Helare shortage in PF: what would bring you back?

[Renathras]

the sudden jump in complexity of how to manage a hypothetical 3 dots, micromanage the fairy's position, etc, would mean they drop a lot of damage when they start out. and yes, some would persist and start to get better, but i fear there would be a fair number who would just say 'screw this,

Yeah, but you're missing the bigger problem: If all the healers are like that, people will try any of them, be overwhelmed and unable to heal, unsatisfied with the results, and just quit.

That's an even worse outcome.

I've already said if you guys had your way, I'd probably quit healing. And given how many of you think the Sylphie is prevalent in this game, you would have to agree lots of people would quit healing. If more quit than take up the mantle in their stead, that's a bad thing, not a good thing. Especially since we have a ready alternative that accommodates everyone and would swell the total ranks of healers, not shrink or shift them. And while you might believe more WOULD take up the mantle, we've seen the mass healer shortage caused by just making healing a smidge more complex. Imagine the result of doing such a sweeping and all encompassing remake of healers all at once! The results would be orders of magnitude above the healer exodus of 6.2 that birthed this very thread.

Moreover, what's the problem if 60% chose to play the "simple" healer? If they're having fun and everyone's clearing the content, what is the issue? Why does everyone NEED to play the more difficult ones? If that happened, all it would prove is that the playerbase and healer community don't, in fact, like complex healers. But I suspect a good 40-60% would choose the harder ones because they just like them in various ways. WHM would be the most played as the simple one, but it already is today, so that's not a problem.

I guess I'm not understanding how this is a problem. If people are actually enjoying what they're playing, people are happy, there's no healer shortage, and everyone who is playing a healer is satisfied that there's one that suits them and they main it...why is that a problem, exactly?

Why is it a problem if people choose and play the simple one and don't desire to "upgrade" to one of the things they don't like and don't enjoy? I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I'm confused why that's a bad thing?

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As for the Tanks: Take someone that plays only WAR and stick them on PLD. They're going to be gray parsing. If we're saying that the only difference with the "harder" healers is optimizing their damage, the same thing would happen. Our hypothetical new player trying out SCH from WHM should still be able to heal just fine, with the issue being their DoTs are falling off all over the place and they're parsing badly, but they're able to keep the party alive. That's what you're talking about, right? So this is the same thing rather than binary. It's not "they aren't healing and people are dying", it's "they're focusing on healing and so gray parsing on damage", but you get the same result with a WAR jumping on PLD, so......again, I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I'm not seeing a distinction here.

some of us healer mains are like ascians, they want the days of old back, SB SCH, SB AST cards, etc.

Lol! Fair enough. That IS completely a fair request. Note my continued position IS to change SCH back to SB (and I again, I don't speak for ASTs, but I'm sure they want changes as well). You aren't fighting me on that, since I already agree with that position! It's literally my own position, too. /highfive

What I contest is changing WHM back, since WHM in SB was just horribly bad. WHM in EW, as I've said before, is the best it's ever been. Supersnow replied to me:

I agree WHM is in the best spot it’s ever been (Rip aero 3) I still think the class is pretty terrible and needs 8000 tweaks before it’s actually a good class and all the lily change did was kinda force competency on it by sheer HPS

...so while we disagree on WHM being good or not, we DO agree that it's honestly in the best place it's been for all of FFXIV. ARR (because it was balanced around WHM and SCH only and the two having different playstyles of main healer vs support hybrid) is the only other place that came close. I just don't want to lose that. And I think most people in this thread/on this forum would be extremely happy if SCH was given its SB kit back.

This is a strawman argument. No one's advocating for, "give every a tank a counterintuitive, cursed rotation and opener like PLD." There's "counterintuitive" as in "this is a neat, non-obvious optimization, yay me for finding it!", and then there's "counterintuitive" as in "why, just why???". Hence, "cursed." The latter is simply bad game design.

lol, a fair distinction. But it's not a strawman argument. The argument being used here is to make healers more complex with deep optimization; which PLD has. It is the most complex healers and the one with the most avenues for optimization and player skill. This is reflected (in damage numbers) by how wide the bar is for their parses. Contrast with WAR which is a shorter/less wide line, indicating the difference between floor and ceiling is much shorter. And my reply also isn't a strawman because it was your argument here:

but that's the "room for improvement for those who want to try." PLD also has an obvious, straightforward (if not "simple") rotation that's serviceable outside of anything that requires coordinating bursts.

You were the one who defined it as "room for improvement" and said it was "obvious, straightforward" and "serviceable". My apologies if I misinterpreted, but it seemed you were advocating for more of that.

From my perspective, it'd be fine if some of the healers, like SCH or AST, did have things like that. I just feel that Healers also need their WAR, not just PLD and some flavors of GNB. To reword this to avoid a strawman, just in case:

Imagine if all Tanks were made like PLD and GNB and none like WAR. There would probably be a lot of upset people and a Tank shortage.

