Party changes moving forward for 8-man content

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Or an alternative would be to just make the fights require two tanks. P3S is how I wish most fights were designed, where the OT is also steadily taking auto attacks. This ups healer engagement since we now have to watch both tanks’ HP bars—and, honestly, the OT in P3S takes far more damage than the MT does.


As it stands now, 2 tanks, 1 healer, and 5 DPS would work far better as a party comp. You barely need 1 healer in a lot of fights. 2 is needlessly redundant considering how low the healing requirements are.

You play with people far more skilled than I apparently.

We definitely wouldn't be able to solo heal any of the savage fights.

[HyoMinPark]

You play with people far more skilled than I apparently.

We definitely wouldn't be able to solo heal any of the savage fights.

Strictly speaking, the healing requirements are low everywhere. In Savage, and especially outside of it. Since the OP only specified “8-man content” and not “8-man Savage content”, having 2 healers in anything non-Savage is even more redundant than having 2 in most Savage fights. A half-competent one can solo heal and maintain steady damage on their own in normal 8-mans. The second healer is basically a gimped DPS, so might as well replace them with an actual DPS.

It doesn’t take nearly as much skill as you’re implying for one healer to handle all of the healing in regular 8-man content.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Strictly speaking, the healing requirements are low everywhere. In Savage, and especially outside of it. Since the OP only specified “8-man content” and not “8-man Savage content”, having 2 healers in anything non-Savage is even more redundant than have 2 in most Savage fights. A half-competent one can solo heal and maintain steady damage on their own in normal 8-mans. The second healer is basically a gimped DPS, so might as well replace them with an actual DPS.

It doesn’t take nearly as much skill as you’re implying for one healer to handle all of the healing in regular 8-man content.

I figured you were just talking savage since you started talking about p3s

[HyoMinPark]

I figured you were just talking savage since you started talking about p3s

I only mentioned that as an example where two tanks are needed. It’s a fight where the OT actually has purpose, and I think more 8-mans could stand to be designed like that (read: where both tanks are taking damage; not just the MT). O12N, E3N and P3N are some examples if you want non-Savage content where the OT serves more purpose than “blue DPS with occasional mitigative responsibilities”. Obviously there are more, but P3S came to mind first due to it being in the recent tier.

[Gemina]

Strictly speaking, the healing requirements are low everywhere. In Savage, and especially outside of it. Since the OP only specified “8-man content” and not “8-man Savage content”, having 2 healers in anything non-Savage is even more redundant than having 2 in most Savage fights. A half-competent one can solo heal and maintain steady damage on their own in normal 8-mans. The second healer is basically a gimped DPS, so might as well replace them with an actual DPS.

It doesn’t take nearly as much skill as you’re implying for one healer to handle all of the healing in regular 8-man content.

Except we're human and we eff up from time to time. And when that unfortunate time comes, it sure does help to have a second healer so we don't have to reset or sacrifice the DPS from a DPS player using SMN or RDM.

Party composition factors in that players are human, not robots who never make mistakes. And please don't trivialize content of any difficulty. Not every player has countless insufferable hours of farming high end content under their belts.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Except we're human and we eff from time to time. And when that unfortunate time comes, it sure does help to have a second healer so we don't have to reset or sacrifice the DPS from a DPS player using SMN or RDM.

Party composition factors in that players are human, not robots who never make mistakes. And please don't trivialize content of any difficulty. Not every player has countless insufferable hours of farming high end content under their belts.

I have countless hours farming high end content and I still make mistakes in dungeons sometimes that lead to me dying.

Some people are "perfect" all the time, but most people aren't. Posts acting like healers do no healing in Savage baffle me, since only at the highest end is that possible. I wonder how some of those healers would react in more casual statics (We've had a few hardcore healers sub in occasionally, and it tends to not work out well lol)

[HyoMinPark]

Except we're human and we eff up from time to time. And when that unfortunate time comes, it sure does help to have a second healer so we don't have to reset or sacrifice the DPS from a DPS player using SMN or RDM.

Party composition factors in that players are human, not robots who never make mistakes. And please don't trivialize content of any difficulty. Not every player has countless insufferable hours of farming high end content under their belts.

I have countless hours farming high end content and I still make mistakes in dungeons sometimes that lead to me dying.

Some people are "perfect" all the time, but most people aren't. Posts acting like healers do no healing in Savage baffle me, since only at the highest end is that possible. I wonder how some of those healers would react in more casual statics (We've had a few hardcore healers sub in occasionally, and it tends to not work out well lol)

First of all, I make mistakes all the time. That does not change how objectively low healing requirements are in all content. If you think there is 50/50 split between healing and damage uptime, you are incorrect. With how low the healing requirements are in Savage, they are even lower in content that isn’t Savage.

