Mr Happy Interview with Yoshida: Glare Mages

[RinaB]

I've said this in other threads before but this attitude completely geared toward new, casual, inexperienced players is actually hurting everyone. I had to quit tanking permanently after the live letter because the whole thing was "your easy boring role will be even easier and more boring in ew because new people!" The tanking I've witnessed over the last week or so is on a level of bad I've never seen before and it hurts everyone involved. Same goes for healers. I've asked questions and said some things on the forum that people probably think are dumb but unlike the majority of society I actually care about quality and optimization and am open to learning how to do difficult things rather then expecting them to be handed to me. This pandering mentality in game design seriously needs to stop because ew is not looking good outside of dps roles right now and im genuinely worried about even clearing basic dungeons.

[Rosa_Frandlia]

They've never directly talked about this, but based on how the healers have evolved over time, I can't help but feel that they just don't get how healers prioritize actions. I firmly believe they see your Cure, Cure II, Medica, Medica II, Adloquium, Succor, etc. healing spells as the core of your healing that you resort to most frequently and that we save OGCDs for emergencies. It makes so much sense when you think about their perspective that way. It couldn't possibly be more wrong, but that's what it seems to be like.

Think about this too, they divided healing into categories not unlike the categories of Melee, Ranged DPS, and Magical DPS for the DPS role. Look at the drastic differences in playstyle from one of those to the other. They seem to think that the difference in playstyle between "pure healers" and "barrier healers" is akin to that of the difference between Melee DPS and Magical DPS, yet the only actual difference between the two is basically whether they have a Cure II, Regen, and Medica II or Adloquium and Succor. These are some of our least used actions on the hotbar these days, and the designers seem to think they are role-defining.

To me the difference seems to be pure healers get GCD regens and oGCD shields, barrier healers get GCD shields and oGCD regens. Both get oGCD's of their core like Asylum on WHM and Sacred Soil on SCH.

[ty_taurus]

To me the difference seems to be pure healers get GCD regens and oGCD shields, barrier healers get GCD shields and oGCD regens. Both get oGCD's of their core like Asylum on WHM and Sacred Soil on SCH.

In a way, that's basically what I'm saying. Pure healers get a Regen, Medica II, and Cure II type of GCD spell in contrast to Adloquium or Succor, but the OGCD part isn't true. AST and WHM have OGCD regens and SGE has OGCD barriers, so going off of the Pure and Barrier labels, the GCD is the only difference.

[Nizzi]

I really do have to wonder how they think healing is fun. As someone who started right at ShB launch, I don't know what healing was like before ShB but I've never once thought while playing healers "I wish I had MORE buttons to deal with this situation" because functionally 80% of any healing kit deals with something the exact same way. When a majority of the problems you face can be solved by hitting one or two buttons, how does that "feel good" to have dealt with it? If anything, healing feels more procedural because of it. You react, press your very powerful heal, and you get back to spamming Glare/Broil. If they don't intend to add any sort of complexity that makes you actually have to use your kit to a fuller extent outside of the final stages of Savage and Ultimate, what's the point? A majority of the content that the vast majority of people interact with on a daily basis isn't Savage and up.

I get that they want all roles to be welcome to "casual players", but are they implying that until Shadowbringers, healers weren't? That doesn't seem right to me. You can clear every bit of MSQ/normal mode content without having a clue at what you're doing or if you're even doing it properly. But having a fully fleshed out kit makes it feel rewarding when you DO know what you're doing. When you're playing as a DPS and doing everything right, it feels good even if your teammates don't know what they're doing. They don't affect my enjoyment of the gameplay. Healers are contrary to this, where the better you get/the better your team gets, the less fun you're allowed to have? How does that pass as good design to anyone?

[GrimGale]

"There is a healer now with a much greater focus on DPSing."

