[Opinion] Why I'm disappointed by most changes to healers.

[NocturniaUzuki]

They're saying it's irrelevant because it's a self-imposed challenge that purposely limits your groups DPS, HPS, and ability at handling mechanics safely. Your struggles in 4-man RM, even if you successfully clear, aren't a valid reason for why Pre-4.05 Spear is better.

With that in mind, your example of the DPS dying due to Ahk Morn doesn't work since it only happens due to your group only being a light party instead of a full party, which is what RN is balanced for.

Should I call nerfs to forced Tank Swap mechanics due to my party not wanting to bring a second tank for the challenge? No, because the instance was made with two tanks in mind.

TL;DR: 4-man RM isn't a valid example since it's a self-imposed challenge, even if it is possible.

Slightly different situation.

Yes, 4-man RM is intentionally limiting outside of the intended design. However, where possible, the game should still be designed to allow that. There was no reason to change Spear to DPS gain except to satisfy DPS-centric players. Now I'm sure you'll say "There was no reason to not change it just to satisfy undersize-centric players." That's true, but also remember that changing it literally makes some undersized content impossible. What increasing DPS does is it speeds up kill times by a minor amount. So the tradeoff of removing content (even if it's derived from player-imposed limitation) isn't worth it.

Also, I'm not following what you're saying about the Tank Swap mechanics. They don't need to change current content to enable undersized runs. In fact, a lot of "forced" tank swaps are actually avoidable anyways. You can just carefully manage aggro then Shirk to a DPS for one tank buster to drop the stacks, then Provoke the boss back. I suppose the difference I'm seeing is between creating a challenge that doesn't currently exist, versus deleting one that already does (and may be quite beloved to some players) in exchange for something that is not similarly enabling, like a DPS increase. If they replaced the old Spear effect with a new one that enabled certain challenge runs in its own way, it wouldn't be quite so bad.

However, well outside of the issue of self-imposed limitations, Spear did still serve a valuable purpose. I found it not just useful, but even necessary to use at certain points when doing 8-man content with parties of mechanically weak players. And for those situations, your argument for irrelevance based on self-imposed limitation holds no weight.

[Gun-Cat]

You sound like someone who has a very elitist attitude to what you percieve to be "correct healing" and who has a rather poor outlook on anyone else. I habe yet to encounter and healer who "derps just around" and doesn't do their best to keep everyone alive. In cases where people die it is a usually a judegement call by the healer, seeing they have to keep someone more important alive in that moment. Cases where people can be kept alive by using cooldowns can be entirely avoided by healing smart and preventive, relying on The Spear to have CDs avaiable sounds like a crutch to me.

Furthermore, if you really wanted to get the best out of the old Spear, you would need to use it on DPS, not yourself. Casting it on a MCH who is about to WF again is indeed a boon for them, seeing that you will speed their whole rotation cycle up by a bit. This, of course, requires the healer to be always aware of where every DPS is in their rotation. Shaving off a few seconds of Essential Dignity hinders the whole groups progress. The only time you'd really want to spear yourself was when you were facing very mana intensive encounters and you want to lower both LD and CO cds.

[Anastacy]

This thread again? And by the same poster?

[Sebazy]

This is simply not true. The sync system, echo (and our ability to remove echo), minIL, and undersizing (including undersized minIL, sync, and unsync) are all there for a reason.

Indeed, I was preaching the benefits of minIL runs to shake off ring rust and prepare for Omega, it's something the FC I'm in uses extensively and it clearly pays off. It's also a great way to go back and experience old primals. The problem is that SE tuned them fairly gently after the initial 3. Titan HM is brutally punishing at min ilvl but the other primals really aren't that bad. If you remember the mechanics it'll take a run or two to adjust to the new healing and dps requirements and then it's a clear np. The main exception to that would be Thordan of course, but for the most part its not until you go back to Coil and/or Savage that MinIL goes from 2 or 3 attempts for a clear to an evenings worth of hard graft to get that win. Your RM 4 man isn't bad, don't get me wrong, but compared to A6S or A8S MinIL it's nothing.