I am not even top tier in terms of healing and still primarily use oGCDs in Savage.

I wonder how some of those healers would react in more casual statics (We've had a few hardcore healers sub in occasionally, and it tends to not work out well lol)

Probably the same way I do in my static? Unless this casual static is expecting me to babysit them and/or the tanks—to which I won’t do since it simply does not need to be done. If my co-healer starts negating all of my healing, then I will probably not heal as much since there isn’t much need if they are going to turn everything I do into an overheal. Which tends to happen a lot because some healers are way overzealous with their GCDs in content. Which they can do whatever they want, but just because they’re pressing those healing GCDs a lot doesn’t mean that the healing was required or even necessary.

[Gemina]

First of all, I make mistakes all the time. That does not change how objectively low healing requirements are in all content. If you think there is 50/50 split between healing and damage uptime, you are incorrect. With how low the healing requirements are in Savage, they are even lower in content that isn’t Savage.

I am not even top tier in terms of healing and still primarily use oGCDs in Savage.

This makes no sense. You're telling me that when you make mistakes, it does not increase the healing requirement? This doesn't even compute. Are there heal bots in Savage? If you make a mistake putting you in crit HP, or a one-shot, the healer has to fix your mistake. This requires them to use healing resources on you they otherwise did not have to. IOW, the requirement goes up. The requirements most certainly doesn't remain stagnant. Because if the healer does nothing, you either die to the next unavoidable attack, and/or stay on the ground. By admitting you make mistakes, whether you want to or not, also admit that healing requirements are mutable.

In my last post, I explained that healing requirements come in two forms. The static form, which you and so many other players love to refer to does not, and cannot be changed. If you feel these fixed requirements are low, then make your case. However, the case I have made, and continue to make after all these years is that because the intangible requirements are so unpredictable due to varied skill level and attention levels, they have to remain so. See while you're busting your ass in Savage, in a static, where everyone knows what they're doing, making sporadic yet human mistakes from time to time; down yonder in the casual playground, players screw up all the time. The intangible healing requirements can and do go up significantly. My roulette tonight threw me in 012N. The bug crushed everyone with Starboard/Larboard. The healers were actually the ones not taking damage, but the rest of the damage was just too much for them to keep up with. And I will tell you this, they weren't casting a whole lot of Broils/Malefics/etc.

This is just one example? Well, I can come up with many, many, many more. You'll argue that you shouldn't have to rely on the ineptness of randos to find engaging content for healers. My question is why do you feel that way? Seriously, why? Do you not understand that you bring a great service to any group who is struggling? Is it not rewarding for you to know how much you contributed to the clear? Isn't this what you say is missing from healing?

I don't participate in savage, so I cannot speak for the healing requirements and how I do with them. However, I do know that the static healing requirements for those duties are much higher than their NM counterparts, and enrage nullifies your ability to sustain an instance longer than what is allowed within the enrage timer. However, with EX and unreal trials, I have still found learning parties to be quite wealthy of healing requirements. If you want it, then don't be afraid to leave your circle to seek it out. That is far easier than trying to get the devs to overhaul healing and encounter design, that is for damn sure.

[MintnHoney]

Maybe I'm too much of a casual to see the problem, but not even I have an issue with solo healing encounters if and when things go wrong, or if a co-healer jumps ship, or even going into party as the solo healer for various encounters. It can be done, it just means that the responsibility for healing is no longer split in two. If we make a mistake, then, well, oops. Just like with every other job: oops. And the party will have to adjust, just like healers have to always adjust, and move on.
If the implication is that healers can't be allowed to make mistakes, or that we must have a back up healer because we do expect the one healer to make mistakes, then I have to ask why healers are the only role that aren't ever allowed to make mistakes in a game that's basically all about learning the choreography of a fight to perfection in order to avoid being KO'd? We also have multiple jobs that can provide party support and emergency healing or pick-me-ups, so the responsibility of fixing every party member's mistakes doesn't have to solely be on the healer anymore (in fact, the combination of the lower damage output and the capacity for other roles to heal and take care of themselves and the party is what has been leading to encounters being completed without any healers in the party).

You can argue that you're bringing the other healer for convenience, in the event that one or both healers make mistakes and can then cover for each other while allowing the other jobs to continue to DPS without any concern, but then that just makes me think that the only real concern being batted around is about meeting certain parses, and then makes me concerned that healers, as a role, are really only there as a convenience while other players think about meeting those certain parses and try to have fun.

Anyway, I agree that it'd be a simple matter to get away with having 1 healer in 8-man content, so perhaps changing the other healer slot to be an option for healer or dps wouldn't be a bad idea. I do think that 2 tanks is a necessity for certain encounters, though their inclusion is generally underutilized by the design team.

