I've written down a question that I can copy and paste into any future Q&A forum thread the next time we get to ask Yoshi P questions. I have no idea if that will ever matter, but as I said in another thread, I'm not going to stop trying to make my feedback heard no matter how hopeless it is.
With that in mind, this question does include examples of changes that could theoretically be made during Dawntrail and I want to make sure these are things you all feel would be appropriate to make healers at least a little more enjoyable throughout this expansion. Let me know if you agree or disagree with any of these suggestions, or if you have other suggestions for your particular healer. Additionally, if you agree with the below question and also want to present it to Yoshi P, you have my permission to copy and paste this into that Q&A. This is, of course, if you don't see my question already posted. The closer this question gets to the first page, the better.
Here's the question:
"Even in Ultimate-level content, healers spend most of our actions casting basic attack spells like Glare and we're frustrated with it. Dawntrail's additional finisher attacks, usable once per 2-minute interval, do not provide enough variety to alleviate this monotony. Our healing kits are full of cheap, powerful heals, which exacerbates the problem. We want our role to be more interesting, not just in Ultimate, but in all content. Can we have more ways to vary our gameplay and reduce the proportion of actions spent casting our basic attack spell? Why not increase how often the other attacks we already have are available? Rather than wait for the next expansion, we can make changes now. Reduce our cooldowns, reduce the duration of damage over time spells, and make the new attacks we received in Dawntrail available outside of the respective buffs they are currently restricted to.
I have some suggestions for ways this could be accomplished for each healer below that I hope can better communicate what we are hoping to see in our healer gameplay.
White Mage: Reduce the cooldown of Presence of Mind to 60 seconds, make Glare IV a separate hotbar action, and allow tics of Dia to proc uses of Glare IV outside of Presence of Mind windows like how Black Mage’s Thundercloud worked; perhaps with a 15% chance per tic. Additionally, you could bring Aero III back at a lower level as a weaker version that can upgrade into Glare IV at level 92 to make this added gameplay element available at an earlier time for White Mage.
Scholar: Bring Miasma back to Scholar as a DoT with a 12 second duration. Rename “Baneful Impaction” to “Miasmolysis” and have Miasma upgrade into it at level 92, getting stronger and becoming an AOE DoT. Add an effect to both DoTs that adds a stack of Impact Imminent to the Scholar. Return Shadowflare as a spell on the GCD that deals high damage and can be used by consuming 3 stacks of Impact Imminent. Scholar can have a max of 5 stacks.
Astrologian: Change Lady of Crowns into a buff that increases the party’s damage dealt by critical hits. Reduce the duration of all Combust spells to 15 seconds. Make Oracle a separate hotbar action on the GCD that has a 1.5 second cast time, a 25 second cooldown, and reduce the potency to 500 for the first enemy and 60% less for other enemies. Add an effect to Gravity spells that inflicts an Omen on the first enemy struck for 10 seconds; when Oracle is cast on an enemy with an Omen, Oracle can be cast again instantly and the Omen is removed. We can also return Stella to Astrologian at an earlier level as a weaker version of Oracle, and upgrade it at level 92.
Sage: Reduce the duration of all Eukrasian Dosis spells to 15 seconds. Reduce the cooldown of all Phlegma spells to 20 seconds. Change Toxikon I and II to oGCD attacks with the same potency as the current version of Dosis. Give Eukrasian Dosis spells and Eukrasian Dyskrasia a 35% chance to generate 1 Addersting when cast. Reduce the cooldown of Psyche to 40 seconds."