It also sounds like you don't solo heal a lot to be honest. Especially not with a party that takes extra damage. There are tons of situations in which healers need to at least double-cast an AoE heal via Swiftcast, etc.

That's the worst assumption you've made all day, lets see now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5TD...dyZmnXC-pUrwxw - Titan HM tanked by a WHM in 2.0.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLF6...dyZmnXC-pUrwxw - Titan EX solo healed fairly early in 2.1.

I also did weekly sales of SCOB (Effectively undersized before that officially became a thing since the buyer would die in a corner somewhere), solo healed a couple of Gordias turns during progression because my co healer couldn't make it. The reason I don't typically make a song and dance about this, is because I've always paired up with big DPS co healers to feed my healing addiction. I'm not far off solo healing every single weekly lockout thank you very much (and thus why my logs HPS rankings are consistently so high). If we want to go really far back, I had solo scalps going back as far as EQ including the likes of one of PoFear Golems (the one that doesn't DT) and Phara'Dar again, whilst they were still considered valid content aka before Planes of Power.

TLDR, I suspect I solo heal a lot more than you do son

[Vyriah]

I think I get what you're coming at but you're mind set is really wrong.

If DPS or tank screw up and die, it's their fault, period.
I'm not supposed to save that DPS that ran in an AoE or that tank that didn't use any single CD on a tank buster (and died instantly).

But then, that's not mean I won't do it if I can. It means I'm actually doing more than the party slot I'm taking when I do. I'm not at fault for not being able to make up for a mistake and excess damage is a DPS/tank burden, not mine.
They even got most of damage reduction tools now.

What you're talking about is something you can set for yourself, but not for others.

[Fortune_Cookie]

This is principally a response to the original post, not subsequent replies. I hope it does not come across as a personal insult; it really isn't intended as such.

I would encourage OP to consider what compels them to pursue this crusade. Everyone is free to hold their own opinions, however eccentric they may be perceived by others. I do wonder though if there is a path to a better enjoyment of the game by embracing the "dps-centric mindset" (i.e. letting go of their ultra-defensive mindset) to some degree.

We can set our own challenges and attempt feats outside the intended content. None of us, however, can change how the game works at a fundamental level. You need to kill the boss before it kills you. Every ability, whether rotational or situational, is used in service of that goal.

What games need to be genuinely unique and interesting are job mechanics that cannot simply be classed into "viable" and "not viable" for DPS. These are mechanics that are situational and allow the player to have a huge impact if used in creative ways.

That's an artificial distinction. Every ability has an impact on DPS or healing throughput, including situational abilities. You grip a player to allow them to get an extra cast off for more damage or to save yourself the mp of a raise or burst heal. You use immunities (thinking more of WoW here) to bypass mechanics saving movement (=dps) and healer mana/time.

Minimising movement, saving GCDs, skipping mechanics etc are not valuable in themselves. They're useful outcomes because they increase throughput. A raid boss is nothing more than an optimisation problem: minimise time-to-kill. That's not a question of mindset. That's just what it is. Obviously, randomness and human error mean that no fight can be mapped out perfectly so you are forced into a reactive stance some of the time. But the utility value of every action is nevertheless quantifiable in terms of dps or hps (at least in principle).

There may of course be situations where a situational ability can have a much greater impact than a straightforward %-damage or healing buff. They are however fairly rare in FFXIV and old Spear wasn't in that category. As I said in the other thread, I believe OP significantly overestimates the number of situations where Spear actually made a difference.

If a party member dies and you had the cooldowns to save him/her (or could have had them if you hadn't used them for DPS earlier, or had used Spear to reduce their cooldowns), then it's your fault. It's only the party member's fault when you, as a healer, literally cannot save him/her because you had to use your cooldowns to save other people earlier (not to DPS).

