SE FINALLY ANSWERED THE HEALERS COMMUNITY LONG ANSWERED QUESTION

[IDontPetLalas]

It's not frequent, but every single time Yoshi talks about healers? The way he talks about them is the way some of my friends who have vaguely heard there's a role named healer somewhere out there, but have never leveled one do. Healers, uh, like casting really big heals right? So if you wanna have fun healing then just cast big heals! And maybe if you can find time to do it, occasionally do damage.

The Yoshi in the interviews isn't someone I'd say gets the idea that we spend well over 50% of our time spamming one button over and over again in harder content. He talks about healers like someone who's never played one and doesn't really care about their gameplay loop. I have never gotten the impression the devs "understand" our concerns.

I really do believe that this is largely the issue. Actually, I do feel that he has played a healer, and like has invested some time in all of them, however it's likely just enough so that he can have have the necessary conversations with his team.

That's very different from someone who is specifically tasked as being the product lead for the healing job. That person would have the time to be invested in that role, they usually know exactly how the job works, why it works the way it does, and where the job should evolve to improve QOL.

Without that type of dedicated person it's not easy to have these types of discussions. I really do believe that the healer job does need a dedicated designer because the healing community does have varying voices and while every role is important in the trinity it's probably one of the more complex roles to design for.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

Bait that's fit for the bin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5TDzbqfEAo

Clearly I held agro on titan with my massive deeeeps

Oh come off if you arrogant raider. My god yes enmity was a problem back then and annoying, there even existed skills to lower enmity that certain classes had to rotate and use. Gosh if you arrogant players would a stop assuming the words of a “lazy player” that represents probably the majority of the non vocal community you would realize maybe you actually should rethink what is best for the “majority”

[AFuzzyMu11in]

And you would be very perceptive in this regard; as far as anything changing, and that's because this expectation isn't reasonable. Even back in HW, healers still arrived at ST spam when there was nothing else to do. So are you suggesting that it should take longer to arrive there? If so, that is where more complexity is added.

The complexity is approached from more angles than just player skill, and I am not sure if this is realized. However, player skill is always a factor and variance in player skill levels is going to fluctuate the numbers all over the place. Now this is just guesswork, but I would think that the more stable these numbers are (talking about encounter design), the easier it becomes for this team to create encounters in a timely manner. Over time from early raiding to now, this team has had to learn how to be more efficient as demand has also increased along with the amount of subscribers, and simplification is one of those methods to achieve that. They do this for the same exact same reason why you use a vacuum to clean your carpet.

So yeah, he completely understands that your damage has been consolidated into a single button. It was deliberate to make things easier for both them and you, and I would also wager that this was done in order to churn out more content where our healing requirements do go up. However, I will also point out again that looking in the same direction the devs are going is a safer way to create expectation opposed to looking back over your shoulder. As an example they are rewarding jobs with more and more finishers for executing their buttons correctly, and I think this is something they can do for healers as well. They already kind of do this with Misery, and it looks like AST new card mech is all about that as well. When I see things like this, it makes me hopeful that they will start to look at SCHs gauge too.

I don't know what else to say. I guess, hang in there? I can't make any promises, and I don't have a crystal ball. I have been semi accurate with some predictions, and what my gut tells me is that those DPS glory days of SCH are gone for good, but this doesn't mean doom. Healers can be made to be very fun and exhilarating, but all minds have to be open on how to get there on a wider spectrum. This include dev and player both.

Once again fantastic post gem.

[BooPoo]

If Toxicon was 660p, then yes, it would make up for the GCD lost in the shield.
The other situation when Toxicon might be dps neutral is if you use it to move and had no other solution.

Otherwise that's a flat loss.

+ we don't shield in ST that much, except if they drastically change it in future savage content and beyond.
Even if they don't want to refund a full Dosis loss, Toxicon should have higher potency.

It's not really a flat loss when everyone is undergeared and constantly making mistakes so you have to shield them. The hard problem lies in healer necessity beyond progression. Addersting itself in a vacuum feels fine to me, just like AM from WHM.

That being said, isn't it a good thing for ultimate fights regardless?

