Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[Saefinn]

Obviously, it's not my point that they're always right or that you can't give feedback to make them reverse a decision.

My point is simply that I don't think you've dealt with the reason why they changed it in the first place.

I think their intention ends up being a moot point when the result is undesirable because with the problems caused they can see that what they tried to do isn't working.

With your suggestion that their goal is to make things simple. This really only applies to the DPS side anyway, because although the healing requirement is low and that makes it easier for healers who have learned the role. If anything over time the healing aspect has a greater wall for learning because there's more abilities they need to learn to think about. Whereas, DPS is considered optional, when it comes to healing they would be more compelled to learn how to use each of their healing abilities. And to be fair, when the healing requirement is greater and you get to use the healing skills as intended, it's great design.

But when I used to help new healers back in ARR, if they wanted to learn Scholar, it'd be the more complicated of the two (versus WHM). I'd first teach them the foundations: Adloquium, Succor, Physick, Raise, Esuna/Leeches. They get used to that, then I'd teach them about Lustrate and Sacred Soil. After that, they could learn about faerie management, which is set and forget if you prefer AI, which was optional. Even then, micromanaging wasn't difficult, but the lowest priority to learn. And this was it.
Nowadays you have more on top of that. You have additional aetherflow skills and have to learn about using Exogitation vs Lustrate. Then you have your tactics - so Deployment Tactics and Emergency tactics as something else to think about. Working in Dissipation. Learning about Seraph and making use of her. And when to throw in Fey Blessing, Recitation and Fey Pact and how each of those can be useful. And at some point they'll have to learn that the GCD's that make up for their core heals no longer make up their core ability use but are secondary instead, because oGCD's after a certain level will start being much better use. To the point you'd probably remove Physick/Cure/Benefic from your hotbar entirely.


From a learning perspective, that's a lot more to think about. From an experienced perspective, it's bloat in most scenarios and therefore easy. But when you do get to properly use them? Yeah, it's great. The way they're designed to work and flow with each other is well suited to a higher healing requirement (which is another reason why I feel there's a desire for more healing). And in a higher healing requirement scenario, it too would be fine for stripped back DPS because chances are you'll be weaving them not spamming them. I told somebody the other week looking to get into healing to not be overwhelmed by the what each ability done, but start small with the foundations.

So if "simple" is their goal, sure the DPS is dead simple. I think the healing aspect has grown more complicated whilst being easier once you have your head around them. Sure you could argue that the simplification of DPS abilities to make room for a more comprehensive healing kit, this would only work or make sense with a higher healing requirement where you can make proper use of them.

If you're looking just at down time and healing requirement, then yes, one could conclude it's about making things simple. When you look at the actual healing kit, you've got something too comprehensive for the low healing requirement we've got. So I am not convinced that the "reason" is to do with simplicity. I am more convinced it is to do with a greater healing emphasis, which is something I've already addressed. I think what's more likely is that they've put a lower emphasis on DPS use and gradually built a more extensive and comprehensive healing kit, but balanced it around Savage/EX content.

[linayar]

I think their intention ends up being a moot point when the result is undesirable because with the problems caused they can see that what they tried to do isn't working.

Fair enough, though in that case, it's just a matter of enough voices telling them to change back, like with the change over alliance raid loot.

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Regarding complexity of healing kit, is it not comparable with DPS and their damage kit?

Two scenarios:

1. If fights are not demanding the full use of the healing kit, then that complexity is reduced for that fight.
2. If fights are demanding the full use, then players who choose to be healers would either learn their full kit or decide it's not the role for them, just like some players think DPS are too complicated to "master" and decide it's not for them or others with the role of tank. And for this scenario, a simplified damage kit also helps.

And yes, the problem of bloat can and does happen, but that's across all three roles. And I personally would support further reduction in buttons but with more meaningful interaction, but that's just me. I know some players think more buttons is more fun, and that's fine.