As many others have said, this isn't really how encounters work (acknowledging that my experience is WoW-based). You know that certain mechanics will wipe you unless everybody executes them correctly. There is no point in preparing for failure (by holding cooldowns) because that won't save you. You use your cooldowns on the assumption that everybody else manages to stick to the strategy, because if they don't you're toast anyway.

[NocturniaUzuki]

I habe yet to encounter and healer who "derps just around" and doesn't do their best to keep everyone alive. In cases where people die it is a usually a judegement call by the healer, seeing they have to keep someone more important alive in that moment.

When I say "derps around" I'm not just referring to the common usage of healers who stand around not healing at all, trying to DPS instead. I'm also referring to healers who are too busy buffing the party or using cooldowns for DPS, then cause a party wipe because they didn't have the right defensive spells available at the right times. These sorts of healers can even be found at high levels of play. Generally, these healers blame the party for wipes. "That tank though; he just kept eating AoEs and getting vuln stacks. But it's not MY fault! I was still throwing out great DPS cards/speeding up the add phase with Holy spam." But here's the question: why was the healer so busy throwing DPS/offensive buffs out when the tank got wrecked? They could have saved the tank if they'd had, say, a Bole held. Or maybe if they hadn't blown Largesse/PoM earlier to save MP/create DPS uptime. Maybe the healer made the judgment call that the tank wasn't likely to get wrecked, so they focused on offense. But that judgment call ended up being wrong, the healer didn't have the spells available when needed, and the tank died. That is at least as much the healer's fault as the tank's.

Cases where people can be kept alive by using cooldowns can be entirely avoided by healing smart and preventive, relying on The Spear to have CDs avaiable sounds like a crutch to me.

Example 1 (which I gave earlier): DPS is the target of Shinryu's Akh Morn. This will require cooldowns if you want them to survive.
Example 2: Any situation in which the healer is being put under more pressure than most people consider it "intended" to handle.

You seem to be under the impression, like others, that anything that isn't a full 8-man party (or even a full party with a couple critical members down) is somehow an "irrelevant" situation. What happens if the party is taking more damage than you're able to heal without using cooldowns? Even if your party is at 100% topped off at all times with shields, party members can take more damage than you can prepare for, if they make mistakes and get hit by avoidable damage. Or even if it's unavoidable, if you're doing undersized content, etc. If your perspective is only being based on farming parties, then yes, this kind of situation isn't likely to show up very often. And if it does, people will cry "I thought this was a farm party!?" and disband.

Heck though, if the use of cooldowns was entirely avoidable, then they wouldn't be in the game in the first place.

Furthermore, if you really wanted to get the best out of the old Spear, you would need to use it on DPS, not yourself. Shaving off a few seconds of Essential Dignity hinders the whole groups progress. The only time you'd really want to spear yourself was when you were facing very mana intensive encounters and you want to lower both LD and CO cds.

...

So only DPS matters? This is such a classic DPS-centric post.

Here, if you want to think about things from a pure DPS perspective, consider this:

You are going through a fight as an aggressive healer, focused on speeding up the fight as much as you can. You're 8 minutes into a raid that usually lasts 10 minutes, but will only last 9 because of your DPS-centric approach. But then, because your cooldowns weren't up when necessary, the party wipes. How much time have you just lost? How many runs will you need to do to make up that time loss?

If you have to restart due to a wipe at the 8-minute mark, you just caused an 8 minute delay. That's 8 runs worth of the 1-minute clear time reductions you were getting from playing pure offense.

Now, if you're only playing in farm parties 24/7, this isn't so much of an issue. A good farm party doesn't cause enough mistakes to put any real pressure on the healer. But then, the game doesn't revolve around farming end-game content. Maybe it does for you. Maybe it does for the majority of players using the Party Finder these days. But that isn't actually representative of the entire playerbase. Generally, the DPS-first approach is centered around these farming parties, and they claim it's not only way "everyone wants", but also what "is best for the game". That's really only coming from a very vocal part of the playerbase though, that makes up... maybe 25% of the playerbase tops? We'd have to survey the entire playerbase to find out for sure, I suppose.

