Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[linayar]

I doubt there is a big group of play who play healer to *only* deal damage.

Right, I don't mean that they literally don't heal at all, but that they may play the how-low-can-you-make-the-tank's-hp-go-without-killing-the-tank game and then for whatever reason (inexperience or distraction) they lose at it. And this would apply to any non-healing spell they'd be using instead of a healing spell.

I just don't think we should make the game easier because of inexperienced players, bad players or players who refuse to fulfill their role properly.

That's a fair opinion, but do you think that the game's direction agrees with you? And to be fair, fun is subjective, while there is some objective measure toward making things easier to reduce potential conflict between different types of player. That said, I'm not saying that simplifying tank/healer has to be because of this one specific reason. There could be others or even a combination of factors. Nevertheless, there seems to be an overarching theme from making it easier to complete solo quest to simplifying crafting/gathering, etc.

So when you say that it's worked in the past, the devs might not agree because they probably saw a problem to fix.

Extremely rare. In most cases you have healers who enjoy contributing as much as possible to the team and juggling damage and efficient healing to be of even more value is fun. More often you have the panicking co-healer topping everyone off immediately after raidwides and stressing over tanks dipping to 50% who thinks the other healer only cares about damage, when in reality they have it fully under control. High dps healers enjoy healing too.

The problem is that it's not rewarding to be good at it. Juggling dps involves spamming one button in-between your heals and healing itself is hardly needed once you gear a little.

In addition to my response to GrimGale, I didn't intend to imply that they're necessarily malicious in not healing, but the result is still a lack of healing.

As for rarity, I think sometimes people can make a small problem bigger than it is. Regardless of my stance on how certain things should or could be done, I rarely ever see problems in the nearly four years I've been playing this game running dungeons, trials, and raids. And of those problems, most are simply annoying but you can get through it and still finish the content just fine and leave.

But one thing is for certain, and that is when playing with random people, you don't always get near ideal situations. And considering the roulette is a major content in this game where you can potentially meet different players of various experience, mindset, skill, or even preparation, the statement "healing is hardly needed" depends on many factors.

[Saefinn]

That's a fair opinion, but do you think that the game's direction agrees with you? And to be fair, fun is subjective, while there is some objective measure toward making things easier to reduce potential conflict between different types of player. That said, I'm not saying that simplifying tank/healer has to be because of this one specific reason. There could be others or even a combination of factors. Nevertheless, there seems to be an overarching theme from making it easier to complete solo quest to simplifying crafting/gathering, etc.

So when you say that it's worked in the past, the devs might not agree because they probably saw a problem to fix.

I mean the devs aren't infallible, sure it may or may not follow the direction they want to take it. The general feeling has been there seems to be a disparity between how the devs think healers should be played and how healers actually play them. I feel Yoshi P's reading of the patch notes I think illustrates some of their misunderstanding when it comes to addressing healer issues.

He said that the nerf to SCH's Energy Drain was because they want healers to reserve their Aetherflow stacks for healing spells and not for DPS. The reason people asked for Energy Drain back after they removed it in 5.0 is because they have too many stacks to spend. But in reality, people will still use Energy Drain, it'll just means their DPS output will be lower, but is still better DPS than not using it. So it doesn't actually address the problem they've set out to do. I've put earlier in this thread how they can make adjustments that'd achieve what they set out to do.

I have found from their comments on healing and the changes they've made to healing shows they are focusing on the wrong numbers. Because they seemingly want healers to well, heal more. Which is absolutely fine, I mean if the balance is 70% DPS and 30% healing, you might find that's a bad balance for a healer role. Their way of addressing it has been to add more healing spells and reduce or dis-incentivise the DPS aspect. But that's not how it works because healing becomes /more/ efficient and exacerbates that problems and DPS just becomes more frequent and even duller (which is what has happened).


And I think a part of this comes out of the perception that this balance is because healers try to focus on their DPS too much. When in reality, the way to make people heal more and DPS less is to either increase the healing requirement or reduce healing efficiency. The problem with doing it that way is that it'd raise the skill floor, therefore make healing less accessible, which I don't think they want to do either. Which comes back to "maybe we should do more in our downtime" instead. Changes nothing about the healing, but breaks up any monotony, respects existing game design and we already know it works, because it's how the game was already designed.

But the devs do listen to player feedback on job changes and job direction and accept that they don't always get it right either and the forums is one place they look to for this feedback, because we have seen changes come out of it.