[Saefinn]

Fair enough, though in that case, it's just a matter of enough voices telling them to change back, like with the change over alliance raid loot.

Regarding complexity of healing kit, is it not comparable with DPS and their damage kit?

Two scenarios:

1. If fights are not demanding the full use of the healing kit, then that complexity is reduced for that fight.
2. If fights are demanding the full use, then players who choose to be healers would either learn their full kit or decide it's not the role for them, just like some players think DPS are too complicated to "master" and decide it's not for them or others with the role of tank. And for this scenario, a simplified damage kit also helps.

And yes, the problem of bloat can and does happen, but that's across all three roles. And I personally would support further reduction in buttons but with more meaningful interaction, but that's just me. I know some players think more buttons is more fun, and that's fine.

My thing is that I just want to have fun being a healer.

I think there's room for more buttons. But I don't even think there's a need for that or for much in the way of that, because some abilities can be given dual purposes. AST I think needs rework on existing buttons, because they already have all the extra buttons for their card system, it's the system itself I think could be improved. SCH I put earlier in the thread an approach that embraces its tactician persona in offering some dual purpose to its ability, the concept adds '0' new buttons to SCH and makes use of existing buttons that would be considered bloat in a low healing situation, so just get repurposed to be useful. WHM, I think could probably get away with a couple more buttons, but even then Cure could be upgraded to Cure II and Fluid Aura could have its function changed or replace it entirely because it is any incredibly, incredibly niche ability that I don't think anybody uses. Maybe WHM could also have some dual purpose abilities too, like Assize already is.

[Recon1o6]

The key word here is 'consistency'. It was probably difficult for the encounter designers to have to constantly balance fights around card RNG. It would lead to clearing the encounter being a matter of Drawing the "correct" amount of rDPS cards which is completely out of the player's control. Having DPS checks dictated by how lucky your AST is with cards sounds like a terrible idea. The new system is much better in that regard because they can more accurately predict how much rDPS the AST will bring and adjust the numbers accordingly. Not to mention how aggravating it would feel to pull absolutely nothing but utility cards in a 10 minute encounter or 30 minute dungeon.

They would have to either turn every card into a utility card which would make the Card system kinda too situational to properly use, or turn every card into a damage buffing card (which we actually got in Shadowbringers). Personally I'd prefer what we have now than the mess of Stormblood WHM being shoved to the wayside.

Actually, that's not the case, thereby having even less reason to have destroyed the cards

The devs in a reddit interview said that they don't really need to take into account job balance for raids. Only if there's something that commpletely breaks a mechanic

If the devs did that, then we wouldn't have E4s cleared by a bunch of summoners a dancer and a paladin with no healer in sight.

[Hyperia]

After some thought... I sorta wish they would make rez instant with no cost and put it on a 60 second CD timer. Would help save the lives of many healers who die trying to hardcast a rez and remind greedy DPS to do mechanics right and not get splatted.

[ForteNightshade]

Yeah, but a reduction in downtime is still a reduction in downtime. And I don't think they plan on reducing heals or increasing need for healing as that would qualitatively be worse for parties unless everyone is on top of their game.

They don't need to increasing healing requirements to an absurd degree. But it should be enough to at least make both healers feel as though they are contributed. I just ran E9N with my friend and literally spend 95% of my time spamming Glare not because of greed but due to how the fight simply doesn't deal enough outgoing damage to warrant two healers. And it wasn't as though she didn't DPS either. We were both spamming Glare/Malefic. Astro simply has so many oGCD tools nowadays that anything below Savage is a complete joke. Hell, even Savage is not immune to be comically low on healing requirements. E7S literally did not require anything beyond Whispering Dawn for two full minutes; in a fight that didn't last ten.

[Lithios]

The solo content isn't really affecting this. Even if you make it so all healer & tank attacks only have 10 potency or decrease the dps needed to clear dungeons/raids, everyone would still be spamming their attacks as much as possible while only using just enough healing/mitigation to keep everyone alive; Because more dps = faster fights and faster fights = less opportunities to make mistakes/ larger buffer to not fail fights due to mistakes.

