Another Yoshi interview: Healer DPS, Sage, Scholar, etc (MTQ)

[Aword3213]

The healing part isn't really that complicated, especially if you just focus on healing and forgo dealing damage or mantaining your dots. You have very strong tools for both AoE healing and movement.

What might get a bit more dicey is balancing dealing damage and healing for a new healer. Fair enough, but that aspect is not affected by added complexity beyond the nuke and the dot. Even then you can still just use your healing spells.

But of course, for a player that has mastered the healing part, there is little recourse but to focus on the balancing act so adding more complexity to the non-healing parts of the kit is the way to go. Doing so doesn't change the healing part. It doesn't affect the people who just want to focus on healing and it doesn't raise the skill floor of the jobs.

This is something the Devs seem to fail to see.

Does adding more offensive options for healers really raise no skill floor?

More dps options for healers does not mean healers can exceed the maximum dps contribution set by the developers. By giving healers more dps options, SE has to lower the potency of our current offensive spells in order to maintain the current proportion of dps contribution from healers. If the current healers have no problem reaching the maxium dps contribution, they might difficulties meeting the same standard with those new,yet lowered, offensive tools.

I know many top tier healers around here may have no problem contributing the same proportion of dps, but mediocre healers, the majority of the raiding player base, may no longer be able to dish out steady dps due to complexity.

[rewd]

Does adding more offensive options for healers really raise no skill floor?

More dps options for healers does not mean healers can exceed the maximum dps contribution set by the developers. By giving healers more dps options, SE has to lower the potency of our current offensive spells in order to maintain the current proportion of dps contribution from healers. If the current healers have no problem reaching the maxium dps contribution, they might difficulties meeting the same standard with those new,yet lowered, offensive tools.

I know many top tier healers around here may have no problem contributing the same proportion of dps, but mediocre healers, the majority of the raiding player base, may no longer be able to dish out steady dps due to complexity.

Hard content should be, by definition, hard. If a healer player can't keep up with a 123 DPS combo, then they should get better at it. DPS and tanks get better at their rotations in order to clear Extreme and Savage, why should healers be simplified?

Normal mode content doesn't require healers to DPS, so a healbot WHM that ignores Glare will still be able to clear any normal content by ignoring Glare 1, Glare 2 and Glare 3. If they want to do hard content, they need to get better or just forget about hard content, which is supposed to challenge you.

[Raminax]

On the other hand, I think that the community might be more sympathetic to "low" DPS if they increase complexity and/or depth. So, people that are either struggling, don't care or are just plain mediocre would probably benefit from community perception being skewed towards "Oh, don't be so harsh on them, it's not easy juggling two DoTs and a cooldown when healing as well!".

Might end up being beneficial for said group as well, really. Obviously, potencies and balancing can be a bit iffy, but if someone feels they can only maybe squeeze in 20 GCDs per fight on damaging spells, those 20 GCDs will be far more impactful if they're spent on the occasional DoT or cooldown like Phlegma/Assize with 30 second breaks to assess the current situation, rather than spamming (usually) unimpressive filler spells like Glare for a minute straight.

Of course, I might just be underestimating how mean the community is, but I've never had a static group for raiding, and the amount of times I've seen a supposed Sylphie/Casual/Bad being called out in-game can be counted on one hand. Are other peoples' experiences truly so different that this kind of, well, fearmongering is justified?

[Aword3213]

Hard content should be, by definition, hard. If a healer player can't keep up with a 123 DPS combo, then they should get better at it. DPS and tanks get better at their rotations in order to clear Extreme and Savage, why should healers be simplified?

Normal mode content doesn't require healers to DPS, so a healbot WHM that ignores Glare will still be able to clear any normal content by ignoring Glare 1, Glare 2 and Glare 3. If they want to do hard content, they need to get better or just forget about hard content, which is supposed to challenge you.

Though I agree with you, it's not relevant to my question.

If adding more dps option does impact the skill floor in some way, it's a path that will surely be avoided by the developers. Besides, I don't think it's fair to compare healers with tanks and dps. Healers have to fix other players mistake. It's a responsibity shared by healers and none other.

[GrimGale]

More dps options for healers does not mean healers can exceed the maximum dps contribution set by the developers.

I think better healers should be able to exceed said maximum. Of course you should be rewarded for pushing that heal-damage (Or in AST case buff management) balance to the very edge if you're experienced. We should see more experienced healers perform better than less experienced ones. I don't think devs should cap healer damage to the same level as the bare minimum by removing skills and skill expression from more experienced healers.

Of course there is going to be a cap for healer damage at some point. There is a cap on DPS job damage after all. But the potential breath of DPS contribution between the floor and the ceiling should be wide enough to encourage much more growth.

[Risvertasashi]

Of course there is going to be a cap for healer damage at some point. There is a cap on DPS job damage after all. But the potential breath of DPS contribution between the floor and the ceiling should be wide enough to encourage much more growth.

