SE FINALLY ANSWERED THE HEALERS COMMUNITY LONG ANSWERED QUESTION

[Melorie]

The skill ceiling on healers are already higher than other roles if you were to take some look at fflogs.



Not true. As my pervious reply in this thread, less experienced healers do care about their dps. With current 1 button spam, they can at least contribute steady dps when they are not healing. You rarely see healers who don't care about dps even at the lower end of fflogs. They want to clear, just as you do. They contribute dps whenever they're not healing. Maybe healing in this game is realy difficult to some people. However, unlike many people here claimed, skill ceiling does exist for healers. By adding more offensive options, you are actually creating a bigger gap between healers. Though the gap itself is fine by me, more available buttons to press does equal to making gameplay harder to less experienced players. Less experienced healers do not mean they are all Sylphies.

But I feel like again the point is that it's normal for inexperienced players to struggle with things. After all, they ARE inexperienced. If I pick Black Mage right now, I will struggle a bit with my rotation at first. But, in this game, struggling rarely means failing. They'll struggle, because they are inexperienced, but they'll get experience and....... overcome it. Like any game with progression.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The skill ceiling on healers are already higher than other roles if you were to take some look at fflogs.



Not true. As my pervious reply in this thread, less experienced healers do care about their dps. With current 1 button spam, they can at least contribute steady dps when they are not healing. You rarely see healers who don't care about dps even at the lower end of fflogs. They want to clear, just as you do. They contribute dps whenever they're not healing. Maybe healing in this game is realy difficult to some people. However, unlike many people here claimed, skill ceiling does exist for healers. By adding more offensive options, you are actually creating a bigger gap between healers. Though the gap itself is fine by me, more available buttons to press does equal to making gameplay harder to less experienced players. Less experienced healers do not mean they are all Sylphies.

I could've worded it better in my reply; what I meant by 'gameplay' in that post was about the healing portion. I shall edit that post in a bit (curse you bedtime brain!).

However, I'm still not convinced the current 1 button spam is considered 'high skill ceiling' considering all you have to do is to reach for that 1 button and mash it until the boss dies or the button breaks. The reason why healer fflogs are difficult is NOT because of the healer's own mechanic/buttons, it's because they are the most reliant to their party's performance. They are typically the last to optimize because they have to rely on their teammate to minimize their mistakes before they can start pumping more... 1 button spam that is Glaroilfisis.

Adding more non-healing buttons won't affect how we heal, or at best it will be mediocre. I repeat; non-healing, it doesn't have to be damage buttons. It appears there are few mistaken that we only want more dps buttons---but no. It's just happens to be one of the easiest options.

I just want more to do beside 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 until next damage happens. Spamming 1 button for 75%+ of encounter is -not- engaging. On the other hand, increasing healing requirement, however tempting it is, will not remedy the situation. If any it will frustrate both side of spectrum more. SE are dead set on keeping the skill floor low (healing requirement) so that healing role is as accessible as possible. I don't see how they will change how busted powerful healers' tools either in the face of encounter design, so it's only natural we look for that 'busy' feeling elsewhere.

[Aword3213]

But I feel like again the point is that it's normal for inexperienced players to struggle with things. After all, they ARE inexperienced. If I pick Black Mage right now, I will struggle a bit with my rotation at first. But, in this game, struggling rarely means failing. They'll struggle, because they are inexperienced, but they'll get experience and....... overcome it. Like any game with progression.

I agree, but it does not validate the statement of not making the game harder.

The gap between skill floor and skill ceiling is there for all to see. It's not like healers who can heal optimally are contributing the same level of dps. Not to mention those healers who cannot heal optimally. Adding more dps options actually raises skill floor because SQEX will have to lower our overall potencies for the sake of balance.

[GrimGale]

The skill ceiling on healers are already higher than other roles if you were to take some look at fflogs. By adding more offensive options, you are actually creating a bigger gap between healers. Though the gap itself is fine by me, more available buttons to press does equal to making gameplay harder to less experienced players.

It might be a correlation is not causation case. Although, reviewing it, I am inclined to agree.

I still think dowtime healing gameplay could use some spicing up though. I don't consider myself a great healer player. My DPS parsers usually stay in the grey and I still think we spend too much time casting the same spell over and over. I honestly don't want to optimize my fights much when my reward for doing so is to fit in a few more casts of yet another boring nuke spell, adding to an already huge pile.

