Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[BlitzAceRush]

The problem with skill tress is unless they basically become different specs in disguise someone will map out the most optimal for dps/whatever is needed and people will either run that or be shunned. As has been said in this thread, they could reduce the dps spells to 10 potency and people would still use them over anything else if it gave them the most dps.

Skill trees would just shift the problem from how you play your class to how you build them, the community will still have a "right" and "wrong" way of doing things, it'll just extend to this as well.

That's often what it comes down to, DPS, they could give people the choice of "This talent gives your healer a full DPS rotation, with skills and procs and the whole nine yards." Vs "Increase Glare potency by 500%" People would still spam the one button if that's where the most DPS is. Poor example I know, but it's just to illustrate what I've seen in every game I've played with a skill tree. You can give people the most interesting and fun customisation for their character, but most would still chose the "Increases dps by 1,3,5,8,10%" If it lets them clear faster.
The worst case I've seen in my recent gaming is Warframe, where the community are hell bent on finding any way to get the game to play itself where they could just tape a button down and walk away, all in the pursuit of "efficiency."

[Saefinn]

Plus I think because they've opted to offer so many jobs to keep in line with the numerous job fantasies of the FF series it's more achievable without skill trees to complicate balance.

[GeminiReed]

Skill trees are hell to balance. Their perceived freedom is usually just a sea of trap specs and one that's role-optimal. The viable off-specs I've seen had unintended synergies or offered hybrid role capabilities with little to no downsides.

[Anhra]

The problem with skill tress is unless they basically become different specs in disguise someone will map out the most optimal for dps/whatever is needed and people will either run that or be shunned. As has been said in this thread, they could reduce the dps spells to 10 potency and people would still use them over anything else if it gave them the most dps.

Skill trees would just shift the problem from how you play your class to how you build them, the community will still have a "right" and "wrong" way of doing things, it'll just extend to this as well.

That's often what it comes down to, DPS, they could give people the choice of "This talent gives your healer a full DPS rotation, with skills and procs and the whole nine yards." Vs "Increase Glare potency by 500%" People would still spam the one button if that's where the most DPS is. Poor example I know, but it's just to illustrate what I've seen in every game I've played with a skill tree. You can give people the most interesting and fun customisation for their character, but most would still chose the "Increases dps by 1,3,5,8,10%" If it lets them clear faster.
The worst case I've seen in my recent gaming is Warframe, where the community are hell bent on finding any way to get the game to play itself where they could just tape a button down and walk away, all in the pursuit of "efficiency."

That's just dry theory you're spouting there friend, potency changes are always manageable. Many MMORPGs including WoW btw, implimented it successfully without having too much of a powergap that isn't unbearable. If for example, one of the healing braches of a skilltree specializes in doing direct damage to a target, another branch that excells in supporting with buffs, could easily make up for it by having crowd control effects with debuffs or flat out increase the damageoutput of someone else. Would that make any difference which one to choose? Mathematically speaking not really, but the way the job plays would and a change of pace is one of the things the combat system really needs.

[Rilifane]

The problem with skill tress is unless they basically become different specs in disguise someone will map out the most optimal for dps/whatever is needed and people will either run that or be shunned. As has been said in this thread, they could reduce the dps spells to 10 potency and people would still use them over anything else if it gave them the most dps.

Skill trees would just shift the problem from how you play your class to how you build them, the community will still have a "right" and "wrong" way of doing things, it'll just extend to this as well.

That's often what it comes down to, DPS, they could give people the choice of "This talent gives your healer a full DPS rotation, with skills and procs and the whole nine yards." Vs "Increase Glare potency by 500%" People would still spam the one button if that's where the most DPS is. Poor example I know, but it's just to illustrate what I've seen in every game I've played with a skill tree. You can give people the most interesting and fun customisation for their character, but most would still chose the "Increases dps by 1,3,5,8,10%" If it lets them clear faster.
The worst case I've seen in my recent gaming is Warframe, where the community are hell bent on finding any way to get the game to play itself where they could just tape a button down and walk away, all in the pursuit of "efficiency."

