Dengeki Interview

This happened a few weeks ago and not sure if anyone else found it but here is some more info regarding some of the healers.

https://kamedani.tumblr.com/post/642...geki-interview

There's more on the before this section but this was the one I want post ahead.

Dengeki: On the same topic, will there be any kind of change to fight balance by making pure healers and shield healers?

Yoshi P: Up until Patch 5.3 we heard from a lot of players that healers had a fair amount of downtime on their hands. So, from Patch 5.4, we’ve planned for the more difficult content to put out a lot more damage more often. For speed clears we are planning for it to be harder to do with just pure healers or just shield healers.

We plan on continuing to make content with this idea in mind so content will be easier to clear if you bring one pure healer and one shield healer. Also, as I said at the Announcement Showcase, we are going to be changing the algorithm behind the matching systems like Raid Finder as best we can so it will put both healer types in a group.

Edit: There are other important sections like what they're going to try with high end with making sure you have a "pure" and a "shield" healer together in raid finder and stuff.

It atleast sounds like they're trying to make regen and barrier healing more distinct, which is good. The issue still stands that it's supposedly only for "difficult content" so there will probably not be any changes to healer downtime in 90+% of the content.

I'm dissappointed yoshida didnt get or acknowledge that feedback sooner, we've been saying it for months. Just the top end of content isn't enough, it needs to be all content

its a 3 step plan to address healer downtime. So far 0.5/3 is done.

1. give something more than pressing 2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 during downtime
2. Overall increase to incoming damage in all content
3. Increase frequency of required healing (none of this 2 minutes before a heal rubbish)

---------

from the same interview, the tanks being distinct i fundamentally disagree with. WAR and Drk play pretty much identically and pld isn'tfaar behind either

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Recon1o6

I'm dissappointed yoshida didnt get or acknowledge that feedback sooner, we've been saying it for months.

---

Considering how long it takes for something to get to them, for them to find time to consider it, draft ideas, playtest things, do this enough to come to an informed conclusion, and do all of this without interrupting the work they were in the middle of... I'm not surprised it took months.
Yoshi P isn't the kind of person who would just acknowledge feedback without looking into it, so a lot must have gone on for him to even be able to comment on it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ItMe

Considering how long it takes for something to get to them, for them to find time to consider it, draft ideas, playtest things, do this enough to come to an informed conclusion, and do all of this without interrupting the work they were in the middle of... I'm not surprised it took months.

---

A few months maybe, but let's not pretend that healer complaints haven't been a thing for about a year now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absurdity

A few months maybe, but let's not pretend that healer complaints haven't been a thing for about a year now.

---

Absolutely.
We've heard similar complaints from Healer since Stormblood.
And it seems like SQEX has been playing an awkward and misguided version of whack-a-mole with them.
Heck, the complaints about ShB downtime started before ShB released.
But the notion "this has taken months" is not something to be surprised or upset by. This has taken too many months is, but that's a different conversation.

Positive: YoshiP acknowledges the issue. We are at least out of the Limbo where we don't know if they recognise it as a problem. Great place to start.
Positive: It sounds like the devs, moving forward are going to address it in content balance
Negative: He says for harder content.
Negative: There's no reference to how they are going to address the problem for lower level
My Hope: They throw in more stuff to break the monotony in other content instead of upping the healer requirement to keep it approachable, of course, in addition to the above.
My expectation: They only adjust it for higher content and not only does it mean we don't get anything to break up the monotony but the distinction between "shield" and "pure" healer is moot and only applies to higher difficult content. Meaning 95% of content remains dull for experienced healers.

So... No real changes, just stay the course.

I'm so glad they used an entire expansion of silence and contemplation to come to this revolutionary decision.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MintnHoney

So... No real changes, just stay the course.

I'm so glad they used an entire expansion of silence and contemplation to come to this revolutionary decision.

---

This.
5.4 was definitely not noteworthy. And we all know there's a limit to how much more healing they'll ask of us in savage content. So all in all we haven't moved much other than them finally communicating on healers.