This is also a strawman argument.

How...is this a strawman? I was just proposing a thought experiment for what WHM would look like if it was absolutely a GCD healer.

It was neither an argument nor a proposal, it was a thought experiment. How is that a strawman? o.O

Read the spirit of what I said: It's still a lot of Glare spam. A few more GCDs spent pushing healing buttons doesn't fix the boredom of scripted incoming damage and the boredom of the DPS kit.

Which is why I've noted consistently the scripted damage profiles are the problem here.

At the end of the day, not wanting to engage with DPS buttons is fundamentally at odds with the combat model of this game.

This is a popular refrain, but as I've pointed out a number of times, this was never true of the game except in a very few encounters.

If you don't want to focus on changing the scripted incoming damage,

That is 100% what I've been focusing on...?

then there's a third option: propose a new job that's 1 damage button + whatever you like (or zero damage buttons if you can design a way to get through solo MSQ instances).

Why do that when we already have one?

I absolutely would be willing to propose another, but why add another healer when we have one (4, but 1) that already does this?

The issue with the SMN change again comes to mind: People are most upset because the Job they already had was changed. There'd be FAR less pushback if new SMN was the new Job added.

If you wish to have an elemental damage juggling healer, then that might be what should be proposed as a new Job. Geomancer could be introduced to the game as basically that and probably fit very well as a healer that juggles a Wind DoT or two or three, an Earth direct damage attack, and Water themed burst and proc system. Considering how many of the WHM change proposals implement an Earth/Water/Air system, we could take any of those, slap the name Geomancer on it, and basically have the new Job ready to go.

[ty_taurus]

Also what Reinha said: I agree. The issue is, I think the problem is encounter design needing to be addressed and healers needing to have FAR FEWER oGCD heals. oGCD heals should be emergency tools, not mainstays.

I haven't really brought it up, but I do think our access to OGCD healing is excessive across the healers. WHM not as much... all you really have are Asylum and Tetra that are consistently reliable, and maybe occasionally Assize if it lines up with a raidwide or if you know your Assize will be coming off CD in a few moments. Benediction and Lilybell are too long of cooldowns to really rely on them as main healing tools, which does make them fall more in line with them being... I wouldn't say emergency tools, but more specific types of healing designed to solve specific types of problems, which I think is better than straight up emergency tools on the OGCD anyway.

That said, how much you can address encounter design is limited. It's not particularly realistic to think about completely reworking how encounters are designed to try and flip the dynamic between healing and DPS. It wouldn't fly well with the community most likely, and it wouldn't really address all of the pre-existing content in this game. That said, I think we should push the envelope further like how savage is. If given time, the more midcore and under healers attempting savage that are struggling will improve, and I'd like to see damage be a little more frequent in casual content. I really don't want to see more Smiletons in the future.

On another note, I wanna outline more of my WHM ideas like with my AST doc. Honestly, theorycrafting game design elements in general is fun for me, so maybe I'll see where that takes me.

[Renathras]

I haven't really brought it up,...

Agree with too much/many oGCDs. Said it before, and doubt this'll be the last time I say it, either.

You have said more than once changing encounter design is something they can't do, but they've already done it. ARR to HW to SB were pretty consistent strings of changes, and encounters changed from SB to ShB, too. Honestly, other than ShB to EW, encounter design has changed every expansion. It would probably be impossible to heal current content (and meet Enrages) using the Healer HW kits. Think about how much less oGCD healing SCH had back then. Compare some of the Alexander fights. When was the last time you had a fight where you ran around as a gorilla?

So it absolutely can change, as it has almost every expansion to date.

I also find it hard to believe they could do anything with encounter designs that would fly worse with the community than what's going on right now. Just about everyone seems upset with this tier. The hardcore, the midcore; the dps healers, the healy healers; half the tanks, double caster comps, MCHs players - I'm not sure that them changing encounter design would make things much worse. I'm not saying it CAN'T be worse, mind you, just that we're already in kind of an icky place.

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As an aside:

Suppose you could make a new Healer Job, Geomancer as a healer. Design it basically as you would your idealized White Mage, but without Holy elemental attacks. That is, it sticking to Earth/Wind/Air, possibly some melee abilities, whatever you feel like.

How would you do it? What would you come up with for that?

[Liam_Harper]

I'm actually fine with oGCD healing. If we cut most of them and made them emergency tools, gameplay basically devolves into a low apm Glare and Medica II spam. Which is how a lot of healers actually play, so I imagine the demand for cutting oGCD's is simply a desire to make this lazy "playstyle" viable.

We just need incoming damage to justify our oGCD toolkit and cause us to draw on GCD heals more, as well as something more enjoyable than Glare spam for downtime.

