Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[Saefinn]

That's just the nature of the role. Healing targets allies while dealing damage and tanking target enemies.

Because dealing damage is the main point of any encounter. Healing being the main thing simply means, as a healer, you focus healing over dealing damage as needed.

Then make that 80% more interesting. Spamming Glare or Broil or Malefic for the vast majority of it is dull-as-heck.

But people don't want that because they will just complain that the healer in their party is DPSing too much and should be healing especially if that healer makes a mistake. Hey, I'm all for ignoring those people, but the devs would need to as well. Judging by Yoshi P's comments this time around I don't think they are given the aim behind the SCH change was for people to rely on aetherflow more for healing and less on Energy Drain.

Either, healing needs to be frequent and engaging enough to be fun, or our DPS needs to be engaging enough, or a bit of both. Me? I'd rather a bit of both, because it's a game the favours DPS and it's a healer role.

Infrequent healing and dull & unengaging DPS is the worst of both worlds if you're a healer player. Hey, DPS and tanks might not mind so much, but they get to enjoy their preferred role.

What's frustrating is they had this balance right IMO. But they decided to change it.

[Semirhage]

What's frustrating is that had this balance right IMO. But they decided to change it.

I'm trying to figure out what the root cause of this was. It's likely a list of reasons. Heavensward design was the best for this (WHM needed something extra to manage, but that bridge has been crossed). And then out of seemingly nowhere, job design directly was like, "no wait, let's double the heals and halve the damage spells, they'll love that!"

Was there some invisible complaining Sylphie contingent in the Japanese forums that hated everything about Heavensward design?

[Saefinn]

I'm trying to figure out what the root cause of this was. It's likely a list of reasons. Heavensward design was the best for this (WHM needed something extra to manage, but that bridge has been crossed). And then out of seemingly nowhere, job design directly was like, "no wait, let's double the heals and halve the damage spells, they'll love that!"

Was there some invisible complaining Sylphie contingent in the Japanese forums that hated everything about Heavensward design?

When you think about it, Dark Knight's got a similar treatment, it was a Heavensward job, it was still fine in SB and they lowered its skill floor, but now, it's a shadow of its former self IMO, but at least I can still enjoy playing it.

But the impression I get is that they don't understand how this particular balance works when it comes to healing. Yoshi P's reading of the patch notes I think is telling of this:

On SCH's Energy drain adjustments for Patch 5.4
The dev team wants you to use Aetherflow more on healing. To compensate on the nerf they buffed the DoTs.

This helps confirm thoughts I've had in a previous thread before, where I've suggested that the devs are looking at the wrong numbers. It feels like they can see, for example, healers are DPSing for 70% of a run and healing for 30% and want to balance those percentages better. But they think this is resolved by reducing our DPS abilities and adding to our healing abilities. Maybe they thought it was because people were getting too hung up on their DPS rotations? By as we know, it just means we're more efficient and it's more boring, because we don't have anything much to break the monotony. And if anything means we DPS /more/.

But Yoshi's comments here are, well, backwards. It seems they think creating a disincentive to DPS means that you will save more abilities for healing. But if, say, we had 20 DPS skills, that 70%/30% balance would remain more or less the same. Because people are taking the same damage and the efficiency of our healing spells remains just as effective. I think people erroneously believe that it's people's DPS drive that means healers don't heal as much as people think they should. In addition to that, as we've seen from some complaint threads, people think somebody who lets you drop below 50% isn't healing enough, so these players tend to misunderstand how efficient healing works too. But maybe I can see how when looking at it from "these people are too driven by DPS" that you might see the logic in "we'll disincentivise their DPS aspect so they focus more on healing".


So I think it makes sense that people more erroneously think that healers are too driven by their DPS to focus on their healing, especially if that healer makes a mistake. But the question that doesn't seem to be considered is on why healers seem so focused on DPS? I mean, we've seen the comments like, "if you want to DPS so much, why don't you play a DPS job?"