I just hope they don't use this "extra healing" as an excuse to keep the dps rotation / downtime gameplay non-existent.

I really doubt that, this is what players ask

Actually healers wants rotation for damage, to be good at topping whole party with hp and output nice numbers for logs/damage

I see big disconnection between players and devs

from HW to SB to SHB is more and more dumbing down jobs

"Yoshi P: Up until Patch 5.3 we heard from a lot of players that healers had a fair amount of downtime on their hands. So, from Patch 5.4, we’ve planned for the more difficult content to put out a lot more damage more often. For speed clears we are planning for it to be harder to do with just pure healers or just shield healers."

Seems like a case of 'hearing from a lot of players' but 'not actually understanding the issue'. Yes healers have a fair amount of downtime - in almost any kind of content, even more so in lower level and 'easy' content. Changing it for 'hardcore' content going forwards will not fix the issue, its a band-aid at most that ignores the main bulk of the game where it actually matters.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chyro

"Yoshi P: Up until Patch 5.3 we heard from a lot of players that healers had a fair amount of downtime on their hands. So, from Patch 5.4, we’ve planned for the more difficult content to put out a lot more damage more often. For speed clears we are planning for it to be harder to do with just pure healers or just shield healers."

Seems like a case of 'hearing from a lot of players' but 'not actually understanding the issue'. Yes healers have a fair amount of downtime - in almost any kind of content, even more so in lower level and 'easy' content. Changing it for 'hardcore' content going forwards will not fix the issue, its a band-aid at most that ignores the main bulk of the game where it actually matters.

---

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite. And since its smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two they make it so healers have less dps spells and lots of downtime, but since the more casual side is more unlikely to do the harder content they make the harder content hit harder and such.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rymi64

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite. And since its smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two they make it so healers have less dps spells and lots of downtime, but since the more casual side is more unlikely to do the harder content they make the harder content hit harder and such.

---

Except it isn't quite that simple. Even players who aren't interested in Savage are complaining because they're bored. Likewise, the higher skilled players don't necessarily want to be green DPS, they play that way because they literally have nothing else to do. What most healers who at least have some understanding of how to properly heal want is something else to focus on besides spamming Glare. Even if you play extremely safe, your Glare/Malefic/Broil casts will vastly outnumber anything else you do. People are bored of spamming a single button upwards of 90% of the time.

If healers were given a myriad of buffs and debuffs, you wouldn't hear many complaints from the green DPS crowd despite it taking away from their damage numbers. Why? Because they actually have something to do now. They're asking for a damage rotation primarily because it's the only thing they think SE will actually do since higher healing requirements aren't likely to happen.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

If healers were given a myriad of buffs and debuffs, you wouldn't hear many complaints from the green DPS crowd despite it taking away from their damage numbers. Why? Because they actually have something to do now. They're asking for a damage rotation primarily because it's the only thing they think SE will actually do since higher healing requirements aren't likely to happen.

---

Even regularly needing to cast Esuna on random party members would likely make them happier (would likely also make Bards happier as well).

Quote:

---

So, from Patch 5.4, we’ve planned for the more difficult content to put out a lot more damage more often.

---

While it's great they're finally addressing feedback, keep in mind the result of the above statement was simply to have Cycles and the occasional need of a GCD heal in e11s and a few raidwides in e12s that require a shield. E9s and e10s are very easy to heal. Emerald EX was being solo healed week one. Normal is as light on healing as ever outside of the messiest runs and recent dungeons can almost be ran without a healer.
E12s is the only encounter in the entire patch to come close to their intended goal and you still have a fair bit of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. But it's a good start. However, in exchange, the healing required for everything below e11 has decreased. I don't see why players aren't allowed to be engaged while healing unless they're playing the final boss of the Savage tier.

The problem is the same as its always been. Yoshi is not a healer main. The class design team are not healer mains. They don't have a dedicated heal designer so even if they hear our feedback they're running on theory and impressions alone. What they feel is "a lot of damage" is nothing to someone who actually mains healer.