My Question for Yoshi P
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06-08-2024, 02:12 AMty_taurusMy Question for Yoshi P
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06-08-2024, 03:00 AMForsakenRoe
As we saw with the infamous question from Recon (the one that got us 'if you want challenge as a healer, try the new ultimate'), the majority of your question would be ignored, and the part that is not ignored, will be partially mistranslated/misunderstood
I think only the first paragraph would get read, and so you have to make that have the most impact. You also left them an 'out' by not mentioning that the issue (spamming 1 button is boring) occurs even in Ultimates, and so he'd be able to just go 'try Ultimates' again -
06-08-2024, 03:24 AMty_taurusI added a line about ultimates and wanting dynamic gameplay outside of ultimates. I tried to write my post in a way that the first paragraph does have the most impact. I don't know if they'd read off the suggestions, so I tried to balance being direct while also being concise in that paragraph.Quote:
Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe
Even if the majority of the question gets ignored, I will repeat the sentiment I shared above: I will not stop talking about these issues. I will not stop giving feedback. No matter how hopeless and fruitless it gets, I will continue to push as much as I can. That's all I can do. -
06-08-2024, 04:39 AMCalysto
I agree ; but I''m mainly going to bet against Roe's idea of how Y-P will avoid the issue : he'll say there will be more damage to keep us busy and that it would be too much stress (you know, the stress he said was missing from the game) <.<
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06-08-2024, 07:53 AMASkellington
My signature has a question that I'd like to ask, but honestly if I got to ask YoshiP face to Discord Face my own question:
"From a healer's perspective it seems as if the dev team doesn't want to engage the role, as they have yet to increase the encounter damage relative to the added healing skills the role gets every expansion as well as refuse to nerf the sustain/mitigation on tanks, rather instead as of Dawntrail have increased them, thereby making healers unneeded in most forms of content; as that seems to be the case, why then do you not delete the role in its entirety?" -
06-08-2024, 09:44 AMty_taurusI get how you feel. As much as I'd love to be more blunt about the topic to emphasize how frustrating it's been, I think it'd get ignored due to perceived rudeness no matter how many upvotes it gets. First, I think there's probably a PR person who sifts through results who probably wouldn't let that slide, but eastern cultures are a lot more intolerant of rudeness.Quote:
Originally Posted by ASkellington
There's a newer game called Wuthering Waves created by a Chinese company that reworked a lot of its story because of a lot of backlash from the Chinese community regarding character rudeness. To give you an example, the basic premise is you have a world where people have basically been at war with these demonish entities called Threnodians that also spawn lesser monsters known as Tacet Discords. Your main character is an amnesiac that, in the very beginning of the game, gets woken up by a couple outriders basically, and you quickly encounter a high ranking Tacet Discord, fight it, and after winning, absorb it into yourself through your hand. In the original beta story, one of the outriders immediately turned her gun on you and demanded answers because, you know, absorbing the power of the threat they've been at war with for centuries is kind of a red flag. But that was seen as too rude and that character was receiving loads of hate. That was just one example as well. So the story was reworked and now everyone basically trusts you with their life, treats you like a hero from day one, and is super buddy-buddy with you because of that backlash.
Now China and Japan are quite different, and I don't believe the Japanese gaming community is that extreme, but there is a cultural similarity in that. I think that's something we gotta take into consideration no matter how frustrating. Blizzard could take it, but I don't think SE will even acknowledge it.
On a separate note, like I said initially, I'm trying to think of ways that we can make what we have here in Dawntrail work at least a little better. But Astro's a strange case because a lot of it comes down on the cards, and I can't imagine we'll see any major changes to this card system during Dawntrail no matter what happens. Personally, I'd advocate for dropping Exaltation and Celestial Intersection because, you know, we really don't need four single target mitigations, but I was more just focusing on DPS things with this. In all seriousness, regardless of what you think is or isn't on the table, what would you do to improve the DPS side of Dawntrail Astro based on the actions we have to work with? How do you feel about that Oracle suggestion? -
06-08-2024, 11:35 AMKes13a
I would be surprised if Yoshi P addresses anything to healers directly. I do not expect this direction to change, give healing abilities to tanks and dps and let healers wither on the vine.
I cant see myself being around for 8.0
yeah, there are many other jobs.. but I prefer healer, and will let a game that has a real healer job have my money if SE refuses to improve the job class at all. someone needs to tell them the classic trinity involves three job classes... and thats NOT a warrior and two dps... -
06-08-2024, 12:45 PMASkellingtonOracle should be an action on the GCD with a recast timer of 20s. It should not be locked behind playing a card, using Astral/Umbral Draw or Divination or anything else.Quote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
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06-08-2024, 01:07 PMty_taurusReally?Quote:
Originally Posted by ASkellington
I don't dislike just having attacks on cooldowns. I'm okay with Phlegma being like that, and I think reducing Phlegma's cooldown to 20 seconds would also be very apt, but I also feel like just having things on cooldowns is kinda boring. That's why I so desperately want Addersting to be something more unique, because I think that can be what makes Sage's DPS more exciting.