Of course, most of us who hang out on the healer forum probably would say something along the lines of "it's because it's more efficient, we only need to heal you enough to keep you alive and this game is scripted meaning damage is predictable and as a result we have nothing else more to do than DPS."

[Hyperia]

To fix healing and have healers lean more into a more focused role on healing rather than DPS, they will have to totally change their mentality on encounter design. Right now its all about memorization and repetition. Most content is predictable, in some cases, laughably so. I cant do it as I have a horrible memory but if I could memorize 15 minutes worth of content, it would be fairly low impact. I would like to see rezzing be made instantly and then a 60 second CD timer, more AOEs but not too harsh. Near removal of all one shot kill mechanics and replace them with DPS reduction mechanics or slows, a long ticking dot, etc. As it stands now, the encounters move so fast, its just not practical to use a GCD heal because I'll get caught in some AOE or other mechanic and die, same with rezzing. There overuse of instant kill mechanics, falling off, ROUND platforms, etc. Its time to change things up and square platforms are not a solution either. Every time I see a raid or trail boss now, it feels like the developer is saying "hey look at this cool raid I made, can I go do the next Ultimate now?"

So really... I don't think healing is the problem, the jobs are good and pretty fun... its the ENCOUNTER design that's the problem. They have forgotten the most important thing in encounter design... FUN. Start with fun and then make it challenging, instead they make it challenging and hope its fun. Well... its not. Story mode raids and trials should be easy and fun for the casuals, hard (Yes add a new difficulty mode, call it hard) and savage for people who want a challenge with ultimate being around for people who want to cry tears of blood.

[Dyvid]

I'm trying to figure out what the root cause of this was. It's likely a list of reasons. Heavensward design was the best for this (WHM needed something extra to manage, but that bridge has been crossed). And then out of seemingly nowhere, job design directly was like, "no wait, let's double the heals and halve the damage spells, they'll love that!"

Was there some invisible complaining Sylphie contingent in the Japanese forums that hated everything about Heavensward design?

It all comes back to Cleric stance and the group that didn't want to DPS. 3.0 saw the expectation and almost requirements from the community to stance dance and DPS, which alienated players to a degree. So in 4.0 SE removed stance dance in order to help with DPS stress but people still complained so in 5.0 SE removed DPSing. Fine, if people don't want to DPS then give healers mechanics based around raid utility abilities.

[linayar]

Then make that 80% more interesting. Spamming Glare or Broil or Malefic for the vast majority of it is dull-as-heck.

But people don't want that because they will just complain that the healer in their party is DPSing too much and should be healing especially if that healer makes a mistake. Hey, I'm all for ignoring those people, but the devs would need to as well. Judging by Yoshi P's comments this time around I don't think they are given the aim behind the SCH change was for people to rely on aetherflow more for healing and less on Energy Drain.

Either, healing needs to be frequent and engaging enough to be fun, or our DPS needs to be engaging enough, or a bit of both. Me? I'd rather a bit of both, because it's a game the favours DPS and it's a healer role.

Infrequent healing and dull & unengaging DPS is the worst of both worlds if you're a healer player. Hey, DPS and tanks might not mind so much, but they get to enjoy their preferred role.

If, by 80%, you mean the damage side, because of the difference in target for healing (AOE aside), maybe they want it simple so that you can switch to heal anytime you feel you need to (though ideally you would know when that would be and can plan for it).

What's frustrating is they had this balance right IMO. But they decided to change it.

Out of curiosity, when was that?

[Saefinn]

If, by 80%, you mean the damage side, because of the difference in target for healing (AOE aside), maybe they want it simple so that you can switch to heal anytime you feel you need to (though ideally you would know when that would be and can plan for it).

