Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[Anhra]

What i also find quite interesting on the topic of pvp, as far as i recall, priests in WoW also get a punishing debuff if they apply any healing effects on themselves (not sure if this apply if healing someone else), but just a minor thing like this could already push our pvp into a good direction.

[Dyvid]

A history of WoW Talent Tree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NujhDV0jYww Blizzard has continually updated the talents because of meta. I remember in Vanilla WoW Raid scene that if you weren't "spec'ed" right you got the boot.

Now another key difference is WoW offers 12 class and you can specialize a role. The only difference with FFXIV is rather than choosing a spec, you just chose a job.

[ItMe]

Now another key difference is WoW offers 12 class and you can specialize a role. The only difference with FFXIV is rather than choosing a spec, you just chose a job.

FF14's way is infinitely preferably in my opinion.
I can play what I want and not get harassed.
I have a friend who plays a warrior on WoW and made a better build than the standard one and even though he constantly makes the nay-sayers eat their words he's constantly shit talked and harassed by new ones weekly.
I don't want the devs to waste their time so I can pretend I have options with skill trees.

[GrizzlyTank]

Now another key difference is WoW offers 12 class and you can specialize a role. The only difference with FFXIV is rather than choosing a spec, you just chose a job.

An comparable example to wow classes and spec would be SMN/SCH, level one of them and you level both.

[Dyvid]

An comparable example to wow classes and spec would be SMN/SCH, level one of them and you level both.

Not really the example I was trying to convey. Take WoW Warlock for example: Affliction, Demonology, Destruction specs. Affliction is you DoT mage, Demonology fills the screen with temp pets, and Destruction is Fire Mage, lol? Now it I wants to play a pet DoT mage in FFXIV I would go SMN, however if I want to play a Destruction type I would switch to BLM.

Now it is true the original idea behind ACN was all classes were going to branch off into new jobs but the Devs didn't like how it turned out and decided to just add jobs rather than a different spec of a class.

FF14's way is infinitely preferably in my opinion.
I can play what I want and not get harassed.
I have a friend who plays a warrior on WoW and made a better build than the standard one and even though he constantly makes the nay-sayers eat their words he's constantly shit talked and harassed by new ones weekly.
I don't want the devs to waste their time so I can pretend I have options with skill trees.

Plus it takes more time for the devs to balance out every spec so one doesn't rein king. I guess it's a moot point because rather than balance spec we have to balance jobs.... I guess my ultimate point is a spec is just the same as a job and wouldn't solve the Healer problem.

[Packetdancer]

Realistically, any game will have people who want to optimize; for some, it's literally the endgame. (It's honestly starting to get that way for me. Well, one of the two endgames; the other is glamour.) It's why the Balance exists here in FFXIV, among other things. Others will want to play their own way.

In a single player game—take Cyberpunk 2077, as an example—that wouldn't matter. The person who wanted to build out V's skill tree such that they were numerically optimal in combat and the person who wants to do stealth and katanas solely because "I think ninjas and stuff are neat" do not affect each other's play in any meaningful way.

In an MMO, though, they do. And if someone's preferred playstyle means a dungeon takes 40 minutes, or a raid involves 5 wipes, versus a quick run? Someone else is gonna be not happy. Because one person's playstyle can hinder another's progress.

Moreover, there's a lot of ability interactions that effect the party overall, not just progression in the abstract; two dancers both hitting Technical at the same time wastes the Technical buff, which is discarding potential damage for the group. Same with a monk never using Brotherhood. A SCH and AST both shielding someone will overwrite the shields (unless the SCH crits and gets Catalyze, which does stack with AST) and be wasted potency. Etc.

And it's particularly pronounced in serious endgame content, because people often get focused on efficiency; if someone is playing in a way that's fun for them but isn't optimal for the group, they absolutely might find themselves feeling pressured to change to a more optimal method.

No matter what the devs do, someone's going to figure out the 'optimal' method and many people are going to prefer those they do content with use that method. (I mean, how many people on the receiving end ever really wanted cards other than Balance most of the time prior to the AST reworking?)

Granted, there are games where there are exceptions; old school Secret World was one, because the deck system literally was so broad that there were easily 10 different ways to build a super-effective deck to do Thing X for any given X. Yeah, there were some decks that were considered 'optimal' in serious content, but people were always finding new weird ways to put stuff together, so folks were more open to alternatives. (My blood/elemental build with passive traits from assault rifle had honestly less than zero justification to work as well as it did... but it was stupid effective as a combat healer, so no one questioned it.)

On the other hand, it was seemingly near impossible to actually balance content in any sane way with such a wide spread, and old-school Secret World also had about 30+ really badly broken ways to do Thing X for any given X. Which was hugely problematic as a combination; with no real guidance on building an effective deck, I know a lot of people who built something 'fun' that got them through Kingsmouth and the Savage Coast, and then when they hit the Blue Mountains and the difficulty ramped up a little bit, their utterly broken builds hit a wall and they felt unable to progress. More than a few left the game rather than try to figure out how to rework their deck. Meanwhile, others had absurdly effective deck builds and just blitzed the entire third zone's content like mowing a lawn.

So diversity in builds/specializations/etc. is not always a good thing, either.

[Payadopa]

So diversity in builds/specializations/etc. is not always a good thing, either.

A bit too reductionist for me but I get you.
In the end it comes down to having fun. If it isn't, why bother? And having to make meaningful decisions certainly is more fun than AoE #1 followed by AoE #2. And yet every time SE 'fixes' a class it gets reduced to a more simple form. That is not engaging. At least not for me.

I mean, why do people wany to pull wall to wall? To save time. Because they are bored. Because everything bar current content requires no real effort. The minute to minute gameplay needs some serious overhaul. And that's not achieved by making everything feel the same if you ask me.

[Absurdity]

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?

More or less. There are certain talents that are simply flat out better for the content you're doing, often depending on the party size. But sometimes you also have two choices for a talent row that are both equal in performance.
The biggest issue that WoW has are the "borrowed power" systems that the devs feel the need to implement, they almost always force you into a very specific set of choices because otherwise you're just severely gimping yourself in endgame content and changing those around requires an endless amount of grind or some arbitrary timed lockout.

[Vickii]

If you’re only a priest in WoW you’re probably a better healer than if you mainly play MCH in 14 but switch to WHM once a week to get healer loot.

Did my raid runs today, on two of the four both healers died at the same time, on one run they were both dead at the same time on two occasions. We were lucky on both runs to have a RDM who saved the run.

The quality of healers in 14 is bad and until it improves I can’t see them making healing more complicated.

[Vahlnir]

Did my raid runs today, on two of the four both healers died at the same time, on one run they were both dead at the same time on two occasions.

I seem to be experiencing this a lot lately in the new Eden raids, ridiculously so. Seems like every time a boss does any mechanic at all at least one of the healers goes down, but sometimes both...more often that I'm comfortable with, really. Thankfully my OT had my back during one of my most recent ones. Healers dropped, I wasn't getting healed, and that other Gunbreaker pulled the boss off of me and held it until the healers were back up again. Bless them.