Mr Happy Interview with Yoshida: Glare Mages

[Semirhage]

I think that just goes to show how backward the design direction is, and which direction solutions lie.

DPS is not the only metric in FFXIV, but it's the primarily important one in -all- levels of content save Ultimate, where mechanical execution gets a slight edge (just from how punishing failure is there). Though the design goal of making everything viable is healthy for keeping a bunch of playstyles in a good spot, nothing comes without consequences. The supremacy of DPS being exacerbated by this design goal is one of them; if every single job in every role must meet or exceed the minimum requirements for winning, then the one of the only ways to distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack is to win faster. This is why I understand but totally disagree with the idea of making Scholar "the" DPS healer. There can be no "the" DPS healer. If you make one healer better at damage than the others, what you make (in this game) is the "best" healer. And cue several expansions of the designers scratching their heads wondering how in the world they can't seem to strike a good balance between the healers when "being the best at the one thing this game system cares about" is a somewhat exclusive identity.

[CrimsonGunner]

I think that just goes to show how backward the design direction is, and which direction solutions lie.

DPS is not the only metric in FFXIV, but it's the primarily important one in -all- levels of content save Ultimate, where mechanical execution gets a slight edge (just from how punishing failure is there). Though the design goal of making everything viable is healthy for keeping a bunch of playstyles in a good spot, nothing comes without consequences. The supremacy of DPS being exacerbated by this design goal is one of them; if every single job in every role must meet or exceed the minimum requirements for winning, then the one of the only ways to distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack is to win faster. This is why I understand but totally disagree with the idea of making Scholar "the" DPS healer. There can be no "the" DPS healer. If you make one healer better at damage than the others, what you make (in this game) is the "best" healer. And cue several expansions of the designers scratching their heads wondering how in the world they can't seem to strike a good balance between the healers when "being the best at the one thing this game system cares about" is a somewhat exclusive identity.

tbh they can make the "dps healer" only if he is not out dpsing the other healers by a huge gap. you can design a proper healer who is more dps oriented which players who come from dps jobs can get familiarize just not have him be this game breaking, huge gap distance between him and the others which is something they are failing to do every time it seems.

so im guessing prepare to see a messed up sage probably in EW.

[ty_taurus]

tbh they can make the "dps healer" only if he is not out dpsing the other healers by a huge gap. you can design a proper healer who is more dps oriented which players who come from dps jobs can get familiarize just not have him be this game breaking, huge gap distance between him and the others which is something they are failing to do every time it seems.

so im guessing prepare to so a messed up sage probably in EW.

What's interesting is that you can still design more passive healers to keep up with a DPS healer's direct damage. AST has its damage support that allows it to essentially guarantee a certain amount of DPS even if you were to completely ignore Malefic and Combust (not saying you should do this, but that's something WHM can't claim). I've talked about this before, but I'd go so far as to move their support to the GCD outside of the cards and make it a flat potency (Grant 5 stacks to a party member. Every spell/weaponskill they use consumes a stack that deals 100 potency from you to the first target of their action). Attach something like to multiple actions such as a heal and suddenly you can make the type of healing a lot of players who complain about DPS would want to play.

Speaking of WHM, Afflatus Misery is the perfect tool to help it keep up with direct DPS if they would make the lily system a larger part of WHM's playstyle. Consolidate and modernize their GCD healing library, make lilies something you learn about early on, create ways to turn Afflatus Misery into a DPS gain rather than a loss, and allow players to built up heavy bursts of damage in a single spell as a reward for healing rather than pelting the enemy with Glares.

[CrimsonGunner]

What's interesting is that you can still design more passive healers to keep up with a DPS healer's direct damage. AST has its damage support that allows it to essentially guarantee a certain amount of DPS even if you were to completely ignore Malefic and Combust (not saying you should do this, but that's something WHM can't claim). I've talked about this before, but I'd go so far as to move their support to the GCD outside of the cards and make it a flat potency (Grant 5 stacks to a party member. Every spell/weaponskill they use consumes a stack that deals 100 potency from you to the first target of their action). Attach something like to multiple actions such as a heal and suddenly you can make the type of healing a lot of players who complain about DPS would want to play.