You'll argue that you shouldn't have to rely on the ineptness of randos to find engaging content for healers. My question is why do you feel that way? Seriously, why? Do you not understand that you bring a great service to any group who is struggling? Is it not rewarding for you to know how much you contributed to the clear? Isn't this what you say is missing from healing?

I don't know, my impression of their posts is that they believe that engagement is missing from healing and that general improvements can be made to the jobs within the role in order to facilitate that, rather than just missing a sense of pride in providing a service.

[HyoMinPark]

This makes no sense. You're telling me that when you make mistakes, it does not increase the healing requirement? This doesn't even compute.

Not in the way you are trying to imply.

If you make a mistake putting you in crit HP, or a one-shot, the healer has to fix your mistake. This requires them to use healing resources on you they otherwise did not have to. IOW, the requirement goes up. The requirements most certainly doesn't remain stagnant. Because if the healer does nothing, you either die to the next unavoidable attack, and/or stay on the ground. By admitting you make mistakes, whether you want to or not, also admit that healing requirements are mutable.

I think you are trying to argue that healing requirement increase by a significant amount in your response here. I disagree that me having to use a single heal to fix one mistake suddenly makes healing exponentially more difficult, or increase it by a significant amount. Not even a single raise impacts this. Or two raises.

In normal content, I have a surplus of healing tools available to me. Having to actually use one of them instead of sitting on it is not that significant. You are making it sound like this is game-changing when it really isn’t.

In order for the healing requirements to increase in the way you are implying, EVERYONE would have to be screwing up at the same time and/or constantly throughout a fight.

Because if the healer does nothing, you either die to the next unavoidable attack, and/or stay on the ground.

With regards to this part specifically, there are actually times where I don’t need to do any additional healing. Running Aglaia on WHM/AST, if people eat Byregot’s cleave versus moving to the safe spot out of it during the hammer floor, I have Assize and Earthly Star to passively heal them without having to go out of my way to move around my healing kit to accommodate. There isn’t any other raidwide coming out any time soon, so me using them on CD takes care of those missing HP. I don’t even have to go out of my way to fix this mistake. If I’m on SCH, I can actually use my fairy tether on them, which doesn’t see all that much use in normal content if I’m being honest outside of tossing it on the tank (I usually do this during dungeon trash pulls—not so much on bosses because their autos are not that threatening). SGE, I can swap Kardia to them. Even if the tank in my alliance is MT, because the boss autos just simply aren’t that huge of an issue (Haima takes care of five autos, which is plenty of time for Kardia to get the DPS to a healthier HP pool usually, especially if paired with Soteria).

Again, I’m not having to go out of my way for this.

In terms of most content, someone making a mistake and eating one AOE is not going to increase the healing requirements much at all; a skilled healer would barely think about having to top them off, and they would more than likely do it with a single oGCD resource/WHM Lily—if not something else in their kit. And by “skilled”, I don’t necessarily mean Savage-tier. There are plenty of skilled healers that do not raid.

In summary: I’ve have plenty of runs of various pieces of content where people take avoidable damage and I have to use an oGCD on them. But unless we are talking about people taking avoidable damage on a massive scale, the requirement does not increase as significantly as you think. Nor as significantly as you are implying in your responses to me.

The damage is simply not rapid-fire enough to cause that much stress from one person making one mistake. Even if it results in them dying and me having to raise.

In my last post, I explained that healing requirements come in two forms. The static form, which you and so many other players love to refer to does not, and cannot be changed. If you feel these fixed requirements are low, then make your case.

Are you trying to argue that static healing requirements aren’t low? I would invite you to look at logs in some of these fights: from 24-mans to Savage. Looks at how often tankbusters and raidwides go out. Look at how often healers are having to heal them versus casting their damage spells.

However, the case I have made, and continue to make after all these years is that because the intangible requirements are so unpredictable due to varied skill level and attention levels, they have to remain so. See while you're busting your ass in Savage, in a static, where everyone knows what they're doing, making sporadic yet human mistakes from time to time; down yonder in the casual playground, players screw up all the time.

I think I need to clarify some things here, because there are a lot of assumptions, I feel.

You are acting like I only heal in my static. You actually act like you know a lot about how I play and who I play with when I’d wager you really do not, so please do not assume. Outside of raid, I’m not healing in a static environment. I heal more in non-static, “casual playground” environments than I do in static environments. Always have. This is only my second Savage tier as a healer with an organized and optimized group. Other groups I’ve been in haven’t been this good. They made myriad of mistakes all the time; wiped all the time. I still do not agree that healing requirements are all that intense. Not to the extent you’re trying to make me believe they are.