Perhaps the clearest way to outline the difference of opinions here is this:

"There shouldn't be any stress on the healer, and if there is, it's the fault of players getting hit by avoidable attacks. Any stress on the healer detracts from their ability to contribute to the party's DPS."

DPS-centric players feel this is a reasonable expectation. Players that make mistakes are holding the party back and deserve to be kicked. They should get better before they join public parties.
I do not believe this is a reasonable expectation. Players that make mistakes are only human, and everyone has different skill plateaus. Players with a lower skill plateau shouldn't be disallowed from joining parties if it is within the healer's power to manage the extra load.

[NocturniaUzuki]

That's the worst assumption you've made all day, lets see now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5TD...dyZmnXC-pUrwxw - Titan HM tanked by a WHM in 2.0.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLF6...dyZmnXC-pUrwxw - Titan EX solo healed fairly early in 2.1.

I also did weekly sales of SCOB (Effectively undersized before that officially became a thing since the buyer would die in a corner somewhere), solo healed a couple of Gordias turns during progression because my co healer couldn't make it. The reason I don't typically make a song and dance about this, is because I've always paired up with big DPS co healers to feed my healing addiction. I'm not far off solo healing every single weekly lockout thank you very much (and thus why my logs HPS rankings are consistently so high). If we want to go really far back, I had solo scalps going back as far as EQ including the likes of one of PoFear Golems (the one that doesn't DT) and Phara'Dar again, whilst they were still considered valid content aka before Planes of Power.

TLDR, I suspect I solo heal a lot more than you do son

And that's the worst reading error you've made all day, perhaps.

I said "It sounds like you don't solo heal a lot, to be honest," not "You can't possibly solo heal, or you would know this." One of these examples is claiming that you do not solo heal. The other is merely hypothesizing a reason and isn't claiming anything.

The first example isn't a solo heal, so I watched some of the second. My conclusion is that your party did not make a whole lot of mistakes. Compare that run, for example, to your average synced DF run these days where half the party is new, your co-healer falls off on the first Landslide after the wall breaks, at least 2 DPS eat an avoidable AoE every single time they spawn, the tank doesn't use cooldowns appropriately, nobody stacks to bait AoEs (or to receive Cure IIIs, for that matter), and half the party falls off before 50%. I'm not saying you couldn't do it, or bashing any of your achievements. However, when you claim that Spear and heavy cooldown use are not necessary just to keep the party alive, I don't think you're taking into account just how rough some runs can be. Most people tend to just quit and try to find a better party in these situations. I challenge myself it pull through it. Depending on the competency level of the party and the boss in question, this can easily necessitate heavy cooldown use. Removing Spear is a heavy blow to my ability to actually pull through those kinds of situations as an AST. And all we got in exchange is a minimal buff to clear time when in parties where AST can afford to use offensive spells regularly.

As for the phase pushing, I can agree that it is quite important. However, I don't think anything actually became impossible to complete unless you pushed a phase. It just made the margin for error much smaller. If it was literally impossible unless you pushed a phase, then the boss was poorly designed. For the players who obsess over how everyone has to play flawlessly and getting killed once results in a kick (which are typically the sort of parties aiming for phase pushing), I don't see how missing the phase push actually makes any difference except to clear speed.

[Nowakii]

Tbh you are the one and only AST who keep nsaying that Spear was something worth spread and it was good and life saver and stuff like that, well even if its true for you, im pretty sure right now you already understood that, us, the rest of the AST population, disagree with you... so in fact they changed spear into something the rest of us would actually use, instead of something only you like.... Basically you are mad because you keep saying you were right and everyone else was wrong.

[loreleidiangelo]

Am I really reading a thread where someone is claiming that pre-4.05 garbage Spear is somehow BETTER than the current Spear??? What nega universe have I fallen into? People have been begging for that awful card to get adjustments since practically it came out.