Speaking of WHM, Afflatus Misery is the perfect tool to help it keep up with direct DPS if they would make the lily system a larger part of WHM's playstyle. Consolidate and modernize their GCD healing library, make lilies something you learn about early on, create ways to turn Afflatus Misery into a DPS gain rather than a loss, and allow players to built up heavy bursts of damage in a single spell as a reward for healing rather than pelting the enemy with Glares.

totally agree on that, even posted my idea of a whm rework to work similar to that (i admit, it might not be the best or a good idea but it was fun imaging and making it) but as i said the problem isn't that dps healers and passive dps healers cant be balanced but the problem is that SE wont or probably cant without breaking the game balance.(again its cause they don't design healers good enough to not make it happen and not because the game itself cant allow it cause that sure is most definitely possible given shb healer balance right now)

[Semirhage]

To further clarify after reading my other post again, I don't mean you can't differentiate *how* healers contribute to damage. I mean that you'd roughly need to put a sliding scale of pDPS to rDPS/utility in, like the magic DPS have.

I maintain that the ugly root of a lot of the problems in the healer role is the absolutist insistence the devs have that WHM be the dumb slow ungabunga healer that isn't allowed to meaningfully evolve, or have utility, or manage anything impactful, ever. Alright, starting a train of thought here. Okay, that's a start, so you forbade most utility, and most specifically damage increasing utility is forbidden. So Black Mage then? That's the no-utility magic DPS, we can work with that.

Oh except it can't be difficult to maintain that personal damage at all, because that's also forbidden. So. Hm. We have a job that's pretty rigidly boxed into the "personal damage" corner, but also have forbidden that personal damage from having a source that requires more than one functioning synapse to maintain. Well.....so what does that mean for, say, Scholar? It's fairly light on the party utility as of Shadowbringers; its only rDPS increase is CS. Scholars want a more involved damage rotation, totally get it and am behind it.

But oh wait, we've already defined WHM as putting out more personal damage than SCH, as personal damage is its only meaningful contribution. Sooo...even if SCH's damage rotation is more complex than WHM's, it also has to output less for more work, otherwise SCH is just straight up better than WHM.

The "glare"(heh)ing question here is...so...why is WHM's damage rotation so stupid again? It's dragging the rest of the role down to its level of simplicity, lest the rest of the role complain they do more work for less output.

And the devs answered that question with "oh shoot you're right. Better make everyone just as dumb so they can't complain they're doing more work for less!". Instead of the obvious answer.

[CrimsonGunner]

To further clarify after reading my other post again, I don't mean you can't differentiate *how* healers contribute to damage. I mean that you'd roughly need to put a sliding scale of pDPS to rDPS/utility in, like the magic DPS have.

I maintain that the ugly root of a lot of the problems in the healer role is the absolutist insistence the devs have that WHM be the dumb slow ungabunga healer that isn't allowed to meaningfully evolve, or have utility, or manage anything impactful, ever. Alright, starting a train of thought here. Okay, that's a start, so you forbade most utility, and most specifically damage increasing utility is forbidden. So Black Mage then? That's the no-utility magic DPS, we can work with that.

Oh except it can't be difficult to maintain that personal damage at all, because that's also forbidden. So. Hm. We have a job that's pretty rigidly boxed into the "personal damage" corner, but also have forbidden that personal damage from having a source that requires more than one functioning synapse to maintain. Well.....so what does that mean for, say, Scholar? It's fairly light on the party utility as of Shadowbringers; its only rDPS increase is CS. Scholars want a more involved damage rotation, totally get it and am behind it.

But oh wait, we've already defined WHM as putting out more personal damage than SCH, as personal damage is its only meaningful contribution. Sooo...even if SCH's damage rotation is more complex than WHM's, it also has to output less for more work, otherwise SCH is just straight up better than WHM.