Some do, some don't.
A good example of a power gap existing but players still chosing the less powerful spec would be Disc during the start of WotLK. It was bad compared to Holy because they hadn't yet figured out how to make Disc viable and more or less on par with other healers for PvE when it had been a PvP spec before. But although a lot of people stuck to Holy because it was comfy and something they knew, you had an increasing number of Disc priests running around even before the first buff/ tweak came in.
Same later during Cata with Archangel Holy. It was more complicated and not as strong as other specs in some situations but viable enough that people still played it.

However the game itself allows for a lot more freedom than FFXIV because of flexible raid size outside mythic and a larger party size for mythic. You can mix and match much better when you have 20 slots with barely restricted role distribution vs 8 slots with predeterminded role distribution. It's not just a matter of what is stronger, it's much more complex than that. Even at times when certain specs were known to be noticably weaker than others, you still had a signifcant number of players playing them.
The same was true for Rift. Chloromancer was far more complicated to play efficiently and quickly fell behind a pure healer spec because in most situations it was easier to just dish out burst healing and call it a day but it was still well-received and many players enjoyed it even if they couldn't realize the full potential and had sometimes trouble keeping up.

Skill trees are hard to balance but players are generally more forviging towards imbalances if they have a large pool of specs/ classes to chose from. But it takes a certain acceptance that the favourite class/ spec will not always be the best one aswell. Not every community has that, different MMOs draw in different people.

[BlitzAceRush]

That's just dry theory you're spouting there friend, potency changes are always manageable. Many MMORPGs including WoW btw, implimented it successfully without having too much of a powergap that isn't unbearable. If for example, one of the healing braches of a skilltree specializes in doing direct damage to a target, another branch that excells in supporting with buffs, could easily make up for it by having crowd control effects with debuffs or flat out increase the damageoutput of someone else. Would that make any difference which one to choose? Mathematically speaking not really, but the way the job plays would and a change of pace is one of the things the combat system really needs.

WoW's a poor example given their talent/skill trees have bounced all over the spectrum in their efforts to get them to work and it always ends the same way, one talent is better and everyone either picks it or expects you to.
Using your example if the support affords more DPS gain than the DPS tree than it will be the picked one or the reverse will be true, if you're serious about progression you'll only take the best and unfortunately even if both are viable even in lower content you get people wanting only what's "meta" We've seen it with jobs getting shunned not because they can't do the content, but because thery're X% slower or deal less damage or add a minute to clears.

All skill tress would do is add to the problem, now it's not "Is MNK OK dose it need help?" Now it's "Is Wind MNK ok? But we can't let it overshadow Earth MNK and perhaps we should lower Fire MNK a bit?" Same issue, you've just added steps.

This is also ignoring that very few games add multiple new jobs per expansion, in 14 your job IS your spec or talent tree, you can do it all on one character unlike a lot of MMO's your customisation/adaptation comes in adding more tools to your belt.

[Anhra]

A Meta isn't a bad thing for a good Rpg game, especially in pvp. A Meta has to exist to a point where it can be broken and rebuild again, keeping this cycle up is what seperates good from great gameplay. Our current "meta" is one of stability, where every job is a simplified dps, tanks just being sturdy dps and "healers" just curebots that are dumbed down so hard, that we reached a point that theyre almost not needed anymore in regular dungeons which are one of the things every player spents on alot of their time. A well-thought skill tree is one of some solutions to this issue but honestly, im not expecting any changes like that to happen because people, and with people i mean casuals, always want to go for the easy mode, play a few hours and move on to the next thing instead of aiming for mastery in something. But for that kind of thing to exist, we first need a proper meta.

