Please Make Healing + DPSing More Engaging

[Verlyn]

All these tools were apparently removed/reworked in the name of balance. Unfortunately, the "balance" they strive for so hard by simplifying everything only applies to less than eight fights out of god knows how much content is in this game. As long as all the healers can do the content without struggling too hard, then who cares what people bring. Let them min-max their comps. Let jobs be meta for those eight-ish fights on a patch-by-patch basis (they already are anyway).

I really don't understand this design push for "everything must be close to perfect parity on 2% of the content."

[HyperiusUltima]

All these tools were apparently removed/reworked in the name of balance. Unfortunately, the "balance" they strive for so hard by simplifying everything only applies to less than eight fights out of god knows how much content is in this game. As long as all the healers can do the content without struggling too hard, then who cares what people bring. Let them min-max their comps. Let jobs be meta for those eight-ish fights on a patch-by-patch basis (they already are anyway).

I really don't understand this design push for "everything must be close to perfect parity on 2% of the content."

Savage was made to be difficult content, just like everything before Shadowbringers. The thing is however is that Savage is considered High-end because it asks you to play the job you main to the best of your ability. If you really want a job to be rampant the whole expansion(SB BRD) then you don't touch it. All the playerbase wants is a semblance of balance that's close enough to where people aren't going to whine about it since ever since they changed Healers, people have complained about AST and SCH in particular due to the consolidation for the sake of healer balance.

[Verlyn]

Savage was made to be difficult content, just like everything before Shadowbringers. The thing is however is that Savage is considered High-end because it asks you to play the job you main to the best of your ability. If you really want a job to be rampant the whole expansion(SB BRD) then you don't touch it. All the playerbase wants is a semblance of balance that's close enough to where people aren't going to whine about it since ever since they changed Healers, people have complained about AST and SCH in particular due to the consolidation for the sake of healer balance.

Unfortunately, even homogenizing all of our tools did not bring this coveted balance. Behold, people complaining about double WHM on a single fight.
But one job being better than the others on a fight-by-fight does not mean the others are bad or even that they cannot do those fights. There is a false notion going on that somehow if every healer were in perfect parity, a meta would not form and everything outside of that meta cannot function. I promise you, that is not the case. People will hang onto 1-5% of a numbers difference as somehow The Entire Reason They Are Failing A Fight when the actual reason is probably execution.

This is not a call to throw balance completely out the window ala FFXI. But I'm saying Savage fights do not matter enough, in the grand scheme of this entire game, to rework entire jobs solely around performance in them. We're at a point right now that Savage raid bosses are dictating the design of jobs and roles. I feel that's the wrong way to go about things.

Bring the numbers as close as you can to encourage people to bring the player and not the class, sure. But don't tip the scale so far in that direction that you forget that more than Titania EX, Innocence EX, Eden 1-4 and S and upcoming Ultimate are supposed to engage players.

[Lodi]

Unfortunately, even homogenizing all of our tools did not bring this coveted balance. Behold, people complaining about double WHM on a single fight.
But one job being better than the others on a fight-by-fight does not mean the others are bad or even that they cannot do those fights. There is a false notion going on that somehow if every healer were in perfect parity, a meta would not form and everything outside of that meta cannot function. I promise you, that is not the case. People will hang onto 1-5% of a numbers difference as somehow The Entire Reason They Are Failing A Fight when the actual reason is probably execution.

This is not a call to throw balance completely out the window ala FFXI. But I'm saying Savage fights do not matter enough, in the grand scheme of this entire game, to rework entire jobs solely around performance in them. We're at a point right now that Savage raid bosses are dictating the design of jobs and roles. I feel that's the wrong way to go about things.

Bring the numbers as close as you can to encourage people to bring the player and not the class, sure. But don't tip the scale so far in that direction that you forget that more than Titania EX, Innocence EX, Eden 1-4 and S and upcoming Ultimate are supposed to engage players.

Not to mention that the entire leveling and tomestone system revolves around replaying old content over and over. I'm sure plenty of people got their last level (or the last tomestones they needed) in Sastasha.

And below level 80, balance... doesn't really exist. There's been so many changes that depending on the level, some classes are ridiculously overpowered compared to the others.

[Corbeau]

In ffxiv a single person messing up can wipe the whole 8 man team. I'd imagine not a single WoW raid would be successful if in a group of 40 a single person wiped the whole raid.

WoW raids are balanced for 20 players, and some fights are exactly that unforgiving. I still have flashbacks to Mythic Varimathras, though at least that was a shorter fight.

I'd also like to note that even in a raid environment with tons of constant ambient damage, in a game where healers deal a fraction of the damage of FFXIV healers and have vastly more mana pressure, I multiple times had my palty healer DPS be the difference between a wipe and a progression kill. A bit more damage in FFXIV raids will not reduce healers to only ever healing - not when the DPS tools are so very strong in this game.

[Almostward]

It's sad to see healers be over simplified just so more people can play it despite engagement being down while doing so. Old Astro was fun and had a lot going on, and Scholar...I can feel all its lost.

[Sloprano]

Not to mention that the entire leveling and tomestone system revolves around replaying old content over and over. I'm sure plenty of people got their last level (or the last tomestones they needed) in Sastasha.

