Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

[KizuyaKatogami]

So what i’m hearing here is….SE sucks at balancing both jobs and raid content. Fun times

[Mortex]

Another detail they spoke about was their method of testing and tuning savage back in HW. It turned out that they were testing turns not as a whole, but phase by phase and with immunity to boot (Likely because of a lack of stability within the testing team). New phases were being tested with fresh cooldowns which heavily skewed DPS requirements as a whole.

I don't think Gordias was intended to be unkillable on week 1. Rather the sac strat just made the dps check much harder for A4S (but in turn greatly simplified the fight).

Twintania is the key example of SE trying to ensure something couldn't be cleared upon it's release.

The problem was that without sac strat you never have enough mana for the fight on min itemlvl. Ironic that the sac start was less mana intensive then keeping nisis for 3 minis I mean why would you make the tick dmg at the start for around 4-5 k hp in a fight we’re you had tons of aoe and was forced too take laser. Also a random death on nisi player was still a wipe and even when you had nisi, royal pentacle did deal a lot of dmg too these player. Also jagd doll aoes and nisi not even on the last phase no they made that stuff on leg 4. Like the hassle to keep it through so much stuff and like I said the healing and mana required too get them even there was atrocious.

[FoxCh40s]

The problem was that without sac strat you never have enough mana for the fight on min itemlvl. Ironic that the sac start was less mana intensive then keeping nisis for 3 minis I mean why would you make the tick dmg at the start for around 4-5 k hp in a fight we’re you had tons of aoe and was forced too take laser. Also a random death on nisi player was still a wipe and even when you had nisi, royal pentacle did deal a lot of dmg too these player. Also jagd doll aoes and nisi not even on the last phase no they made that stuff on leg 4. Like the hassle to keep it through so much stuff and like I said the healing and mana required too get them even there was atrocious.

Also, back then, White Mage had serious MP problems, and Scholar was a near infinite mp battery. The issue was Scholar was exceptional at single target heals, while very weak at AoE healing, meaning for all its near infinite MP, it had to rely on White Mage for the brunt of the AoE healing. Which is why people said screw it, and developed the same strategy.

Gordias was brutal for the sake of gauging difficulty, where as Coil was brutally hard because of the 8 second latency and unmarked mechanics.

[Maltothoris]

while very weak at AoE healing,

Until it got Indom in 3.0 and People started to under how strong that Whispering Dawn was when used with Rouse and Fey Illumination with stuff like Mantra and Convalescence being bonuses. That was when Sch got that weakness somewhat fixed in terms of its aoe weaknesses. THen they doubled down with whm having little mitigation weaknesses when they got rid of the 18 percent onf stoneskin and making protect reducing both magic and physical without the trait while trying to make up for those with lackluster replacements with half medica and quick stoneskin.

[Lyth]

While I'm also frustrated and would be the first to criticize the relative lack of two-way communication with the development team, it's helpful if we ourselves don't also propagate the spread of misinformation.

SE isn’t good at balancing at all. Remember when Yoshi said back in HW that they tune raids without healer dps in mind? Yeah that’s very obviously a lie as week one clears literally wouldn’t exist without healer dps lmao.

This quote gets paraphrased quite often. The problem is that when you paraphrase what someone else has paraphrased based on what they had seen paraphrased in some reddit post some time back, then you start distorting it and losing more and more context.

This is the original quote, which was taken from the Game Watch interview with Yoshi-p during the EU Media event (05/19/2015) (link to full translation):

Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers. Then when those publish clear videos and other people see the healers DPSing, they might think that healers need to be DPSing even though its a situation that only arose because their clear would have otherwise been impossible. While we could take this into account, and assume a different item level in the next update which would then make it impossible to clear even with the healer DPS, we'd eliminate this type of play for highly skilled players who use communication, items, and a high level of understanding to come up with those last second clears. That would be a tough decision to make, so I still think it should be up to each party's own plans.

This is also one of the reasons we decided to implement both a normal and savage version of Alexander. Once again, healer DPS was not included in the development team's calculation as it was for other jobs, so you should just think of healer DPS as a last way to get your overall party's DPS up to where it needs to be.

So yes, as the quote itself suggests, week one clears wouldn't exist without healer dps.

Historically, when teams did world-progression on raid tier content, it was done below the recommended ilvl. This is because there's a difficulty curve. Take Gordias for example. The ilvl requirement ranges from 190 (A1S) to 205 (A4S). You're entering with an i190 weapon and i180 token gear. And while crafted gear can help offset some of the differential, you'll probably need to get down the first 1-2 fights without it (because the gear itself takes time to make). So when you're playing at an ilvl disadvantage, then you have to put out higher raid damage than the development team predicts in their estimate. Gordias took something like 34 days for EM to get the world first clear because of how it was tuned. You don't want overtuned raid tiers.