The "glare"(heh)ing question here is...so...why is WHM's damage rotation so stupid again? It's dragging the rest of the role down to its level of simplicity, lest the rest of the role complain they do more work for less output.

And the devs answered that question with "oh shoot you're right. Better make everyone just as dumb so they can't complain they're doing more work for less!". Instead of the obvious answer.

hmmm isn't it already true with the magic dps we have really? blm still being higher then the rest while having the easiest to learn of the 3 while the rest make up for it in utility and more instant/waving options?
my point is whm is not at fault its SE fault and they pinpoint it on whm, if they really cared as seen from the caster dps and their development the healers could have been fun and maintain a status que like they do in performance (pDPS/rDPS) while still being their own and having fun kits to play

[Acece]

hmmm isn't it already true with the magic dps we have really? blm still being higher then the rest while having the easiest to learn of the 3 while the rest make up for it in utility and more instant/waving options?

blm is the hardest magic dps to play well in a savage raid. whm is by far the easiest.

[ty_taurus]

To further clarify after reading my other post again, I don't mean you can't differentiate *how* healers contribute to damage. I mean that you'd roughly need to put a sliding scale of pDPS to rDPS/utility in, like the magic DPS have.

I maintain that the ugly root of a lot of the problems in the healer role is the absolutist insistence the devs have that WHM be the dumb slow ungabunga healer that isn't allowed to meaningfully evolve, or have utility, or manage anything impactful, ever. Alright, starting a train of thought here. Okay, that's a start, so you forbade most utility, and most specifically damage increasing utility is forbidden. So Black Mage then? That's the no-utility magic DPS, we can work with that.

Oh except it can't be difficult to maintain that personal damage at all, because that's also forbidden. So. Hm. We have a job that's pretty rigidly boxed into the "personal damage" corner, but also have forbidden that personal damage from having a source that requires more than one functioning synapse to maintain. Well.....so what does that mean for, say, Scholar? It's fairly light on the party utility as of Shadowbringers; its only rDPS increase is CS. Scholars want a more involved damage rotation, totally get it and am behind it.

But oh wait, we've already defined WHM as putting out more personal damage than SCH, as personal damage is its only meaningful contribution. Sooo...even if SCH's damage rotation is more complex than WHM's, it also has to output less for more work, otherwise SCH is just straight up better than WHM.

The "glare"(heh)ing question here is...so...why is WHM's damage rotation so stupid again? It's dragging the rest of the role down to its level of simplicity, lest the rest of the role complain they do more work for less output.

And the devs answered that question with "oh shoot you're right. Better make everyone just as dumb so they can't complain they're doing more work for less!". Instead of the obvious answer.

Something that's also quite peculiar is that while Chain Stratagem makes sense thematically, why on earth did they add a powerful DPS utility OGCD onto the healer that's already designed to be the most aggressive? Like yeah, they would rather burn the game and everyone in it than give DPS utility to WHM, but purely from a design standpoint, it would be way more fitting to give that to a healer that's supposed to be more heal intensive and doesn't have many OGCD heals to fall back on.

I think there is something to be said about Afflatus Misery's potential, but they're not taking advantage of that at all. With the right lily actions, you could totally have WHM tone down on forefront aggression in favor of spinning huge bursts of AM damage through healing.

Back to SCH, though, I really wish they never gave SCH Chain Stratagem because now they really can't take it away unless they actually do rebuild the job from the group up.

[CrimsonGunner]

blm is the hardest magic dps to play well in a savage raid. whm is by far the easiest.

that is why i said the easiest to learn not play. to make it a bit more clear you basically catch the mechanics of the class and how to work it quite easy. having astral fire to be dps mode while having umbral ice being the mana regen mode and rotating around those 2. the job is mostly the classic static caster where u sit in one place most of the fight casting spells to make the most use of it but what makes it hard is actually doing that in an heavy movement settings making blm the hardest to play in savage and beyond tier cause there will be many moments where u need to cast and move at the same times to keep damage going or even risking losing your phases.

[Acece]

that is why i said the easiest to learn not play.

like skill floor yeah. Whm can def be low skill floor but high skill celling job.