A summary of healer issues

[Renathras]

<things to discuss>

Last thing first: Which is why I continually propose that there should be 4 different levels of play for the 4 healers so everyone has at least one they enjoy.

To the 1 and 2: Note that 2 is based on 1. That was kind of my point. You can't treat it in isolate. Based on 1, noting that 2 means FFXIV is comparable to other MMOs in healing from that time makes sense. And to be fair, it's not like it was ever hyper DPS intensive - WHM in SB only had one more single target DoT (Aero and Aero 2, Aero 3 was for AOE, not single target). If we were using a substantial number of GCD heals, then having few GCD damage spells wouldn't be noticeable since you don't sit there pressing Glare over and over again very often.

As to your note about what damage would have to be - it's less damage would need to be ridiculous and more (a) oGCD heals need to be toned down AND (b) healing needs to be more continuous/sustained. The current healing model is that healing generally comes in bursts, then periods where no healing is needed (absent mistakes). What this means is that the bursts can never exceed party health pools (at least with mitigation), as they would just KO everyone. This then allows one or two oGCDs to be used to get the party back to survivable health before the next damage spike. If the oGCD heals were weaker, this would require GCD heals (you simply wouldn't have enough oGCDs for them all, and so oGCDs would assist, not replace, GCD heals), or alternatively, if damage was more continuous but SMALLER, you'd have to use GCD heals since most oGCD heals are spikes all at once with only a few being HoTs. That is, if you take 50% damage then no damage for 30 seconds, an Assize will do the job. But if you took 5% damage every other GCD, you'd run out of oGCDs 30-40 seconds into the fight and then have to cast GCDs - more realistically, you'd space out oGCDs or hold them for bigger hits and use things like Medica 2 augmented with Solace/Medica to deal with the tick damage and the oGCDs for larger attacks.

Point is - at the very least - the current encounter design is garbage for healing.

...in one way or another, I assume we can agree on that.

EDIT: I should also note that FFXIV HAS HAD fights like this at various points in its history, to mixed effects. The king Behemoth in Labyrinth of the Ancients, for example has a constant electric damage on all party members. Back when synced party members didn't outheal it basically just on natural regeneration, it would require things like Medica 2 (since WHM had no AOE oGCD heal at the time) and the like to keep the party from being whittled down to death.

[QooEr]

Last thing first: Which is why I continually propose that there should be 4 different levels of play for the 4 healers so everyone has at least one they enjoy.
[...]

Point is - at the very least - the current encounter design is garbage for healing.

...in one way or another, I assume we can agree on that.

we do agree on these two points. i wouldnt call them "levels of play" but yes, more variety in healer gameplay loops is overdue.
and yes damage patterns need to change. if we had sustained damage on top of the usual spikes that would be a lot more fun.

To the 1 and 2: Note that 2 is based on 1. That was kind of my point. You can't treat it in isolate. Based on 1, noting that 2 means FFXIV is comparable to other MMOs in healing from that time makes sense. And to be fair, it's not like it was ever hyper DPS intensive - WHM in SB only had one more single target DoT (Aero and Aero 2, Aero 3 was for AOE, not single target).

aero 3 was used in single target too, and fluid aura still dealt damage. the only healer in SB with the barebones rotation we have now was ast.
and youre right, healers were never super dps intensive, but for some reason people love to pretend like returning to 2-3 dots would tear the fabric of society or something?? healers can only have 2 dps buttons from lv 4-90 because anything else is too much ???
people back in stormblood said they liked whm because it was simple and straightforward. why is having 2 dots suddenly such a high standard now?

If we were using a substantial number of GCD heals, then having few GCD damage spells wouldn't be noticeable since you don't sit there pressing Glare over and over again very often.

this is where i think we disagree. look back at heavensward ast, where its only ogcd heals were essential dignity and CU every 90 seconds. you had to gcd heal pretty much everything. and while i think that was fun on its own, even with so many healing gcds there was still more depth to the dps kit. ast had aero, combust, combust ii and malefic. if i had nothing left to heal at a given moment, i still had more going on to make the not-healing interesting.

healing alone cant be the Entirety of the enjoyment of healer jobs, it sure can be the primary source of enjoyment, but there still needs to be something else for when youre done. and i dont say this just because i like optimization; even when i was new to healing i would get that one cohealer that just spams medica ii the entire time, or that one paladin that kept using clemency, or that one dungeon boss that barely does any damage. theres always going to eventually be a time where healing isnt needed for one reason or another. theres also the issue of how difference in healing skill/efficiency affects your healing uptime. healing in ffxiv wont ever be nearly half as gcd heal intensive to justify such an awful dps kit, because on one side of the spectrum you have cure spammers and on the other you have guys that manage to solo heal ultimates and still have time to dps. how do you keep the vets entertained on healing alone without making it impossible for newbies to clear?


the reason healers are so bad now isnt just because theres so much downtime OR because the dps kits suck. its because theres too much downtime AND the dps kits suck. both problems need to be fixed.

