I'm gonna say it. cause no one else will.

[ty_taurus]

Forms of assistance, mitigation, buffs, and other such things are wildly different from new forms of dps. I'm all for finding ways to make that down time more engaging.

But all I'm reading is more dps buttons, more damaging abilities. And that's where I draw my line in the dirt.

Here's the thing about why DPS is such a heavy factor: both healing and utility are not things that you can measure--they are pass/fail mechanics. Either you can heal through an attack or you can't. Either you can remove doom or your can't. There's no form of utility that can be pushed or optimized outside of just knowing when and where to use them. As mentioned above, the design team will not increase the demand for healing or utility out of fear that it will alienate casual players. So what else is left?

How much can you DPS while passing all of the healing and utility checks a fight can throw at you? That is the only way to allow healers to evolve and change. This is why some of the most interesting and exciting abilities we've seen from EW are Pneuma and Macrocosmos--because they let you continue to support and heal while maintaining your DPS, and they're on the GCD.

You can draw your line in the dirt all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that we will NEVER see healers evolve until the designers learn this fact and start building healers around it. Until that point, casual players may not be bothered by the lack of options healers have to work with for the majority of most content in the game, or they may still be in their honeymoon phase, but anyone that seeks to improve their healer gameplay who gets passed that is going to ultimately become disappointed in the job because you can't offer healers anything of value without addressing the focus on DPS optimization.

[Drkdays]

I get what you're saying. I do.


BUT

Healers DOOOOOO have dps abilities already. Several, actually. They can and do contribute, even though it was stated that it should never be considered necessary for success. It's even been stated many times that they are even better at doing damage than tanks. So this ability to push themselves to be better in the available windows of down time is already clearly there. Its just ...IRRITATING to read about people complaining about, essentially, how EASY and boring it is to do great dps while effortlessly healing like it's some huge problem.

That's why I feel like people really just don't know what it is they want. MORE CAKE!

[ty_taurus]

I get what you're saying. I do.


BUT

Healers DOOOOOO have dps abilities already. Several, actually. They can and do contribute, even though it was stated that it should never be considered necessary for success. It's even been stated many times that they are even better at doing damage than tanks. So this ability to push themselves to be better in the available windows of down time is already clearly there. Its just ...IRRITATING to read about people complaining about, essentially, how EASY and boring it is to do great dps while effortlessly healing like it's some huge problem.

That's why I feel like people really just don't know what it is they want. MORE CAKE!

Yes, because that's what I want in a video gaming experience: something that's easy and boring. I yearn to take time out of my day and pay money to bore myself with slow and uneventful gameplay.

Do you honestly not see what's wrong with that statement?

Also, I don't know how the topics on this forum could possibly be even more clear that we know exactly what we want.

I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt, but now I'm inclined to believe this is just more bait. I don't really know why there's a handful of people that just want to harass the people on here discussing valuable and important conversations. I totally get that this place is, in many ways, is really just an echo chamber, but the trolling is entirely unwarranted.

[RinaB]

Here's the thing about why DPS is such a heavy factor: both healing and utility are not things that you can measure--they are pass/fail mechanics. Either you can heal through an attack or you can't. Either you can remove doom or your can't. There's no form of utility that can be pushed or optimized outside of just knowing when and where to use them. As mentioned above, the design team will not increase the demand for healing or utility out of fear that it will alienate casual players. So what else is left?

How much can you DPS while passing all of the healing and utility checks a fight can throw at you? That is the only way to allow healers to evolve and change. This is why some of the most interesting and exciting abilities we've seen from EW are Pneuma and Macrocosmos--because they let you continue to support and heal while maintaining your DPS, and they're on the GCD.

You can draw your line in the dirt all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that we will NEVER see healers evolve until the designers learn this fact and start building healers around it. Until that point, casual players may not be bothered by the lack of options healers have to work with for the majority of most content in the game, or they may still be in their honeymoon phase, but anyone that seeks to improve their healer gameplay who gets passed that is going to ultimately become disappointed in the job because you can't offer healers anything of value without addressing the focus on DPS optimization.

Sounds like you people need to play different jobs and leave healing to the people who actually want to do it. I'd take a sprout healer over a glare mage anyday because they actually heal. When I leveled ast and whm a while ago I did it to heal. Keep the dot up on the boss but my priority was healing and I was extra busy in 8 man's because all the people complaining about downtime aren't bothering to heal at all. You're not gonna get more involved dps because that's not your job.

[Lalatuni]

Then why do dps and tank jobs have healing and mitigation buttons then? It's not their job, right! With how much self healing everyone else is getting, healers will be made functionally redundant and pointless. I want to heal more, I'd love it more than anything, but paying attention to how the game is built means I can't just jam a square shape in a round hole and heal just to cast heals like a useless idiot.

[Drkdays]

Yes, because that's what I want in a video gaming experience: something that's easy and boring. I yearn to take time out of my day and pay money to bore myself with slow and uneventful gameplay.

Do you honestly not see what's wrong with that statement?

Also, I don't know how the topics on this forum could possibly be even more clear that we know exactly what we want.

I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt, but now I'm inclined to believe this is just more bait. I don't really know why there's a handful of people that just want to harass the people on here discussing valuable and important conversations. I totally get that this place is, in many ways, is really just an echo chamber, but the trolling is entirely unwarranted.

