What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

[Supersnow845]

Healing to me was the most fun in TERA before it finally died. There was a mystic and a priest, one buffed and one was a healer. They complemented each other well. And the healing was fun too, like you had a lock-on target over the screen that highlighted your allies when you move the camera.

In ffxiv healing does not feel necessary once you are so far over the gear score for content. At a casual level, they could make the attacks in trials and dungeons hit harder.
In savage, I don't see a point in adding 8 dps skills to busy healers like scholar or astro. I see that you play it too, it would be annoying to have to keep up with dps rotations and also pre-shield raidwides while scurrying around like a rat.

They could just re-do healer gameplay like the pvp modes. Would people be satisfied then?

HW SCH was exactly that, you juggled 6 DOT’s alongside more meaningful fairy management than “it’s a glorified embrace and has some totem healing” and it felt damn good, pls do give me more complex DPS rotations, AST is fine because it’s cards are a form of DPS rotation but yes give me far far more on SCH

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

So essentially your opinion boils down to “I like the act of healing and I don’t really care how badly it’s designed”

About what I expected, my quest to find someone who can actually explain to me why ShB healing is actually well designed continues

I never argued about if its design is good or not. Not even my point
My entire point was I personally Like Healing in this game. I find it fun.

You were doomed to be disappointed from the start if you were looking for a deep analytical explanation XD

[Hezhi]

What makes a good combat? Do you think FFXIV has good combat?

Still good and satisfying depending on your role. Juggling CDs and figuring out a good rotation for each encounter is nice, and game engine complaints aside, I love raiding in this game. There's something to keep in mind, 50% of the combat is the enemies we face, and raids in XIV are always fun to figure out.

Not to repeat what's been said itt, I want to point out that job design is getting worse and worse because SE's approach since 5.0 has been dreadful. From my point of view, it feels like they see an issue with XIVs combat, and instead of even attempting to address it, iterate on it or improve it, they scrap it and go next. When there's something unique about a job like SCH dealing damage through DoTs, differently shaped AOEs, BRD getting some unorthodox proc spam mages ballad phases or SAM having a different damage curve with most of it being loaded in Iaijutsus, they'd rather hammer all of it down into something easier to balance rather than even trying to preserve that uniqueness. What even is the point of having different jobs?
It kinda feels like the 4 guys in charge of combat design are burnt out and just wanna make things as easy as possible for themselves going forward instead of attempting to actually make combat fun. Or that they're too hyperfocused on an inachievable standard of balancing and want all the complexity of XIVs combat to stem from an arbitrary 2mins burst window.
My expectations for the future of job design have never been lower, to put it mildly.

[WhiteWitch]

What even is the point of having different jobs?
It kinda feels like the 4 guys in charge of combat design are burnt out and just wanna make things as easy as possible for themselves going forward instead of attempting to actually make combat fun. Or that they're too hyperfocused on an inachievable standard of balancing and want all the complexity of XIVs combat to stem from an arbitrary 2mins burst window.
My expectations for the future of job design have never been lower, to put it mildly.

This is why I said "Why level two regen or shield healers if they have the same function?" "Why level all the tanks if they all have an aoe combo and a burst window?". It's like having 4 different fast-food cheeseburgers when they are all basically still a cheeseburger.

[Leigaon]

The combat system is what someone below the first post described as comfy, and that's what they are aiming for and have achieved.

Within the system, two things would be something I wish was changed before 2.0

1. The limit break system, I would have liked more utilization. If you have 2 lb bars, then you should be able to perform 2 lv.1 lb's. You could always put a resistance debuff to prevent spamming the two sam limit breaks. OR do not make the limit gauge completely deplete after using limit break. If you have 1.5 limit break bars and use a level 1 limit break then it would be nice to have that .5 remain.

2. I enjoy the glam's people have on. Just can't see them much in combat because you have to zoom so far out with your camera. I would have liked it more if the combat was tailored to allow us to zoom in more with our party so i can see some, not all, of the details people put into their glamours.

This is why I said "Why level two regen or shield healers if they have the same function?" "Why level all the tanks if they all have an aoe combo and a burst window?". It's like having 4 different fast-food cheeseburgers when they are all basically still a cheeseburger.