[Renathras]

we do agree on these two points. i wouldnt call them "levels of play" but yes, more variety in healer gameplay loops is overdue.
and yes damage patterns need to change. if we had sustained damage on top of the usual spikes that would be a lot more fun.

I say this with all sincerity: I'm glad.

aero 3 was used in single target too, and fluid aura still dealt damage. ... and youre right, healers were never super dps intensive, but for some reason people love to pretend like returning to 2-3 dots would tear the fabric of society or something??

I'll have to find some archive of the potency somewhere, but I was thinking Aero 3 was a DPS loss on one target? It has been literally years, though, so I may not be remembering right. I still miss that animation (and Stoneskin/SS2)

people back in stormblood said they liked whm because it was simple and straightforward.

Compared to SCH and AST.

this is where i think we disagree.

Somewhat, though I think less than you might think. Personally, I hate DoTs. So the solution to healers being "Just throw some more DoTs at them" seems iffy to me. Not to mention the Devs said something about DoTs being computationally intensive on the server backend and that was why they wanted to move away from them on SMN. Me personally, I'd rather have a 1-2-3 rotation with an oGCD (think MCH's core rotation with Gauss Round) instead of 1-3 DoTs. It's also why, if we really are just forcing DoTs on healers, I would rather one Job that has just one, since I personally hate them so much. But this is ALSO why I personally propose having a DoT healer, a DPS rotation healer, a 1-2-3+oGCD healer, and a Glare+Dia WHM. Having it spread out that way would allow people who like each style to have one they can enjoy playing.

Some other sub/roles already do this well. For example, Ranged has a rigid rotation (MCH), proc heavy (DNC, sorta like RDM), and DoT heavy (BRD) Jobs in it. I see no reason why this isn't possible in a slimmed down way with healers with something like AST being rigid rotation (the better to weave cards between), SGE being proc heavy with a DNC/RDM(caster phase) level rotation, and SCH leaning into DoT gameplay. Just add Glare+Dia WMN as the fourth and we've got a quartet that has at least one that would appeal to players of any skill level or complexity desire. The vets could gravitate to whichever flavor of complex suits them more and your Cure 1 spammers (which I've never personally seen, at least not since ARR - I'm not saying they don't exist in a game with 5 million players, but I feel they're more rare than how often they're thrown around in arguments...) would have their Job over in the corner that they could still clear content at passably.

EDIT:

the reason healers are so bad now isnt just because theres so much downtime OR because the dps kits suck. its because theres too much downtime AND the dps kits suck. both problems need to be fixed.

Going back to the very first thing I quoted you as saying:

We agree.

I've been saying this for a while. My personal solution would be less downtime. My secondary solution would be to shake up 3 of the DPS kits. Fair enough?

[Irenia]

Whatever solution the devs come to, as long as easy content is still fun for healers, I'm good. I despise the "just do Savage" response from Yoshida - I didn't want to feel punished for helping my friends.

Unfortunately, I feel easy content in this game will always have low healing requirements. Perhaps this should even be expected; healing should have a difficulty gradient too. But healers should also work when the party's skill is way above what the content demands.

[QooEr]

My personal solution would be less downtime. My secondary solution would be to shake up 3 of the DPS kits. Fair enough?

ah, i guess i misunderstood as just one Or the other, but not necessarily both. tbh these forums are really hard to follow, theyre less like a forum and more like a bunch of posts.

I'll have to find some archive of the potency somewhere, but I was thinking Aero 3 was a DPS loss on one target? It has been literally years, though, so I may not be remembering right. I still miss that animation (and Stoneskin/SS2)

naur it was definitely a gain on single target. you dont really need an archive, just find some old footage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5CKRr89YFs
i also miss the animation, it was so satisfying and the little variety in animation added to the fantasy too.

Personally, I hate DoTs. So the solution to healers being "Just throw some more DoTs at them" seems iffy to me. Not to mention the Devs said something about DoTs being computationally intensive on the server backend and that was why they wanted to move away from them on SMN.

i think suitable replacement for dots is what blue mage has-- those weird GCDs with a longer cooldown. theyre like dots in the sense that they are GCDs and you cant spam them, but theyre unlike dots in that theyre literaly not dots. i think getting more skills like those would be neat. phlegma is already this, but we kinda need more than just 1 if its going to be any interesting to use imo (like blu).

