Healer Changes Straw Poll from Reddit

Are you happy with the healer changes: https://www.strawpoll.me/18074634/r

Boards of any sort are never necessarily representative of a player base, but that poll looks like a plausible representation. A slight majority unhappy with the homogenization/simplification/heal-focus, and a sizable minority either happy with the heal-focus or okay with whatever happens as long as they get new content.

How can i vote if I haven't play the changes?

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Originally Posted by Alathon

Boards of any sort are never necessarily representative of a player base, but that poll looks like a plausible representation. A slight majority unhappy with the homogenization/simplification/heal-focus, and a sizable minority either happy with the heal-focus or okay with whatever happens as long as they get new content.

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I expected that result. There are three opposing camps regarding a healer's role in a party.

Those who want to contribute to a group's overall damage by weaving offensive spells between their heals, those who feel a healer's role is only to heal, and a minority who wish to contribute by casting buffs/debuffs and healing with a minimum of personal dps.

My personal belief is the last one. Healer's should support the party.

A party already has their damage dealers and tanks. Tanks need to do damage along with their enmity spells to keep threat.

Damage dealers should focus on own dps and the party's while watching their own enmity.

Healer's are the glue and support of the party. They keep the whole effort working so it succeeds.

Instances should not be balanced around the maximum damage a healer can do along with the rest of a party. Healer's aren't a green damage dealer.

Let tanks and damage dealers have their own roles and let healers have their own. That's my opinion and I'm stepping off my soapbox.

So, how was your day? /chuckle

Agreed.

I'd love to see one of the healers pushed down the route of spending their spare GCDs augmenting and buffing. Whilst it'd be tough to balance (Which is likely why it's not been done), it'd at least give an option for those that don't want to be expected to sit there throwing rocks for the majority of an encounter.

Both Dancer and RDM were kind of a wasted opportunity on this front really =(

And @OP

Yeah the poll results make sense really. The healer changes aren't calamitously bad. It's more that they are highly underwhelming from the angle of high level play. For a casual player a lot of the stuff is actually pretty good. WHM will be a cakewalk to heal with and SCH should be more approachable as well. AST has a few deeper issues IMHO but if nothing else, it's card mechanics and cooldowns are a lot more streamlined now. The new Sleeve Draw is a massive improvement.

This isn't a repeat of AST in 3.0 or SCH in 4.0 thankfully. It's just.... Meeeh =(

Speaking as a new player who fell in love with AST and WHM, I'm a little wary of them messing with my cards, but I do like that I'm getting Holy magic spells for DPS on my WHM. Fight light with light!

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Tanks need to do damage along with their enmity spells to keep threat.

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Honestly no they don't. As a PLD you can keep aggro doing nothing but flash if you wanted. Damage is completely optional.

And if they wanted to SE could jack up emnity rates or have abilities that dealt enmity instead of damage.

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Originally Posted by Truen

Are you happy with the healer changes: https://www.strawpoll.me/18074634

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The important takeaway is that with 900+ participants, the poll is more than enough to have statistical validity. Of course a bit of background would help determine the standard deviation but it clearly shows a majority of players aren't happy with the healer changes as proposed.

SE should take that feedback to heart.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

I expected that result. There are three opposing camps regarding a healer's role in a party.

Those who want to contribute to a group's overall damage by weaving offensive spells between their heals, those who feel a healer's role is only to heal, and a minority who wish to contribute by casting buffs/debuffs and healing with a minimum of personal dps.

My personal belief is the last one. Healer's should support the party.

A party already has their damage dealers and tanks. Tanks need to do damage along with their enmity spells to keep threat.

Damage dealers should focus on own dps and the party's while watching their own enmity.

Healer's are the glue and support of the party. They keep the whole effort working so it succeeds.

Instances should not be balanced around the maximum damage a healer can do along with the rest of a party.

