Famitsu Interview: Tuning encounters for healing

[Kabooa]

In this article, Mr. Yoshida's comments have been edited in no small measure to ensure readability. Please note that the content and order of Mr. Yoshida's remarks may differ from the actual exchanges.

Oh boy, can't wait to read this.

[Gemina]

As far as we know they have 4 people designing every single job, and none of those play healer (not sure about tank).

This is my impression as well, which according to the recent information given to us, there are essentially five roles as depicted in our character menus. That isn't really anything new though, other than confirming that even if they did have one engineer to represent each role, they are one short. I don't think it's either here or there because of how PvE is structured. They could replace anyone on that team with a healer main, or someone there can take it up and we would still have the same result.

Problem as I see it is instead of addressing the ilv problem, they just keep moving the goalposts; which will validate healer utility again for what? Two, three weeks?. Also according to that information, they have ran out of field and I would say they ate up that field in massive chunks allowing the ilv to scale the way it does. I have just never been able to comprehend the reverse pyramid approach to content design these devs use, but I also don't see it changing. I think that instead of addressing the ilv scaling in 6.0, they've just reset the values, and are starting fresh, and will continue to move the goalposts again each patch. Just by much smaller margins this time.

[Dogempire]

It just shows that they don't read healer feedback closely when the best they can do is just buff savage to hit harder and do nothing about the other 99% of content in the game where healing is even more boring.

Making the hardest content hit harder does nothing for people complaining about loss of job identity and complexity.

[Rymi64]

It just shows that they don't read healer feedback closely when the best they can do is just buff savage to hit harder and do nothing about the other 99% of content in the game where healing is even more boring.

Because they have to appeal to the casual player. The casual player isnt likely to go into savage and such so they thats where they can actually cause things to hurt. Every normal fight has to clearable even for the casual player

[ASkellington]

Because they have to appeal to the casual player. The casual player isnt likely to go into savage and such so they thats where they can actually cause things to hurt. Every normal fight has to clearable even for the casual player

My counter to this is that Amarout and Mt. Gulg, both fights required to clear MSQ are harder than any other dungeon we've gotten in ShB. They should've been the standard difficulty going forward for lv80 content. They weren't. Doesn't matter what ilvl you had, certain pulls in both dungeons, while not anywhere near EX or Savage content, was still difficult to pull off.

Some adds in Amarout targeted Healer/Dps and the tank could not pull aggro off them. One in particular debuffed your healer. In Mt. Gulg there were plenty of mobs who hit the tank hard from start to finish. The boss fights in both imo become snooze fests like normal, but at least in this respect SE can take notes:

More priority targets and harder hitting mobs is not asking for too much.

Also closer ilvl gap would be nice. Mt. Gulg and Amarout? Min ilvl 390/410 respectively with a sync of 420/440. Why is the Twinning and Akademia min 410 but their ilvl sync goes up to 470?

[SiriusSaltstice]

How about instead, the players simply...not use the better gear? Most player complaints can be taken care of by the players themselves it often seems. Stop trying to optimize everything and watch it get harder.

That's such a lazy answer, my guy. You prog for gear, you naturally get new gear, why not use it?

It says a lot when to fix the "hard mode" content you'd do what is considered a challenge run in single player games.

[Risvertasashi]

"healers say they're bored so we'll increase damage", usual simplistic view from Yoshi :|

He's not wrong ; just trapped in his own shallow game where healing has become some kind of side-activity because of the focus on one-shot.

This is pretty much how I've felt too.

Someone earlier commented it's more of a mitigation check. Lots of planning around mitigation. Which isn't bad, but... I think I agree, the emphasis on attacks that can oneshot or otherwise kill through burst damage don't really do as much as a more frequent (but not necessarily extremely hard hitting) need for healing could do.

[AnotherPerson]

Also closer ilvl gap would be nice. Mt. Gulg and Amarout? Min ilvl 390/410 respectively with a sync of 420/440. Why is the Twinning and Akademia min 410 but their ilvl sync goes up to 470?

As you may have noticed, all dungeons at expansion lv cap (50/60/70/80) will have huge ilvl gaps while their leveling dungeon counterparts aren't that different ilvl-wise. That's nothing new. Dungeons at expansion cap level are generally easier than leveling dungeon counterparts and also have their separate roulette too.

[Dogempire]

Because they have to appeal to the casual player. The casual player isnt likely to go into savage and such so they thats where they can actually cause things to hurt. Every normal fight has to clearable even for the casual player

Leveling dungeons like Bardam's Mettle and Holminster Switch hurt like hell for tanks, especially compared to the "Expert" max level dungeons, and the average casual player is more than likely to get a tank that does wall to wall pulls that they're then expected to heal. Sure it's not the same healing demand as cycles in E11S or Junction Shiva in E12S, but in terms of single target healing it's very demanding when the tank does that wall to wall pull.

Either way, they shouldn't focus on increasing outgoing damage, that's not how you make healers engaging, making it hard to optimize your rotation and your resources on top of keeping everyone healed is how you do it.

Since healing has basically been idiot-proofed, only the last thing still remains, and that task isn't even hard if you actually know how to use your kit

[elioaiko]

Naturally gear should make things easier. Healing more =/= more enjoyable. I don't particularly find having to spam more GCD heals to be interesting so tbh increasing the dmg is not the way. I'd rather they focus on making healers more unique in how they handle damage overall. Everything healers have is either mitigation or a direct heal. In fact most of the ogcds and gcds are incredibly similar. I find healing boring when I can just look at my hotbar and know exactly what type of button I need to hit between healers because they're functionally similar. There's no real flavor.

I guess it's good that they looked at it but failing to realize there more issues than just "oh they want more raid damage." There's fairy ghosting, WHM and SCH clipping like crazy and AST's Sleeve Draw not lining up with Divination. I really do hope they get it together for 6.0 but this gives me nothing tbh. We just keep seeing them take and take away things and just giving us more of the same.