Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[SeverianLyonesse]

They can stick with it all they want but they need to face these facts:

They can technically bring out a TB more often in Dungeon Content, specifically Expert as well as AOE.

We have many oGCDs and we're going to burn through them before we even TOUCH our GCDs (...except WHM, sorry). This design is a problem, however, because we're never pushed enough to USE our GCDs when everyone plays well (strictly speaking of bosses not trash mobs) and thus we have few mana problems (which makes piety useless, again sorry WHMs) and an overbloated kit.

Even if they don't want to bring Expert Dungeons in line with leveling dungeons, the same can still be said for Raids, EX and Savage. And EX and Savage have 0 excuse for not testing 2 tanks and 2 healers.

So, if they want healing to be lax, fine. BUT we need a skill pruning then. They cannot have low healing and too much healing abilities. One or the other has to give.

Again, this idea of "bloat" doesn't take into account why the redundancies exist: to help compensate for outright bad players.

I have absolutely needed to dip into my GCDs as a SGE to keep bad tanks alive. And granted some of that comes down to me being new to healing and greedy for those adderstings, but even still that is a situation that the ability bloat accounts for: when you have a bad healer AND a bad tank, you can still clear.

I think even in the live letter YoshiP made some intimations that he prefers to err on the side of content being clearable rather than difficult.

Again, this makes a lot more sense when you view FF as a social MMO as its first priority, and a combat MMO second. It makes its money from having an extremely low barrier of entry to most of its busywork content.

[ASkellington]

Again, this idea of "bloat" doesn't take into account why the redundancies exist: to help compensate for outright bad players.

I have absolutely needed to dip into my GCDs as a SGE to keep bad tanks alive. And granted some of that comes down to me being new to healing and greedy for those adderstings, but even still that is a situation that the ability bloat accounts for: when you have a bad healer AND a bad tank, you can still clear.

I think even in the live letter YoshiP made some intimations that he prefers to err on the side of content being clearable rather than difficult.

Again, this makes a lot more sense when you view FF as a social MMO as its first priority, and a combat MMO second. It makes its money from having an extremely low barrier of entry to most of its busywork content.

Not really? Perhaps it is my experience but even with bad tanks and dps I still don't use everything. Collective Unconciousness can 100% be removed and with some moving of skills I can guarentee most healers will not feel it. CI can also be removed by either trait upgrading it to Exalt or just flat removed. Neutral Sect'd A.Bene can fill it's spot for when I need to shield a DPS or my tank.

That is where we differ on our opinions for redundancies. Where you see it as less tools, I see it as more chances to creatively use what tools I have left to salvage a situation. THAT is what healing imo is lacking for engagement and WHY I want unnecessary skills or just some skills period gone.

Does that make sense?

[SieyaM]

Not really? Perhaps it is my experience but even with bad tanks and dps I still don't use everything. Collective Unconciousness can 100% be removed and with some moving of skills I can guarentee most healers will not feel it. CI can also be removed by either trait upgrading it to Exalt or just flat removed. Neutral Sect'd A.Bene can fill it's spot for when I need to shield a DPS or my tank.

That is where we differ on our opinions for redundancies. Where you see it as less tools, I see it as more chances to creatively use what tools I have left to salvage a situation. THAT is what healing imo is lacking for engagement and WHY I want unnecessary skills or just some skills period gone.

Does that make sense?

The problem I see with removing CI and just using Neutral A. Bene is that if you are in a dungeon situation and your tank is pulling, you don't want a regen effect on them since it's so easy during that time to grab aggro from them. Neutral is also on a pretty long cool down so it probably would not be available again before the next pull. Sure this would probably work for Savage or ultimate content, but that is not where these jobs are going to be used most of the time and so having tools that work better for dungeons is also important.

[Deceptus]

I think they know the moment the make an entire expansion hard like World of Warcraft's CATA people will start fleeing.

Difficulty and engagement aren't the same thing.

Content can be easy and engaging. Pressing the exact same button in 90% of content from level 4 to lvl 90 isn't engaging.

[MintnHoney]

Perhaps it is my experience but even with bad tanks and dps I still don't use everything.

I think they meant bad healer players.

[QooEr]

Again, this idea of "bloat" doesn't take into account why the redundancies exist: to help compensate for outright bad players.

outright bad players dont use their skills. bad whms will spam cure 1 every 5 seconds while tetra and everything else gathers dust. bad scholars cast adlo and succor when literally anything happens while they have 3 stacks of AF and AF off cooldown. bas asts go straight into asp helios and then use all their stuff at once at the smallest booboo. they all have less than 60% gcd uptime.

why are they designing jobs around people who just dont press buttons? you CANNOT add anything to help make healing easier for these players, other than a tutorial or literal invincibility buffs. i see this shit every time i queue for a roulette, and is the reason i just exclusively heal: bad players just dont use skills. i rather be redundant in dps thats always useful and leads to fun gameplay when healing is covered than redundant in healing ill never ever need while spamming 1 endlessly

[SeverianLyonesse]

I think they meant bad healer players.

I meant both sides, yeah.

