Nerfing Healer Role Through Content

[Littlegreen]

Something I haven't seen discussed a whole lot is how to nerf the healer class as a role. We talk a lot about how to fix each individual healer, but let's just take a second to admit that healers are exceptionally powerful in the current content. Healing is a breeze even in some of the Savage raids and still leaves us room to DPS. Hell, SCH is basically a 5th DPS.

So let's switch gears and talk about nerfing from the angle of the content itself. Yes, bigger numbers hitting the tank would put a slightly larger strain on our Cure button but we can take things a step further.

In dungeons we can add a couple more trash mobs per pull, but what about easily identifiable mobs that have mini-tank busters (like those bees but less extreme and without the self-sacrifice part), or roaming monsters that spawn at a random location in the dungeon to keep the party on their toes? This would add a small variety to our roulettes without amping the difficulty too much but just enough to find those DPS windows harder to find and predict or create.

NM/HM trials could do with needing more work out of the off-healer, especially during add phases. Maybe more hazard spots or DoTs getting thrown out to other party members (the exploding healer mechanic from Ifrit EX comes to mind).

EX/Savage raids need the main healer to REQUIRE focusing on the MT, and this content could do with some more communication between tanks and healers. Tank busters that would OHKO a PLD even with a defensive CD (outside Hollowed Ground), but, say, a WAR could sponge. In this situation, let's say the tank buster would dish out 1k over the PLD health. The healers could top off the PLD and provide a shield the keep him alive and then focus heal him back up or have the WAR Provoke the attack and the PLD takes back aggros while the off healer heals up the WAR and main healer never stops focus healing the tank.

I want to know what you guys think. You can pick apart my examples, I admit I don't know a whole lot outside of WHM and a couple others I'm only now getting into so there are probably holes in thise examples somewhere, but the point is to think of ways to make the content itself nerf the healing role instead of strictly thinking of what traits/actions to remove/add/alter.

[Cyrocco]

The last healcheck that sticks out in my mind is Judgement Nissi, mostly because the other healchecks are raid-wide damage, so I'd like to see more of that going on. But if we're suggesting mechanics, I'd like to see more of the old zombie enemies from older Final Fantasy games, enemies that need to be healed to be killed, while the healers also focus on keeping the party topped off.

[Risvertasashi]

You picked a very odd title for your post.

In any case, I would be for increasing the healing requirements in content. Assuming SB follows the same pattern as HW, we'll get that in leveling content. Then endgame when ilvls start climbing and climbing, well...

Trash mobs having more powerful (unavoidable) cleave moves they use from time to time could help a bit...

[Fernosaur]

Just to make sure I'm not giving you insufficient credit, what's your endgame experience as healer? Have you cleared Savage battles? EX trials? If so, when did you? Did you clear them while they were still relevant and the attainable IL to enter them was close to the minimum? Or did you clear them some time after they were released, by getting better gear and etc.

Don't take this the wrong way, I just want to make sure where you're coming from to understand your points better.

[Risvertasashi]

If so, when did you? Did you clear them while they were still relevant and the attainable IL to enter them was close to the minimum?

I know this was directed at the OP but this still brings up some points I want to mention:

Half the problem is, indeed, being overgeared. Because the content is outdated when it's released. Sure, 11s and 12s have a fair bit of healing to do. But, say, Zurvan ex... that was a joke to soloheal from day 1, unless you get tanks that don't like using CDs on the Wills or something and even then.

And even excluding such content, dungeons at minimum ilvl do take a decent bit of healing. This is why large pulls lead to wipes on the HW leveling dungeons at 55/57+, and why the same thing will probably happen in SB in June. But outside of that... once we're at "endgame" dungeons, they're always going to release 30 or 40 ilvls below what players are at, and yes, that's a big part of why they're so trivial.

That doesn't mean it's not a problem, though.

[Tint]

And even excluding such content, dungeons at minimum ilvl do take a decent bit of healing. This is why large pulls lead to wipes on the HW leveling dungeons at 55/57+, and why the same thing will probably happen in SB in June. But outside of that... once we're at "endgame" dungeons, they're always going to release 30 or 40 ilvls below what players are at, and yes, that's a big part of why they're so trivial.

That doesn't mean it's not a problem, though.

the question is why are they 30 or 40 ilvl below your actual ilvl at release?

1 - they are designed for that ilvl so a new player who has just started the game can jump into the dungeon without getting gear from any weekly lockouts first.

2 - they are designed for that ilvl so a second class of a veteran player can directly jump into the dungeon without getting gear from any weekly lockouts first.

so... why is the "Expert" dungeon designed for new players, who have a lot of "new" dungeons they can choose from from previous patches (at least they are new for them), and second classes? why not for main classes?

you can not only design it for a higher item level, but also make it harder overall, since new players and second classes, both indicators that the player is not as skilled as a veteran player on his mainclass, are excluded from the dungeon.

[Littlegreen]

you can not only design it for a higher item level, but also make it harder overall, since new players and second classes, both indicators that the player is not as skilled as a veteran player on his mainclass, are excluded from the dungeon.