With Oracle, I like the thematic concept of having it be a follow up to something. Follow ups aren't a bad thing in my mind, just that having something only be a follow up to a single action, and one on a 2 minute cooldown no less, is so weak and uninspired. But I feel like there's a way that we could make it more dynamic than just a cooldown, and that can still make it used fairly often. I'm just really unsure of how to connect it to anything else Astrologian has. Because for some reason Astrologian has just become a kitchen sink of repetitive heals that do a lot of the same thing.
I mentioned before about my own idea for card effects, where you place a sort of "reverse dance partner" on the enemy, and cards instead offer different ways of proc'ing a special attack that triggers whenever you build enough stacks on this "reverse dance partner." I was also sort of thinking about how maybe Horoscope gets reworked to an effect that marks each party member with a designated card. Let's say you have a Paladin marked with Ewer, a Samurai marked with Spear, a Summoner marked with Arrow, and you're marked with Balance. Well maybe you can draw a specific set of cards, but the goal is to try and match the card you play to the person who's horoscope matches that card, and doing so grants you a use of Oracle. And then you could have tools that do things like maybe Celestial Opposition lets you overwrite everyone's horoscope to match the card you want to play.
Of course, all this is far beyond the scope of things we can do during Dawntrail. I guess, coming back from that tangent, are there not other ways we could make Oracle usage a little more interesting? -
06-08-2024, 01:23 PMASkellingtonYes really. Actually think about how this plays out in solo instances.Quote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
In order for me to use another attack I have to play a card that's only accessible every minute with a buff that doesn't even benefit me because I do the lowest damage of every class in the game. I have 2 casts of Oracle per minute. Do explain how is that fun?
I don't think its fun in the slightest. Put it on 20s until 8.0. -
06-08-2024, 01:36 PMty_taurusA 20 second cooldown is just 3 casts per minute, so sure that's more than 2, but it's not that much better either. I'm just saying are there other things we can investigate first before resorting to a cooldown? That's all. I'm sure there's something far better than what I can think of right now and I'm just wracking my brain on how to make it happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by ASkellington
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06-08-2024, 01:52 PMASkellingtonWith what? Your stipulation is what we have going into 7.0.Quote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
- That means that Oracle would need to be tied to Divination as its going to be on release
- The card system as you mentioned, however which way you want to do it (after every play of a card, after every Draw, after every select play of a card)
- Off of any of the oGCD heals AST already has
- Lightspeed
- Synastry
- Combust
- Fall Malefic
The only acceptable answer of all these is to tie it to a proc off of Combust like Thundercloud and I'd rather give that to WHM.
Decoupling it from Divination and putting it on a 20s recast timer is a quick and easy fix that's easily able to be done in a post patch and it is one I don't mind advocating for.
Coupled with reducing the recast timer of Astral/Umbral draw and it would make DT AST on the same level as Shb. Not good, but not offensive either. -
06-08-2024, 02:09 PMty_taurusLook, I'm not trying to be your enemy. I'm trying to have a conversation about it, because I want to try and make each healer feel more unique with the resources we're given. But whatever, if you don't want to talk about it cordially, I'll just write 20 second cooldown. It's more important to you than it is to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by ASkellington
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06-08-2024, 02:29 PMASkellingtonMy point is you're not going to achieve it with the resources we're given.Quote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
Toxicon is a poor idea simply because we don't use the GCD heals what so ever. If healing was more on the GCD and there were more raidwides/tankbusters for SGE to use E. Diagnosis akin to DRK's TBN (or even if autos hit hard enough) I could see addersing and Toxicon to be good. Unfortunately, its not.
Tying Orcale to the card system and Divination is about the same, but only for solo play. Divination as a solo AST is a waste of a button. Most enemies aren't spongy enough to be worth the duration. The ones that are, are painful and pretty much force you to use it to eak out whatever damage you can to make things go some what faster (think Zenos' fight at the end of 6.0) only for you to barely feel it. And the cards are about the same. Now add in an attack to make things go faster, but only after you use something that feels unrewarding just so you can use it.
