Are you the loud minority? (Healer feedback)

[CrimsonGunner]

Ok sure, stoneskin was needed then. But it is no longer needed. Things change. You are living in the past. I also did coils in dark light gears. A lil bit of whatever the i90 gear was called too. You can try and flex but things change. The game has changed. Developers took many things into account, got rid of skills we no longer need, and made sure to tune the game in a way they were also no longer needed.
Idk what skills i took beyond sure cast and swift cast, but i could tell you, thunder sure wasn’t one of them. Maybe your group found it necessary, but we did fine without.
Let go of the past. Accept things change. Not everyone is playing at raid level. In fact, the vast majority of players are not.
As far as your anecdotal experience in coil, i mean i could go on about the plethora of alternatives to surviving. Shields. Lucky with a crit Aldo. Tank limit breaks. The stars didn’t have to align

times changes,jobs changes but who said it was actually for the better. true not everyone playing at raid level but it doesn't mean that need to be the forced job ceiling.
players don't need to play at raid levels cause the content they play dont require them to play at raid and beyond levels in fact it isn't even require them to press 1 2 3 combo so maybe we should just remove dps buttons for ALL DPS JOBS and make it 1 button press cause you know not everyone play at raid level including dps so lets please the "casual" dps players by removing their "gigabrain" combos and utilities and debuffs and guages cause its too complicated for them to do. that is my friend the future that will happen or at least the future the healers see will happen and what you ignore my dear friend is the basic call -dont raise the floor raise the roof on the jobs so less skilled or as you said not raid level players can still play the job how they want while the raid level players can raise higher and push its jobs to the limits they are capable of doing when they are doing all content even ones you dont need to bring you A game for you know their fun and entertainment cause they exist too.

[Silver-Strider]

Ok sure, stoneskin was needed then. But it is no longer needed. Things change. You are living in the past. I also did coils in dark light gears. A lil bit of whatever the i90 gear was called too. You can try and flex but things change. The game has changed. Developers took many things into account, got rid of skills we no longer need, and made sure to tune the game in a way they were also no longer needed.
Idk what skills i took beyond sure cast and swift cast, but i could tell you, thunder sure wasn’t one of them. Maybe your group found it necessary, but we did fine without.
Let go of the past. Accept things change. Not everyone is playing at raid level. In fact, the vast majority of players are not.
As far as your anecdotal experience in coil, i mean i could go on about the plethora of alternatives to surviving. Shields. Lucky with a crit Aldo. Tank limit breaks. The stars didn’t have to align

The thing of it is, we had more to do back then. We had Virus rotation, Shield Management for Prey and/or Tank Busters, we had Eye for an Eye for extra mitigation purposes, etc. It's not that it was better per say, but it was more involved than a single button press for the majority of the fight. I still remember needing to use Fluid Aura to position Golems for meteors in T9 and using Stoneskin to shield against Prey Mechanics in T10. There was a lot more nuance with healers back in the day and some of us would like to see that nuance returned, even if only in part.

[Sebazy]

Another to add to the list and it burns me that I forgot this one.

PPPs aka potent poisoning potions.

I still carry a stack to this day.

4 Dots!

[MaxCarnage]

I take the time to explain and detail my reasoning and all you can do is try to discredit my points with buzzwords? Don't be lame, I'm sure you can do better than that =/

How is "anecdotal" a buzzword? Everyone's experience is different. Just because your experience in Coils went one way doesn't mean that is the only way it could have possibly been done. Therefore, as your examples are personal, as they seem to have applied to your group but not Kolaina's, it is anecdotal. That doesn't discredit your strategy. It doesn't say it was wrong. But it was yours. Not Kolaina's group. It's anecdotal.

Why are you trying to start a fight about information from over 8 years ago, anyway? What is your obsession with Turn 5?

If you want the ceiling to be raised, pick people up off the floor. Stop enabling, and encourage growth. Every time some says "they're doing fine" when clearly they could be doing so much better, it doesn't bring people up, it keeps them down. It is an encouragement of bad behaviour and poor play. Encourage people to get better. Hold enablers accountable.