Maybe yes, they want it to be simple, but the problem is, it's made it dull and un-engaging, hence arguably it's a problem that needs fixing. And in fairness, the change I am advocating for the most keeps it simple from a healing perspective. It respects current design, it keeps a low skill floor, it just raises the skill ceiling. Which is the compromise I've arrived at. More DPS abilities won't make healing hard. But it will break up that 80%, it means they can keep simple content simple, they can respect the inexperience of newer healers, but not bore more experienced healers at the same time. It also means in more healing heavy fights, they're not compromised because they'll just DPS less and heal more.

Out of curiosity, when was that?

It was Shadowbringers mainly. Stormblood showed symptoms and WHM was already in a bad place for it. SCH healed too well and had a little pruning DPS-wise in SB, but not much, hence I never complained. But the big changes were on Shadowbringers release.

WHM was already underwhelming in their downtime and lost Aero III in addition to that and couldn't stack Aeros no more. But at least they fixed other problems on the healing side of WHM from Stormblood, because that was full of problems, so it flows a lot better, but still, their downtime is mostly filled with Glare or Holy. Devs maintained a philosophy of White Mages should be the healiest healer, which is a concept that was made redundant as far back as Heavensward, this really only worked in A Realm Reborn when Scholars were less efficient at pure healing because they were the "shield healer" (a concept that barely exists anymore with how efficient oGCD's are). Heavensward patched that by making SCH get health up almost as quickly and added AST, which combined SCH's and WHM's niches. I've seen WHM's call for "more to do" since then, maybe just some utility just to bring more in line with SCH and AST. It's these kind of changes are why you might see some claim healers are homogenized.


For SCH we saw a huge gutting of their DPS skills in exchange for more healing-related abilities. They removed the functionality of Selene, who contributed to their downtime activity. You'd use Selene if healing intensity was low to give the party a bit of a DPS boost, you'd have Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Bane, Shadowflare, Miasma II, Energy Drain, and you'd add your Broils. And it wasn't even complicated. Now? It's Biolysis with Broil/Ruin II spams (or Art of War for AoE) and the occasional Energy Drain, the latter of which has just been nerfed because Yoshi P says the devs want us to be prioritising our aetherflow stacks for heals not Energy Drain.

With faerie abilities being turned into player actions means an element of faerie micromanagement is gone (where you weave their abilities during your own, which you might do in a DPS rotation). The effect of all the Scholar changes is that it just feels like you're spamming the same ability over and over when you don't need to heal.

For AST their card system was simplified fairly heavily and all cards now have the same effect as each other. AST used to have a problem with useless draws, but this was fixed through Minor Arcana in Stormblood. You had a system where you'd think about what you'd do with the card you drew, whether it is to Royal Road it, whether it was to use it, whether it was to hold it for later or to redraw or use it as a Minor Arcana. The most effective card was The Balance, so yes, there were people who fished for The Balance. So now ALL cards are in effect, The Balance. Which, funnily enough the "Seals" system they added didn't stop the fishing problem (only changing Sleeve Draw in 5.3 alleviated that). The only "choice" element is who to give it to. It also meant they lost a DPS ability from Minor Arcana because now that's just a more potent version of The Balance. There's no Royal Roading anymore, which allows you to modify your next card whether to extend the effect, make it stronger or spread it. And the ability to extend the duration of cards and to stun enemies has been replaced with another oGCD heal. But at least they still have their card system, which is why when I heal now I don't heal SCH (which was my main) but I use AST instead, just because it has a bit more to do.

For all healers the original Cleric Stance is gone, it was changed to something else in Stormblood (a temporary DPS boost) and removed entirely in Shadowbringers. This was an ability that added an element of risk and reward to healer DPSing, but got complaints because people forgot to turn it off when they needed to heal.


When you look at what has changed and been dulled or simplified or removed, it's quite significant, and it changed how interesting they were to play. But the thing is, they weren't that complicated either. I mean, there were varying levels of difficulty, with WHM being the lowest and AST being the highest, but that's a good thing. Because variety in design and complexity is the main advantage of having multiple jobs for the same role, you can appeal to what works for different people better.