And to further add insult to injury Oracle is just a standard attack like Malefic is, but at 600p. It's not a compile or anything fun where we could maybe tie it to something to enhance that, but it is literally a buffed out Phlegma on a 2min CD. There isn't much you can do to make it distinct from the other healers.
You can't give it Delirium/Inner Release where you place Balance/Spear or Divination and give it 3+ consecutive uses because that's WHM's thing
You can't make it proc off of Combust because again WHM (and thematically I like that better on WHM due to the connections with BLM)
Proccing it off of Fall Malefic doesn't make much sense and is too similar to your changes to Addersting generation for my tastes
Therefore the only alternative is to place them on the cards (which you've done) which SUCKS in solo play, is fine in group play, and something I don't want or make it on a 20s CD. And I'm gonna prefer the 20s GCD to make solo play less monotonous.
There's not much else one can do with Oracle as it stands without changing it in some way. -
06-08-2024, 02:47 PMty_taurusI don't disagree that the cards are generally a lot weaker on you than literally anyone else, but would you not still be using your Draws anyway? Because that is how you're going to at least get uses of Lord of Crowns, and while damage cards might not offer that much on AST alone, wouldn't you still use them anyway since they're there and not taking away from your ability to use Malefic?Quote:
Originally Posted by ASkellington
Like I said, this is not where I am most invested. So I'm not going to fight for it, but I would imagine that the 4 offensive cards you get between both draws are still going to be used in solo. That is 2 less casts per minute than a 20 second cooldown, so that's something that can be worked on sure, but it does also offer the benefit of giving you a little more flexibility in when you cast Oracle, which can be nice for movement potentially. I mean there's also adding a second charge to it, so it literally is just Phlegma but on Astro at that point.
Another idea that came to mind is something that I don't think will fly in DT due to how MP continues to be handled. But you could also have Oracle have no cooldown at all, but has a really steep MP cost--let's say it costs 2000 MP. If we did the cards thing where instead of enabling Oracle, it reduces the cost of Oracle by 80%. In that case, while you have 4 Oracles that are safe to use without tearing through MP, you would otherwise have the agency to greed with Oracle casts outside of those 4 uses. And in solo, that could probably be very exploitable since most solo encounters are short. Instance battles would need to be paced more slowly, but you could probably nuke normal enemies down very quickly as an AST in that case. -
06-08-2024, 03:07 PMASkellington
I'mma take this bit by bit if you don't mind
Depends on the solo content. Overland for example, I probably may not. Depends on how tanky the mobs may be. Same with FATEs. Sure I'll cast Lord of Crowns, since its already there, and I'd get a use out of it, but there's no point in using Balance or Spear/Lady on me (which btw, does that stack?) or even casting Umbral Draw except perhaps out of habit. And even then, much like I do now with Astrodyne and did with Divination I'd still feel bad just using my stupid card mechanic in solo so I can have an extra attack to make things go faster. Its not fun and would make me use AST for nothing other than group play.Quote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
Going into the next set of solo instances where we have sponges:
This is correct. I am going to be using Divination and the cards but again its going to be tedious and unfun. Were Oracle to be used after every card or just the 4 you mentioned on release instead of Divination (like that was never in the cards, ha, just what the devs themselves did for release) I'd play it, go through MSQ and then ask why not just make it a Phlegma ability then, because it isn't fun to tie a single use of an attack after playing a card. It'd still be a chip on my shoulder so to speak.Quote:
Like I said, this is not where I am most invested. So I'm not going to fight for it, but I would imagine that the 4 offensive cards you get between both draws are still going to be used in solo. That is 2 less casts per minute than a 20 second cooldown, so that's something that can be worked on sure, but it does also offer the benefit of giving you a little more flexibility in when you cast Oracle, which can be nice for movement potentially. I mean there's also adding a second charge to it, so it literally is just Phlegma but on Astro at that point.