[Sebazy]

How is "anecdotal" a buzzword? Everyone's experience is different. Just because your experience in Coils went one way doesn't mean that is the only way it could have possibly been done. Therefore, as your examples are personal, as they seem to have applied to your group but not Kolaina's, it is anecdotal. That doesn't discredit your strategy. It doesn't say it was wrong. But it was yours. Not Kolaina's group. It's anecdotal.

Ok cool, let's wave off my Coil experience (Which in turn was Solitude's experience in Coil, aka the people that made the most in-depth guides and analysis by far back then if that adds any credibility to my claims), what about the cold hard math behind my first corrections which were Aero and Thunder. Waving these corrections off as Anecdotal is just a weak response.

Why are you trying to start a fight about information from over 8 years ago, anyway? What is your obsession with Turn 5?

I'm not trying to start a fight, I'm simply correcting misinformation. A portion of it is evidently debatable (Although I await Kolaina's Coil clear achievement date with baited breath), but my first 2 points are absolutely not. Saying that full duration Aero and Thunder were a DPS gain vs simply spamming stone is 100% verifiable and mathematically sound. It is not in anyway anecdotal and to suggest as such is a missuse of the word.

Disagreeing doesn't have to mean fighting. Debating is a great art.

Lastly, T5 wasn't even my first or second point? I also referred to Caduceus aka T1? These were just easy examples of where WHM had to dig deep into it's bag of tricks. Silver Strider above covered a few others that completely skipped my memory as well.

If you want the ceiling to be raised, pick people up off the floor. Stop enabling, and encourage growth. Every time "they're doing fine" when clearly they could be doing so much better, doesn't bring people up, it keeps them down. It is an encouragement of bad behaviour and poor play. Encourage people to get better. Hold enablers accountable.

Now this I can get behind. As I've mentioned in another thread, the difficulty curve in this game needs to be tackled if the general attitude within the player base is to be fixed at this point. We see so many people who simply don't care if they spend half the fight on the floor because the game strays perilously close to actually encouraging it. 24 mans allow players to gear up to a pretty decent standard whilst doing little more than mopping the floor with their corpses. Meanwhile end game dungeons, normal mode primals and raids are laughably undertuned with a near perfect storm of a clown shower being needed before a group is at risk of being bad enough to legitimately fail. If a player isn't interested in improving there is nothing that you can do for risk of falling foul of a strike or warning for your efforts. Even if a player is willing and eager to learn, you're still treading on egg shells to help them especially in duties.

At this stage I just can't see how things can improve until SE address the foundations first.

[Lyth]

...

I don't think that avoidable damage mechanics have anything to do with healer ennui. Mechanic checks tend to be pass-fail in harder content, and handling player deaths is just as often outsourced to your rez mage. The unavoidable damage tends to be fairly boring and predictable, and bosses seem determined to slowly AoE cast your team into dust. Historically MMOs didn't have this problem because the bosses actually make an effort to kill off your tank before proceeding to auto-attack oneshot the rest of your team into fine paste. In earlier expansions this wasn't a major problem because tanks and healers entertained themselves by out-damaging the straggler dps players on the team, but Shadowbringers put a firm end to that.

I find OP's choice of words to be interesting, because that was the same rhetoric that Yoshi-p used - 'the vocal minority'. I think that there's a growing body of players who have supported this game through its darkest hours in ARR to present who are realizing that they really aren't the target audience of this game anymore. The problem is that MMOs rely entirely on that core audience of invested players to build up a sense of community. The instant that you treat your core playerbase as if they're disposable, you start to struggle to retain players. The more casual, social-network style player is probably a more lucrative target audience, but they also have a much, much shorter attention span.

I think it's good for you to have content that you can't complete. It gives you reason to want to play the game more to get better. Players will invest in your game naturally, but only if you let them. If everything is accessible, then nothing has value, and there's no player investment.

[MaxCarnage]

Ok cool, let's wave off my Coil experience (Which in turn was Solitude's experience in Coil, aka the people that made the most in-depth guides and analysis by far back then if that adds any credibility to my claims), what about the cold hard math behind my first corrections which were Aero and Thunder. Waving these corrections off as Anecdotal is just a weak response.

