Dengeki Interview

[Chyro]

"Yoshi P: Up until Patch 5.3 we heard from a lot of players that healers had a fair amount of downtime on their hands. So, from Patch 5.4, we’ve planned for the more difficult content to put out a lot more damage more often. For speed clears we are planning for it to be harder to do with just pure healers or just shield healers."

Seems like a case of 'hearing from a lot of players' but 'not actually understanding the issue'. Yes healers have a fair amount of downtime - in almost any kind of content, even more so in lower level and 'easy' content. Changing it for 'hardcore' content going forwards will not fix the issue, its a band-aid at most that ignores the main bulk of the game where it actually matters.

[Rymi64]

"Yoshi P: Up until Patch 5.3 we heard from a lot of players that healers had a fair amount of downtime on their hands. So, from Patch 5.4, we’ve planned for the more difficult content to put out a lot more damage more often. For speed clears we are planning for it to be harder to do with just pure healers or just shield healers."

Seems like a case of 'hearing from a lot of players' but 'not actually understanding the issue'. Yes healers have a fair amount of downtime - in almost any kind of content, even more so in lower level and 'easy' content. Changing it for 'hardcore' content going forwards will not fix the issue, its a band-aid at most that ignores the main bulk of the game where it actually matters.

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite. And since its smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two they make it so healers have less dps spells and lots of downtime, but since the more casual side is more unlikely to do the harder content they make the harder content hit harder and such.

[ForteNightshade]

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite. And since its smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two they make it so healers have less dps spells and lots of downtime, but since the more casual side is more unlikely to do the harder content they make the harder content hit harder and such.

Except it isn't quite that simple. Even players who aren't interested in Savage are complaining because they're bored. Likewise, the higher skilled players don't necessarily want to be green DPS, they play that way because they literally have nothing else to do. What most healers who at least have some understanding of how to properly heal want is something else to focus on besides spamming Glare. Even if you play extremely safe, your Glare/Malefic/Broil casts will vastly outnumber anything else you do. People are bored of spamming a single button upwards of 90% of the time.

If healers were given a myriad of buffs and debuffs, you wouldn't hear many complaints from the green DPS crowd despite it taking away from their damage numbers. Why? Because they actually have something to do now. They're asking for a damage rotation primarily because it's the only thing they think SE will actually do since higher healing requirements aren't likely to happen.

[Ultimatecalibur]

If healers were given a myriad of buffs and debuffs, you wouldn't hear many complaints from the green DPS crowd despite it taking away from their damage numbers. Why? Because they actually have something to do now. They're asking for a damage rotation primarily because it's the only thing they think SE will actually do since higher healing requirements aren't likely to happen.

Even regularly needing to cast Esuna on random party members would likely make them happier (would likely also make Bards happier as well).

[Liam_Harper]

So, from Patch 5.4, we’ve planned for the more difficult content to put out a lot more damage more often.

While it's great they're finally addressing feedback, keep in mind the result of the above statement was simply to have Cycles and the occasional need of a GCD heal in e11s and a few raidwides in e12s that require a shield. E9s and e10s are very easy to heal. Emerald EX was being solo healed week one. Normal is as light on healing as ever outside of the messiest runs and recent dungeons can almost be ran without a healer.
E12s is the only encounter in the entire patch to come close to their intended goal and you still have a fair bit of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. But it's a good start. However, in exchange, the healing required for everything below e11 has decreased. I don't see why players aren't allowed to be engaged while healing unless they're playing the final boss of the Savage tier.

The problem is the same as its always been. Yoshi is not a healer main. The class design team are not healer mains. They don't have a dedicated heal designer so even if they hear our feedback they're running on theory and impressions alone. What they feel is "a lot of damage" is nothing to someone who actually mains healer.

In short, increased/more frequent damage should be applied to more content and the 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, during downtime still needs to be addressed.