Woah there..you telling me that McDonalds crapburger is as wonderful as the glorious Wendy's burger? ...that's it...there's no compromise to be had here. Imma head out. Taking Dave Thomas and the talented person(s) behind their twitter account with me. You're lucky In-N-Out isn't here! /cry

[Liam_Harper]

It has nothing to do with ego, and is more akin to, "I feel useful"
Best way I can put it atm because I cant think of a better phrase at the moment. Overall I feel more satisfaction keeping people alive then doing Big-D-DPS.

The problem is that once you get more experience you realize you only feel useful, but you aren't actually as useful in reality. Pretty much any sprout blindly spamming Medica II can keep a group alive just fine. In certain content like lv90 dungeons you're barely needed and in Normal raids you're just surplus and your co-heal could do the job for both of you.

Keeping people alive is a joke, your group could easily replace you and the only way to be genuinely useful is to contribute high dps while keeping everyone alive. But since the developers have made sure most content has no dps check and meters are banned, no one cares if you did damage (or might even dislike you for it).

The more experience you have, the less rewarding healing is and the more pointless you realize it is.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I'm curious to see this be put into an experiment: to truly know if healing is that useless in dungeons. Basically I would like somebody to record them and their friends running a lv.90 dungeon or trial synced with no healer.

One where it's only the tank and 2 dps.
Another with a tank and 4 dps
And lastly one run with regular party make up.

Oh and to also have each run timed to see which party was the most efficient in clearing the content.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

The problem is that once you get more experience you realize you only feel useful, but you aren't actually as useful in reality. Pretty much any sprout blindly spamming Medica II can keep a group alive just fine. In certain content like lv90 dungeons you're barely needed and in Normal raids you're just surplus and your co-heal could do the job for both of you.

Keeping people alive is a joke, your group could easily replace you and the only way to be genuinely useful is to contribute high dps while keeping everyone alive. But since the developers have made sure most content has no dps check and meters are banned, no one cares if you did damage (or might even dislike you for it).

The more experience you have, the less rewarding healing is and the more pointless you realize it is.

You don't even need experience for that considering i was just leveling SMN/SCH (almost exlusively using SMN) to 90 on a character, decided to go through a few duty support dungeons as a scholar for a change, had a massive kit of healing spell that i never used since healing the party to full health was as easy as pressing a single button once, and even that usually went to overhealing since the enemies/bosses are never a threat if nobody facetanks mechanics on purpose. Even then the only reason it's a threat is the vulnerability stacks. Whatever Ronso could possibly be talking about is beyond me. I imagine it's more like "i feel useful as i watch netflix/some twitch streamer/youtube video on my second monitor".

[Supersnow845]

I'm curious to see this be put into an experiment: to truly know if healing is that useless in dungeons. Basically I would like somebody to record them and their friends running a lv.90 dungeon or trial synced with no healer.

One where it's only the tank and 2 dps.
Another with a tank and 4 dps
And lastly one run with regular party make up.

Oh and to also have each run timed to see which party was the most efficient in clearing the content.

Take a look at FFlogs

I looked at stigma dreamscape (though all are roughly similar dead ends skews a little more strongly to healers in the top clears), of the top 50 fastest clears only 8 of them even had a healer yet all 4 tanks are represented (DRK even has some non RDM clears), raids is harder because it’s hard to find non standard clears of the panda normal raids but currently for all 4 bosses non standard comps hold a faster record than standard comps which I assume is trading out one healer and one tank to run 6 DPS so it does show how useless healers are regardless

[Striker44]

Take a look at FFlogs

I looked at stigma dreamscape (though all are roughly similar dead ends skews a little more strongly to healers in the top clears), of the top 50 fastest clears only 8 of them even had a healer yet all 4 tanks are represented (DRK even has some non RDM clears), raids is harder because it’s hard to find non standard clears of the panda normal raids but currently for all 4 bosses non standard comps hold a faster record than standard comps which I assume is trading out one healer and one tank to run 6 DPS so it does show how useless healers are regardless

But if you're talking "top 50 fastest clears" tracked by sites designed to be used by people pushing the toughest content, you're not getting anything close to a representative sample of the playerbase. The typical FFXIV player is not anywhere close to the "top 50 fastest clears." I expect the top players to be able to do things that you're typical, casual player isn't going to even dream about. The result says absolutely nothing about the usefulness of things like healers to what is far and away the most common FFXIV player.