In short, increased/more frequent damage should be applied to more content and the 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, during downtime still needs to be addressed.

Also the shield/regen divide is just a joke and going down the wrong track entirely. It's very likely to end badly. All they're doing is reducing healer toolkit and splitting it between the healers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rymi64

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite.

---

I imagine another portion of the playerbase think they want the opposite. But if damage taken was ramped up significantly and healing done reduced so that a healer always needed to be healing to keep the party alive, they'd fall to pieces. Most of those players have no idea how their toolkit works or care to learn and we'd be swamped with complaints of how impossible the game has become.

What most actually want is healing to be as easy as it is now, but no one to expect them to contribute in other ways, so they can spam their one aoe heal with 30% uptime, clear content and be praised without requiring effort.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rymi64

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite. And since its smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two they make it so healers have less dps spells and lots of downtime, but since the more casual side is more unlikely to do the harder content they make the harder content hit harder and such.

---

Let me add that it's not necessarily smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two. MMOs have a long history of that going wrong.
It can definitely be a good thing but it's all about where you draw the line.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

E12s is the only encounter in the entire patch to come close to their intended goal and you still have a fair bit of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. But it's a good start.

---

The catch is that they have a hard limit to how much damage output they can realistically add. They'll never take it up to ultimate levels and ultimates are still a lot of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. So yeah, like you say. The problem is that they're running on theory.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

The catch is that they have a hard limit to how much damage output they can realistically add. They'll never take it up to ultimate levels and ultimates are still a lot of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. So yeah, like you say. The problem is that they're running on theory.

---

But that "hard limit" currently in place is arbitrary.
How high the healing requirement can be isn't just defined by a % of GCDs spent on healing vs dpsing; fights with a more lenient dps check or lower amount of healer mechanics can have a higher healing requirement. Saying that because in ultimate you spent x% of your GCDs on healing and anything else cannot go beyond that isn't really a good argument on their part. You definitely can without making it equally or more difficult than ultimate itselt.
Right now we have a lot of downtime between having to heal and playing mechanics. There is a lot of wiggle room for higher healing requirement without raising the difficulty to unrealistic levels. That goes for casual content aswell; only few mechanics exist and all of them are forgiving.

But with how many Sylphe-style healers go about healing when things get messy, it's perhaps for the best that they don't raise the healing requirement. I'm starting to think that that ship has long sailed with the frequent healer changes that make healing itself easier and easier. It's hard to go back to old difficulties once people got comfortable with the current state of things.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I imagine another portion of the playerbase think they want the opposite. But if damage taken was ramped up significantly and healing done reduced so that a healer always needed to be healing to keep the party alive, they'd fall to pieces. Most of those players have no idea how their toolkit works or care to learn and we'd be swamped with complaints of how impossible the game has become.

What most actually want is healing to be as easy as it is now, but no one to expect them to contribute in other ways, so they can spam their one aoe heal with 30% uptime, clear content and be praised without requiring effort.

---

I can attest to this. Way back in Heavensward, I decided to play a little game to "test" these "pure healers". If I didn't see Cleric Stance turned on within 25 seconds of the boss being pulled, I let them solo heal. Exceptions were made for new players, and I would try to save a run if we'd otherwise wipe. Emphasis on try.

It was staggering to see how utterly clueless so many supposedly pure healers were. I'll never forget an A12N where the WHM ran out of MP because they spammed Medica II and prioritized raising over healing the DPS for Prey. We wiped to adds despite me having to come in a heal because I simply couldn't make up for their mistakes. The hilarity is they had Accuracy melds yet never once touched Cleric. Naturally, they blamed me. "Cassandra doesn't want to help in her PvP gear." Funny enough, the tank was a WHM main and balked at the idea they could run out of MP that fast.

Another gem is a Dun Scaith run where the WHM used Medica II some 70 times (we wiped to the... third boss twice, I think?).

Yes, people are better nowadays. But it really highlights how a good chunk of "pure healers" have very little idea how to actually heal and are carried by either their co-healer or the fact we now have practically bottomless MP.