Scholar notes from E3 build - Titania Fight

[MintnHoney]

significantly nerfing every healing ability across the board.

The problem with this, is that you run into the Media Tour scenario that Mr. Happy's AST gameplay recordings portray (but he avoids acknowledging): with this encounter design, you can't keep your party alive, and will quickly run out of MP trying (Lucid Dreaming really isn't that great). Therefore, significantly nerfing healing would require changes to overall encounter design, and since a majority of those changes would lower the requirements of tanking efficacy, and since it would reduce the drama of dealing high damage at the risk of grabbing aggro (and therefore lower the "fun" for DPS, though trivially), we will not be seeing those changes.

For this expansion, changes to the healer role are being made to help bring about a fun experience for the DPS and the Tanks, not the healers.

[DiznypKC]

For this expansion, changes to the healer role are being made to help bring about a fun experience for the DPS and the Tanks, not the healers.

Ouch, I felt this statement in my soul stone.

[zeopower6]

I do hope they at least give us some kind of AoE spread for dots or Energy Drain back... don't really need Shadow Flare as much as those IMO. I wonder if Biolysis naturally being AoE would 'fix' that a bit too since SCH lacks an Earthly/Assize-alike.

[Ilenya]

I do hope they at least give us some kind of AoE spread for dots or Energy Drain back... don't really need Shadow Flare as much as those IMO. I wonder if Biolysis naturally being AoE would 'fix' that a bit too since SCH lacks an Earthly/Assize-alike.

Not likely to give AoE Biolysis, considering they took away Aero III, unfortunately.

[ForteNightshade]

The problem with this, is that you run into the Media Tour scenario that Mr. Happy's AST gameplay recordings portray (but he avoids acknowledging): with this encounter design, you can't keep your party alive, and will quickly run out of MP trying (Lucid Dreaming really isn't that great). Therefore, significantly nerfing healing would require changes to overall encounter design, and since a majority of those changes would lower the requirements of tanking efficacy, and since it would reduce the drama of dealing high damage at the risk of grabbing aggro (and therefore lower the "fun" for DPS, though trivially), we will not be seeing those changes.

For this expansion, changes to the healer role are being made to help bring about a fun experience for the DPS and the Tanks, not the healers.

... what? Mr. Happy's Astro gameplay didn't show off anything except Merri mass pulling a leveling dungeon and exploding. Despite how piss easy SB is, you can still very easily die doing the huge pulls in Shisui or Doma. Nerfing healing might make super wall to wall pulls difficult or downright impossible but it wouldn't make healing itself impossible. You would merely sub in more healing instead of constant Stone/Holy spam. In fact, this is somewhat how ARR worked. Healers didn't have the oGCD options they do now—many of which are hilariously overpowered.

[MintnHoney]

... what?

We're talking about significantly nerfing healing. You're right, in that the one recording I was immediately thinking about was an extreme situation, but it's still relevant to what I'm saying because that's how the game is played and the situation is the natural progression of the current design (as we get more confident, we pull more and add to the challenge). If I'm honest: if he had remembered to use those [hilariously overpowered] oGCDs, then the outcome of that pull would likely have been very different (but I guess, "Job effectiveness is relative to player skill," or however they said it).
Even if we ignore that extreme territory, unless encounter design ultimately changes to work with "signficantly nerfed healing," (to which, I'm taking it to mean we would be trying to reduce healing potencies in proportion to the displayed Collective Unconscious' potency nerf) then gameplay for all the roles would have to slow down and suffer for it under the current design philosophy, not even thinking about how much stress would be placed upon the healer for having a potentially constant uphill battle. It just wouldn't work out as it is right now, and anything that would slow down the gameplay would lower the fun for just about everyone, so they're not going to do it.

[ForteNightshade]

We're talking about significantly nerfing healing. You're right, in that the one recording I was immediately thinking about was an extreme situation, but it's still relevant to what I'm saying because that's how the game is played and the situation is the natural progression of the current design (as we get more confident, we pull more and add to the challenge). If I'm honest: if he had remembered to use those [hilariously overpowered] oGCDs, then the outcome of that pull would likely have been very different (but I guess, "Job effectiveness is relative to player skill," or however they said it).
Even if we ignore that extreme territory, unless encounter design ultimately changes to work with "signficantly nerfed healing," (to which, I'm taking it to mean we would be trying to reduce healing potencies in proportion to the displayed Collective Unconscious' potency nerf) then gameplay for all the roles would have to slow down and suffer for it under the current design philosophy, not even thinking about how much stress would be placed upon the healer for having a potentially constant uphill battle. It just wouldn't work out as it is right now, and anything that would slow down the gameplay would lower the fun for just about everyone, so they're not going to do it.