And remember that you see a lot more variability in the average team. So let's say that you have a couple of DPS who are below the target. Well, perhaps you make up for that because your healers actually do contribute a sizable amount of damage. Or failing that, you get some more gear upgrades and try again. You generally can't tune content for wide a range of skill levels without having some degree of gear progression over the tier. This is just a back-of-the-envelope way of tuning a dps check. I think it's a very reasonable base assumption for tuning, especially if you're trying to design it such that a wide range of player skill levels and playstyles are able to get through. You want them to underestimate your damage output as a tank or healer when doing their base calculations. You want to be able to cross-compensate for weaker DPS when you're playing tank or healer.

And let's also remember this is also from 2015.

I do think it's valuable to feedback actual problems to the dev team. Tanks and healers need more interesting rotations? Sure. Tanks and healers should be able to contribute a much bigger portion of overall raid dps to cross-compensate for underperforming DPS players? Definitely. Tanks and healers need some genuine mitigation/survival challenges and checks with raid wipe potential? Absolutely. Healers damage output is being deliberately underestimated in a back-of-the-envelope calculation for raid tuning that was being used during internal testing in 2015? Really don't care. If they didn't deliberately underestimate the dps prediction, most groups probably wouldn't clear.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

It’s still applicable in this overall conversation though, as it goes to show what kind of thought process they go through with the tanks and healers. It’s pretty clear cut that they get less attention than the dps do and that needs to stop, the issue here is it won’t. SE literally doesn’t care about healers or tanks as they aren’t the ones that are the loudest and most vocal on twitter and reddit. Unfortunately a majority of players are now being catered to by SE by making content absolutely brain dead on release, so jobs are just being dumbed down more and more. The 2015 interview is an interesting insight on their thought process when creating raids. While it is an old interview, it’s likely some of that thought process stayed and, going by this expansions raids, it’s clear some of it has. Nothing has really changed despite them saying how in this expansion fights were going to be more heal demanding.

[Lyth]

????

No, that particular quote really doesn't show anything that you said. In fact, if you look at the date, it was made just a few months before Gordias, the raid group destroyer. They actually had to go back and ease up the requirements even further in subsequent content releases because of how completely demoralized the playerbase was from trying to make the dps checks. And the follow-up result, Midas, was mechanically the overall best designed standard raid this game has ever released. So even that calculation overestimates what the vast majority of the playerbase is capable of doing.

You've written a complete non sequitur. I also feel that more recent content has been poorly designed from both a tank and healer perspective. I also think that there's much too much value attached to playing a DPS job over the other two roles. But I cannot for the life of me understand why you would use that quote, about how they calculated the dps checks in Gordias, as the basis of your point.

[Absurdity]

Until it got Indom in 3.0 and People started to under how strong that Whispering Dawn was when used with Rouse and Fey Illumination with stuff like Mantra and Convalescence being bonuses.

I have no idea if they changed Rouse from HW to SB but in Stormblood atleast it never actually worked on anything but Embrace. Rouse increased healing magic, not healing abilities, so it only worked on GCDs, of which Eos only had 1.

[Maltothoris]

I have no idea if they changed Rouse from HW to SB but in Stormblood atleast it never actually worked on anything but Embrace. Rouse increased healing magic, not healing abilities, so it only worked on GCDs, of which Eos only had 1.

Back in Heavensward and pre patch 4.3, Whispering Dawn was a spell and not a ability. As a result, Whispering Dawn benefited from Rouse and all those other abilities That increased healing magic.

[KizuyaKatogami]

No, that particular quote really doesn't show anything that you said. In fact, if you look at the date, it was made just a few months before Gordias, the raid group destroyer. They actually had to go back and ease up the requirements even further in subsequent content releases because of how completely demoralized the playerbase was from trying to make the dps checks. And the follow-up result, Midas, was mechanically the overall best designed standard raid this game has ever released. So even that calculation overestimates what the vast majority of the playerbase is capable of doing.

You've written a complete non sequitur. I also feel that more recent content has been poorly designed from both a tank and healer perspective. I also think that there's much too much value attached to playing a DPS job over the other two roles. But I cannot for the life of me understand why you would use that quote, about how they calculated the dps checks in Gordias, as the basis of your point.

Because i’m talking about their overall raid design thought process, how they seem to apply it to tanks and healers. Don’t really see how it’s a “non sequitur” but if you don’t understand it that’s fine. I used that quote simply to showcase their weird mentality with Yoshi seeming to be very disconnected with the playerbase. In that quote he acknowledges how healer dps is somewhat necessary for a majority of groups to clear the harder content, but then nothing has ever been done to make healer dps more interesting and instead they’ve actually done the opposite and made it worse in the case of scholar. He also says “This is also one of the reasons we decided to implement both a normal and savage version of Alexander. Once again, healer DPS was not included in the development team's calculation as it was for other jobs, so you should just think of healer DPS as a last way to get your overall party's DPS up to where it needs to be.” So it’s like, they acknowledge it’s necessary, but also see it as a last resort… It’s like they don’t understand their own design process.