Only way I see how you could change this is by forcing players into situations where they can't dps; But at that point, you're changing how dungeons & raids work in FF14

[Lilseph]

The devs in a reddit interview said that they don't really need to take into account job balance for raids. Only if there's something that commpletely breaks a mechanic

Would you happen to have the source link for this? I would really like to read it.

If the devs did that, then we wouldn't have E4s cleared by a bunch of summoners a dancer and a paladin with no healer in sight.

That's actually a huge exaggeration. All the Summoners were alternating Titan-egi and also holding Demi-Phoenix specifically for high damage phases. The Dancer and Paladin were there for the mini healing and the strong party mitigation. Heck, at the end of the video in the final phase, everything started to snowball the moment one person got KO'd. That E4S clear required a very high amount of coordination, which would be impossible to do for the average party. There is no reason not the bring a Healer unless you're specifically in it for the meme.

[Recon1o6]

Would you happen to have the source link for this? I would really like to read it.
That's actually a huge exaggeration. All the Summoners were alternating Titan-egi and also holding Demi-Phoenix specifically for high damage phases. The Dancer and Paladin were there for the mini healing and the strong party mitigation. Heck, at the end of the video in the final phase, everything started to snowball the moment one person got KO'd. That E4S clear required a very high amount of coordination, which would be impossible to do for the average party. There is no reason not the bring a Healer unless you're specifically in it for the meme.

Here's the link https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...4_battle_devs/
It was a famistu translation posted on reddit, I was a little mistaken on that front since it was from january but the content I was correct on

Famitsu: So many gates to pass. Did the addition of GNB and DNC affect the raid designs in any way?

Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): We leave the job balance to the battle system team, so we as the battle content team just need to be conscious about each of the roles, so we don't really need to be bothered by it.
Nabeshima: I was also told i didn't need to worry about the balance. The only mention was the "interrupt system" they added in 5.0.

Masaki Nakagawa (Ozma): [We all check the new actions for each job and sometimes are conscious, but it doesn't really affect the difficulty of designing fights.

Daisuke Nakagawa: The job adjustments and raid designs are done at the same time when we work on an explansion, so it's not realistic to start designing the raids after waiting for the final job adjustments, because we simply won't be able to make it on time.

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Therefore if they don't need to look at job balance, then there was no "balance" need on the encounter level to remove the cards.

Its not an exaggeration of low healing requirements if the hardest raid in a tier can be done without a healer. If that's not proof they don't into account just how abundant our heals are then what is?

[Lilseph]

Here's the link

Thanks! Was definitely an interesting read. Regardless though, the old card system caused a hefty imbalance when it came to the three healers with Diurnal being essentially a better WHM. Shadowbringers has the best "healer balance" we've had so far. If anything, they really only need to add a bit more for healers in terms of tools during downtime.

Its not an exaggeration of low healing requirements if the hardest raid in a tier can be done without a healer. If that's not proof they don't into account just how abundant our heals are then what is?

There isn't less healing per say, there's actually more; it's just that the new healing tools they've introduced compensate for the extra outgoing damage so it feels more same-y.

I think it's more of a testament to the strength of the sustain that those jobs have. Putting up what amounts to double the potency of Media II, and having access to a Manaward every 90/30 seconds respectively is pretty insane. Not to mention having Addle for practically every raidwide and mechanic. WAR and PLD are pretty self-explanatory, and the DNC has a mini Medica that's slightly stronger than actual Medica.

Finding the fights easier to heal and being able to find and use downtime says more about your improvement as a healer skill level-wise. Also keep in mind that e4s is the first raid tier of this expansion. In Stormblood, o4s (Neo Exdeath) is similar in that regard because it's literally just "healing downtime the fight", yet that's never really ever brought up. They just need to fill in the gap for downtime so it isn't monotonous.