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

[Taika]

Can't edit since I'm posting from my phone, but just wanted to add that I wanted to comment on this issue because I find the rhetoric of "DDs alone are responsible for beating DPS check" very misleading and posing unrealistic expectations when read by people who have no clue about the realities of party DPS in raid fights.

What many people don't seem to understand is, leaving them to DDs alone, without any significant contribution from tanks on healers, really sets the performance standard for DDs to that top 10%ish, while it means healers and tanks are allowed to perform far below average. I would recommend instead that all party members would be asked for at least 50% contribution (in terms of logs numbers).

[NamoNanamo]

Can't edit since I'm posting from my phone, but just wanted to add that I wanted to comment on this issue because I find the rhetoric of "DDs alone are responsible for beating DPS check" very misleading and posing unrealistic expectations when read by people who have no clue about the realities of party DPS in raid fights.

I'm not saying that Healer are forbidden to dps (And never said that). And I do not imply that when I say the DD alone need to do their job without healer help. I'm saying that, even if the healer are doing 0 damage, they can't be blame for failing the DPS check because SE didn't take Our dps for designing the content.

And to be realistic, with two healer, you almost always got one " dps" and another "main heal". But will you blame the "main heal" for not suceed the dps check or the another one for not pulling enough dps ?

This is particularly evident once you hit O3S, beating enrage without healer DPS would need a very tidy run IMHO.

Yep, I agree with you. I'm only speaking about O1/2 S (not hard for healer / dd with easy mechanics). I got some exp post Library phase on O3s and I'll learn the fight before saying anything.
And O4s is "too far" from pugs

Yup, if we follow the developers balancing as our guideline, we're not even supposed to be clearing any OS yet, so that's hardly an argument for anything related to actually playing the content right now. :P

At least, if you could provide some link that "we are not even supposed to be clearing any OS yet", I would be glad.

Tl,dr :
healer are not required to DPS to beat savage.
Yes, you are inefficient if you aren't DPSing.

[Sebazy]

they can't be blame for failing the DPS check because SE didn't take Our dps for designing the content.

Whilst SE claim not to include healer DPS in how they tune DPS checks, they do tend to tune the content to around the midpoint of that tier's gear, do keep this in mind as it's an equally important factor in the 'Yoshida said healer dps isn't required!' argument that always gets conveniently overlooked.

At this stage we are still relatively under geared vs how SE envisioned the content, thus healer DPS becomes a factor. This is particularly evident once you hit O3S, beating enrage without healer DPS would need a very tidy run IMHO.

[Taika]

Whilst SE claim not to include healer DPS in how they tune DPS checks, they do tend to tune the content to around the midpoint of that tier's gear, do keep this in mind as it's an equally important factor in the 'Yoshida said healer dps isn't required!' argument that always gets conveniently overlooked.

Yup, if we follow the developers balancing as our guideline, we're not even supposed to be clearing any OS yet, so that's hardly an argument for anything related to actually playing the content right now. :P

[Rivxkobe]

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.

You just don't understand math or the actual facts, you are just going to continue to blindly believe what you want. This is no longer an opinion, it is now a belief. Because the FACTS and MATH showed that Spear was garbage even in the best of situations. You are one of very few players who found it good. And I am going to go as far as to say you are literally the only person who thought it was ever necessary. Which is silly since getting it at all is based on RNG.

SE changed it because it was no good. You can argue it is because of a focus on DPS but you'd be wrong.

[NocturniaUzuki]

You just don't understand math or the actual facts , you are just going to continue to blindly believe what you want. This is no longer an opinion, it is now a belief. Because the FACTS and MATH showed that Spear was garbage even in the best of situations. You are one of very few players who found it good. And I am going to go as far as to say you are literally the only person who thought it was ever necessary. Which is silly since getting it at all is based on RNG.

SE changed it because it was no good. You can argue it is because of a focus on DPS but you'd be wrong.

If you actually read my thread (especially the other one I wrote, "The Case for the Spear"), I clearly point out how the game does not revolve around algorithms/math. What the math proves is that, in standard, mainstream content that play out as perfect scenarios (where nobody makes any mistakes), Spear is garbage. As you start moving away from perfection, Spear becomes less and less useless. Eventually, you reach a point where it changes from negative to positive. At that point, it starts to become more and more useful. So as a parallel line diagram, it'd look like this:

Mistakes<-----------------------------------|------------------------------------>Perfection
Unconventional<----------------------------|----------------------------------->Mainstream

The divider in the middle can be considered where Spear changes from a negative to a positive.
The more towards the left side of the lines the situation is, the more useful Spear is.
The more towards the right side it is, the less useful Spear is.