[GoatOfWar]

I'm actually fine with oGCD healing. If we cut most of them and made them emergency tools, gameplay basically devolves into a low apm Glare and Medica II spam. Which is how a lot of healers actually play, so I imagine the demand for cutting oGCD's is simply a desire to make this lazy "playstyle" viable.

We just need incoming damage to justify our oGCD toolkit and cause us to draw on GCD heals more, as well as something more enjoyable than Glare spam for downtime.

They would have to redesign the entire game. Every single encounter. Every single dungeon, trial and raid.. The encounters were (are) made with healers constantly doing damage in mind. It would make a lot more sense to give healers a more interesting (not overly complex) dps tool kit. Or at least some of them.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeah, but you're missing the bigger problem: If all the healers are like that, people will try any of them, be overwhelmed and unable to heal, unsatisfied with the results, and just quit.

which is why i'm saying make the healing simple and intuitive, and add depth to the dps side of things, so people can ease themselves into doing more and more damage as they get more comfortable with the fight/their healing kit. aside from that, we're already looking at a healer shortage at times in PF because of this tier's early 'not very geared yet' healing requirements, and i think at least part of the reason for that shortage is that some 'fair weather' healer mains who got used to how last tier was, swaggered into P5S thinking it'd be a cakewalk and promptly got slapped down because it turns out, week 1 raids kinda slap sometimes.

I've already said if you guys had your way, I'd probably quit healing. And given how many of you think the Sylphie is prevalent in this game, you would have to agree lots of people would quit healing. If more quit than take up the mantle in their stead, that's a bad thing, not a good thing. Especially since we have a ready alternative that accommodates everyone and would swell the total ranks of healers, not shrink or shift them. And while you might believe more WOULD take up the mantle, we've seen the mass healer shortage caused by just making healing a smidge more complex.

'the raidwides have a bleed too' doesnt make healing more 'complex' it just means we have to heal a bit more while we are undergeared. i cannot stress that last part enough. once people are in BIS again, we're going to be right back to being able to deal with things without relying on our GCDs. Already me and a cohealing sage can ignore the raidwides in P7S entirely because of lilybell and panhaima alternation, whereas it'd take maybe a bonus medica2 for safety back in week 1. Natural Alignment asked a regen AND medica2 to stabilise the purple gamers, now it only needs medica2. again, raising healing required is not the solution for two reasons, first, gear undoes the change as mentioned above, and as proved by every raid tier going back to Creator. second, as you seem to be agreeing yourself, unless im misunderstanding, raising healing requirements makes some healers quit, either because it's now suddenly too much effort, or because they cant keep up. if it's too much effort, well that's RIP, but if it's because they cant keep up, i would posit that the idea of coddling them and trying to cater to that lower skill level by 'making healing less stressful' just makes it MORE stressful when actual healing needs to be done.

Imagine the result of doing such a sweeping and all encompassing remake of healers all at once! The results would be orders of magnitude above the healer exodus of 6.2 that birthed this very thread.

yeh i cant imagine doing such a thing that would be crazy...looks at SHB release

Moreover, what's the problem if 60% chose to play the "simple" healer? If they're having fun and everyone's clearing the content, what is the issue? Why does everyone NEED to play the more difficult ones? If that happened, all it would prove is that the playerbase and healer community don't, in fact, like complex healers. But I suspect a good 40-60% would choose the harder ones because they just like them in various ways. WHM would be the most played as the simple one, but it already is today, so that's not a problem.

first off, you know what, lets do it. lets have a simple healer that is just 'press 1 to apply 30s dot, press 2 to spam nuke for 13 GCDs, repeat'. you know, for the people who enjoy the current design. BUT, lets make it a new healer, and move the current 4 back towards the DPS design of SB. No, im not saying 100% SB, i mean 'WHM now has fluid aura and aero 3 back, but with current lily system', like an actual evolution of the SB design instead of whatever SHB was meant to be. after all, if we're meant to be trying to compromise here, the way it'd work in my mind is that the old fogeys like me who can still hear the sound of Scourge for DRK in our mind, we get back what we had before, and the people who want this new design in some form, get it in some form, just it'd be on a new healer. Heck, Sage could have been it for all i care, but 'a SCH for people who dont know how to play SCH' doesnt really sound good on paper, let alone in practice does it?

that also doesnt address the simple fact that if one class is the 'idiotproof' class, it's also going to be viewed by the community as 'the idiots play this one' and it's gonna probably be instantly locked out of PFs due to this. we already got meta chasers locking sage out of P8S parties cos 'its shit dmg' when it was, at the time i was told this by a very egotistical SCH main, SIXTY dps behind SCH. This was at 90th percentile too, iirc at 95% at the time, it was a difference of about 80. give PF morons a reason to lock a class out and they're going to jump on it