Yes, clearly I'm trolling because I'm the only one who feels this way.

I was actually giving you the benefit of the doubt since, for a moment there, you seemed willing to actually talk. But then I continued to disagree with you and the truth came out. Pity.

[ty_taurus]

Yes, clearly I'm trolling because I'm the only one who feels this way.

I was actually giving you the benefit of the doubt since, for a moment there, you seemed willing to actually talk. But then I continued to disagree with you and the truth came out. Pity.

It has nothing to do with the stance you take and everything to do with how you communicate it. The community that stands on the "experienced" side of the argument has largely come to the conclusion that want we want is something that adds the depth and fun value without disrupting the easy and accessibility of the role for casual players, but you won't hear it. You don't want something that makes the role more fun for us without changing your ability to not worry about optimization. You want us to enjoy the role the way you do or not at all, and that, to me, doesn't sound like something any legitimate casual player would say.

There have been people that have brought up concerns about not wanting the role to become harder for incredibly valid reasons. Examples like "my brother has special needs," "I'm in my 60s now and its hard to keep up with DPS jobs," "I have joint problems in my hands that make it hard to maintain a rotation," are all things that I've heard and are completely reasonable things to want healing to stay simple and not require optimization which is exactly why the vast majority of us have been beating the dead horse over and over and over again that raising the skill floor is NOT what we want, and it is entirely possible to raise the skill ceiling without making a noticeable impact on the skill floor, or even making it easier for the casual audience to improve their optimization without changing how they will play the job.

Wanting SGE's Toxikon II for example to be DPS neutral with 2 casts of Dosis III changes nothing about how a casual player will play SGE, but will actually improve their DPS contribution because it means overusing E. Diagnosis will actually be less of a DPS loss for you while allowing experienced healers to optimize how they shield the party.

The suggestion I made above about adding in a Water spell actually makes it easier for casual players to dodge mechanics because it gives you a way to do a little extra damage without having to cast anything at all.

That said, I cannot, in good conscience, believe that someone actively wants a game to be boring so they can not play the game. If you want to just enjoy the scenery, then explore the overworld or use the Explorer mode that we've had for quite some time now to just explore dungeons for the fun of it. That is literally a mode added to the game for that very purpose. If you want to instead watch Netflix or talk on the phone with your friend, then go do those things instead. These are solutions that rational people understand without having to explain them, and I cannot bring myself to believe you don't have the sense to understand that. You are an intelligence, conscious person, and I have enough faith in your intelligence to view these as nothing more than an attempt at trolling and not a genuine stance you would possibly take.

[Silver-Strider]

Forms of assistance, mitigation, buffs, and other such things are wildly different from new forms of dps. I'm all for finding ways to make that down time more engaging, even if I feel like there are already plenty of things to do during a boss fight in which death could happen at any second and dps options DO already exist.

But all I'm reading is more dps buttons, more damaging abilities. And that's where I draw my line in the dirt. I feel like people don't even know what they're asking for. They just want MORE, and that troubles me greatly.

The thing is, we had that before and SE took them away.

We had Stoneskin for Prey Mechanics
We had Shadowflare for Slow debuff so enemies didn't attack as frequently
We had Stella for a Heavy debuff on stuff like Liquid Limb in A3S so as to give us more time to deal with that mechanic.
We had Virus/Disable/Eye for an Eye for mitigation purposes.

WE HAD ALL THIS!!!
And it all got taken away. We have asked SE for more mechanics for healers for YEARS but all we got was more tools to heal with.

To make matters worse, how many times have they repackaged the same skills we've had in the past just with a different coat of paint and say its new?
Temperance is just Divine Seal with 10% damage mitigation added to it.
Seraph is just Rouse with a Shield effect
Lord/Lady of Crowns are back in pretty much the exact same form as they were in SB but in AoE.
Aqua Veil/Exaltation/Protraction are, ironically, Eye for an Eye just specific to the healer and I'd wager I can't spread Protraction with Deployment Tactics like I could Eye for an Eye on SCH so not even as good as it was either.

This isn't even asking for more. We're asking for the things we had to be returned so that the role isn't simply a 1 button wonder that it currently is.

[BooPoo]

Why would anyone be against hybrid playstyle? At least make it an optional playstyle on Sage for diversity and fun. The "healers only heal" mentality is extremely outdated and is only appealing to probably 1% of the total MMO playerbase. Remember that for every 3 DPS in this game there needs to be a healer to balance the queue. And right now it doesn't look like it's very balanced. Adding a GNB of healers would be very healthy for 14 in the long term.

Also, even if they up the healing requirements in instances, why wouldn't you want more interesting DPS options anyways so you aren't useless in the open world when doing MSQ/Bozja/Fates etc.? It really baffles me.

[RobynDaBank]

VictoriaLuv ruined Viera for me.

I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt, but now I'm inclined to believe this is just more bait. I don't really know why there's a handful of people that just want to harass the people on here discussing valuable and important conversations. I totally get that this place is, in many ways, is really just an echo chamber, but the trolling is entirely unwarranted.

It's not a conversation when anyone with an opposing view - granted with some level of aggression (but honestly unparalleled to the aggression of the other side) - is told that they're baiting for inflammation and irritation. You acknowledged that the forums can become an echo chamber, but continue that preconception. Wording can be the difference between bait and a true opinion sometimes, it's true, but so can the poster's intent.