While people make mistakes, unless they are massive and party-wide, they are not nearly as demanding as you are implying. And while I live for these meme parties because I actually feel like a healer for once and not a gimped DPS, they are not nearly as common as stories would make them seem. The vast majority of my runs are actually pretty average.

The intangible healing requirements can and do go up significantly. My roulette tonight threw me in 012N. The bug crushed everyone with Starboard/Larboard. The healers were actually the ones not taking damage, but the rest of the damage was just too much for them to keep up with. And I will tell you this, they weren't casting a whole lot of Broils/Malefics/etc.

Okay, and meanwhile I have had runs of O11N where this doesn’t happen. In Duty Finder, and not with friends/static mates. While meme runs happen, how can you prove that they are the norm? Despite all the Tales from DF stories, I would argue that the average run of things are just that: average. Not perfection; not circuses.

This is just one example? Well, I can come up with many, many, many more. You'll argue that you shouldn't have to rely on the ineptness of randos to find engaging content for healers. My question is why do you feel that way? Seriously, why? Do you not understand that you bring a great service to any group who is struggling? Is it not rewarding for you to know how much you contributed to the clear? Isn't this what you say is missing from healing?

I want to ask you some questions, and I want you to seriously consider them:

Why must the party be inept for me to be engaged? That is a core issue surrounding healers in general: that they are so thoroughly unengaging unless their party is a clown fiesta, and why should that be the case.

Do I feel great when I can pull off a save? Actually, I do. But the role should not be reliant on this. Is it unhealthy for job engagement to be reliant on this because you should not assume that the norm for everything is going to be absolute insanity. And the norm isn’t absolute insanity. Not even for the memey-est of fights like O11N.

Why do I feel this way? Because things shouldn’t be balanced around people always making fools of themselves, in my opinion. The reality is that these extreme examples where everyone is dying left and right, healers are OOM because they’re raising all the time or doing extensive amounts of GCD heals due to having no oGCDs are not nearly as common as runs that are just…average.

I fail to see why we are defending healer being so boring simply because they MIGHT get a party that is inept at the content and MIGHT get that sense of satisfaction of saving a run by the skin of their teeth. I don’t see any other role having to rely on something like this. We should be able to meaningfully contribute and feel engaged on a healer on a regular basis. As it stands, more often than not in any piece of content I am in, the only thing I really contribute to the most is damage. Not healing. Not saving runs. Not carrying. Just…dealing damage.

I don't participate in savage, so I cannot speak for the healing requirements and how I do with them. However, I do know that the static healing requirements for those duties are much higher than their NM counterparts, and enrage nullifies your ability to sustain an instance longer than what is allowed within the enrage timer. However, with EX and unreal trials, I have still found learning parties to be quite wealthy of healing requirements. If you want it, then don't be afraid to leave your circle to seek it out. That is far easier than trying to get the devs to overhaul healing and encounter design, that is for damn sure.

I’m sorry, it is not a valid defense of the state of healers to basically say, “Well, if you want a complete and utter mess every time you put on your green icon, just go out and find it! You need to go find your own engagement on healer because the developers shouldn’t be expected to provide it!”. That is a terrible mindset to have. It really isn’t okay to defend lazy and boring gameplay with “well you can just go out and find parties where people mess up all the time so why don’t you”. Healers should not have to rely on messy runs to have fun and be engaged.

I disagree with the notion that it is easier for healers to go out of their way to find engagement versus the developers making it engaging all around, and that that should be the way things remain in terms of healer gameplay. Every job should be engaging regardless of what kind of content they are doing, and regardless of if the run is clean or messy. Other roles seem to be engaging more often than not; what makes healers the exception to all of this?

I don't know, my impression of their posts is that they believe that engagement is missing from healing and that general improvements can be made to the jobs within the role in order to facilitate that, rather than just missing a sense of pride in providing a service.

If that was it, I wouldn't have spent the better part of my evening trying to explain certain factors that exist in the game that everyone should be aware of.

I’m not looking for a sense of pride when it comes to salvaging a dumpster fire of a run. I am looking for engagement in my role AT ALL TIMES. Not just when things are messy. You shouldn’t assume what my goals are and what I am after in the role. MintnHoney is correct here.

With regards to the thread topic and how one healer can be omitted—in most content, yes, this is the case. I don’t think a good defense of the 2 healer requirement is “well, the other healer might not be able to heal their way out of a paper bag, so you need to be there as a backup”. Because what happens when you have decent healers? Not even Savage-level healers, either? One can take care of the healing all on their own while the other DPSes. This has happened in a lot of runs I have been in; in all types of content. With and without friends/static members. When I’m the one on healer, and when I am not.



I’ll end this post here. It’s already obscenely long, and I don’t think people will actually read it all. But there you go. Here’s my response to you made during breaks.