Healer design is still terrible and I'm tired of apologizing for it.

[Halfgeeek]

Let me be more specific, their encounter design that facilitates everyone actually using their role SE could do well to emulate. Designing encounters around several people and roles being afk is just completely stupid imo, see current ex trials being completed without healers.

So a bunch of elite statics manage to break an encounter with non standard comps and it's all doom & gloom, WoW had better encounter designs?

I recall Ultimates with 8 tanks happening before. Just because it can happen, does not mean 99% of the playerbase will manage such a feat, and the average PF out there don't find any challenge in these encounters.

[Sebazy]

So a bunch of elite statics manage to break an encounter with non standard comps and it's all doom & gloom, WoW had better encounter designs?

I recall Ultimates with 8 tanks happening before. Just because it can happen, does not mean 99% of the playerbase will manage such a feat, and the average PF out there don't find any challenge in these encounters.

Suggesting it takes an elite static to break Zodork EX is a stretch tbh. This was linked in the other thread about this and it's a telling watch. Note that both healers died to Astral2 roughly a minute prior leaving it as a 6 man run to clear the rest.

https://youtu.be/T6MvwQWBMVg?t=532

Let's look a little closer at it.

8:58 - Shield Samba goes up
8:59 - Divine Veil goes up and Curing Waltz gets fired off early wasting the heal from both
9:00 - AoEs start hitting
9:01 - Shake it off goes up
9:05 - Tank LB3 goes off soaking the last two hits
9:06 - Mechanic done, no one died.

A few observations from that. The reaper and dancer came closest to dieing, everyone else was pretty safe.

Now before you say 'But they needed LB3 to survive that!' I'll preemptively counter with 2 clear points: If they had have had the full 8 people for the stack, it wouldn't have been nearly as close and secondly, they could have made it safer for themselves by not wasting Curing Waltz or the heal portion of Divine Seal early (That's 10k hp or roughly 20% of a HP bar wasted right there). I also suspect that no one used Feint looking at the scrolling text. That's another big chunk of mitigation gone.

Was that an elite static? The fact that they had 45 minutes on the timer suggests that they most certainly weren't.

Keep in mind that this is a mechanic that happens 3 times in a 9+ minute fight with the last two being spaced 2 minutes apart, cooldowns are not an issue whatsoever. Thank god the first one at least has a 1hp mechanic beforehand or we really would be seeing 0 healer runs in PF IMHO.

*Edit*

Sauce:

So this happened in a random pug I joined trying to get more practice with ninja.
https://youtu.be/T6MvwQWBMVg?t=474

[Halfgeeek]

Suggesting it takes an elite static to break Zodork EX is a stretch tbh. This was linked in the other thread about this and it's a telling watch. Note that both healers died to Astral2 roughly a minute prior leaving it as a 6 man run to clear the rest.

https://youtu.be/T6MvwQWBMVg?t=532

Sorry, I don't understand your point.

That looks like they did really well up to the last phase of the boss and managed to pull through with tank LB3 and aoe healing cooldown ready on WAR + PLD tanks, both known for high healing potential with their CDs. To me, that was a great win, if the healers were around, the LB3 would have been used for melee dmg instead for a faster win.

Would it have been a better feat if everyone else dies except healer, and the healer pops LB3 instead ftw?

[Sebazy]

Sorry, I don't understand your point.

I'm not really sure how I can make it clearer?

They didn't need the tank lb3

If they had have not wasted the healing from the dancer and PLD, they would have been fine

If someone had have pressed Feint, they would have been fine

They had have had the full 8 people, they would have been fine

They didn't manage to pull through with the tank LB3 because the tank LB3 barely did anything. With 1 or 2 simple adjustments, they could have merrily survived that and still had a melee LB3 to finish it off.

My point is that the damage in this fight is absolutely farcical. I'm saying that it wasn't a particularly special feat, mistakes were made but enough cooldowns were pressed that they survived without too much of an issue. Had they been better coordinated like an 'elite static' it would have been far far cleaner and that Tank LB3 wouldn't have even been considered.

It doesn't take an elite static to break this fight. Any old pug with players that are awake and have half an idea what their kit does can do it.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

It's part of being jaded. Once they've mastered the role and play with those who also mastered the game, it all becomes quite unsatisfying and boring.

Repeating the same Ex, Savage or Ultimate no longer provides the same thrills. The encounters scripted, memorized to the second, the inevitable victories, hollow..

The only optimizations they're left with is getting in more Glare, Broil, Malefic, Dosis and to see how low they can let the party HP drops to without wiping. There's those who parse runs to compare rDPS, it's the wins here & there that provides the little joys that make it worthwhile, like when they use Dissipation and spam Energy Drain on cooldown & manage to rank up on fflogs.

Then there are those who find no joy at all to playing a healer, so they play other roles, or on the forums.

Essentially never get a static, never get to the point where your memorizing every part of an encounter timing wise, just know mechanics and play somewhat reactively and you will always have fun.

[Shalan]

Essentially never get a static, never get to the point where your memorizing every part of an encounter timing wise, just know mechanics and play somewhat reactively and you will always have fun.

That's what I do and I no longer have fun with healers now though

I only play a few hours a week, I don't have a static, I don't read guides or try to optimize, the extent of my class knowledge and rotations comes from reading my tooltips and figuring it out myself from there, I don't use parsers, I've never touched anything harder than PuG extreme groups or solo deep dungeons.

By all means, I'm pretty casual, so by your standards I should be having a blast with healers. And yet, I still pine for HW and SB class design for them.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

That's what I do and I no longer have fun with healers now though

I only play a few hours a week, I don't have a static, I don't read guides or try to optimize, the extent of my class knowledge and rotations comes from reading my tooltips and figuring it out myself from there, I don't use parsers, I've never touched anything harder than PuG extreme groups or solo deep dungeons.

By all means, I'm pretty casual, so by your standards I should be having a blast with healers. And yet, I still pine for HW and SB class design for them.

Play scholar then, cause once you touch expedient you will never go back.

[Sebazy]

Essentially never get a static, never get to the point where your memorizing every part of an encounter timing wise, just know mechanics and play somewhat reactively and you will always have fun.

Whilst I disagree with the static point (not all statics are equal, some are super casual), you're legitimately spot on with the rest of that imho.

[Risvertasashi]

So a bunch of elite statics manage to break an encounter with non standard comps and it's all doom & gloom, WoW had better encounter designs?

No. People have been managing to pull off solo heals since the game's inception.

The problem is how accessible it's becoming by lowering healing requirements across the board. (Or it's not a problem, depending on your view, but it's not a matter of "oh some elite world first types did this once")

[FoxCh40s]

No. People have been managing to pull off solo heals since the game's inception.

The problem is how accessible it's becoming by lowering healing requirements across the board. (Or it's not a problem, depending on your view, but it's not a matter of "oh some elite world first types did this once")

Honestly, we're likely going to hit critical mass on this issue this expansion.