Me personally, I'd rather have a 1-2-3 rotation with an oGCD (think MCH's core rotation with Gauss Round) instead of 1-3 DoTs. It's also why, if we really are just forcing DoTs on healers, I would rather one Job that has just one, since I personally hate them so much. But this is ALSO why I personally propose having a DoT healer, a DPS rotation healer, a 1-2-3+oGCD healer, and a Glare+Dia WHM. Having it spread out that way would allow people who like each style to have one they can enjoy playing.

i do think thatd be a good idea, but i would personally at least see whm get *something* else. not something huge, just something simple on the surface that you can optimize a bit, so its damage ceiling can be closer to the others without people complaining about the effort : performance ratio. theres a lot of subtle optimization that goes over most people's heads. e.g. a dancer can switch their dance partner around for maximum benefit (nin has a higher burst, blm has higher sustained dmg). ast can hold cards for reopeners, etc. i wouldnt necessarily want whm to have like some big overarching rotation, just a simple trait or buff or extra attack that lets you squeeze a bit more damage with a little planning. like if, idk, using certain skills gave you a proc or a cd reduction on assize, or a trait like thundercloud.


i dont think many people wouldve even considered stb whm to be hard or distracting by any metric, which is why i think even the tiniest depth beyond dia glare would be for the better.

Some other sub/roles already do this well. For example, Ranged has a rigid rotation (MCH), proc heavy (DNC, sorta like RDM), and DoT heavy (BRD) Jobs in it. I see no reason why this isn't possible in a slimmed down way with healers

ive always thought healers could have like the arr class version of a job's rotations, especially the ranged and casters. theyre very simple and theyre decently entertaining.
archer is just 2 dots + a proc + a short ogcd .
thaumaturge is 1 dot + fire / blizzard spam + transpose
arcanist has that 3-phase rotation thing

[Renathras]

...

Agree on sometimes being hard to follow. And I'm honestly up for most changes as long as they retain AT LEAST ONE healer that is more or less as today. I don't think that's a tall ask, honestly. Or shouldn't be, anyway.

Well, the reason I say what the potencies were - people had a lot of interesting...ideas...about what was and wasn't a DPS gain back then, many of them being wrong. The theorycrafting stage of FFXIV's evolution really came into its own in SB, with fits and starts before then and a lot of people doing things that were sub-optimal. So I'm never quite sure "here's a person using it" means it was good or not. BLM's used Blizzard 2 sometimes. Jokes aside, I think even WHM's could cross-class it. Did NOT get the MP regen effect, though.

Agree on BLU. I like things like that. The thing is, they need to be GCDs with shortish (15-30 sec max) CDs. Otherwise we end up with Assize weaves. But the trick is also not to fill Jobs with needless button bloat. MCH, for example, has 4 "big CD" buttons, each a separate button...but you effectively use them on CD outside of some very niche optimization. Drill, Air Anchor, and the new sawblade one. They could honestly replace them with one button that cycles through each every 15-20 sec (this is literally how PvP MCH works) and nothing of value is lost other than unneeded hotbar bloat. So there's kind of a careful balance there. And I don't mind stuff like Phlegma for but Hydaelyn's sake, don't make it melee ranged! I HATE melee ranged stuff on my caster/ranged classes (and healers are a caster). I already dislike that on RDM, but it's part of the class fantasy there, at least. It isn't with Jobs like WHM. SCH/SGE is a bit more of an argument...

I'm a bit confused what you mean by damage ceiling being closer without people complaining. I thought the point of making healer rotations more busy was so that people who are bored could be less bored, not to push people who enjoy simpler rotations out of being competitive/raise the skill ceiling? Which is it? The first I'm willing to support, the second I'm not. If people are just going to complain that someone has an easier time, then we might as well stick with what we have now as we don't have to worry about THOSE complaints with the present system - which is how we ended up with it in the first place.

Besides which, there already IS some WHM optimization, people just tend not to get it.

Yeah, a bit of nuance isn't bad. But as I say, if we give players that with 3 Jobs, why must we with all 4? Especially if 1-2 of said Jobs are going to be a good bit more complex than they are now?