I suppose it depends what you define as "significant." Some would argue a straight 25% nerf across the board is significant yet very little would change in terms of gameplay design. You could easily go further because is just that strong in this game. Currently, there is no progressively pulling more as we get stronger. Expert dungeons are so comically undertuned, you mass pull day one without a second thought unless you're woefully undergeared. I mean, it got to the point I stopped turning on tank stance and still did wall to wall pulls. The outgoing damage was that pathetic. Going one better I've done Expert dungeons without a healer, period. The fact we can get away with that at any level is absurd but a combination of tank self healing and poor scaling makes it easy.

As for gameplay changes. Some alternations may need to be made but one could argue they improve things. No need for crap like White Hole which exists due to the dev team having no idea how to challenge healers. The notion healers have to be overpowered to make other roles fun is silly. They're overpowered because SE caters towards new or bad players.

[AikenDrum]

Well without changing heal-to-tank-hp ratio the only way we can get a "healers mostly heal" scenario is when tank almost get oneshotted every other gcd, leaving very little room for mistakes/losing focus, so it automatically rules out casual content.

Although, honestly, in few scenarios where i had that (like keeping lower elemental level tank alive in eureka), when I'd cast cure 1 even at 100% hp since it'd never overheal and would leave me some safe room if next gcd gets tank below 30%, everything under 70% is safe cure 2, and you save ogcds for bringing tank up from like 10% - i much preferred it to the usual stuff since i had to constantly react every gcd which kept me engaged in the game rather than phased out during stone spam. And I also felt like a proper healer.

[MintnHoney]

As for gameplay changes. Some alternations may need to be made but one could argue they improve things. No need for crap like White Hole which exists due to the dev team having no idea how to challenge healers. The notion healers have to be overpowered to make other roles fun is silly. They're overpowered because SE caters towards new or bad players.

To be honest, the currently-proposed updates to healing actions, including oGCDs, are not really the changes I have in mind when I say that the Dev team made updates to the healers in order to ensure Tank and DPS fun, but rather the non-healing actions and the pruning we are receiving to them. But that's also just how I feel, and is not necessarily their true intentions.
Alterations to the current system would be necessary for them to promote a true "healers should be spending most of their actions healing" experience. They've been experimenting with a few alterations using various "new" content, like Eureka and the Deep Dungeons, and it's lead to a series of varied successes and experiences.
Let's hope that one of those experiments bares fruit.

[ForteNightshade]

Well without changing heal-to-tank-hp ratio the only way we can get a "healers mostly heal" scenario is when tank almost get oneshotted every other gcd, leaving very little room for mistakes/losing focus, so it automatically rules out casual content.

Although, honestly, in few scenarios where i had that (like keeping lower elemental level tank alive in eureka), when I'd cast cure 1 even at 100% hp since it'd never overheal and would leave me some safe room if next gcd gets tank below 30%, everything under 70% is safe cure 2, and you save ogcds for bringing tank up from like 10% - i much preferred it to the usual stuff since i had to constantly react every gcd which kept me engaged in the game rather than phased out during stone spam. And I also felt like a proper healer.

You wouldn't need near one-shot mechanics on the tanks if bosses did more sustained damage instead of short bursts. For example, WoW plays a war of attrition gameplay while making it not all predictable. A combination of that achieves the same thing without making tanks take 85% of their HP. The only reason Busters can hit so hard now is because healers are far too powerful. That 85% gets healed by a single use of Essential Dignity and you're back to spamming Malefic III.

Eureka actually tips its toes in more healer focused content. Coincidentally, none of it is difficult but keeps you active. From my own experiences, I remember a Kugane Castle run a while back where my friend on BRD was forced to tank Yojimbo after our tank bailed. Healing her was fun because I had to consider my casts since she couldn't take more than a couple autos.