It's time to kill the argument that DPS abilities keep healers from healing.

[Hjihna]

It does make sense if you consider experience and optimization to be the natural result of playing the game. If Devs create content to be run repeatedly and make said content require a Healer then they must design the jobs to adapt to a player base that has the capacity to evolve and learn.

You say that jobs around the worse possible scenario for healing doesn't make sense, but it also doesn't make sense to design jobs around the best scenario for healing either, knowing how much these two scenarios will naturally vary the moment your players get to know the fights and gear up.

The fact remains Healing dowtime occurs naturally. Devs should account for that.

I am not asking whether it's good to design for a different range of players with different abilities. That's obviously true, and FFXIV obviously does this, unless you think EX/Savage/Perfect fights are only trivially different from lower-level content. I'm asking whether it's good to design around players who've "cracked" the game, because that inevitably makes it harder for healers who haven't gotten there yet, and because players will crack *anything* if you assume sufficient effort and time.

Healing downtime occurs naturally, and it occurs less when you and your party are less skilled, and it occurs more when you and your party are more skilled. Up to a certain point, healers are learning to use more of their kit--after that point, healers are learning to use less of their kit. This is not really true of other roles. (it might be true of tanks too, if aggro management was more of a thing and still more of a party responsibility) The more you design around healers who heal less, the harder you make for healers learning to heal more. Devs should account for as many cases as they can, but a balance has to get struck at some point. We can talk about what an appropriate balance is--I'm not saying the current iteration is the right one--but I don't think you *can* balance by assuming the specific cases where a job's primary role has been solved.

[Sebazy]

Up to a certain point, healers are learning to use more of their kit--after that point, healers are learning to use less of their kit. This is not really true of other roles. (it might be true of tanks too, if aggro management was more of a thing and still more of a party responsibility) The more you design around healers who heal less, the harder you make for healers learning to heal more. Devs should account for as many cases as they can, but a balance has to get struck at some point. We can talk about what an appropriate balance is--I'm not saying the current iteration is the right one--but I don't think you *can* balance by assuming the specific cases where a job's primary role has been solved.

You mentioned that expanding our DPS and utility toolkits would make things harder for healers.

Couldn't the same be said of our complex and over tuned healing toolkits?

You don't see new healers rotating their oGCDs. Rather you generally see them relying on Succor, Medica etc despite having oGCDs that are far more powerful and time efficient. So by your logic, wouldn't you agree that simplifying our healing toolkits and forcing us to lean more on our GCD heals at all levels of play would be a good solution that appeases both ends of the spectrum?

[Hjihna]

If a healer feels overwhelmed because of so many dps buttons and then fails at healing, that has nothing to do with the amount of dps buttons. It's on them, because they set the wrong priority and focused on all the downtime fillers instead of their primary role. It doesn't just "sound good and all", it's the only way to keep the skill floor low while raising the skill ceiling.
Or should vet healers be permanently bored just because someone can't handle a skill on their hotbar they're not using anyway because they're still struggling with just healing even when doing it fulltime?

I've seen the idea that more DPS raises the ceiling without raising the floor, and I've never quite understood it. It's not as though players just tunnel-vision on the specific buttons they feel comfortable using, until they're suddenly comfortable using more buttons through hitting the dummy or whatever. You admit that there's more things to focus on and more mistakes to be made, so why do you think that has no impact on the skill floor? Again, a balance can be struck, but pretending this has no impact just doesn't make sense to me.

It feels like your nitpicking various random moans from elsewhere and bringing them into this thread to try and bulk up your point TBH, I'm not really sure why half of these points are relevant to this?

The point was literally brought up in this thread by WaxSW, so I take a little issue with this. People have different thoughts, and it's no good assigning everyone's random carping to everyone else just because they're all dissatisfied with the same thing--but I've seen the point made in this thread and elsewhere, so I spoke generally. If you don't agree, that's fine. Well done on the save!

I agree that there's a balance to be struck, and that dungeon/fight design generally could be better, etc. I'm not against the idea of having more DPS or more of a kit, and would certainly like more interconnection between different parts of the healer kit. It's no good NOT to account for the point where healers are more confident and clear-headed and more efficient with their skills. But starting from assumptions like a learned fight, braindead healing downtime, etc. seems iffy when evaluating engagement. I don't know if it makes sense to judge a job based around when most of the kit is irrelevant. (The argument might be that it's too easy, and most of the kit is irrelevant most of the time, but that touches on broader questions of game design and how the rest of the playerbase plays and etc)

[Hjihna]

You mentioned that expanding our DPS and utility toolkits would make things harder for healers.