[Allegor]

The concept of a meta isn't bad, it's the player's perception of -worst case scenario- "do it like this or you're garbage, I don't care you don't like it". In XIV there's no variation, you're either playing the job right or you're doing it wrong, but if given the chance, there will be people not following the meta because fun is subjective and they won't sacrifice their fun for a marginal dps increase, whichever the role.

For example, let's say there's a talent that gives AST their old "useless" cards back, no min maxer would touch that talent, but me and many others would, because 8 flavors of Balance is imo the worst thing they did to the job.

Short version: it's more of a player side issue rather than the game's.

[Aeducan]

I joined the game roughly 2 weeks prior to SB, so I experienced HW iteration of the game. CNJ was my first class and when I got cleric stance very early in the game (lv 4 I think?), I thought the purpose of that ability was for solo play ie. MSQ. Hence I always have it on while solo but always off whenever I do dungeons. I remember as a new player, healing pre-50 dungeons was an authentic experience; I had plenty to do without having to spam stone. Back then I used holy for stun, not dmg so I only casted it a few times per pull. Stonekin had longer-than-usual cast time, regen, couple of cure 2 here and there, and few cross skills like virus and the like. CNJ and later WHM felt like a typical RPG support and I enjoyed my first pre-50 journey. I was 50 when SB hit, so that's when I really started learning to DPS as a healer because of the new design. Now as experienced green DPS who often play "how low can you get" game with tanks, the playstyle is a lot different than it was before. From my observations:

1. Damage is predictable and telegraphed in this game. Most of them are "avoid/do this and you'll survive with 0 damage taken, or botch it and die" which renders healing moot either way. Probably the reason why Amaurot boss is infamous; that one is anomaly in which its attacks are not as predictable so chances are you'll still get hit by laser for the first second or two.

2. Questionable spells design. I understand our panic heal should be instant and have long CD (300s Bene lmao), but then they keep adding powerful oGCD heals like: tetra, another charge of ED, earthly star, excog, etc. Requires no cast nor resource and often enough to patch up the party to acceptable health range. Support spells like benison and cards are all abilities which require nothing but a button push so it doesn't require much time/effort. Strong oGCDs were a SCH thing but now all 3s are like that, with AST as the winner (imho) with its current iteration. I think having too many/overpowered oGCDs is a big one cause even now healing pre-50 dungeons is more aligned to dev's vision of what a healer is. Just try healing Stone Vigil as SCH with a gear-lv appropriate tank. Matoya is a LOT easier than that and I spent most of my GCD DPSing there, unlike in Stone Vigil.

3. Nature of the beast. Unlike anything else, healing has a hard cap; you either live or you don't. As long as your HP is above 0, you're good. 17k or 170k don't matter that much for experienced healers. You get the idea. Given how powerful oGCDs and simple our support spells are, we have so much downtime. What else is there to do but spamming that 1 bloody damaging spell? Plus as you play more, you become more familiar with the game and know when to anticipate damage that's worthy of healing.

Current design can work if they revamp healer spells. With every new patch my hope dims (??? @ED nerf) but who knows what 6.0 will bring; they might surprise me with how they handled NIN or new lilies.

[Aeducan]

WoW's a poor example given their talent/skill trees have bounced all over the spectrum in their efforts to get them to work and it always ends the same way, one talent is better and everyone either picks it or expects you to.

I'm very late to the party, but I just started playing WoW 2 days ago. I'm currently lv 11 holy priest and having read the spellbooks for all 3 specializations, I daresay healing seems a lot more fun there. I have yet to heal any actual dungeon yet, but I like what I'm reading so far. You brought up a good point about highest DPS gain; would you say enrage here is the culprit then? Cause otherwise 1 or 2 minutes disparity (which honestly I don't think it's going to be even this long) won't matter that much. I was just thinking early today that WoW healer design might work here given how similar the battle system is; I guess it's not cookie cutter as I thought eh? Could be interesting nonetheless...

Slightly on tangent here, but is it true that I will be pressured to conform to people's expectations regarding my build once I reach end-game?