Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[Vickii]

I actually think the answer is to make more other jobs self sufficient and put less dependency on healers, not more.

Today I did E11 normal and Emerald Weapon normal. On both occasions both healers died right at the start of the fight. One was a wipe, the other we won. Difference was a Red Mage.

I’m sorry to the good healers, but I don’t want my runs to be make or break on the ability of two random strangers, which more often than not at least one is not good.

[ADVSS]

I actually think the answer is to make more other jobs self sufficient and put less dependency on healers, not more.

Today I did E11 normal and Emerald Weapon normal. On both occasions both healers died right at the start of the fight. One was a wipe, the other we won. Difference was a Red Mage.

I’m sorry to the good healers, but I don’t want my runs to be make or break on the ability of two random strangers, which more often than not at least one is not good.

That was beautiful, I couldnt have said it better myself

[ForteNightshade]

Their own encounter design DOES NOT WORK with their idea of "pure healers", simple as that.
Unless they want people to literally stand there for 60-80% of a fight and DO NOTHING..

I think that's exactly what they want. Or more specifically, they design encounters for the types of players who take several seconds mulling over what heals to use or those who mistake Cure III for being an upgrade over Cure II. Basically, they're focused more on the lowest common denominator. Which is why there's such a massive divide since any healer half way decent ends up extremely bored spamming Glare.

[Absurdity]

I think that's exactly what they want. Or more specifically, they design encounters for the types of players who take several seconds mulling over what heals to use or those who mistake Cure III for being an upgrade over Cure II. Basically, they're focused more on the lowest common denominator. Which is why there's such a massive divide since any healer half way decent ends up extremely bored spamming Glare.

Well, if it continues that way then quite a few people will eventually look for a game that doesn't insult their intelligence.
If you try to design everything for the lowest common denominator you run the risk of it becoming an endless cycle.

Player doesn't put any effort in -> game gets simpler to appeal to them -> player notices and puts even less effort in, because why should they? -> repeat.

At some point you simply have to let people fail.

[Thoosa]

Also people can help themselves by having some patience - simply raging after one pull after one wipe won’t get you very far, especially in PF.

If you want an easier life, form or join a static, and even then there’s no guarantee it will work, it depends on a lot of things, like 8 other people of equal skill, equal personality and the ability to be consistent.

[tdb]

Tank and DPS don't really have healer rotations either and (self) sustain is just as much tank gameplay as it is healer's (to a greater extent). If anything, healer has more DPS rotation than DPS/tank has healer rotation.

Tanks and dps get to keep a 100% uptime on their dps rotation though. Healers spend maybe 20% of their time on heals and 80% on the very barebones dps rotation.

If anything, the fact that they gave healers so much DPS with so "few" abilities just shows that the devs want healers to deal damage (while still not losing focus on healing being the main thing).

Then why do they design content with so little need to actually heal? Why can I solo heal Puppets' Bunker, a duty with two healers per party, and still spend half my time spamming glare?

[Vahlnir]

My stupidly long queue times on anything but healer say otherwise.

Adventurer in need is a bit broken, it looks for tanks before everything else and thus you will see Tank AIN more in spite of the fact that healers are noticeably rarer and most often the last role to fill when queueing for most things, or that's the case on crystal at least (it checks TANK then HEALER then DPS when it comes to filling slots, and thus gets stuck on filling the tank slot more in spite of healer taking longer to fill, and with how it gets locked into a role for a set period of time regardless of what fills, it ends up giving the illusion that tanks are rarer while actually trying to queue for stuff tells a very different message, as I have come to learn while trying to level DPS classes over the last month).

On Crystal I have noticed that it usually varies for "in need" roles but it favors tanks and dps for the most part. Alliance, Trials and Level 80 Dungeons seem to alternate between tank and dps every so often and you will occasionally see healer as the needed role for Alliance raids or something random. It's actually somewhat of a rarity for me to see healers in need for anything, at least in my experience.

[Greyhawk]

I actually think the answer is to make more other jobs self sufficient and put less dependency on healers, not more.