Couldn't the same be said of our complex and over tuned healing toolkits?

You don't see new healers rotating their oGCDs. Rather you generally see them relying on Succor, Medica etc despite having oGCDs that are far more powerful and time efficient. So by your logic, wouldn't you agree that simplifying our healing toolkits and forcing us to lean more on our GCD heals at all levels of play would be a good solution that appeases both ends of the spectrum?

I actually do think that making healers lean more on GCD heals would be a good, personally. I think it's great to have oGCD tools, and things to weave, but also that it would be nice to have either slightly fewer tools or more aggressive fight design so that healers have phases where they actually focus on healing. There was a specific part of leveling WHM that felt like that, around I think mid-60, and that was fun.

EDIT: It's funny, because it is the sort of thing where I'd get a new tool and be like "oh fuck yeah" and be excited about it for a while, and be really into how it made things easier, and then kind of realize it made the rest of my time less interesting, not more. Or, not get used, while I'd be keeping an eye out trying to gauge if I needed to use it. But, y'know, Blood Lily go brrrr

[Semirhage]

I'm not against the idea of having more DPS or more of a kit, and would certainly like more interconnection between different parts of the healer kit. It's no good NOT to account for the point where healers are more confident and clear-headed and more efficient with their skills. But starting from assumptions like a learned fight, braindead healing downtime, etc. seems iffy when evaluating engagement. I don't know if it makes sense to judge a job based around when most of the kit is irrelevant. (The argument might be that it's too easy, and most of the kit is irrelevant most of the time, but that touches on broader questions of game design and how the rest of the playerbase plays and etc)

I find the devs' position absolutely ludicrous, and indicative that they don't actually play healers. Yeah, of course you should design kits to work on a base level for players learning their job and fights. Designing kits in such a way that the pinnacle of skill you work toward is 11111111111111111111 until you want to cut your finger off is awful. Design.

[Nizzi]

Wanting more DPS options or utility toolkits or better-tuned fights sounds good and all, but all those things would make learning to heal more difficult...and without RADICAL changes to the FFXIV fight formula, I don't even think they're a solution to the malaise.

Are you learning to heal in Savage, or Normal mode content? What normal mode fights (if any) can you tell me that require healers to DPS efficiently to clear? Is this older content (when healers had way more DPS options) or is it newer content (when healers have generally all the same DPS options)? At what level should we consider that someone should have some level of understanding on their job and they're no longer "learning"? We're about to be at level 90; are you still a "learning healer" at level 90? What about now, at level 80?
Why is it that we just have to accept that "this thing COULD make "learning" healing harder, so the jobs will gain no mechanical depth from level 4 to level 80!" When does the "learning" end and when do we start expecting that players have some idea of how to play their jobs?

[Sani2341]

Wanting more DPS options or utility toolkits or better-tuned fights sounds good and all, but all those things would make learning to heal more difficult...

You know, maybe it was just me, but back in SB when i first learned to heal in ffxiv, the fact a lot of my damage came from a couple of DoTs on SCH meant I could much more easily just apply one or two, and then focus on healing, even when I was still a wet behind the ears sprout.
Then came the ShB changes, and keeping both healign and DPS up beame a lot harder for the first while for me.

I'd even going so far as that reintroducing the DoTs we lost at the start of ShB would lower the skill floor for starting to contribute damage, because using 2-3 GCDs for damage every 30s is, at least imho, much less to ask of sprouts than getting as close to 1 damage spell every GCD if they want to contribute a noteable amount of dps.

[ForteNightshade]

People complain about dungeons being mass pull hallways, but then resent the less linear ARR dungeons when they get them in roulette. People complain about raids all being arena fights, but then bitch about mobs. People complain about how gear trivializes fights, but will still gear as best they can. So long as damage is predictable and manageable by healers of less skill, more skilled healers will figure it out and optimize and get bored. No?