[Aword3213]

Adding more non-healing buttons won't affect how we heal, or at best it will be mediocre. I repeat; non-healing, it doesn't have to be damage buttons. It appears there are few mistaken that we only want more dps buttons---but no. It's just happens to be one of the easiest options.

I just want more to do beside 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 until next damage happens. Spamming 1 button for 75%+ of encounter is -not- engaging. On the other hand, increasing healing requirement, however tempting it is, will not remedy the situation. If any it will frustrate both side of spectrum more. SE are dead set on keeping the skill floor low (healing requirement) so that healing role is as accessible as possible. I don't see how they will change how busted powerful healers' tools either in the face of encounter design, so it's only natural we look for that 'busy' feeling elsewhere.

I feel you and I agree with you.

The current 1 button spam is not the only reason that leads to the gap between the healers. There are other reasons too. I only mentioned it because of its correlation to the idea for adding more dps options. I, myself, am not even against the idea of adding complex rotations healers. I want healers to be more engaging to play, either by giving us more dps options or by making healing itself more intensive.

I think SQEX should use the stat squish in EW as an opportunity to address these issues for healers. Our current healing potential and encounter design do not match.I think they should take a deeper look on how healing is currently done and create more interactions for healers.

[QooEr]

The skill ceiling on healers are already higher than other roles if you were to take some look at fflogs.

The huge gap in dps between percentiles for healers has always existed, because you have a whole spectrum ranging from "im a heal not a dps" to people who minmax server ticks for hots. Even the biggest skill gap for any job in any other role doesnt come close because its an issue of mentality more than it is skill.

Shadowbringers healer dps pruning changed absolutely nothing in this regard. It brought a lot of discontent for nearly no benefit.

less experienced healers do care about their dps. With current 1 button spam, they can at least contribute steady dps when they are not healing.

As it is, healer dps is so incredibly simplistic that the gap you find in fflogs is actually just game fundamentals. Any healer getting green and gray parses is simply not keeping their GCD rolling, or is dying to mechanics. A healer without optimized healing in PF can *easily* get purples or more if they just do their ABCs.

They may not be sylphies as you put it, and they might be trying indeed, but i don't see why ex and Savage content needs to coddle players who don't even have good fundamentals yet. Grey dps usually have 80%-90% gcd uptime because getting any lower means hitting enrage. Meanwhile gray healers gcd uptime can get as low as 60%, sometimes even worse.

By adding more offensive options, you are actually creating a bigger gap between healers.

Funnily enough, the old dot-based healer dps design was more forgiving, because the filler gcd was less percentage of our total damage, and you could let dots tick on if you missed GCDs. Missing a single broil is a *lot* more punishing nowadays than it was in Stormblood or heavensward

[AFuzzyMu11in]

The skill ceiling on healers are already higher than other roles if you were to take some look at fflogs.



Not true. As my pervious reply in this thread, less experienced healers do care about their dps. With current 1 button spam, they can at least contribute steady dps when they are not healing. You rarely see healers who don't care about dps even at the lower end of fflogs. They want to clear, just as you do. They contribute dps whenever they're not healing. Maybe healing in this game is realy difficult to some people. However, unlike many people here claimed, skill ceiling does exist for healers. By adding more offensive options, you are actually creating a bigger gap between healers. Though the gap itself is fine by me, more available buttons to press does equal to making gameplay harder to less experienced players. Less experienced healers do not mean they are all Sylphies.

Thank you, this is all I have been saying since the beginning. That and that I would prefer not to have more buttons than my bio/broil, but if ONE more button will make everyone freaking happy and at least do more damage that isn't part of some convoluted rotation/opener then fine lets have it.

[Saefinn]

Well I’m a carrot stick type of player. I guess I’m sorta lazy. I’m not going to do the challenge for challenge sake. Like if a cool glamour I need is in content then I’ll do it, if it’s a upgrade I MUST have sure but otherwise no. And I do care about getting better actually, I practice on the sky sea dummy sometimes as well. Trust me the only thing I care about is letting healer keep it’s non dps identity of a simplistic rotation/opener

Healers getting more DPS options really shouldn't make a difference to you, just don't put them on your hotbar. If you're not a savage raider then it's not really going to matter, the content is forgiving enough to give you that freedom. Sure you'll be doing less DPS but you're still doing DPS. It's rare that anybody picks on a DPS and says "you're not doing enough damage" or "you've got your rotation all wrong" they just see them doing damage and the mechanics and leave it at that. Especially as it's the kind of things GM's crack down on and for the same reason the devs don't like parsers.