Today I did E11 normal and Emerald Weapon normal. On both occasions both healers died right at the start of the fight. One was a wipe, the other we won. Difference was a Red Mage.

I’m sorry to the good healers, but I don’t want my runs to be make or break on the ability of two random strangers, which more often than not at least one is not good.

The only thing I can say about this is - The patch just came out four days ago, and quite honestly this statement makes you sound like you are expecting them to win in Savage already which was most likely their first time there to heal. I agree with you about less dependent healing!

This patch has absurdly brought out this mentality of "You should know the fights already!", when we all seem to forget the influx of new/learning players, and the content is less than five days old (I'm not saying it's you, the general mentality). I'm not making an excuse for them, because by the time they reach this point in the storyline, they should be good enough on the job to do 'decent'. What I've seen though (myself included) is walking into a new Eden as my first time healing the place and dying to a mechanic I just couldn't get out of in time. I'm sorry - not everyone has reached elite status, they are still back at wondering 'WTH is going on'.

Now, if you would have used something like LoTA, WoD, or even Copied Factory as examples of what a hot mess looks like, I'd most likely be completely agreeing with you - and it's not the new people doing dumb things there. People have gotten lazy in not getting out of bad, expecting the healers to bail then out. I'm certainly glad not to live up to those expectations to bail someone out of stupidity.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Then why do they design content with so little need to actually heal? Why can I solo heal Puppets' Bunker, a duty with two healers per party, and still spend half my time spamming glare?

Because fight design and job design are so disconnected. The designers seems to be checking if content can be cleared and not how content feels to clear. Content seems to be designed for dps enjoyment rather than tank and healer enjoyment.

Look at Puppets Bunker: only boss 2 needs 3 tanks, bosses 3 and 4 need only 1 tank and the first boss only has tank busters to enforce tank inclusion.

The natural healing distribution of one healer watches the tank while the other healer focuses on the dps doesn't really work if 2 of the parties are participating in the fight as 0 tank: 2 healer: 6 dps comps.

[Saefinn]

I actually think the answer is to make more other jobs self sufficient and put less dependency on healers, not more.

Today I did E11 normal and Emerald Weapon normal. On both occasions both healers died right at the start of the fight. One was a wipe, the other we won. Difference was a Red Mage.

I’m sorry to the good healers, but I don’t want my runs to be make or break on the ability of two random strangers, which more often than not at least one is not good.

I'm sorry but that's how this game works. It's a team effort. And when you group with randos, it's a roulette, you'll get people of any skill level who can cause problems. Sure you can mitigate this by making the game super easy, but then what's the point? You just make it dull and kill any challenge.

But everybody is supposed to do their part and it can be make or break for different reasons depending on the fight, it's not always the healer's fault nor are the only make or break part, but they're the only one with a completely mindless DPS rotation, which hasn't lessened this perceived issue. You only need to see healer rants to see that so many others can put the strains on a run of something, either meaning the healer has to carry their butts or wipe. In a lot of cases where there is a strain, you might have got a good healer who's saved that part from the clutches of failure.

And example of where it's usually the DPS who're the liability is getting Titania in trials roulette, I find it's the DPS that cause the most wipes, followed by the tanks, followed by the healers. It's a mix of that DPS check and DPS needing to dodge AoE's. Dying to avoidable AoE's means less DPS, means we don't meet the check. Then there's the tanks who don't realise they have to tank the adds even when they're big, so the damage goes straight to the healers. Or as I keep getting it roulette lately: Good King Moogle Mog, not DPSing the adds in the right order, tanks not separating the mobs, people DPSing the King or the Tank Moogles first. Or as it's our new Unreal, I remember most of my Titan EX wipes back in the day were due to the bomb-slam mechanic because DPS didn't co-ordinate which bomb they blew up or they failed to properly dodge the AoE's, die and not get the bomb DPS'd down quick enough. Or as I had recently, Shiva in roulette, the tank turned her around to the party and she cleaved everybody and wiped most of the party, including the two healers.

And you want to put less dependency on healers? There's already very little dependency on healers compared to healers in other games, when you can go through a run of something and find only 30% of your casts are healing spells.