Not really? Perhaps it is my experience but even with bad tanks and dps I still don't use everything. Collective Unconciousness can 100% be removed and with some moving of skills I can guarentee most healers will not feel it. CI can also be removed by either trait upgrading it to Exalt or just flat removed. Neutral Sect'd A.Bene can fill it's spot for when I need to shield a DPS or my tank.

That is where we differ on our opinions for redundancies. Where you see it as less tools, I see it as more chances to creatively use what tools I have left to salvage a situation. THAT is what healing imo is lacking for engagement and WHY I want unnecessary skills or just some skills period gone.

Does that make sense?

I understand you, and I don't disagree with that perspective. I think I *could* probably have more fun healing if I had to be choosier--and, in reality, I already am kind of choosy and ignore several spells almost entirely, if only because I forget they exist.

What I am saying is that you are also a good healer, and I am not. The game is designed so that players who are new to healing or bad at healing still have a good chance at keeping even a bad tank alive. The game is designed to be clearable even if both your healer and your tank are terrible. Put another way, the game is designed to be clearable by an extremely low skill threshold to accommodate an increasingly unskilled playerbase. Or, put even a third way, the players' ignorance already creates so much artificial difficulty that all the skill bloat is the developers' way of compensative for that artificial difficulty.

And does that work? To an extent, yes. Usually at least one of either the healer or the tank can limp the group to the end within one or two wipes, because they are never far from where a slight adjustment could help them clear. It's not efficient or very high-skill, but the system gives the party extremely good odds to clear, and that in turn reduces friction over player skill. With tighter kits, we would have much more rage because players wouldn't be able to compensate for each other as much.

why are they designing jobs around people who just dont press buttons? you CANNOT add anything to help make healing easier for these players, other than a tutorial or literal invincibility buffs. i see this shit every time i queue for a roulette, and is the reason i just exclusively heal: bad players just dont use skills. i rather be redundant in dps thats always useful and leads to fun gameplay when healing is covered than redundant in healing ill never ever need while spamming 1 endlessly

Exactly this. I have to reiterate that I don't exactly *like* that this is FF XIV's design philosophy. Just that it quite self-evidently prioritizes accessibility, and the healer/tank design reflects that implementing that philosophy just amounts to mitigation/healing bloat to compensate for, exactly as you said, people who don't press buttons. But again, I think there is a distinction to be had, because they have a two-prong approach to dealing with players who don't push buttons:

1) Shift the challenge difficulty to more "intuitive" things that do not involve button pushing like scripting AoE-avoidance dances.
2) Shift the responsibility for pushing buttons onto other players. The button bloat is *partly* to throw a bunch of things at the inept player and hope they will stick (faulty logic, I know), but moreso it exists so other players have more tools to *compensate* for the inept player. Again, in theory this bloat keeps the party balanced in favor of clearing, because at this point in XIV's design (and ignoring the occasional DPS check), as long as the tank stays alive then clearing isn't a matter of skill but of patience. Having so much redundancy between tanks and healers literally halves failure rates because now you have two roles whose primary concern is a single health bar and each has a very reasonable ability to single-handedly maintain it.

[Doc_Seraph]

They could just add something for further hell one could opt in for like "answer this multiple choice question while dodging mechanics" it is engaging kupo lol jk <3

Toss in some achievements behind it etc.. People would do this haha

want an extra 10k at the end of this dungeon? answer all questions correct and never die etc..

[StriderShinryu]

What I am saying is that you are also a good healer, and I am not. The game is designed so that players who are new to healing or bad at healing still have a good chance at keeping even a bad tank alive

Exactly this. As I said earlier in this thread, Healer is the job with the most responsibility in a group. In MSQ content, tanks can basically just turn on their stance and hit random buttons and will hold aggro and be okay.. as long as the healer keeps them alive. DPS can essentially hit random buttons and the fight will just take longer.. as long as the healer fixes their mistakes. Healers need to keep everyone alive for the expected damage as well as the unexpected damage, keeping an eye on the Vuln Stack collectors and the few things that actually do still need to be cleansed, while still trying to put out whatever DPS they can... or the entire group dies (and they probably get the blame for it). There just isn't much of a chance that healing in MSQ content will get much harder overall otherwise, well, pretty much no one would opt to be a healer.

Now, should "Expert" dungeons be at least a little harder for healers than MSQ dungeons? Sure. Should 8 mans actually require at least some healing attention from both healers? Sure. Should EX's (and potentially Savages in some cases) be harder still? Sure.
Should 8 mans be soloable by an on level player of any job? Absolutely not.

It's much better to look at ways for Healing jobs to be made more engaging outside of the healing component of their role. This will not only positively impact playing a healer in all content in the game, easy or otherwise, but it's much, much, much more likely to actually be considered by the developers than "Just make everything harder so healers have to heal more."

[IDontPetLalas]

If this were true you wouldn't be continuously making threads on the matter. Sometimes you have to continue asking to get what you want, hence why it keeps getting pushed by the players. Ask the PVP community if it felt ignored lol

I was writing a longer response, but forget it, it boils down to "I'm not sure if you have even bothered to read his response".

the threads that were quoted while helpful aren't even ALL of the threads that have been made over the years asking for changes, but I feel that you won't be convinced no matter how many links get posted.