[Sebazy]

Oh come off if you arrogant raider. My god yes enmity was a problem back then and annoying, there even existed skills to lower enmity that certain classes had to rotate and use. Gosh if you arrogant players would a stop assuming the words of a “lazy player” that represents probably the majority of the non vocal community you would realize maybe you actually should rethink what is best for the “majority”

Oh come off if you arrogant casual. My god yes trolling was a problem back then and annoying, there even existed ignore lists and self restraint to lower enmity that certain posters had to rotate and use. Gosh if you arrogant trolls would a stop assuming the words of a “lazy troll” that represents probably the majority of the troll community you would realize maybe you actually should rethink what is best for the “majority”

[Semirhage]

Oh come off if you arrogant raider. My god yes enmity was a problem back then and annoying, there even existed skills to lower enmity that certain classes had to rotate and use. Gosh if you arrogant players would a stop assuming the words of a “lazy player” that represents probably the majority of the non vocal community you would realize maybe you actually should rethink what is best for the “majority”

Could I interest you in a movie? It provides the level of interaction with content that you've said you enjoy. I'd also assume a certain comfort level being that close to a projector.

[GrimGale]

It's not really a flat loss when everyone is undergeared and constantly making mistakes so you have to shield them. The hard problem lies in healer necessity beyond progression. Addersting itself in a vacuum feels fine to me, just like AM from WHM.

That being said, isn't it a good thing for ultimate fights regardless?

Mobility tools are good for movement intensive fights, indeed. But a shield being absorbed might be a bit inconsistent as trigger, especially when the other players can inadvertedly or willfully change the timing. A Darknight can shield himself or use mitigation, another healer can use their shields on the target or the sage himself can crit.
It makes addersting gain rather inconsistent. It also makes having increased mitigation on your shield undesirable, as you don't want your shields to be too strong so they are more easily consumed.

[Saefinn]

Oh come off if you arrogant raider. My god yes enmity was a problem back then and annoying, there even existed skills to lower enmity that certain classes had to rotate and use. Gosh if you arrogant players would a stop assuming the words of a “lazy player” that represents probably the majority of the non vocal community you would realize maybe you actually should rethink what is best for the “majority”

On the other hand making enmity super easy has removed one dynamic and responsibility to tanking. Doing this is just a step closer to making the experience bland.

I feel if there are things people struggle on (like keeping tank emnity) the philosophy shouldn't be "let's make it easy" but instead, "let's give them something to empower and help them". The Hall of the Novice was a step in the right directions as it taught basic game mechanics and gave an incentive to do so.

[Brandedblade]

Oh come off if you arrogant casual. My god yes trolling was a problem back then and annoying, there even existed ignore lists and self restraint to lower enmity that certain posters had to rotate and use. Gosh if you arrogant trolls would a stop assuming the words of a “lazy troll” that represents probably the majority of the troll community you would realize maybe you actually should rethink what is best for the “majority”

[Sunhwapark]

On the other hand making enmity super easy has removed one dynamic and responsibility to tanking.

Some jobs were able to deal with that enmity system far better than others, like pulling anything as a WAR instead of PLD because they could follow up their Tomohawk with an Equilibrium and maintain aggro just doing their dps combo with natural ease. NIN was a very popular class for fights with enmity resets due to them being able to shirk their own enmity onto the tanks and smokescreen the healers so that they don't get shanked after casting a cure III or Indom and such. (Hello God Kefka)
I do recall in some cases as a dps you could pop your 'Quelling Strikes/Diversion' buffs to mitigate your enmity generation and still end up ripping threat in the downtime between your Quelling Strikes/Diversion.

I did really like how you could play around things such as in the second part of Deltascape V4S in a composition with a PLD, you could ignore some of the enmity resets and simply cover the person that's taking the Aero III Tankbuster after that followed shortly after an Almagest. (It was a white mage the majority of the time) But if you lacked that, people would still really want a NIN on the team because it made the enmity battle so much more easier for the tanks. And then there's the whole stuff at lower levels because SAM + RDM still hit like trucks, I recall they even touched the enmity modifiers a few times to try to resolve that issue.

Even with this enmity simplification, It's surprising how often I've seen DPS constantly get murdered via a dual Tankbuster because the OT wasn't 2nd Aggro in places like E4S/E12S.

I honestly don't know how they would be able to make enmity management more dynamic in its current state, but you do make a good point about the hall of the novice... Is it mandatory to go through the hall of novice? I just vaguely recall doing it when I was new because it gave you free gear or something along those lines.