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Here's my issue with the healer changes... (not necessarily your statement, but I want to build off it)

The line I've bolded has literally never been the case for Final Fantasy XIV. The team has stated several times that healer DPS has never been and probably never will be taken into consideration. We live in a sytem where healer DPS is 100% optional. The reason healers can DPS in the first place is because all instances must have downtime between waves of damage received by the party. This isn't designed for Healers to go on the offensive, but to allow room for error. When a healer doesn't perform optimally, or gets overwhelmed for whatever reason (DPS not dodging AoEs, the Healer is new to the trial, etc.) they require moments to breathe and catch up. If we didn't have those break periods, raid content would be ruthlessly punishing on healers, threatening to end a raid at the smallest misstep.

Not every healer or group is going to fall behind though. Many skilled healers will be able to keep up with what's going on. This naturally turns those break periods into moments where you have nothing to do because you're all caught up. You don't have to DPS at this point, as the game certainly doesn't require that you do, but the fact is that you can if you want to. Again, it's been entirely optional.

Neutering Healer DPS doesn't actually make it easier for the healers that don't want to participate because that DPS has never been expected of them in the first place. All it does is punish those of us who do want to be able to participate in DPS, i.e. those of us who want to do more than what's expected of us--to do more than the bare minimum. It's not fair to dumb it down to a bland and boring button spam because it doesn't help anyone. For someone like you who doesn't want to DPS, not having DPS tools doesn't help you, and having DPS tools doesn't hurt you. What matters is how content is designed.

Healer DPS shouldn't be this brain-meltingly boring spamming of a single spell. It shouldn't be a full on DPS rotation either. It should be a small and simple, yet engaging system that rewards players who want to do everything they possibly can at any given moment. Stormblood Scholar's DPS set I think was a pretty good example: You manage a couple DoTs, Shadowflare, and Energy Drain along with your Broil casts, + Ruin II for weaving through abilities. It's not Mudras. It's not building up Greased Lighting. It's a simple handful of tools that have enough intricacy to make your break periods more engaging should you chose to DPS.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Agreed.

I'd love to see one of the healers pushed down the route of spending their spare GCDs augmenting and buffing. Whilst it'd be tough to balance (Which is likely why it's not been done), it'd at least give an option for those that don't want to be expected to sit there throwing rocks for the majority of an encounter.

Both Dancer and RDM were kind of a wasted opportunity on this front really =(

And @OP

Yeah the poll results make sense really. The healer changes aren't calamitously bad. It's more that they are highly underwhelming from the angle of high level play. For a casual player a lot of the stuff is actually pretty good. WHM will be a cakewalk to heal with and SCH should be more approachable as well. AST has a few deeper issues IMHO but if nothing else, it's card mechanics and cooldowns are a lot more streamlined now. The new Sleeve Draw is a massive improvement.

This isn't a repeat of AST in 3.0 or SCH in 4.0 thankfully. It's just.... Meeeh =(

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As a new player, it was the combination of combat and healing that attracted me to the healer classes, the fact that they were not just whack-a-mole healbots, but combatants who had to balance their time between healing and damage-dealing. I started WHM but AST and SCH really grew on me. It seems like, in return for a vocal minority of players getting more of what they want, the style of play that I want is being back-burnered, perhaps even slated for removal. And that style of play is one that a whole lot of current healers have said (here and on reddit) they want to keep.

Setting us aside in favor of pleasing a minority of "pure healer" afficionados, and speculation that extremely simplistic class design will attract new players (when they do the opposite on DPS...........) sucks.

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Originally Posted by Myrhn

How can i vote if I haven't play the changes?

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By looking at them and using your brain to think, that's how.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

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I can only agree here.
If some Healers don't want to DPS or can't DPS because they are new or w/e reason, but if other Healers want to DPS in the downtime and even in the FFXIV Lore of the Healers DPS is mentioned there, why should they deal damage without fun? Why should they suffer and get something boring? Even if it is designed for new Healers or for Healers who can not multitask that good, why punish the others who can?