Also the shield/regen divide is just a joke and going down the wrong track entirely. It's very likely to end badly. All they're doing is reducing healer toolkit and splitting it between the healers.

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite.

I imagine another portion of the playerbase think they want the opposite. But if damage taken was ramped up significantly and healing done reduced so that a healer always needed to be healing to keep the party alive, they'd fall to pieces. Most of those players have no idea how their toolkit works or care to learn and we'd be swamped with complaints of how impossible the game has become.

What most actually want is healing to be as easy as it is now, but no one to expect them to contribute in other ways, so they can spam their one aoe heal with 30% uptime, clear content and be praised without requiring effort.

[EaMett]

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite. And since its smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two they make it so healers have less dps spells and lots of downtime, but since the more casual side is more unlikely to do the harder content they make the harder content hit harder and such.

Let me add that it's not necessarily smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two. MMOs have a long history of that going wrong.
It can definitely be a good thing but it's all about where you draw the line.

E12s is the only encounter in the entire patch to come close to their intended goal and you still have a fair bit of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. But it's a good start.

The catch is that they have a hard limit to how much damage output they can realistically add. They'll never take it up to ultimate levels and ultimates are still a lot of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. So yeah, like you say. The problem is that they're running on theory.

[Rilifane]

The catch is that they have a hard limit to how much damage output they can realistically add. They'll never take it up to ultimate levels and ultimates are still a lot of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. So yeah, like you say. The problem is that they're running on theory.

But that "hard limit" currently in place is arbitrary.
How high the healing requirement can be isn't just defined by a % of GCDs spent on healing vs dpsing; fights with a more lenient dps check or lower amount of healer mechanics can have a higher healing requirement. Saying that because in ultimate you spent x% of your GCDs on healing and anything else cannot go beyond that isn't really a good argument on their part. You definitely can without making it equally or more difficult than ultimate itselt.
Right now we have a lot of downtime between having to heal and playing mechanics. There is a lot of wiggle room for higher healing requirement without raising the difficulty to unrealistic levels. That goes for casual content aswell; only few mechanics exist and all of them are forgiving.

But with how many Sylphe-style healers go about healing when things get messy, it's perhaps for the best that they don't raise the healing requirement. I'm starting to think that that ship has long sailed with the frequent healer changes that make healing itself easier and easier. It's hard to go back to old difficulties once people got comfortable with the current state of things.

[ForteNightshade]

I imagine another portion of the playerbase think they want the opposite. But if damage taken was ramped up significantly and healing done reduced so that a healer always needed to be healing to keep the party alive, they'd fall to pieces. Most of those players have no idea how their toolkit works or care to learn and we'd be swamped with complaints of how impossible the game has become.

What most actually want is healing to be as easy as it is now, but no one to expect them to contribute in other ways, so they can spam their one aoe heal with 30% uptime, clear content and be praised without requiring effort.

I can attest to this. Way back in Heavensward, I decided to play a little game to "test" these "pure healers". If I didn't see Cleric Stance turned on within 25 seconds of the boss being pulled, I let them solo heal. Exceptions were made for new players, and I would try to save a run if we'd otherwise wipe. Emphasis on try.

It was staggering to see how utterly clueless so many supposedly pure healers were. I'll never forget an A12N where the WHM ran out of MP because they spammed Medica II and prioritized raising over healing the DPS for Prey. We wiped to adds despite me having to come in a heal because I simply couldn't make up for their mistakes. The hilarity is they had Accuracy melds yet never once touched Cleric. Naturally, they blamed me. "Cassandra doesn't want to help in her PvP gear." Funny enough, the tank was a WHM main and balked at the idea they could run out of MP that fast.

Another gem is a Dun Scaith run where the WHM used Medica II some 70 times (we wiped to the... third boss twice, I think?).

Yes, people are better nowadays. But it really highlights how a good chunk of "pure healers" have very little idea how to actually heal and are carried by either their co-healer or the fact we now have practically bottomless MP.