Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[ItMe]

incidentally I do wonder if many of their recent changes were borne our of a desire to be the anti XI of sorts?

How do you mean?

[Morningstar1337]

How do you mean?

From what I gather, assume and read, XI seemed to had been a very grindy game (prior to Abyssea at least), and one where outside certain cases it is impossible to solo (I assume you need a party just to avoid getting killed by even woodland critters). On top of that it is a style of MMO that compared to themeparks like this and WOW is rather different. The overworld being where all the action is, certain abilities being on timers long enough for repeated use in only prolonged encounters. Job mechanics interacting with each other, deleveling and exp loss, etc.

If XI and WOW were ends of a spectrum, than most of XIV from 2.0 onward seems designed to be closer to the latter than it is the former. I'm not sure where 1.0 falls, but I assume it was closer to XI than 2.0 and beyond and the failure did cause them to shift to WOW (I think Yoshida even mention that it was an explicit inspiration for 2.0)

(Eureka, being a love letter to XI obviously. is also less WOWesque, and part of that carries over onto Bozja)

the overall theme with this post is that (i think) XI prioritized complexity and long playing sessions and XIV simplicity and short playing sessions.

[linayar]

Not necessarily an easy fix because the fix would either be:

- rebalance healers' healing abilities to be less efficient, but for this to address the issue across the game's content, they've got to do it so it doesn't gimp them for EX/Savage/Ultimate whilst making you heal more in dungeon runs and Normal Raids/Trials.

Or:

- adjust encounter design to increase the healing requirement. This is a huge job, but would address the issue that makes the above suggestion difficult, but is more laborious.


If they were able to properly deliver on this, then perhaps healing in this game would be fun again.

But a simpler solution already exists. And one that many of the healers on these forums advocates for and a portion of non-healers seem resistant to. That's to accept that downtime is a thing and do something with it and give up on this direction change for any existing content and just apply this new philosophy to new content. After all it's healing efficiency and encounter design and not DPS that affects healing focus.


Because they don't have to sacrifice DPS to achieve the goal for content moving for, then maybe in that respect it is a simple fix. Bring back DPS abilities and design future encounters to make your healers work harder as healers.

The simplest solution is to remove DPS healing and mitigating abilities, at least reduce (if not remove) tank healing abilities (but leave them with mitigating abilities), and increase the damage for DPS (and to a lesser extent tank) relative to healer. The downtime between heals for healers would be reduced naturally just because the fight would go faster and there would be more need to heal and less need to deal damage because it would be a smaller percentage of party DPS.

Either way, hard to do or not, nothing they've done INCLUDING making healer damage abilities simpler (which actually encourages people to deal damage in between healing) says that they actually want healer to deal damage less and just be a "pure" healer. So I still say it's more about simplifying the role rather than a simple don't-do-DPS directive. Anecdotally, when I see that it's not uncommon for healers in roulettes (especially for full party and alliance, less so on light party) to be high on the enmity list (granted, healing also increases enmity), I don't think the game has ever said that healers should not deal damage.

[Johaandr]

i honestly dont understand the AST card design....
they could have make the old card system be used in COMBAT ONLY.
And prolly nerf balance back to 3.0HW > 5% buff.

As for Scholar. Bring back Aetherflow Quickened. If they want us to use more aetherflow bring this back even tho it prolly be used more for Energy Drain.

White Mage with annoying ogcds casts.

Meh i went for Machinist even tho they got wierder.

[Deceptus]

The simplest solution is to remove DPS healing and mitigating abilities, at least reduce (if not remove) tank healing abilities (but leave them with mitigating abilities), and increase the damage for DPS (and to a lesser extent tank) relative to healer. The downtime between heals for healers would be reduced naturally just because the fight would go faster and there would be more need to heal and less need to deal damage because it would be a smaller percentage of party DPS.

Issue is this is literally a only a problem between the good players and the not so good players. Good players use their entire kit, self heals and mitigation and all. Poor players don't. I'm not against this idea mostly since it's pretty rare outside of statics to see the majority of the FFXIV playerbase using their entire kit.