And why do they even cut the Support style from AST if they already cut the DPS skills? How come job designers do such things to Healers but a DNC job comes which is pretty Hybrid? That makes no sense to me.

Also I am a bit confused about the Poll because I think OP you should have had mentioned the changes in this thread because it could be that some people vote "yes" without even knowing what is going on or w/e. Though the Poll shows that more people are unhappy and SE should consider this.
I hope SE is doing something and talking to the Healer playerbase atleast once. Maybe the designers with the ideas.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Honestly no they don't. As a PLD you can keep aggro doing nothing but flash if you wanted. Damage is completely optional.

And if they wanted to SE could jack up enmity rates or have abilities that dealt enmity instead of damage.

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One of my alts is a paladin and I don't agree with you. Flash is a part of a paladin's rotation, not it's only tool.

The combo, Fast Blade/Savage Blade/Rage of Halone must be used continuously to hold threat.

Meanwhile, Flash and Shield Lob are used for the initial threat during a pull and for other situations, such as ranged mobs and melee mobs needing to keep their attention on the tank. There are also other abilities a paladin used for enmity which are off the global cooldown.

With the exception of Flash, all of these spells do damage and damage causes enmity. It's just that tank abilities tend to add additional threat in addition to the spell's damage.

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Here's my issue with the healer changes... (not necessarily your statement, but I want to build off it)

The line I've bolded has literally never been the case for Final Fantasy XIV. The team has stated several times that healer DPS has never been and probably never will be taken into consideration. We live in a sytem where healer DPS is 100% optional. The reason healers can DPS in the first place is because all instances must have downtime between waves of damage received by the party. This isn't designed for Healers to go on the offensive, but to allow room for error. When a healer doesn't perform optimally, or gets overwhelmed for whatever reason (DPS not dodging AoEs, the Healer is new to the trial, etc.) they require moments to breathe and catch up. If we didn't have those break periods, raid content would be ruthlessly punishing on healers, threatening to end a raid at the smallest misstep.

Not every healer or group is going to fall behind though. Many skilled healers will be able to keep up with what's going on. This naturally turns those break periods into moments where you have nothing to do because you're all caught up. You don't have to DPS at this point, as the game certainly doesn't require that you do, but the fact is that you can if you want to. Again, it's been entirely optional.

Neutering Healer DPS doesn't actually make it easier for the healers that don't want to participate because that DPS has never been expected of them in the first place. All it does is punish those of us who do want to be able to participate in DPS, i.e. those of us who want to do more than what's expected of us--to do more than the bare minimum. It's not fair to dumb it down to a bland and boring button spam because it doesn't help anyone. For someone like you who doesn't want to DPS, not having DPS tools doesn't help you, and having DPS tools doesn't hurt you. What matters is how content is designed.

Healer DPS shouldn't be this brain-meltingly boring spamming of a single spell. It shouldn't be a full on DPS rotation either. It should be a small and simple, yet engaging system that rewards players who want to do everything they possibly can at any given moment. Stormblood Scholar's DPS set I think was a pretty good example: You manage a couple DoTs, Shadowflare, and Energy Drain along with your Broil casts, + Ruin II for weaving through abilities. It's not Mudras. It's not building up Greased Lighting. It's a simple handful of tools that have enough intricacy to make your break periods more engaging should you chose to DPS.

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I did say mine was a minority view. :D

I feel the different philosophies about what a healer's role is will insure there will always be a group which is dissatisfied.

However, I do think S.E. will come up with something which will appeal to the majority of healers. ((Maybe a compromise between my opinion and yours. We aren't so different in our views. ))

After all, their company will lose money if most healers leave the game and players can't form parties to take on instances and raids. It happened to Blizzard with their Cataclysm expansion and S.E. is certainly aware of Blizzard's mistakes.

