, one can hope, but it won't be long before we find out. And I think now we have a clearer idea of what their thoughts are it can help us direct our feedback better.