Famitsu Interview: Tuning encounters for healing

[Absurdity]

The problem is that even in savage healing is very minimal. I took a look at my static's first clear of eden promise savage and, as a whm when I was playing super safe with a lot of overhealing, I spent less than 20% of my GCDs healing (including afflatus skills ofc). That was week 1 when we were all undergeared, and that's the most healing intensive fight of the current savage tier. That's way too low. Now, with BiS gear, my healing - offensive GCD ratio is <1% on AST. And the most skilled healers manage to do 0 GCD runs with perfect oGCD planning.
I mean...this cannot be what healers are supposed to be.

It sounds like the "What people think I'm doing:... and what I'm actually doing:..." meme but I'm starting to believe that SE really has no actual clue what even just somewhat competent healer gameplay looks like, they seem to think that healers just spam GCD heals 24/7. "Oh you took 10% damage? Let me do 3 Medica 2's" As if every healer has less cognitive function than a badly programmed bot.

Or they really think that spamming the same button for 7 minutes out of an 8 minute fight is riveting gameplay.

[Risvertasashi]

It sounds like the "What people think I'm doing:... and what I'm actually doing:..." meme but I'm starting to believe that SE really has no actual clue what even just somewhat competent healer gameplay looks like, they seem to think that healers just spam GCD heals 24/7. "Oh you took 10% damage? Let me do 3 Medica 2's" As if every healer has less cognitive function than a badly programmed bot.

Or they really think that spamming the same button for 7 minutes out of an 8 minute fight is riveting gameplay.

While there's plenty of people that will say "SE has no idea what they're doing" - the honest truth?

It's just hard to fix comprehensively. The game is so thoroughly built around burst damage. SE's gone for the low hanging fruit, like nerfing the % of an hp bar that a given amount of potency will heal, and per the start of this thread, adding more burst damage attacks.

And then add that DPS and healing don't intertwine together like, say, DPS and enmity generation does for tanks. The current design is just the easiest, and a major change would be a major expense for a set of jobs most people don't play and rarely gets so much as a mention from the press.

Oh, and, there's like 4 people responsible for the design and balance of every job across every role - there's no dedicated healing person or people, so it's competing for attention from both the issues DPS players face and tank players face.

So if you really want to get into SE's headspace, ask "what is the cheap and practical solution to feedback," and their adjustments make a lot more sense.

[ItMe]

So if you really want to get into SE's headspace, ask "what is the cheap and practical solution to feedback," and their adjustments make a lot more sense.

That is a really helpful way of framing it.

[Dogempire]

So if you really want to get into SE's headspace, ask "what is the cheap and practical solution to feedback," and their adjustments make a lot more sense.

It's kind of unfortunate because simply upping rotational complexity across the board for all healers would go a long way towards reducing boredom, as would making MP more scarce so that MP management becomes a bigger issue and piety and efficient resource usage become important, but that's just not going to happen.

Things could change in Endwalker, but so far SE has just been lazy at solving balance issues, choosing to delete skills, simplify anything complex, and homogenize jobs across the board instead of taking the time to look at every job carefully and consider what it actually needs.

Heck they completely gutted the support aspect of ranged dps and so far they're just happily sitting on the bones of the role they killed. What's to say they're not going to add healers to that pile of bones next?

[GrimGale]

It's kind of unfortunate because simply upping rotational complexity across the board for all healers would go a long way towards reducing boredom, as would making MP more scarce so that MP management becomes a bigger issue and piety and efficient resource usage become important, but that's just not going to happen.

Things could change in Endwalker, but so far SE has just been lazy at solving balance issues, choosing to delete skills, simplify anything complex, and homogenize jobs across the board instead of taking the time to look at every job carefully and consider what it actually needs.

Heck they completely gutted the support aspect of ranged dps and so far they're just happily sitting on the bones of the role they killed. What's to say they're not going to add healers to that pile of bones next?

To this I keep asking myself the question: After all those new healing actions they have added, what can they possibly give us that is new that we don't have yet? Each healer already has several healing oGCDs, GCDs, instant, AoE, single target strong and weak, what other healing ability could they possibly give us that is unique and useful. The only avenue left is to give healers either more DPS tools or some form of utility.