Look, I can't speak from personal experience about Coils. I never did them. You had the same strategy as the guide. Cool. Doesn't mean it was the only possible way to play.

No one is claiming that Aero + Thunder being a DPS gain is anecdotal. In fact...

I wouldn’t call them corrections necessarily as your post is mostly anecdotal.

So already, they didn't say all you said was based on personal experience. They said most.

Idk what skills i took beyond sure cast and swift cast, but i could tell you, thunder sure wasn’t one of them.

So sure, Aero 1 and Thunder is a DPS gain, but clearly not every WHM that did Coils during progression had Thunder selected as a cross-class skill. Some deemed it to be less important than other skills they could have taken.

Your coil experience is different from mine. I also went through progressive coil before we were over powered or coil was nerfed.

This is from the perspective of someone who started to prog Coil in Darklight and Vanya

I also did coils in dark light gears.

I don't see why it matters the exact date they beat it. They said that, like you, they did progression and in the same gear as you. So whether you beat it first or they beat it first, honestly doesn't matter. They don't seem to be arguing about whether your way was most effective or not. They're saying that your experience is your experience, not theirs. They did it different. And you both beat it. So there isn't only 1 right answer. To see who beat it first is just a pointless attempt at flexing.

i mean i could go on about the plethora of alternatives to surviving. Shields. Lucky with a crit Aldo. Tank limit breaks. The stars didn’t have to align

Whether something was a "necessity" or not, who knows. But I'm just saying, if someone could beat the same thing you did using a different method, doesn't seem much like a "necessity" to me.

And truth be told, as a bystander to this conversation, it seems more like you're looking for a fight than a debate. Don't take this the wrong way, but you're coming off very.... for lack of a better phrase, high and mighty. Like you're looking down on others for having a different method. To me, it reads as "well, I'll have you know that I beat it at this time, I was one of the first to beat it, and my method is the same method that the people who wrote the guide used, so it must be the only correct way". Whether it was the intent or not, that is definitely how it came across to me. Take that how you will.

And I'm saying this as myself; Aero puts all your GCD skills on cooldown. So yes, keeping a DoT up is a DPS gain over the entire course of the DoT being up, no one is arguing that. But choosing to cast Aero 1 and Aero 2 over Aero 2 and Stone 2 seems like a drop in DPS as you took that GCD time you could have used for a Stone 2, and continue to lose GCD time every time you reapply.

[Halfgeeek]

How the heck would a newb know what the minority/majority wants? Good grief. MANY healers are sick of spamming one spell 40% of the time--spend a few years here first before you start ballparking this bs. You've never even played a build before 5.0 LOL.

Are you suggesting it's not possible to learn what the community wants from reading forums and reddit where feedback is given constantly?

Anyone who can read will know the two most common desires from the vocal healer playerbase is either more healing requirements and/or more ways to do DPS besides glare/broil spam. Some even want both.

Contrast this to the dev team that has consistent rebuked this demand and expressed their reasons why they are against these ideas (it's a skill-floor problem and anti- inexperienced players). Thus I feel like its more productive if you give feedback to take into account the dev's views, and work around it, with ideas that do not cause a rise in the skill floor that turns off a lot of the not experienced or not elite playerbase, which if MMO stats correlate across games, these casuals are the vast majority.

There's been really good suggestions in this thread from various players that won't cause a conflict with dev's goals, while improving the healer experience. It's been very constructive and not disrespectful.

[Sebazy]

Look, I can't speak from personal experience about Coils. I never did them. You had the same strategy as the guide. Cool. Doesn't mean it was the only possible way to play.

Nono, I was a part of the FC that wrote the guides. Pls =(

I don't see why it matters the exact date they beat it. They said that, like you, they did progression and in the same gear as you.