...That wasn't Deceptus' point. The point was that "healers shouldn't be doing much damage" is a concept that could easily apply equally to tanks given enough buffs to enmity modifiers. Except tanks get to do a bunch of damage, and healers shouldn't. Because reasons.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

...That wasn't Deceptus' point. The point was that "healers shouldn't be doing much damage" is a concept that could easily apply equally to tanks given enough buffs to enmity modifiers. Except tanks get to do a bunch of damage, and healers shouldn't. Because reasons.

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This person gets it.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

This person gets it.

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Indeed he does. Sure wish the dev team did and they weren't forcing this <censored> onto us.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

...That wasn't Deceptus' point. The point was that "healers shouldn't be doing much damage" is a concept that could easily apply equally to tanks given enough buffs to enmity modifiers. Except tanks get to do a bunch of damage, and healers shouldn't. Because reasons.

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Ah. I agree.

Sorry Deceptus. I misunderstood.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

I did say mine was a minority view. :D

I feel the different philosophies about what a healer's role is will insure there will always be a group which is dissatisfied.

However, I do think S.E. will come up with something which will appeal to the majority of healers. ((Maybe a compromise between my opinion and yours. We aren't so different in our views. ))

After all, their company will lose money if most healers leave the game and players can't form parties to take on instances and raids. It happened to Blizzard with their Cataclysm expansion and S.E. is certainly aware of Blizzard's mistakes.

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I think the major aspect to the compromise between Healers who DPS and Healers who don't already exists: Healer DPS is 100% optional.

Not DPSing shouldn't be seen as hurting your team's chances of clearing content, because if your team needs you to DPS as a healer to clear, there's something wrong with your DPS players.

Choosing to DPS should be looked at as a bonus--something the strong healers can do to speed up a fight and hopefully mitigate the chance of failure.

We could totally have a slightly more sophisticated DPS 'rotation' in the setup we have and all it would do would be make healing more fun for the Healers who want to DPS while at least making solo leveling more fun for the Healers that don't.

And about the groups being dissatisfied thing... I don't really understand why the no-DPS healers feel like they have any reason to be dissatisfied to begin with. Like I said, the game isn't designed so that you have to. You don't want to DPS? Don't! It's as simple as that.

Is someone giving you a hard time? Well, screw them and find a new party who isn't going to kick and scream about how you're playing the game. Unless you perform at 100% at every waking moment, you will always find someone who feels the need to tell you that you're not doing enough. Most of us aren't 100% all the time players. This game isn't designed for that rigid challenge level, even in Savage content.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

The important takeaway is that with 900+ participants, the poll is more than enough to have statistical validity. Of course a bit of background would help determine the standard deviation but it clearly shows a majority of players aren't happy with the healer changes as proposed.

SE should take that feedback to heart.

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It's not really representative though; The vast majority of the playerbase does not frequent the forums or reddit. Furthermore the people who are upset at the healer changes are a lot more likely to seek council from people who share their opinions, meaning that any poll you put out is going to have a natural bias to it to begin with. Very rarely is a poll unbiased, and you should always consider bias factors when analyzing data.

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Originally Posted by Warkupo

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Pretty much this. Unless it's an official poll were every single player gets involved then you really should take polls you find through 3rd party mediums (Reddit, Discord etc) with a grain of salt as it does not show a true representation, with bias playing a big role. Content/happy players have less reason to complain and even then it would get drowned out by those on the other side of the spectrum so SE will be cautious when trying to establish which group is actually the "majority".

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Originally Posted by Warkupo

It's not really representative though; The vast majority of the playerbase does not frequent the forums or reddit. Furthermore the people who are upset at the healer changes are a lot more likely to seek council from people who share their opinions, meaning that any poll you put out is going to have a natural bias to it to begin with. Very rarely is a poll unbiased, and you should always consider bias factors when analyzing data.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Pretty much this. Unless it's an official poll were every single player gets involved then you really should take polls you find through 3rd party mediums (Reddit, Discord etc) with a grain of salt as it does not show a true representation, with bias playing a big role. Content/happy players have less reason to complain and even then it would get drowned out by those on the other side of the spectrum so SE will be cautious when trying to establish which group is actually the "majority".

