Mogtalk interview with yoshi p

[KaldeaSahaline]

Thank god!
Nothing feels more frustrating than a healing design like WoW, where you spend your majority casting weak ass heals that barely manage to move the HP bar. >.<

From my healing main friend:

"Nothing feels more frustrating than a healing design like FF14, where you spend your majority casting DPS spells that barely do anything >.<."

Just sayin...

You guys really don;t sit down and actually think what stuff like this may mean in practice. It's easy to say "healing potency is too much" but you need to sit down and actually post some kind of rough model people can agree or disagree with; not just say something needs to happen and not define a plan.

I've done it, countless times for this and many other MMOs. I envision:

A model where incoming damage and healer potency is lower, but comes much quicker and in more various forms to create a steady MP drain (i.e. FINITE resource, currently it is near infinite). You'd have more frequent damage to tanks, less predictable damage (i.e. on who and when) to throw wrenches in triage. To compensate for this healer toolkits would have spells that handle different functions with differing utility/efficiency tied to it. I.e. faster cast heals with higher MP drain for emergency healing, heals with more range, less cost, but maybe slower speed or less power, etc.

The idea would be that as damage ramps up (be it from mechanics, failed mechanics, avoidable damage, unavoidable damage, etc.) healer decisions would be less binary and more dynamic. Ideally, I'd like to see some defensive utility added to non-healer jobs to supplement this paradigm. This also allows vuln stacks to be more impactful, as well as other mechanics that impact party stability. This means that a healer can't easily delete mistakes, but allows mistakes to be more dynamic and less pass/fail.

like one particular mode of mmo playing is the "builder." A healer would do a small, low potency cure to build resources to spend on higher potency cures or attacks. Essentially instead of hitting the aetherflow button, you need to cast a 2k potency physick for maybe 30 sec to a minute to proc your stacks, then you have your spike cures or burst cures for upcoming attacks. But building modes of play are kind of sedate and slow, really.

Except, you gave one mere example, and it's an awfully slow and boring one. You can have a builder/spender style of gameplay that happens in a much more rapid pace as well offering choices in spenders and builders to add to the gameplay form.

Then go play WoW, because trying to make that happen here would break the game.

Don't be so petty and dismissive...

You are asking for a nerf to every healing class, forcing them to spend a lot more effort to do their basic job-healing, with no benefit. I mean literally no benefit to them; reducing one hits isn't going to help any if my healing now needs a pretty strict rotation, and a slower wipe is a wipe just the same.

Yes, I am asking healers to heal, so they aren't mistakenly called green DPS. While YOU personally may not see a benefit, there is a benefit to making healing more engaging with actual choice and consequences. There is a benefit to de-homogenizing some of the current healing jobs and carving out more defined playstyles.

I don't know where you got this concept of "strict healing rotation". I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, and isn't something anyone is advocating for as best I can tell.

I mean, ffs, the game works fine as is. The only issue with healing potency is in pvp. People need to stop suggesting changes that would break the game for no real defined goal.

Just because something is fine, doesn't mean it's good. It doesn't mean it can't be better, or shouldn't be improved.

The defined goal would be to switch healers away from a paradigm where they cast boring one dimensional DPS spells 80% of the time to one where dynamic healing decisions and consequences are available.

But to be perfectly frank: I prefer the concept of strong heals and quickly moving health bars over the concept of slowly regging people back up after a hit. I' rather have more ups and downs in rapid succession than one big hit and spending the next 20 seconds trying to recoup.

There is no right or wrong here, these are 2 different design philosophies.

I mean, we can still have powerful heals if we want (though I don't), but we'd still need to change other things to shift away from a DPS-centric paradigm. As Riyah mentioned, less access to powerful heals (a la builder/spender concept), or perhaps a drive away from efficiency (i.e. powerful heals have drawbacks, be it range, MP cost, cast time, etc.), etc.

Naah lets face it: in this MMO and in pretty much any I have played: it's always the healer that is burdened by "content difficulty" because if sth. goes wrong, we are the only ones that might be able to compensate for it.

Not entirely true, but I will concede that most often this is accurate. In high Mythic+ early keys, we found that a lot of difficulty was around coordinating CC, interrupts, DPS cooldowns, as well as rotating defensive cooldowns on every party member to bypass mitigation checks. In situations where healing was simply a matter of kill or be killed, we would try and do things to make it easier for the healer to do what they needed too (because if they had to move for a mechanic it could end up killing someone while they turret healed) I.e. running stacks to the healer, using BoP on them to give them time to focus on others or bypass a mechanic, etc.

One thing I've been advocating quite a bit for is shifting that responsibility off the healers and onto the whole party. Making tanks more responsible for their well being and threat, DPS have actual challenges/hurdles other than a 12 minute enrage timer, and healers having to actually triage the party.