It matters because the gear defines how much you could get away with. You missed the part where they also had tome gear in your quote FYI. I'm saying that in dark light and Vanya/crafted, you required Stoneskin as part of your mitigation strategy alongside adlo, a virus chain and a timed cure II that needed to land between death sentence hitting and the game client registering the infirmity debuff. With this gear you could afford to miss one of these things with minimal risk. Miss 2 and you were risking a one shot with the odds getting rather unfavourable beyond dive-bombs. This was simply how early T5 prog was. Once it was farm content and tanks had more HP, this sort of optimisation just wasn't required. Thus the date is relevant to the discussion. It's not a flex.

Feel free to go check my logs, they are pretty awful in Savage, especially relative to the company I keep. As hardcore as I used to be, I'm the last person to have any right to flex and brag about things like this

Don't take this the wrong way, but you're coming off very.... for lack of a better phrase, high and mighty. Like you're looking down on others for having a different method. To me, it reads as "well, I'll have you know that I beat it at this time, I was one of the first to beat it, and my method is the same method that the people who wrote the guide used, so it must be the only correct way". Whether it was the intent or not, that is definitely how it came across to me. Take that how you will.

I poured weeks into progressing coil. I took time off work. I spent evenings post raid digging through logs, scanning replays, uploading PoVs and discussing with the rest of the FC healing team. Even when I wasn't inside participating, I was sat outside in wineport watching our healer PoV streams so I could help with instant backseat analysis. All this to ensure that our FC killed Twintania as quickly as possible. I'm not hiding anything, my clear date is plain to see for all even if it does bug me, as are my logs. My PoVs would still be about if Hitbox was still a thing too.

But I've got to sit here and be told I'm wrong by a sprout and someone who can't back up there claims with a shred of evidence. I'm the one making anecdotal claims? Really?

And I'm saying this as myself; Aero puts all your GCD skills on cooldown. So yes, keeping a DoT up is a DPS gain over the entire course of the DoT being up, no one is arguing that. But choosing to cast Aero 1 and Aero 2 over Aero 2 and Stone 2 seems like a drop in DPS as you took that GCD time you could have used for a Stone 2, and continue to lose GCD time every time you reapply.

You're thinking about this the wrong way

Aero's dot did a total of 150 potency across 18 seconds with an additional upfront hit of 50 potency for a total of 200 potency for 1 GCD (and an instant that could be used on the move at that).

Aero II's dot has a total of 160 potency across 12 seconds with the same additional upfront hit of 50 potency for a total of 210 potency for 1 GCD cast. Unlike Aero, it did have a cast time.

At the time, Stone II was 170 potency for the same GCD with the caveat that it was entirely front loaded.

Simply put, if you were confident the target would stay alive for at least 15 seconds, Aero was a DPS gain over just throwing another Stone II. If it died 12 seconds or sooner, it was a loss. It was also marginally cheaper to cast vs Stone II which was a pretty big factor not only in Coil, but also in fights such as Titan HM where WHM would often be struggling for MP if the DPS wasn't great. One thing I can confidently add, is that multi dotting everything in dungeons was the key to huge damage numbers as a healer back in 2.x to 3.x.

[Halfgeeek]

I think it's good for you to have content that you can't complete. It gives you reason to want to play the game more to get better. Players will invest in your game naturally, but only if you let them. If everything is accessible, then nothing has value, and there's no player investment.

I fully agree with you here, even if I will not be doing a static ultimate anytime soon, the fact that it exist is encouragement to better my own ability.

One thing YoshiP has said constantly is they do not want to make content where only a small amount of players will play. I get this in terms of dev return on investment, where the goal is to invest resources to create some content and try to make it as relevant to as many of the playerbase as they can.

But the fact now with FFXIV being so successful, they have a lot more money coming in, they can afford to be less efficient on ROI for some special content.

There should be truly elite content that caters only to the 1% or even 0.5%. Players who are top percentile are the only ones who should be able to clear it. I've looked at the stats for clear rate on hard content in this game, and it's astoundingly high (20-30% on JP servers) compared to other MMOs that i've played.

This correlates to what the elite players say when these hard content becomes boring as a healer, when other players do the mechanics right, the frequent downtime is spent just spamming 1-2 dps buttons.

Besides ROI, what would be other legitimate reasons why the devs do not want to make content for the 1%? I think it could be good for the game, as you say, as an encouragement to get better and play more.