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That's not how polls work. You try to avoid selection bias by trying to get as many people as you can from a wide variety of sources. You take the data that people give you. You can't just say, I don't agree with the result, lets discredit those who participated.

That's why I said with the number hitting 900+ respondents (now 1000+), it was statistically valid. At 1026, it would have 95% confidence interval at +-3 % deviation which any pollster would LOVE to have.

I am not happy with the change of AST, but I also agree the poll are not very meaningful. The the poll population is relatively small compare to our sub player base. The poll is simply yes or no, anyone can vote not just those who have get at least one heal to 70, and lacking proper way to stop repreat voting.
And since someone mention brexit. This is exactly the issue, I am unhappy about AST change because how all the card turn into dps boost, other might be upset about their dps skill for dump down.
All this poll show is just some ppl in the forum are not happy healer change. The why and what is not address in the poll, we don’t even know how many voter have a healer

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Originally Posted by Misutoraru

I am not happy with the change of AST, but I also agree the poll are not very meaningful.

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On a statistical basis, you're wrong. With the number of responses, it's statistically valid.

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Originally Posted by Misutoraru

and lacking proper way to stop repreat voting.

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It's IP restricted so you can't re-vote from the same devices on the same network.

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Originally Posted by Misutoraru

The poll is simply yes or no, anyone can vote not just those who have get at least one heal to 70,

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Many polls don't make you qualify yourself specifically. Would it have been better if they said, "Are you a current healer, have you healed in the past, or do you ever plan to heal in the future" Absolutely, but it's not necessary. The response would have likely been in the high 90's or even 100% because most people who respond to that poll would be healers.

Just like most who respond to a tank poll would be tanks.

I'm still finding it amusing they made the healer npcs in Trusts DPS in their downtime endlessly, if that doesn't say what the devs think truly IDEK.

I would have loved to see Gravity spam by Urianger :)

Honestly this could be full of non healer mains. Not really worth much without more info.

I'm not a healer main, but I have played healers in casual content as well as EX and Savage.

So I'd argue that I'm "qualified enough":p

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Agreed.

I'd love to see one of the healers pushed down the route of spending their spare GCDs augmenting and buffing. Whilst it'd be tough to balance (Which is likely why it's not been done), it'd at least give an option for those that don't want to be expected to sit there throwing rocks for the majority of an encounter.

Both Dancer and RDM were kind of a wasted opportunity on this front really =(

And @OP

Yeah the poll results make sense really. The healer changes aren't calamitously bad. It's more that they are highly underwhelming from the angle of high level play. For a casual player a lot of the stuff is actually pretty good. WHM will be a cakewalk to heal with and SCH should be more approachable as well. AST has a few deeper issues IMHO but if nothing else, it's card mechanics and cooldowns are a lot more streamlined now. The new Sleeve Draw is a massive improvement.

This isn't a repeat of AST in 3.0 or SCH in 4.0 thankfully. It's just.... Meeeh =(

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I do wonder though if the law of diminishing returns will apply. If damage doesn't end up scaling up enough to require said healing, I foresee it being a much louder talking point this time around because of how much emphasise they kept putting on supposedly healing. We needs only look at the initial excitement people had when they thought the DPS might die. While you'll see have those stubborn people who refuse to DPS no matter what, I really think we'll reach a point where Healer in Need becomes the de facto for roulettes.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

On a statistical basis, you're wrong. With the number of responses, it's statistically valid.

It's IP restricted so you can't re-vote from the same devices on the same network.

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People can use a VPN and actually vote multiple times.

As to the poll.

I would say that a 2 option poll (yes/no) is really poor to judge the topic on.

The question could be interpreted differently by different players.