If you dig into FF logs, you'll find healers already have the widest variance (that is, the biggest gap between skill floor and skill ceiling) of DPS compared to any role/other classes.

So, this is already the case.

[rewd]

Though I agree with you, it's not relevant to my question.

If adding more dps option does impact the skill floor in some way, it's a path that will surely be avoided by the developers. Besides, I don't think it's fair to compare healers with tanks and dps. Healers have to fix other players mistake. It's a responsibity shared by healers and none other.

It's completely relevant to your question, but your argument is flawed on a fundamental level. You divide the raiding community into two groups, but you actually need three groups:

- the top tier healers;
- the good healers (the majority);
- the mediocre healers.

The mediocre healers can only clear Savage if they are carried (by their co-healer, by better gear, by echo etc.). The good healers are your average healers, they are good enough to clear Savage. They are (should be) the target group for healer design and balance.

Good healers know that damage comes in bursts, so they are left spamming one button for long periods of time. If there is a 30s window with no damage and if you find Glare spamming manageable but suddenly Glare1+Glare2+Glare3 is too hard, then sorry, you don't belong in hard content and an entire role shouldn't be balanced around you. You can, though, try to get better and try again once you are comfortable. That's the purpose of harder (and optional) content.

It's completely fair to compare healers to tanks and DPS. Healing is not as hard as the community thinks (mostly non-healers). For example, you talked about having to fix other people's mistakes, but in raids, usually, mistakes mean death, multiple deaths or a direct wipe. You very rarely fix mistakes. You wipe, you take note of the fact that "Supermegaiper bonebreaker of the doom" is a tankbuster so you go -> Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil, Ruin II+ Excog, Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil and you take note of the fact that "Gigantic flood of gigantic darkness of the death" is a raidwide, so you go -> Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil, Ruin II + Recitation +Indom, Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil.

It's boring and trivial.

Then you notice that after that raidwide there are 30 seconds of nothing. Why shouldn't healers get more buttons to use in that window? What makes standing still and do 11111 fundamentally harder than 123123? And mind you, healers shouldn't be design around Savage. Healers need to be fun from level 1 to max level. If they don't want to pressure casual healers, then don't. Keep normal content braindead so a Cure II bot that ignores Glare can clear content even when that Glare becomes Glare1+Glare2+Glare3.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

The answer might be that the people who care enough to post here might be at say 75% skill level when YP is focused on the 10% skill level experience. So for us we might think of ourselves as just ok, but our capabilities are huge compared to the bread and butter of the game.

That's still not a reason to undertune content that only a bit of the population tries.

This. I have learned through leveling paladin and now whm that a lot of players reach level 50/60/70/80 and still have zero clue on their abilities, jobs, anything. These are the people who are going to be on your party to clear content.

[Silver-Strider]

Though I agree with you, it's not relevant to my question.

If adding more dps option does impact the skill floor in some way, it's a path that will surely be avoided by the developers. Besides, I don't think it's fair to compare healers with tanks and dps. Healers have to fix other players mistake. It's a responsibity shared by healers and none other.

It's a shared responsibility given that almost every class has a means of easing the burden of healers.
I think there is only 4 classes that offer nothing in terms of group mitigation/healing in some form or another, which are SAM, BLM, NIN and DRG and even they have Feint and Addle available to them.
All Ranged DPS have 1 raid wide mitigation skill, BRD has a Single Target Healing buff and an Esuna, DNC has healing buffs and extra heals, MNK has Mantra for extra raid wide healing, SMN has a Regen and Excog from Phoenix, RDM has actual heals, and its new skill that buffs healing and mitigation, RPR has a regen, Tanks just made out like bandits and got tons of extra healing added to their toolkit (barring DRK but at least he still offers some more mitigation via shielding).

The burden of healing has been so exorbitantly mitigated that, if played right, you're spending more than half of your time as a Healer DPSing because you simply don't have to heal. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see more videos like the E4S clear with no healers become common place in EW after everything is said and done.

[Aword3213]

I think better healers should be able to exceed said maximum.

What if current top tier healers already exceeded maximum?

If course you should be rewarded for pushing that heal-damage (Or in AST case buff management) balance to the very edge if you're experienced. We should see more experienced healers perform better than less experienced ones. I don't think devs should cap healer damage to the same level as the bare minimum by removing skills and skill expression from more experienced healers.

Of course there is going to be a cap for healer damage at some point. There is a cap on DPS job damage after all. But the potential breath of DPS contribution between the floor and the ceiling should be wide enough to encourage much more growth.

But to say there's no skill ceilling regarding current healers is hyperbole. The difference between top tier healers and low teir healers is based on the number of offensive GCDs cast, and how much they heal while dealing damage. Healers at the lower end may have high HPS, but low damage contribution. Mediocre healers may be able to deal high dps, but at the cost of low healing output. Top tier healers can excel at both healing and damage. The skill floor and skill ceiling do exist. Maybe not in the way you like it, but they exist.