That or deleting/upgrading Healing actions into more "poweful" versions with a new coat of paint.

[Raminax]

Well, considering White Mages got the abomination that is 4.0 Plenary Indulgence, I'm sure that Square Enix are more than capable of giving us quirky heals that are useful approximately never. But hey, look at all the choices we have to fill up HP bars!

[Liam_Harper]

"Recently I’ve received feedback saying “There’s nothing much to do for healing” from the healers so we’ve increased the attack intensity on Eden Promise Savage"

As much as I enjoy Savage... it's fine to increase damage in these but, that's not the only content where it should be adressed.

The other issue is there isn't much to do for healing because of the frequency of incoming damage, not just the intensity. Making raidwides hit extremely hard doesn't change much besides adding in a GCD or two and letting HoT's do their work as usual. The long stretches of downtime where there is no unavoidable damage still exist.

[Gemina]

It's kind of unfortunate because simply upping rotational complexity across the board for all healers would go a long way towards reducing boredom, as would making MP more scarce so that MP management becomes a bigger issue and piety and efficient resource usage become important, but that's just not going to happen.

This basically ignores what the poster you quoted is pointing out. If you understand why the devs have to do certain things, then you immediately know exactly why the rotational complexity and harsher MP management aren't going to happen. But that isn't completely accurate, is it? A bit more rotational complexity and MP management used to be things that were very much part of the game for healers. They are pretty much gone now, so why would you think they would revert to old systems, especially when they didn't work? There are times in all the content I participate in where it would be really bad if I had to worry about where in my DPS rotation I am in while also having to worry about players who fail mechanics. There are times where I run out of MP. I am also far from infallible, and screw up all the time.

When I think about the healers who were actually capable of optimizing their kits while keeping everyone up in comparison to your every day run of the mill healer, there were only a handful. With that in mind, the desire for more complexity within the healer kits sounds a lot more like gatekeeping than it does making healing enjoyable for everyone. After all, accessibility works in direct contrast with exclusivity. I am fine with having very few DPS abilities as a healer. I am not fine with being punished when myself and me mates get stronger and better at handling mechanics. Makes absolute, zero, sense.

[Semirhage]

Having more than one button to press 75+% of the time is "gatekeeping"?

Having one button to press 75+% of the time "gatekept" me out of the role. Oh but thank god I made way for a hundred Medica 2 spammers; that's what was really missing from the role.

[Satarn]

A bit more rotational complexity and MP management used to be things that were very much part of the game for healers. They are pretty much gone now, so why would you think they would revert to old systems, especially when they didn't work?

They didn't work - how exactly? Were those more complex healer kits and MP making it impossible to clear content? Nah, every tier before SHB has been cleared just fine so that certainly worked. Were they unattractive for majority of the healer playerbase? Don't think so, given how many people are asking for them to be back, I also don't recall any requests to "remove healer dps spells" in Stormblood. There have always been people complaining about being expected to dps while healing, but that's caused by traditional healer mentality, not the complexity of rotations and is in fact "worse" with the simplified damage kits, as people are even less forgiving to "pure healers" now that dps is so easy to do - and so these people are still unhappy about being pressured to dps.

With that in mind, the desire for more complexity within the healer kits sounds a lot more like gatekeeping than it does making healing enjoyable for everyone. After all, accessibility works in direct contrast with exclusivity.

It's not exclusivity at all though. Increasing the healing requirements drastically to reduce the downtime would be gate keeping, since you'd need to actually get better at healing to continue participating in content at all. If the damage rotations were made more complex again, then the less skilled healers could still clear encounters like they do now, they would just do less dps which is not their primary role - and even they could eventually simply get better with practice.
Adding complexity to the healer dps is the only way to increase the skill ceiling - and thus enjoyment for the masses of disgruntled veteran healers - without making the healing itself more difficult and actually hurting the role's accessibility.

If the concern is not meeting dps checks due to lowering the average healer's output, then the devs could just lower the requirements to account for that(insert the outdated "we don't take healer dps into account in dps checks" quote), and it would actually make the "pure healers" happier at the same time since they wouldn't be expected to deal high dps, so it'd cater to more than one type of player simultaneously.