Why is it a problem if people choose and play the simple one and don't desire to "upgrade" to one of the things they don't like and don't enjoy? I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I'm confused why that's a bad thing?

again as others have said, if you take a simple class you can only play it simply. if you take a class that is simple to get into, but very technical to master if you choose to try to, then you can still play it simply and do 'ok', but there's room for you to grow as a player, should you choose to. and having that room to grow, can often be what keeps people playing the class. again, i can take DRG into the latest extreme and clear, because it's simple enough to get into. but if i wanted to get a 99, id need to learn so many different tips, tricks, adjusted openers and rotations based on fight length and phase durations, potentially shifting things around to better match the fight etc. but again, i can still go in there and just 'wing it' and clear, because it's simple enough to approach.

but anyway, the other reason we're asking for a little more interactivity on healer is this: why is this rotation considered 'good', but this would be considered 'a horrible dumbing down of the class' (moreso than SHB already mangled it)? it's not the tank's job to do damage, just as much as it isn't the healers, but we do it anyway because we've got nothing else to do in the downtime. so surely it makes sense for the healers to be roughly as complex as the tanks in terms of dps rotation, right? no, 'but you have to focus on healing' is not gonna fly, ive seen too many tanks forget that mitigation exists at all. if we're going to say 'healers get 2 buttons so they can focus on healing' it's only fair we remove all the buttons from tanks except two, and give them 14 different mitigation tools, many of which will be completely surplus to requirements. i'm kidding of course, i dont want tanks to get lobotomised like this, but when you use the logic being applied to one role, and apply it to another, it just doesnt hold up. and again, im not even asking 'can we have tank level complex', im asking for 'a bit lower but approaching tank complex'. WAR might have only 8 buttons or so in it's ST rotation but they have interaction that ties the kit together. Fellcleave makes Infuriate come back faster. The choice between Path and Eye depending on your buff timer. The choice to blow an Onslaught to gapclose vs holding it for raidbuff windows.

On the topic of WAR though, i recall people starting to feel like it was getting a bit bland, with SHB's IR giving five fellcleaves in a row, plus bigger fellcleave when they infuriated. Turns out, pressing the same button five times in a row for your burst window, is kinda boring, and gets old quickly (even when it is guaranteed to crit). poor WHM meanwhile, our burst window is 'the same button we were already pressing, but now slightly faster due to presence of mind. oh yes, and one misery, as a treat' if 5 fellcleaves in a row started feeling 'stale', what does that make '150 glares in one fight' WHM? substitute 'glare' and 'WHM' for other equivalents as needed

As for the Tanks: Take someone that plays only WAR and stick them on PLD. They're going to be gray parsing

if they are grey on PLD, they're grey on WAR. there's enough fundamentals you learn from one job that carry over through it's role to do at least 'competently' when you swap over, even if you've never touched the job before. personal anecdote, i dont play SCH, like at all. i play SGE because i like panhaima and kerachole sticking to my allies as a buff. despite this, last tier i went into P1S and got a purple without really trying, knowing the class outside of levelling it, etc. enough fundamentals of how 'barrier healing' works translated over from SGE for me to do alright as SCH. The same would likely apply to any purple or above player, swapping from one job in their role to another in that same role. give them like 4 hours at the training dummy and they'll be hitting purples on the new job, just gotta learn the rotation and then it's all muscle memory from there[/QUOTE]

What I contest is changing WHM back, since WHM in SB was just horribly bad.

yeh, we dont want the bad lilies back, which is why, as mentioned above, when people say they want SB healers back, they are referring mainly to the DPS side of things. Aero 3, Combust 1/2 being seperate, Miasma, Miasma2 for movement instead of ruin 2, that kind of stuff.

Suppose you could make a new Healer Job, Geomancer as a healer.

i already did in a thread i made. not my 'idealized WHM', but 'a WHM that can work within the design SE is currently giving us, but with room to grow'. issue is, why would i want to make this GEO concept my 'idealized WHM' when i made the concept FOR WHM in the first place? why would i not just make a different concept for GEO instead? i'm 100% not a fan of 'take away something from a class, then make a new class with that same something', it happened in wow for warlocks losing their meta form, then DH being released, it's happened here with AST losing it's time bending effects like Time Dilation and old Celestial Opposition, WHM losing it's elemental stuff, AST losing Noct Sect only for parts of it to return in SGE's kit. no, my idealized WHM is distinctly a WHM, it ties into the lore of CNJ and WHM, and that's why i labelled the section on the idea pitch 'WHM'.

as an aside, i personally don't think a GEO would ever be done right in this game, as it'd have to sacrifice too much of what makes GEO a GEO to make it function here. no terrain based attack modification because of the 'ley lines dilemma' and boss mechanics forcing you to certain locations at certain times, so it'd likely end up as a bland, caster-role, earth-wind-water flavoured reskin of BLM or something.