And below level 80, balance... doesn't really exist. There's been so many changes that depending on the level, some classes are ridiculously overpowered compared to the others.

Believe a solid class foundation available from level 16 and defining core gameplay unlocked as you get your job stone would help this. Then add a slow trickle of new skills and traits that further builds on this as you level. Where doing Sastasha at level 16 feels good, and being max level feels great.

That's where my fascination with old Arcanist/Scholar combo came from: It aready did the foundation and core gameplay from an early level. Arcanist brought base gameplay with dots, debuffs, Aetherflow and Scholar built on this with pet and shields (and Conjurer for some more). So as Scholar in Satasha you'd at least have Ruin, Bio, Miasma, 1 Aetherflow + ED, Virus and you could have Cleric Stance, Aero and Protect. For heals you got your physick, Embrace and WD. Then at level 30, where you get the cornerstone ability Adlo, you also get Bane. Now they're doing another bout of making older content enticing with Moogle tomes which just reminds me of how little I can do there.

Keeping on posting hopefully make SE come out and let us in on the thought process about non-<current expansion> content with this skill readjustment or let us know that one nuke/one dot is exactly what they wanted.

[Saefinn]

Talking of keeping DPS and healing engaging. I've decided to monitor what I'm doing the last couple of days - just doing roulettes, because they're a daily thing. I worked out that on my SCH, which isn't that well geared my downtime looked like this:
Expert Roulette (The Twinning): ~45% downtime (average pulls)
Expert Roulette (Amaurot): ~35% downtime (high to full pulls)
Levelling Roulette (Sirensong Sea): ~55% downtime (average pulls)
Trials Roulette (Susano): ~30% downtime

Susano is a trial that has more raid wide AoEs and also hug mechanics and mechanics people easily get clipped on. So this meant I healed more. Plus IMO SB trial encounters were well designed. But the healing aspect was still very straight forward.

Amaurot: The tank did good pulls, not quite wall-to-wall, this was little more engaging than those who don't, especially towards the end of the dungeon where the pulls are bigger and deadlier. But on the second boss I was doing like 65% Art of War, that encounter wasn't engaging as a SCH. Healing again, was super easy, less so at the end section with the wall-to-wall pull - that's the only point I felt I was doing something as a healer and this was brought on by having to move around a lot (lots of AoE's), people getting hit by AoE's and the tank taking a good amount of damage because he's got everything he could pull.

But I feel given the lack of variety in our DPS rotations, 30+% is a high margin of downtime. Plus I only consider myself or medium to high skill, I don't even do savage and I wouldn't rate myself highly. But 30-35% still can be kinda engaging depending on how it's spaced out, but when it gets past that, then I find it's not.

Believe a solid class foundation available from level 16 and defining core gameplay unlocked as you get your job stone would help this. Then add a slow trickle of new skills and traits that further builds on this as you level. Where doing Sastasha at level 16 feels good, and being max level feels great.

See this is the kind of thing I think something like GW2 does right. Early on you get the core and defining skills of your class, then you learn more as you progress. It meant I could get stuck in pretty early and get an idea of how something plays without investing too many levels into it. And at the same time, you have abilities on top you can invest in picking up. Though their system of course is very different to FFXIV, but I think at least the principle here is compatible. Low level stuff may not necessarily have to push you to use your full kit because you might still be learning at a lower level, but then in MMO's in general, lower level stuff is forgiving anyway to accommodate this.

[Lodi]

Talking of keeping DPS and healing engaging. I've decided to monitor what I'm doing the last couple of days - just doing roulettes, because they're a daily thing. I worked out that on my SCH, which isn't that well geared my downtime looked like this:
Expert Roulette (The Twinning): ~45% downtime (average pulls)
Expert Roulette (Amaurot): ~35% downtime (high to full pulls)
Levelling Roulette (Sirensong Sea): ~55% downtime (average pulls)
Trials Roulette (Susano): ~30% downtime

Susano is a trial that has more raid wide AoEs and also hug mechanics and mechanics people easily get clipped on. So this meant I healed more. Plus IMO SB trial encounters were well designed. But the healing aspect was still very straight forward.

Amaurot: The tank did good pulls, not quite wall-to-wall, this was little more engaging than those who don't, especially towards the end of the dungeon where the pulls are bigger and deadlier. But on the second boss I was doing like 65% Art of War, that encounter wasn't engaging as a SCH. Healing again, was super easy, less so at the end section with the wall-to-wall pull - that's the only point I felt I was doing something as a healer and this was brought on by having to move around a lot (lots of AoE's), people getting hit by AoE's and the tank taking a good amount of damage because he's got everything he could pull.

But I feel given the lack of variety in our DPS rotations, 30+% is a high margin of downtime. Plus I only consider myself or medium to high skill, I don't even do savage and I wouldn't rate myself highly. But 30-35% still can be kinda engaging depending on how it's spaced out, but when it gets past that, then I find it's not.

And these aren't even the most downtime-y content. Some dungeons, like Swallow's Compass, can be done without a single GCD heal.

[Deceptus]

And these aren't even the most downtime-y content. Some dungeons, like Swallow's Compass, can be done without a single GCD heal.

Things survive through more than 3-5 Holy's in there? /s