More to the point though, the AI in the game is not smart enough actually see the healer casting something and try to interrupt it.

One of the things I am looking forward to is trying out the new Island Expedition AI in BfA. They have the ability to line of sight casters, stun the front line and go for healers/ranged, as well as interrupt, etc. They've even claimed that their original iteration was simply too hard and they had to tone it down. Really curious how it pans out, as if it's any good, I'd LOVE to see it make its way into the already phenomenal Mythic+ system.

Try running content minimum item level, and see how healing and damage received will go.

I have and it's still trivial. It's why in nearly every single MMO DPS always get geared first, because defense is almost always secondary to offense because by nature the game has to give you enough defense to be able to survive.

[Granyala]

The defined goal would be to switch healers away from a paradigm where they cast boring one dimensional DPS spells 80% of the time to one where dynamic healing decisions and consequences are available.

less access to powerful heals (a la builder/spender concept)

I absolutely agree that we should not be casting a 2-3 button DPS "rotation" for pitiful contributions of 1/3rd of a red class 80% of the time.

Fill downtime with Risk-attached DPS? Sure that is fun. I always like the fact that a healer basically performs 2 roles in FF XIV and I do not want that to change.

A builder / spender kind of thing is exactly what I do NOT want though. This made the holy priest class in WoW so annoying and frustrating for me. I don't want to cast near meaningless crap as "filler heals". As I already stated: that is by no means more interesting than casting braindead DPS spells.

I still maintain that healers are largely fine and that it is the content itself that is tuned way to lax (savage excluded).

[KisaiTenshi]

I still maintain that healers are largely fine and that it is the content itself that is tuned way to lax (savage excluded).

As stated, the only way that fixes anything, makes gear irrelevant. Essentially you'd be asking for all dungeons be tuned to the minimum ilevel, regardless of gear. Thus all content becomes "savage" tier.

No I think the solution has to be "give the healers more to do" and not be "give the healer stupid combos". You do not want RNG (even hoping for a crit is stupid) to be the factor that determines if you save or wipe the party. Hence the original proc's for lilies was stupid as well. If "more to do" comes in the shape of healing idiot NPC's or casting debuff removals, that does make more work for the healer, but that's not something that can retroactively be applied to content.

[Granyala]

As stated, the only way that fixes anything, makes gear irrelevant. Essentially you'd be asking for all dungeons be tuned to the minimum ilevel, regardless of gear. Thus all content becomes "savage" tier.

It does not have to be "ermagaawd savage" all the time. I know the tiny skilled (and usually quite vocal) minority would like that but that would render the game inaccessible to the rest of the playerbase. There is more than black and white here and I think SE could beef up the dungeons w/o needing to trow savage like instagibs, reaction times and enrages at people.

I am not asking for savage dungeons, I am asking for new content not to be tuned so low that it feels like outdated content the moment it is released because I happen to walk around in the casual tome gear.

3. Hard content...look, I do trial roulette for fun sometimes. It's pretty easy. but a lot of times, I come into one in progress at the 16 min mark because people abandoned after one or two wipes. Sometimes I switch to tank because otherwise its getting vote abandoned.

I cannot get why people want the content we all do to be harder. I mean, you all know how much of a pita it is to pug savage or ex content...you really want that to be spread down to lower ranks?

I think trials are mostly fine as is.
I thought we were talking about 4man content. That has indeed become braindead easy, where I can ignore many a mechanic even when the dungeon is brand new. Imho, that is wrong. When the dungeon is new it should be a bit meaner and over time, as people get the new tome gear, it gets easier.

As for 80% DPSing: I have been in S5 - S7 yesterday, and frankly, I am at a loss as to how people manage to do 2K DPS in there. I was so busy trying to keep everyone alive that I barely managed to squeeze in around 800ish.

Yeah sure, the ELITE can DPS like crazy b/c everyone has the content on farm and knows exactly what they are doing. But if you enter in there with a normal group that still struggles with mechanics, any healer is plenty busy saving butts and not busy throwing stones. If they leave that content as is and castrate the healers, savage will feel like a nightmare.

[Tridus]

It does not have to be "ermagaawd savage" all the time. I know the tiny skilled (and usually quite vocal) minority would like that but that would render the game inaccessible to the rest of the playerbase. There is more than black and white here and I think SE could beef up the dungeons w/o needing to trow savage like instagibs, reaction times and enrages at people.

I am not asking for savage dungeons, I am asking for new content not to be tuned so low that it feels like outdated content the moment it is released because I happen to walk around in the casual tome gear.

I think trials are mostly fine as is.
I thought we were talking about 4man content. That has indeed become braindead easy, where I can ignore many a mechanic even when the dungeon is brand new. Imho, that is wrong. When the dungeon is new it should be a bit meaner and over time, as people get the new tome gear, it gets easier.