I don't think the game has ever said that healers should not deal damage.

Quite the opposite in fact.



Hell, the entire Sylphie Job Questline was trying to get her to understand that pure healing was a bad idea.

[Rilifane]

The simplest solution is to remove DPS healing and mitigating abilities, at least reduce (if not remove) tank healing abilities (but leave them with mitigating abilities), and increase the damage for DPS (and to a lesser extent tank) relative to healer. The downtime between heals for healers would be reduced naturally just because the fight would go faster and there would be more need to heal and less need to deal damage because it would be a smaller percentage of party DPS.

Either way, hard to do or not, nothing they've done INCLUDING making healer damage abilities simpler (which actually encourages people to deal damage in between healing) says that they actually want healer to deal damage less and just be a "pure" healer. So I still say it's more about simplifying the role rather than a simple don't-do-DPS directive. Anecdotally, when I see that it's not uncommon for healers in roulettes (especially for full party and alliance, less so on light party) to be high on the enmity list (granted, healing also increases enmity), I don't think the game has ever said that healers should not deal damage.

It would reduce downtime only marginally. I've spent enough time in PFs where absolutely nobody used Addle/ Feint/ ranged mitigation and even tank raid mitigation was sparse at best if used at all and all it did was force to hardcast here and there but usually still single digits for a ~10min fight. And in casual content, those skills don't get used at all.
All it would achieve is that healers get even more frustrated than they are now because they're getting even less bang for their bucks but they'd still try to squeeze out dps where they can. Even if it was a 10 potency skill, people would spam it. It's not just out of neccessity that healers spam dps skills, it's because nobody wants to feel useless by standing around more than half the fight without anything meaningful to do. Literally anything is better than standing around.
Heals are insanely powerful compared to incoming damage and good healers use skills like Neutral, SS or Cure III once in a blue moon even though they are powerful because it's simply overkill.

[linayar]

Issue is this is literally a only a problem between the good players and the not so good players. Good players use their entire kit, self heals and mitigation and all. Poor players don't. I'm not against this idea mostly since it's pretty rare outside of statics to see the majority of the FFXIV playerbase using their entire kit.

Well, I do think the majority of the player base is the target for role and job designs usually. And thanks for the screenshot.

It would reduce downtime only marginally. I've spent enough time in PFs where absolutely nobody used Addle/ Feint/ ranged mitigation and even tank raid mitigation was sparse at best if used at all and all it did was force to hardcast here and there but usually still single digits for a ~10min fight. And in casual content, those skills don't get used at all.
All it would achieve is that healers get even more frustrated than they are now because they're getting even less bang for their bucks but they'd still try to squeeze out dps where they can. Even if it was a 10 potency skill, people would spam it. It's not just out of neccessity that healers spam dps skills, it's because nobody wants to feel useless by standing around more than half the fight without anything meaningful to do. Literally anything is better than standing around.
Heals are insanely powerful compared to incoming damage and good healers use skills like Neutral, SS or Cure III once in a blue moon even though they are powerful because it's simply overkill.

Your experience is with current damage distribution. That's why I said to also increase damage dealt by DPS and tank. If there are times in between heals, that's a filler in the fight that can be shortened by more damage (or less enemy HP I suppose). That said, some of the pacing has to do with allowing people time to think of mechanics, so downtime would still be there.

[Saefinn]

snip.

I've not claimed they want us to only heal, I think they've not designed it as a heal only game. And I don't think the Devs are trying to stop that.

What I do think is that the Devs don't want healers to be so DPS focused, because it's something they themselves have claimed they do not expect of healers. They have claimed they don't take this into account when designing raids and they don't take it into account for DPS checks and more see healer DPS as just optional.

Then you have Yoshi P's most recent statement that they nerfed Energy Drain because they'd rather have people focus their efforts on using their Aetherflow stacks on healing spells, not Energy Drain. Energy Drain added back in back people had an abundance of Aetherflow stacks and nothing to spend on.