So Phlegma III. You get to go melee for a couple of gcds and use the two charges, then go back to Dosis spam. Toxikon is a DPS loss unless you use it for movement, wich then becomes neutral at best. Addersting works against iself. If you barrier crits, your tank uses mitigation or the other healer shields the tank, your steady flow of Adderstings gets interrupted. You might not have the addersting for the next time you need to move.

That doesn't seem like a healer focused on DPS.

[Rosa_Frandlia]

In a way, that's basically what I'm saying. Pure healers get a Regen, Medica II, and Cure II type of GCD spell in contrast to Adloquium or Succor, but the OGCD part isn't true. AST and WHM have OGCD regens and SGE has OGCD barriers, so going off of the Pure and Barrier labels, the GCD is the only difference.

I think you misread what I meant in "Both get oGCD's of their core". That meant barrier healers get barrier oGCD's and pure healers get regen oGCD's. The now sad thing is that WHM has to wait to level 30 for its first oGCD in Presence of Mind, but the change on making it a 2 minute CD instead of 2 minute 30 Second CD is good. I think it is now also the only job that doesn't get an ability at level 15 when the game tells you abilities are locked behind job/class quests.

[Semirhage]

Though it's not on the top ten list at the moment, the WHM boost is one of the most popular items in the Mogstation. WHM is among the most played jobs in the game and always has been.

THIS is how Sylphies have been "asking" for the stupidification of the role. With their wallets. According to bean counter metrics, all of WHM's downward slide in the realm of engagement has been well-received. What's that veteran healers? I can't hear you over these fat stacks of Yen.

Maybe we should drag the entire role down to this level of "gameplay". It's just. So. Popular. I gave up and went DPS in Shadowbringers because I realized that quitting the role is both the only way the message would get through, and it would also never happen because the tidal wave of Sylphies who luu-huu-huuuuv WHM at its bare-bonesiest and one button spammiest would convince Squeenix that GlareBroileficosis mage was the bestest design evar.

[AikenDrum]

i'm also confused as to how sage is a healer that you play if you want "more involved dps"
sure, dosis also heals, so technically it's a "dps focused" healer in a sense you can dps even longer with it before resorting to healing gcds; but, unless i'm missing something, the dps kit looks as small as whm one? for comparison, part of ast kit that deals damage in one form or the other is twice that; shouldn't ast have been the "more involved dps" healer?

[ty_taurus]

I think you misread what I meant in "Both get oGCD's of their core". That meant barrier healers get barrier oGCD's and pure healers get regen oGCD's. The now sad thing is that WHM has to wait to level 30 for its first oGCD in Presence of Mind, but the change on making it a 2 minute CD instead of 2 minute 30 Second CD is good. I think it is now also the only job that doesn't get an ability at level 15 when the game tells you abilities are locked behind job/class quests.

But both also get OGCDs of the other's core. Pure healers have Divine Benison, Celestial Intersection, and Neutral Sect, and Barrier healers have... a lot of regens. Sacred Soil, Whispering Dawn, Fey Union, Embrace in a sense, Kardia in a sense, Physis, Physis II, and Kerachole. Yeah I see no value in the Pure healer label.

[GrimGale]

Basic Nuke: Glare III-Broil V-Fall Malefic-Dosis II
Use on CD: Assize-Energy Drain/Dissipation?-Minor Arcana 50% chance-Phlegma II
DoT: Dia-Biolysis-Combust-Eukrasian Dosis
Movement Tool: Afflatus Misery-Ruin II-Minor Arcana 50% chance- Toxikon II
Damage+heal (Not really a DPS tool since damage is equal to Nuke): N/A-N/A-Macrocosmos-Pneuma

I can't believe I am saying this but SCH seems more interesting in terms of DPS still than Sage. Barely. Phlegma III being the only "extra" that suddenly makes Sage into a super technical High skill job for advanced healer players. Energy Drain still gives you "choices" and interactivity the SGE kit doesn't really have. Kardia is essentially a target focused Embrace. Nothing else really interacts with it. If you mantain a steady flow of GCD nukes and damage spells, it will heal the target 170 potency every 2.5 seconds.