But this way we're both accommodated. I know the devs don't intend to do this, but honestly all we need is the middle ground. You want simplicity, we want variety. There's no reason why we can't have both.

Adding more non-healing buttons won't affect how we heal, or at best it will be mediocre. I repeat; non-healing, it doesn't have to be damage buttons. It appears there are few mistaken that we only want more dps buttons---but no. It's just happens to be one of the easiest options.

Pretty much. I don't mind it being something else, but all other options would raise the skill floor and would require more work from the devs. This game was designed for healers to contribute DPS and this makes for the easier answer.

But really we could add a crowd control element to the game and give those options to healers, historically healer-y types in FF have had them, healers in other MMO's have had them, SW:TOR benefitted well from crowd control mechanics - even to the point of having builds around them. 2.0 SCH had the foundation of it and BLU benefits from it. They could build on that, in fact one of my suggested SCH set ups following the ShB was to replace our old DPS abilities with exactly that and make them more effective. You could take cues from Saboteur in FFXIII. You could design whole mechanics that take advantage of these.

And there could be more variety in status removal, FFXIV reduced it all to 1 button, but other FF titles have had specific items for specific removals (and in XI, specific spells) - they could make a change where you match the removal spells to the status effect. Like Paralyna for Paralyze, Blindna for Blind and maybe even throw in spells that add resistances like null-paralyze. And then design encounters to throw more of these things out.

I'd actually think these dynamics would be more interesting than DPS complexity, they'd keep us busy and they'd be more role appropriate than DPS. But it'd not just be a job design change here, it'd be more than that as other game design elements would need changes, but I expect it would make things tougher for lower end healers because there'd be a greater necessity to use them.

But nobody could really use the "healers heal" argument because CC means people are taking less damage (and we kinda get this with Holy) and the status resistance/removal is a form of healing.

[Aword3213]

The huge gap in dps between percentiles for healers has always existed, because you have a whole spectrum ranging from "im a heal not a dps" to people who minmax server ticks for hots. Even the biggest skill gap for any job in any other role doesnt come close because its an issue of mentality more than it is skill.

Shadowbringers healer dps pruning changed absolutely nothing in this regard. It brought a lot of discontent for nearly no benefit.

The gap exists for multitude of reasons, I don't believe those are all about mentality issues.

As it is, healer dps is so incredibly simplistic that the gap you find in fflogs is actually just game fundamentals. Any healer getting green and gray parses is simply not keeping their GCD rolling, or is dying to mechanics. A healer without optimized healing in PF can *easily* get purples or more if they just do their ABCs.

Healer dps is simplistic because healers have other responsibility. The difficulty itself lies on the balance between your dps and healing. If reaching purple parses is that easy as you said, then any healers with intention to get good, and I believe there are lots of them, should have purple parses already.

I don''t know how you value the skill level of healers, but to me, I will look at both their dps contribution and healing contribution. If one of them is low, they are not top teir healers to me.

They may not be sylphies as you put it, and they might be trying indeed, but i don't see why ex and Savage content needs to coddle players who don't even have good fundamentals yet. Grey dps usually have 80%-90% gcd uptime because getting any lower means hitting enrage. Meanwhile gray healers gcd uptime can get as low as 60%, sometimes even worse.

I did not say the game should coddle to poor performing players. I just don't believe adding more dps options rasies no skill floor nor skill ceiling despite my personal preference on this matter.

Funnily enough, the old dot-based healer dps design was more forgiving, because the filler gcd was less percentage of our total damage, and you could let dots tick on if you missed GCDs. Missing a single broil is a *lot* more punishing nowadays than it was in Stormblood or heavensward

Is it though? I don't think timer tracking and more button press can mean forgiving. Perhaps when we comapre them mathmetically, older iteration of healers might really be more forgiving. However, that does not mean its more forgiving on player skills.

[AikenDrum]

getting a clear in ex/savage is not skill floor ^^