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Originally Posted by Comfort

People can use a VPN and actually vote multiple times.

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I highly doubt many would actually go through the trouble to manipulate it that much. I'm sure people might now that you bring it up though.

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Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

By looking at them and using your brain to think, that's how.

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Fur looks weird until you know how it feels. Did ARR teach you nothing? Feel. Think.

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Originally Posted by Gula

Fur looks weird until you know how it feels. Did ARR teach you nothing? Feel. Think.

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I don't have to play it to be able to tell that WHM will pretty much play the same as now, with almost no of it's flaws addressed. I don't have to play it to be able to tell you that taking existing skills (Cure II, Medica), tweaking them up a bit, and then giving them back in addition to the ones we had since the beginning is horribly lazy; as is taking a skill away (Largesse, Protect, Stoneskin, etc.) just to give it back at a higher level. You really see nothing wrong with that? Are you blind?

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

On a statistical basis, you're wrong. With the number of responses, it's statistically valid.

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according to census, we have roughly 660k active character with 1,044 votes, it is not even close to 1% of the population

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Many polls don't make you qualify yourself specifically. Would it have been better if they said, "Are you a current healer, have you healed in the past, or do you ever plan to heal in the future" Absolutely, but it's not necessary. The response would have likely been in the high 90's or even 100% because most people who respond to that poll would be healers.
Just like most who respond to a tank poll would be tanks.

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a parametric test would be way more powerful, and it will also answer the issue of why and what, that have not been able to address with just "Yes and No"
Like I mention earlier, ppl can be happy or unhappy about healer change with all sort of reasons, and a simple "Yes and No" poll would have very limit information to use a feedback

if OP modify his poll to include more information like which healer role they main, or even state the reason they are unhappy or happy about the change, it would be more informative

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Originally Posted by Misutoraru

according to census, we have roughly 660k active character with 1,044 votes, it is not even close to 1% of the population

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And we have 330 million people in the US and 1000 polled respondents is a good metric of almost any topic. Polls are samples. Nothing more. They're supposed to be representative of the whole.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

And we have 330 million people in the US and 1000 polled respondents is a good metric of almost any topic. Polls are samples. Nothing more. They're supposed to be representative of the whole.

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A professionally conducted poll will carefully consider what populations they randomly select from. 1000 people living in Portland metro are going to think different than 1000 people in the rural southeast. Polls try to select at random, since that's the only way they actually approximate a population accurately. The issue with this poll is that the population engaging with it is highly unlikely to be random and the answers to the question posed are too broad imo. It also has no way to weight the population for sampling biases.

As much as I am dissatisfied with the healer changes, I have to agree with the other side here: this poll is poorly constructed (blind yes/no), poorly controlled (possibility of duplicate votes, onus is on those polled to find poll, weighting sample is impossible), and pulls from a population (people who have enough investment in the game and issue to participate in a poll on English language fan forums) that is arguably not representative of the playerbase as a whole. I mean, most casually created internet polls given to the public at large are, so I don't mean to imply anything against its creator.

It's a quick way to gauge opinions in the broadest strokes possible, it's not meaningless, but I'd never call it valid or statistically significant and therefore wouldn't use it as a tool in debate.

A better poll would likely call random active players, and would be more involved with the questions asked. Of course, I doubt anyone is going to actually DO that.

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Originally Posted by Jollyy5

I'm not a healer main, but I have played healers in casual content as well as EX and Savage.

So I'd argue that I'm "qualified enough":p

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I don't know if that's in response to me but yeah it's not a matter of being qualified or not. Even if you're not qualified at all and never played healer your opinion can still be valuable. It's just that it doesn't say anything if you just bunch up all players from all backgrounds into one vaguely formulated poll. Aka: We can't tell anything from this poll.

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Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

A better poll would likely call random active players, and would be more involved with the questions asked. Of course, I doubt anyone is going to actually DO that.

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True but you have to work with the data you have.