Yeah, people seem to think there's nothing in the middle of "Eos can heal this" and "only the top 1% can clear it."

Experts are a joke right now. If you single pull them for some reason, you literally don't need a healer. Why do you think the wall to wall pull style exists? Because that's what we're really capable of. It's kinda sad when Auran Vale is the hardest dungeon in the game to this day. (Although based on how many people wipe in Keeper of the Lake, that could also be a contender.)

As for 80% DPSing: I have been in S5 - S7 yesterday, and frankly, I am at a loss as to how people manage to do 2K DPS in there. I was so busy trying to keep everyone alive that I barely managed to squeeze in around 800ish.

Yeah sure, the ELITE can DPS like crazy b/c everyone has the content on farm and knows exactly what they are doing. But if you enter in there with a normal group that still struggles with mechanics, any healer is plenty busy saving butts and not busy throwing stones. If they leave that content as is and castrate the healers, savage will feel like a nightmare.

I can do 2k on WHM in there, and I'm hardly elite. Can't quite on SCH, but still over 1500 reliably. It's really about not overhealing. On something like the single Ultima Upsurges in the first half of o8n, I can use Whispering Dawn to heal it. If I just let that tick, it requires no GCD healing at all, and I'm 100% DPS uptime. Not being willing to wait for the HoTs to do their job leads to using more GCD healing and lowering DPS. WHM can let Medica II do its thing although the initial cast requires a GCD.

That is group dependent. A group that is constantly taking avoidable damage isn't going to let you do that, and you'll have to top them up and shield them or they'll keep dying. Healer DPS is extremely group dependent because if you have to do enough healing to need GCD heals, you're trading between DPS and HPS. 7 tends to be bad for this because people eat missles or stand in the airborne cannon fire or get the paralyze DoT or all kinds of other stuff that you just have to deal with. The less of that you get, the better your DPS looks.

You need to factor that in when looking at your DPS and comparing. The goal is to push what DPS you can given the time you have, so don't feel bad if you can't push high numbers in that situation. Your goal is simply to improve your own efficiency. (It's the same for tanks going in there the first time. The goals are to hold the boss, use CDs effectively, and not eat mechanics. DPS is what you worry about after you get those things down.)

[Granyala]

I can do 2k on WHM in there, and I'm hardly elite. Can't quite on SCH, but still over 1500 reliably. It's really about not overhealing. On something like the single Ultima Upsurges in the first half of o8n, I can use Whispering Dawn to heal it. If I just let that tick, it requires no GCD healing at all, and I'm 100% DPS uptime. Not being willing to wait for the HoTs to do their job leads to using more GCD healing and lowering DPS. WHM can let Medica II do its thing although the initial cast requires a GCD.

I was talking about savage, sorry if I was not precise enough.
Esp S6 where both tanks get hit like trucks I do not find that much time to DPS.

As for Sigma normal: not sure, typically I am the one that does the healing and my co healer gets the luxury of DPSing.
To be honest though: I find the FF-XIV community is far more obsessed about DPS than the WoW community. Apparently one does not need ingame parsing addons in order to breed this fixation on DPS at all. :P

[Tridus]

I was talking about savage, sorry if I was not precise enough.
Esp S6 where both tanks get hit like trucks I do not find that much time to DPS.

Oh yeah, that's different.

As for Sigma normal: not sure, typically I am the one that does the healing and my co healer gets the luxury of DPSing.
To be honest though: I find the FF-XIV community is far more obsessed about DPS than the WoW community. Apparently one does not need ingame parsing addons in order to breed this fixation on DPS at all. :P

Out of game parsers are still a thing here, so that helps. It's just that XIV is a more DPS driven game. When I played WoW (vanilla through Cataclysm), fights where as a healer I had nothing to do except DPS for extended periods were the exception. You didn't go into Icecrown Citadel and find that you didn't have enough incoming damage to keep you busy. It just didn't happen outside of a specialty fight like Vaelstraz, which was fun because it was so abormal. On the hard modes at the time, keeping people alive was all you could really do. Mimiron hard is something I remember vividly because of all the damn fire, it was a chaotic mess trying to keep a raid going during that. (And the 800 Dispels when you fought the Horde team in the Colisuem raid...)

Here? I mean, XIV devs tell us they don't expect DPS and then give us o2n, which can be healed by Regen and Eos easily. What do they expect healers to do the rest of the fight if not DPS? Nothing? Healer DPS rises up as a thing because the required level of healing simply isn't that hard to deliver in most of the game (savage being the exception, but since only a minority of players ever do that, the majority won't see those, and even there people still crank out significant quantities of DPS).

The meta is ultimately a response to the game that we have and what people can do in it. If SE really doesn't want healers DPSing, they have the means to do something about it. That they made it easier in Stormblood instead of harder says something about their intentions.