You can definitely make the content harder to heal but accessible to new players, especially once they've gotten to SB. At that point they should be pretty familiar with their class. It doesn't even need to be just throwing in bigger numbers, you can put mini-mechanics in the dungeon itself or give the trash mobs some tricks up their sleeves. The last time I had trouble in a dungeon was Baelsar's Wall after coming off of a 2 week break and was a bit behind gear-wise and even then it was just the very first couple pulls I was having trouble with (but I did appreciate the enemy bards throwing venom/windbite on party members. It wiped each of my parties when pulling both encounters but it's def the kind of stuff I want to see more of). After that it was laughably easy.


For example, there's no reason that in Sohm Al Hard I should go in as SCH and almost never leave Cleric Stance, even at i267. Selene should not be able to keep the party alive by herself, in boss fights especially. At that point it's too little damage.

[Tsilyi]

For example, there's no reason that in Sohm Al Hard I should go in as SCH and almost never leave Cleric Stance, even at i267. Selene should not be able to keep the party alive by herself, in boss fights especially. At that point it's too little damage.

you have to consider the minimum ilvl required for this dungeon, I'm not sure you can realistically say "even at i267" you are 37 points over the required ilvl for the dungeon and (i think) 22 ilvls over the level of the drops. then again, we weren't really having problems at i230 depending on player skill either, did have to heal slightly more though.

also you have interesting ideas for savage raids and such but i think that they would require fair reworks of the tanking classes as the average mitigation considering cooldowns are relatively equal amongst the tanks themselves and it might require a mana regen or mana pool rework for the healers if they have to heal that much. a good idea might be something similar to sophia where the TB applies a debuff that (in theory, less in practice, especially now) should require the tanks to at least swap or become hard or impossible to heal.

[Littlegreen]

Just to make sure I'm not giving you insufficient credit, what's your endgame experience as healer? Have you cleared Savage battles? EX trials? If so, when did you? Did you clear them while they were still relevant and the attainable IL to enter them was close to the minimum? Or did you clear them some time after they were released, by getting better gear and etc.

Don't take this the wrong way, I just want to make sure where you're coming from to understand your points better.

I kinda only just got into raiding recently, so maybe I don't have room to talk in the first place. My experience is clearing A9S a couple weeks ago at i269 and most of my knowledge of other raids comes from my bf talking it through with me while he heals it. The pattern I noticed is that even when the damage gets intense, a lot of it is avoidable so I was thinking along the lines of something unavoidable but, with some coordination before the fight, is easily healed through.

[Fernosaur]

I kinda only just got into raiding recently, so maybe I don't have room to talk in the first place. My experience is clearing A9S a couple weeks ago at i269 and most of my knowledge of other raids comes from my bf talking it through with me while he heals it. The pattern I noticed is that even when the damage gets intense, a lot of it is avoidable so I was thinking along the lines of something unavoidable but, with some coordination before the fight, is easily healed through.

Ah, I see. I figured this might be the case.

As Tasashi said in an earlier post, a lot of the problem that makes healing "easy" at this point in the expansion is the massive power creep that has come with higher IL. It is something that was particularly jarring in 3.X because the IL power creep has been ridiculously fast. Compare tank HP at the end of ARR with tank HP at the end of HW. A WAR could have around 14k HP by the time Final Coil of Bahamut ended. Now, a WAR can reach up to 50k HP. That's three times as much HP in a single expansion.


A really good example of this is the way Thordan EX has become by this point. It used to be the hardest HW primal by a massive margin, but now you can ignore a lot of mechanics and still faceroll through him thanks to the IL increments.

In any case, my point is that the problem is less about the content design in terms of concept, and more in terms of how it interacts with our gear levels. Zurvan is a perfect example of something that was released with outdated damage:gear parameters. However, if you had tried to do raiding content or EX primals at around the minimum IL required to enter, your opinion on healing design in the game would be very very different .

Thankfully, I think the devs are aware of this power creep problem, and I hope to see it more or less fixed by the time Stormblood comes.



Another thing that I have to talk about is that the whole "main/off" mentality that applies to healers and tanks is awfully flawed logic. There's no real reason one healer should have to shoulder more of the healing burden other than what their toolkits allow, and the same goes for tanks. You don't see SCH dpsing 80% of the time because the other healer is basically solo-healing the fight. And if this is the case, then the SCH is not efficient or good. A good SCH will make proper use of Eos and their insta-cast toolkit to keep AoE healing covered, as well as emergency healing from people taking avoidable damage and buffed regens+fairy on the main tank. This allows not only for the SCH to DPS, but also for the other healer to have a massive amount of good DPS windows. Of course, the lower the IL, the less both healers can DPS, but the concept should be the same. A SCH doing their job properly will be doing around 30% more healing than the other healer due to the fairy alone.

In the end, it's pointless if SCH's own DPS is 1800 if the other healer's is just 200 or less. It's much better for the raid if both healers are at around 1300, to give an example. All of this ain't because the content is "easy to solo-heal" and SCH is just sitting there DPSing, but because the job's specialty is creating DPS windows by using the fairy to heal and mitigate. Of course, you won't see this in trial roulettes and Party Finder pts, because it actually requires communication and trust between the two healers, and that ain't something you're expecting from PuGs.

The same thing can be applied to tanks, but I think my post is already long enough, lmao.