I feel Yoshi's latest comments help cement what I've suspected about their changes for a while. Because it illustrates the same backward logic I've seen people use to defend the changes where I've seen people claim that it means that healers stop focusing on DPS and spend more time focusing on healing, which it doesn't do. I can see how one might think that by looking at them.

And that backwards logic is: if people have less DPS or fewer DPS skills then they will heal more.


Also, I don't think your solution is necessarily that simple and of course draws complaints from those jobs too and those tools have their uses in content. And I don't thing would make enough of a difference to have the effect you describe.

DPS healing mainly exists for emergencies. A RDM shouldn't Vercue unless it's really needed because you're sacrificing good DPS. Bloodbath is also used when you really need it as a melee, but I also see it get used for DPS to keep their uptime through AoE's. I don't see it get used that often. Curing Waltz and SMN's Physick do very, very little in the grand scheme of things, but may just pull from near death.

Tank heals can be a life saver at times, but you'll get unhappy PLD's if you take their clemency away.

[linayar]

And that backwards logic is: if people have less DPS or fewer DPS skills then they will heal more.

And that logic is what I've said is easy to see doesn't work. If anything, reducing DPS abilities makes it easier to DPS in between heals. As for Yoshida's statement on the ED change, I see that more as saying if you don't use ED, it won't be as bad DPS-wise, especially with the buff to other part of the DPS ability. What this change does is saying, if you don't know the fight and your kit well enough to decide where to allocate your resource on, choosing healing ability is the recommended way. Again, it's about simplifying the job. If you do know what to do, then nothing has to change and you can still choose ED.

Also, I don't think your solution is necessarily that simple and of course draws complaints from those jobs too and those tools have their uses in content. And I don't thing would make enough of a difference to have the effect you describe.

DPS healing mainly exists for emergencies. A RDM shouldn't Vercue unless it's really needed because you're sacrificing good DPS. Bloodbath is also used when you really need it as a melee, but I also see it get used for DPS to keep their uptime through AoE's. I don't see it get used that often. Curing Waltz and SMN's Physick do very, very little in the grand scheme of things, but may just pull from near death.

Tank heals can be a life saver at times, but you'll get unhappy PLD's if you take their clemency away.

When it comes down to it, every little bit helps, and I've gone down to very low HP as DPS and tank often enough to know that. Heck, we can even do more, like removing abilities like addle and feint, if we really want more use of the "powerful" healing/mitigation spells of healers.

Either way, the point isn't how effective it would be, but it would at least be better than simply reducing DPS potency with no other change.

[Saefinn]

When it comes down to it, every little bit helps, and I've gone down to very low HP as DPS and tank often enough to know that. Heck, we can even do more, like removing abilities like addle and feint, if we really want more use of the "powerful" healing/mitigation spells of healers.

Either way, the point isn't how effective it would be, but it would at least be better than simply reducing DPS potency with no other change.

Whilst it would help a /little/ from a healing perspective. This would impact on other jobs and would attract complaints from that side for not too much benefit for the healer side.

Contrary to that. They could add a few extra DPS abilities and change nothing else about the job design and this would break the monotony, it can remain simple because it was simple before.

Technically, people could play exactly as they play the jobs now with no changes. Even DPS side, unless you're going for a high percentile group nobody's gonna moan at a healer for not optimising their DPS rotation. Given healer DPS has never worked by a combo rotation, there is no immediate incentive to do anything more complicated. If you wanna spam Broil, IMO it's fine because you're still trying to contribute.

Healing would remain simple. It would remain accessible without the need to increase healing requirements or reducing the effectiveness of any abilities.

I expect by the time you're at a level where your DPS needs to be optimised you're at a level where most if not all of these abilities are second nature.

Not only that, but it's an easy fix too.

In effect what you get is a skill floor that stays exactly where it is now, but the skill ceiling is higher.