My initial thought is an immediate no. However an idea that did occur is that perhaps Oracle could then be apart of a loop - say it does have this steep cost, 1k-2k mp and the cards (all 8 perhaps) reduces its MP cost by the 80%. Why not also have it, so that if you use Oracle outside of a card proc it can reduce the timer of Astral/Umbral draw per cast thereby allowing an AST to have more card usage (doesn't fully address solo concerns but the thought occured and I figured I share cause why tf not?). Perhaps coupled with a change to Ewer for MP regen this could be a new fun mechanic for AST.Quote:
Another idea that came to mind is something that I don't think will fly in DT due to how MP continues to be handled. But you could also have Oracle have no cooldown at all, but has a really steep MP cost--let's say it costs 2000 MP. If we did the cards thing where instead of enabling Oracle, it reduces the cost of Oracle by 80%. In that case, while you have 4 Oracles that are safe to use without tearing through MP, you would otherwise have the agency to greed with Oracle casts outside of those 4 uses. And in solo, that could probably be very exploitable since most solo encounters are short. Instance battles would need to be paced more slowly, but you could probably nuke normal enemies down very quickly as an AST in that case.
Tangent asside I don't see the harm in allowing Oracle to have an MP cost that's reduced after playing a card (however many), to be used outside of cards. I'm not sure how I feel about there being 0 cooldown with no cast time. Perhaps give it the 1.5s cast and I think it'd be an interesting change. It has ties to the card system without being beholden to it.
...I should add that potency would probably need to be reduced to maybe 400. -
06-09-2024, 06:35 AMvetch"Even in Ultimate-level content, healers spend most of our actions casting basic attack spells like Glare and we're frustrated with it. Dawntrail's additional finisher attacks, usable once per 2-minute interval, do not provide enough variety to alleviate this monotony. [ADD: Our healing kits are full of cheap, powerful heals, which exacerbates the problem.] We want our role to be more interesting, not just in Ultimate, but in all content. Can we have more ways to vary our gameplay and reduce the proportion of actions spent casting our basic attack spell?"Quote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
I'm a professional editor, there you go. All the salient points (plus one I suggest adding), delivered succinctly and without anything to distract Koji and Yoshi.
Remember, this is hypothetically a media tour or Q&A-type question. You won't have a bunch of time to outline all the possible paths they could take and give them examples of changed abilities. -
06-09-2024, 09:12 AMty_taurusThank you, I can update it with this as well. I might still add a piece or two from my post though.Quote:
Originally Posted by vetch
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06-12-2024, 06:05 PMHappyHubrisI mean, the dev team has clearly communicated its design goals for healers across multiple expansions by now, and their game is a runaway success in the MMO space. No question is going to change their minds.Quote:
Originally Posted by ty_taurus
The productive options are to accept that this is what FFXIV healing is or switch jobs/games. -
06-12-2024, 08:46 PMTeno
I saw you commenting on the japanese forums too, but it seems that they indeed like this type of braindead 111 gameplay. It does not bode well...... And it might explain why we've been stuck with this bs design for years... They might very well just not care at all about international players.
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06-12-2024, 08:47 PMTenoNah, precisely because of how good options were before, and how the game is designed. Surely you see it.Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyHubris
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06-13-2024, 09:32 AMRamiee"No king rules forever my son."Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyHubris
Success leads to satisfaction, satisfaction leads to comfort, comfort leads to laziness, laziness leads to stagnation.
Many games have had runaway success then got too comfortable with themselves thinking they're too big to fail and that leads to lack of innovation and eventually falling subs.
If final fantasy for the next 10 years remains in this dull, uninteresting state for midcore players then it'll lose them. Then better games will come out to syphon off the rest.
1.0 thought it wouldn't fail because the final fantasy name was considered successful enough that the developers felt like they didn't even need to learn about MMOs to create a new one and it created the worst launch to an triple A MMO anyone had ever seen.
It took until Endwalker, 10 years afterwards for it too lose this mark. -
06-13-2024, 09:36 AMRamieeThey want more interesting healing mechanics over DPS mechanics it's a cultural difference. But sadly neither side will be happy in the end because XIV was built around healers who damage so pure healing will never be a thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Teno
JP players don't have the same MMOs over there, their culture and their games promote homogenisation and don't like hybrid roles, a healer should heal, a tank should tank and a DPS should DPS. It's in their names, so that's what they must do. It's a very different viewpoint that we in the West moved past on in the late 2000s.