I think some of the changes would have been fine on their own - I mean, yes, I miss Cleric Stance but I can understand why they removed it and would have the consolation of "I've got these other things that keep me interested", but sadly is not the care because of all the other changes too.

[linayar]

More DPS abilities won't make healing hard.

A couple of considerations:

1. There is a limit to the number of abilities they want to have, so more DPS abilities would take the place of some healing abilities.
2. As I said before, depending on how these DPS abilities work together, it might feel bad to interrupt them to heal. It would be a similar reason to why they remove cleric and tank's DPS stances.

[Saefinn]

A couple of considerations:

1. There is a limit to the number of abilities they want to have, so more DPS abilities would take the place of some healing abilities.
2. As I said before, depending on how these DPS abilities work together, it might feel bad to interrupt them to heal. It would be a similar reason to why they remove cleric and tank's DPS stances.

In counter to this.

Speaking as a controller user, who are supposedly more limited in space for abilities, on WHM and SCH I still have space for more abilities. The same sort of space AST's card abilities take up. AST doesn't need new abilities, it needs reworking of existing ones.

Given there is bloat in the number of healing-related abilities versus what we actually need, there's wiggle room here to swap them for other abilities. After all, they took up the space that DPS abilities took before.

And of course, the main important point: we did just fine before.

As I've played since the game's BETA as a healer, I can tell you what it was like for all these DPS abilities to work together, it didn't feel bad to interrupt them. Because it didn't flow in the same way as say, a Dragoon or a Monk, which can feel terrible when your rotation is interrupted. When you think of it this way, Gemina's comment about not comparing healers to tanks, because tanks too have a rotational flow like DPS jobs have. Healers never did, but what they did have, was more abilities they could use in their downtime.

And it wasn't clunky like turning Cleric stance on and off. Because there was no combo bonus nor any buffs to keep up through your abilities.

You could cast Miasma, heal then cast Bio and Bio II after. So the flow could be more dynamic that a standard DPS rotation, likely because they've considered that you might have to heal.

So your flow as a SCH might be:
Physick -> Miasma -> Physick -> Bio -> Bio II -> Bane -> Broil -> Ruin II -> Fey Wind
Or it might be
Succor-> Miasma -> Lustrate -> Bio -> Bio II -> Bane -> Shadowflare -> Adloquium -> Miasma III
Or
Miasma -> Bio -> Indomnibility -> Bio II -> Bane -> Shadowflare -> Miasma III

It really depended on what needs casting at the time.

[linayar]

In counter to this.

...

Ok, I understand now. You just want more variety of independent DPS abilities rather than actual DPS combos. I guess that's workable, though I wonder how that would work in practice.

On the one hand, you have healers who don't like to deal damage. Would having more DPS abilities have a bigger negative impact on the party's total DPS requirement when these same players still won't use them?

On the other hand, you have healers who only like to deal damage. Would having more DPS abilities make them heal even less? (I actually had this experience on yesterday's trial where I was tanking Zurvan normal and no one was dying and yet the two healers can't seem to keep me (or the other tank on one occasion) alive and I've used all my CDs.)

In the end, will the dev trust the wider healer community to handle more DPS abilities? Maybe or maybe not it seems.

GNB can execute Gnashing Fang combo without interrupting Keen Edge combo. DNC can execute dances without interrupting combo. Same with NIN's ninjitsu. And many of MCH's attacks. There's plenty of precedent of non-combo-breaking abilities, so the same could be applied here (as long as you don't abandon the DPS combo for too long - but if you do need to do enough heals back-to-back that the combo is abandoned, then the heals were probably more important anyway).

Indeed, but will people end up complaining about healers who don't know when to interrupt their DPS combo for a much needed heal or even for healers who don't even do their combos and thus losing out on DPS?