Basically, math doesn't account for the situational. NPCs/AI are 100% predictable, so you can figure everything about them out via math. But human beings are inherently inconsistent. Trying to measure the value of a situational skill with math doesn't work, because its value changes in non-quantifiable ways based on an infinite number of possible situations that can occur due to human error.

[NocturniaUzuki]

I'm noticing this is becoming a thread about hard DPS debates that no longer have anything to do with the healer changes. It'd be nice if that discussion happened elsewhere unless it is actually making clear reference to the healer changes.

In other news, I'm not able to comment much these days due to my classes. That probably makes the flamebaiters happy, at least . Sorry if I haven't responded to anyone that was actually having at least a half-decent argument with me though.

[NocturniaUzuki]

I'm under impression that you think that if the healer commits a error, the fault is his. But if the DPS commits an error, that is also healer's. Also, DPS and tanker can play whatever, but the healer must always show a top 1% worth performance.

Isn't this way of thinking that perpetuate that meme, "healers adjust"? Even a WHM can be without a single drop of MP if the DPS eats every possible AOE. And what if that WHM let the tank die because he was trying to keep that DPS alive but was without MP and his CDs were on cooldown because of that? He deserves to have all the blame and be kicked?

That's what pretty much what happens when the party faces a wipe: they brainlessly blame the healer and kick him out. And pretty much this is why most people avoid to play as healer to begin with.

I don't know if somehow my writing is just prone to misunderstandings, or if people just aren't reading carefully enough. Maybe a combination of the two.

If the healer makes a mistake, the fault is the healer's. If someone else makes a mistake, it's their fault for making the mistake, but it's still the healer's job to keep the party alive. Now, if the other players are making so many mistakes that it's impossible or extremely detrimental to the party for the healer to keep trying to fix them, then it may even be the healer's responsibility to the party to let that player die. But I have very rarely run into that situation outside of cases where someone disconnects mid-fight.

It's not just the healer that should play at the top of their game. Everyone should. But everyone makes mistakes, and everyone is at different skill levels. The healer being at the top of their game means that they should be dealing with as many allied mistakes as possible, following the outline I laid out above.

It's the healer's responsibility to manage MP, and that comes into play with decisions as well. However, many healers will sacrifice MP sustain, either direct (Lucid Dreaming, Lightspeed -25%, etc) or indirect (buffing allies, etc), in order to increase their own DPS. As an AST main, and largely the topic of my threads thus far, the Spear came into play here as well. The healer shouldn't be busy throwing out buffs and otherwise increasing DPS if it ultimately will cause allies to die, either because it gimps the healer's MP sustain (no Ewers, no Lucid/CO on reduced cooldowns), or because they don't have cooldowns available when needed.

If the DPS player is dying so much that it will literally be impossible to keep the party alive unless you abandon that player, then abandon them. But that shouldn't be happening until the healer is literally playing full MP sustain (no DPSing, all buffs reserved for self to increase MP regen, using Ethers, etc) and still doesn't have enough MP to keep the party alive.

On AST, I have virtually never encountered that issue. Or didn't, when Spear was still -20% cooldown. If I fished for Spear/Ewer constantly, I could keep my MP up through insane usage rates. On WHM, I haven't done that many heavy healing challenges. In general, I rated AST #1 in MP sustain due to Ewer/Spear fishing (though it did depend a bit on RNG). WHM was #2, and SCH was #3.

[Taika]

At least, if you could provide some link that "we are not even supposed to be clearing any OS yet", I would be glad.

Here:

Yoshida: Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers.

Source: https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...-Event-5-19%29

So when you're saying "fights aren't balanced for healer DPS", remember they're not also balanced to be beaten without it at the item level available to players when they are released, and by Yoshi's own admission this gap has to be filled with healer DPS.

The healer being at the top of their game means that they should be dealing with as many allied mistakes as possible, following the outline I laid out above.

But this play style you're advocating means the healer is playing extremely ineffectively, not using or even throwing away all the resources they have to boost the party DPS (through not boosting their own healing with cooldowns so they can DPS more, and also not doing DPS themselves and not boosting their party members' DPS either, causing the fight to last longer). How much wasted DPS does this play style cause, and how many team members and how many times would the healer have to rescue (in a way that wouldn't be available for the healer if they hadn't been saving their resources / not DPSing) to make up for it in a situation when things would go wrong (when they often won't or at least shouldn't)?

[Sebazy]

Here:

Source: https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...-Event-5-19%29

I really should bookmark that for these sorts of threads, thx beb <3