This is an incredibly disingenuous argument, and completely disregards any context as to why people dislike older ARR dungeons nowadays. Being synced down to lower level content removes a good portion of most jobs toolkis, leaving several complete shells of themselves. Bard, Dancer, Black Mage and pretty much every tank all are extremely lacking at or below 60 simply because they're missing far too many of their core skills. Take Gunbreaker, for example. What makes the job fun is Continuation. Below 70, you're essentially doing 123 Burst Strike and nothing else. Bard and Dancer have laughably low proc rates (I believe 20%) at these level ranges. Granted, Standard Step isn't remotely balanced for low level content. So that gives Dancer something. Bard is little more than a Heavy Shot simulator.

Even with all the aforementioned issues, the dev team simply doesn't incentivize non-linearity. Adding a few branching pathways is nice... if it leads to something. A lore dump or an extra accessory 30 ilvls lower than what most players will have isn't going to entice anyone. Sure, the lore dump can be fun but it's a one and done occurrence. People have run the dungeon 50-10-200 times aren't going to slow down so you can read lore. They just want it over with.

Likewise, raid mobs were equally pointless because they were nothing but AoE fodder. You blew them away in seconds. Hence why people complained. They weren't made to be interesting; instead being more of an annoyance. If the dev team actually did something with them, perhaps people would be more receptive.

Lastly, of course people prioritize gear. That's literally the entire purpose of raiding. It's the dev team's responsibility to design fight mechanics around the knowledge we'll inevitably outgear them. They have, at least not for healers who are denied any form of meaningful gameplay progression. Optimizing their healing throughput means spamming the same nuke button more frequently. They aren't being given debuffs, buffs, utility or DPS to actually manage. Just a simple DoT and 200 Glare casts.

[Sebazy]

The point was literally brought up in this thread by WaxSW, so I take a little issue with this. People have different thoughts, and it's no good assigning everyone's random carping to everyone else just because they're all dissatisfied with the same thing--but I've seen the point made in this thread and elsewhere, so I spoke generally.

Aah I see, I think you're referring to this quote right?

If you're in endgame not doing a mechanic will likely go from killing you to depending on the situation wipe, just swiftcast raise if the former, nothing you can do in the latter.

To clarify, I think you are misunderstanding what they are saying in this case. This isn't the group just going 'oh ok let's jump off the edge now'. But rather Savage fights (and extremes to a lesser extent) generally have a number of marque mechanics where it has to be done flawlessly by the entire team or it will typically just kill off the raid. This isn't something that's limited to end of tier fights either. You'll find this sort of thing in the majority of Savage fights.

A more notorious example would be Lions Rampant in E12S - His death at 6:14 causes the next set of breaths to overlap with an extra lion breath going randomly through the raid forcing a near inevitable wipe.

A good example of this sort of thing in an easier Savage turn would be E5S Ramuh and Fury's Fourteen where one person missing a spear = raid wipe.

Otherwise, good discussion so far. Thanks

[inhaledcorn]

So long as damage is predictable and manageable by healers of less skill, more skilled healers will figure it out and optimize and get bored. No?

Are....

Are you seriously suggesting in order to have more fun as a healer just... don't be good at the game? Do you even know what being a "good healer" even entails? Yes, the goal of a healer is to minimize the use of GCD heals to maximize use of GCD spells. There are various levels of people who can reach that ideal. I can get pretty close to that ideal. Sure, not many people can. Are you seriously saying it's fair that I have to suffer just because I wanted to be a better team player? I'm not saying I want a NIN or DRG level of rotation. I just want a second DoT to juggle. Spells or skills to use for Burst phases. If I keep getting oGCD healing tools to minimize my GCD healing to maximize my GCD damage, why can't I get more GCD damage? New players aren't a factor. They're not going to hit those buttons until they feel they're ready, and there are plenty of people who are never ready to hit those buttons. There are tons of people who believe that their ideal state is to just be a healing battery. We've already accommodated their play with Cure I spam. Why does someone like me have to suffer when playing healer? Don't say, "Play another role," I want to play and I like playing healer.

I like playing healer because it gives me the satisfaction of feeling smarter than the thing I'm fighting. DPS is for when I want to punch something's face in. Tank is for when I want to feel invincible. But, when I'm a healer, I'm thinking about how I'm going to use my multitude of tools to "optimize the fun out of a fight" as you put it. If you think that "optimization" is somehow inherently unfun, then maybe the problem is on you, not on us.