The same has applied to other jobs where they find a change or direction doesn't go down too well and they change it. For example, in Heavensward the direction they took for Bard was to make it a "bow mage", but found people didn't like it and reworked it in Stormblood. In Stormblood MCH was incredibly unsatisfying to play and was completely redesigned for Shadowbringers and people tend to find it a lot more fun to play now. MNK have been complaining forever about how their job plays (a lot of it doesn't fit together, has redundant abilities etc) and they've just got a patch with the aim to fix some of those issues MNK's complain about. They thought they fixed it for Shadowbringers (as per Yoshi P's comments on the Shadowbringers media tour) and found they hadn't and have made additional changes in patch 5.4.

Whist yes, fun is subjective. And in fairness, when I make suggestions/feedback, I am trying to consider the direction they've taken it. Hence my DPS suggestion here actually changes nothing about how the healing jobs have to heal.And really, those who like how healers play ATM, could technically still play it that way. But you can make changes to appeal to more people. And it's one of the big advantages of having a system where there's multiple jobs for each role, you don't have to think "how do all healers play?" you can look at how AST plays, how SCH plays and WHM plays all as separate entities. And really all those who like the pruned downtime of healers could have been given a 4th healer with a pruned downtime and kept any existing WHM, AST and SCH happy.

[linayar]

...

While I agree that devs do listen to feedback, I think that's more likely on specific job changes. A change in "healer mentality" is a little more doubtful given that it fits with the rest of the mentality for other changes they've made in the rest of the game. And while I agree that your specific feedback may fit somewhat, I think it'll still also be a somewhat significant change in terms of direction.

That said, we're coming up on a new expansion (EXCITING!), so we'll see what it brings in terms of job and role designs.

[Saefinn]

While I agree that devs do listen to feedback, I think that's more likely on specific job changes. A change in "healer mentality" is a little more doubtful given that it fits with the rest of the mentality for other changes they've made in the rest of the game. And while I agree that your specific feedback may fit somewhat, I think it'll still also be a somewhat significant change in terms of direction.

That said, we're coming up on a new expansion (EXCITING!), so we'll see what it brings in terms of job and role designs.

That's the problem, the mentality doesn't fit their direction. Their desire and direction is to see healers heal more and DPS less, things they've eluded to when talking about healers.

Their changes in 5.0 meant we heal less, DPS more and the DPS is dull
Their 5.4 SCH change happened because the devs want people using Aetherflow stacks for healing instead of Energy Drain, a DPS ability. Their change makes no difference to it, it just means it does less damage, but is still more net damage than if they didn't use it.

This is my point about them focusing on the wrong numbers. I'll demonstrate, all figures are made up for demonstration purposes to explain how their healer design does the opposite of what they allegedly want to achieve.

An average dungeon run was:
70% DPS, 30% healing.
You have 8 DPS Abilities and 8 Healing abilities at your disposal.

If you're looking at this, you might conclude that there's too much DPS going on here. Which, from their previous comments, I think the devs have identified and want to deal with.

So, if you're wanting to rebalance this, what numbers do you focus on? Let's look at what the devs did.

They took down the 8 DPS abilities and brought them down to 3 and increased the healing abilities to 15.

What that achieves is:
70% of the run you've got 3 DPS abilities to spend
30% of the run you've got 15 healing abilities to spend.


For that 30% you don't need all those 15 healing abilities.
For that 70% you're doing very little.

Except there is a second thing to consider.
The extra healing tools you now have available makes you more efficient as a healer.
So that 70/30% split? That becomes an 80/20% split.

Then in the midst of this, they decide they want to nerf one of those DPS abilities because they'd rather you use more healing abilities. But without addressing what the actual problem is that nerf doesn't make a difference to how people are using the ability.

So if they are wanting to achieve what they've set out to do, what numbers should they be focusing on?
The 70/30%.

They need to ask: why is it 70% DPS and why is it 30% healing?

The answer is twofold:
- Content mechanics & the damage people take
- How efficiently your healing spells handle it.

The main reason being: if a person's health is high enough then there is no reason to heal them.

Whilst I am of the opinion, the best solution is the one I've lined out (evolve on the original design philosophy for healers)
They've not actually delivered on the direction change they've set out to do. If they did, I'd probably be okay with that.

However, you are right that new expansion is coming, so who knows what that'll bring?

[ASkellington]

They need to ask: why is it 70% DPS and why is it 30% healing?

The answer is twofold:
- Content mechanics & the damage people take
- How efficiently your healing spells handle it.

The main reason being: if a person's health is high enough then there is no reason to heal them.

Say it louder for the people in the back.

[Deceptus]

Say it louder for the people in the back.

It has been and is currently being shouted from every rooftop over in the healing forums.

[linayar]

That's the problem, the mentality doesn't fit their direction.

By direction, I meant simplifying things.

...

If they don't require more healing but provides less DPS abilities, to me, that's not necessarily about wanting you to DPS less, but about something else, like making the role potentially easier to pick up due to simplification of the mechanics (powerful healing spells and simple DPS abilities).