[QooEr]

Agree on BLU. I like things like that. The thing is, they need to be GCDs with shortish (15-30 sec max) CDs. Otherwise we end up with Assize weaves. But the trick is also not to fill Jobs with needless button bloat. MCH, for example, has 4 "big CD" buttons, each a separate button...but you effectively use them on CD outside of some very niche optimization. Drill, Air Anchor, and the new sawblade one. They could honestly replace them with one button that cycles through each every 15-20 sec (this is literally how PvP MCH works) and nothing of value is lost other than unneeded hotbar bloat. So there's kind of a careful balance there.

i mean blue mage doesnt feel like that i think, as long as each gcd cd thingy has different cooldowns that dont line up perfectly it shouldnt be an issue. you can also prevent button bloat by making things do more than just 1 single thing. i quite like when buttons become other buttons situationally to combat button bloat but still keeping actions in the game.

I'm a bit confused what you mean by damage ceiling being closer without people complaining. I thought the point of making healer rotations more busy was so that people who are bored could be less bored, not to push people who enjoy simpler rotations out of being competitive/raise the skill ceiling?

its just pragmatics. even if i dont necessarily agree with said complaints i think its best to find a way to avoid them. i dont mind when more complex jobs are slightly worse than simple jobs, but theres usually a lot of complaining about balance when that happens. which eventually like you said leads to the current situation.
if theyre going to future proof that balance i think theyd have to give whm something, doesnt even need to be something too big imo. like maybe making using a lily heal reduce assize cd by X seconds in addition to charging the blood lily. whm would still play the same to pretty much everyone, but it would have a bit more going for it when optimizing, which in turn raises the ceiling without affecting the floor.

just to put into perspective how small the extra dps potential would be: the gap between highest dps and lowest dps healer is like 3-4%. if whm's extra *thing* raised its dps potential by even as little as 2%, it would actually be a huge deal for it to be competitive in speedkills and the like. and yet, the not-optimizers would not even care about such a tiny damage boost. this is what i think could be ideal, as that extra effort could deter a lot of the "why is babbys first healer better than mine!" complaints, while most of the "target audience" would probably not even notice it.

Yeah, a bit of nuance isn't bad. But as I say, if we give players that with 3 Jobs, why must we with all 4? Especially if 1-2 of said Jobs are going to be a good bit more complex than they are now?

i guess theres also people that just like to get better at their own job, and wouldnt want to "graduate" from whm once they got too good. idk. like i said i think it would be best if whms nuance was subtle enough that most people wouldnt care about it, except for only those who really want to push whms limits. i see it as a win-win if executed right

[Renathras]

...

To the first: I also like when buttons pull double duty. Gives us more abilities without making us need a dozen hotbars to use them all. I'm not sure if things not lining up is a good thing or a bad thing, honestly. The more things line up, the more generally manageable it is and the more things line up with the 2 minute window (which is what seems to be the design objective at present). For example, my biggest complaint on GNB is that Bloodfest's CD lines up with literally nothing else other than (SORTA) every third Gnashing. Which doesn't really feel good at all.

To the second: I mean, if we want to carry through on that, why stop there? Why not just go ahead and leave all the Jobs just as they are today to prevent that complaint in the first place? Sarcasm aside, I don't think WHM needs anything to "prevent" that. People are literally going to complain about anything. I saw a complaint thread in here a few days ago about someone not liking Sage's combat stance, and in the discussion, some people mentioned they don't like its Sprint animation (which it shares with PUG/MNK). People are ALWAYS going to complain about SOMEthing. I think when they consider the solution is "things as they were in ShB/EW", it'll silence most of those complaints. We needn't make the ONE Job we're keeping simple more complex to satisfy the people that will, at that point, have exclusive claim to ALL THE OTHER THREE Healing Jobs, I don't think. Again, is the objective to allow bored people to have options for Jobs to play and be less bored, or is it to force everyone along for that ride? The first I will support, the second I will not, and I'm hardly alone.

To the third: If they didn't want to "graduate", then they wouldn't have a problem with it staying easy, would they? And if they didn't like it being easy, they'd "graduate" on to one of the others. I get what you're saying - some people might decide they really love WHM and want more to do on it, specifically. But you have to understand the contra position is that the people who like simple are already having THREE Jobs robbed from them, and you're insisting they also give up the fourth. Can you see how that wouldn't go over well? It's not a win-win. It's a win-win-win-partialwin for the people complaining now and a lose-lose-lose-semilose for the people who love healing as it is right now. See how that's a problem?

EDIT: And for clarity, remember that many people who like simple playstyles are already playing some of those other Healing Jobs. You're asking them to not only give up the Jobs they love, but entirely give up the playstyle they love as well by not allowing them even ONE option that they can enjoy. I feel like that's not a viable solution nor is it a compromise position. Granted, the Devs probably aren't going to change ANY of them, but we'll see closer to 7.0, I suppose.