General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[ty_taurus]

I know it was sarcastic but I like the idea honestly. My job would be healing only, and dps is worried about by the team, I think a pure healer class that just heals while giving passive dps boosts would be interesting and definitely should be a thing. It's less stressful to worry about rotations, and you can just focus on what matters healing only. Maybe like if the class had no broil but a stronger Chain Strat, strategem and some copies of it with different names, that you had to time with raid cooldowns etc. It's a very interesting idea. Your main focus being healing and never worrying about dps.

You could always play a game where that’s how healers are designed to play and not one where that concept cannot functionally exist because it was designed to have healers spend a majority of their time attacking only to fight that design and the players that enjoy that choice.

I mean, I wouldn’t start playing WoW and harass it’s forums declaring that skill trees are a menace to my personal experience and that WoW should delete them because I don’t like them.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

You could always play a game where that’s how healers are designed to play and not one where that concept cannot functionally exist because it was designed to have healers spend a majority of their time attacking only to fight that design and the players that enjoy that choice.

I mean, I wouldn’t start playing WoW and harass it’s forums declaring that skill trees are a menace to my personal experience and that WoW should delete them because I don’t like them.

Look, I'm just helping provide the outside opinion to the echo chamber you guys have here sometimes. Even the live letter question showed that healers are complaining it's too hard now in the new content, you can't have it both ways, either make it easier so anyone can do it[ even bored vets] or make it harder so only one part of community can do it [ bored vets]...this is a no brainer.

Why would they make the content consistently harder which would ruin healer population versus making it simpler and increasing it? Loosing the minority to help the majority is better. But that aside I do think they need to just make a braindead healer, medium, and savage hard mode easy to screw up healer.... so everyone is happy.

Like league.
Sivir easy.
Trist medium.
Vayne hard.

Just make sure the difference in DPS is minuscule at best so you don't get toxicity from players saying don't play sivir/trist they do less dps in raids.

[ty_taurus]

Look, I'm just helping provide the outside opinion to the echo chamber you guys have here sometimes. Even the live letter question showed that healers are complaining it's too hard now in the new content, you can't have it both ways, either make it easier so anyone can do it[ even bored vets] or make it harder so only one part of community can do it [ bored vets]...this is a no brainer.

Why would they make the content consistently harder which would ruin healer population versus making it simpler and increasing it? Loosing the minority to help the majority is better. But that aside I do think they need to just make a braindead healer, medium, and savage hard mode easy to screw up healer.... so everyone is happy.

Like league.
Sivir easy.
Trist medium.
Vayne hard.

Just make sure the difference in DPS is minuscule at best so you don't get toxicity from players saying don't play sivir/trist they do less dps in raids.

I'm just saying it seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face trying to grit your teeth and play through a game where healing is fundamentally designed to DPS the majority of the time when other games exist. Someone mentioned Ragnarok Online where healers only heal because there's a lot of outgoing damage. Why not try that? It genuinely seems like that's what you're looking for. It's not a jab, but a serious question. I hate first-person view. I like MOBAs. I could play Overwatch and yell about how its not the kind of MOBA I like, or I could just go play a MOBA I like. Doesn't that sound like a healthier option for my own enjoyment?

What's different here is healers are designed for something that they currently are not built for. But they used to be better designed to compliment this system and had room to grow into it more now, but that was taken away to sterilize the role, but sterilization does not make it well designed. It's just trying to desperately feel as inoffensive as possible to push away the least amount of people, which is wishy-washy bad design. I just want to see the game embrace the path it's taken and design the healers for this game.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

I'm just saying it seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face trying to grit your teeth and play through a game where healing is fundamentally designed to DPS the majority of the time when other games exist. Someone mentioned Ragnarok Online where healers only heal because there's a lot of outgoing damage. Why not try that? It genuinely seems like that's what you're looking for. It's not a jab, but a serious question. I hate first-person view. I like MOBAs. I could play Overwatch and yell about how its not the kind of MOBA I like, or I could just go play a MOBA I like. Doesn't that sound like a healthier option for my own enjoyment?

What's different here is healers are designed for something that they currently are not built for. But they used to be better designed to compliment this system and had room to grow into it more now, but that was taken away to sterilize the role, but sterilization does not make it well designed. It's just trying to desperately feel as inoffensive as possible to push away the least amount of people, which is wishy-washy bad design. I just want to see the game embrace the path it's taken and design the healers for this game.

And then what happens to the players who can't handle the new raider style intensive high skill cap high skill floor healing style you want? "Git gud?"

[ty_taurus]

And then what happens to the players who can't handle the new raider style intensive high skill cap high skill floor healing style you want? "Git gud?"

First and foremost it's not "raider style intensive high skill cap high skill floor healing" It's literally asking what is asked of every other job in the game. If you take a look at any of the builds I proposed for example, none of them are asking for anything even remotely challenging. What changes about my WHM suggestion is basically that every 5 casts of literally any spell, you get a 1-2 utility combo where you cast Tempest, and combo that into either getting your MP back, gaining a lily, putting up Asylum, or activating mitigation based on whatever it is you need. That's not hard to do and no where near what most other jobs in the game ask, but it gives variation and options. It's forgiving, it's simple, but it's interactive, and it gives you choice.

Moreover, what dictates difficulty is not the job but the content. The vast majority of content barely requires a party to be breathing, let alone perform their rotation. When you do a dungeon roulette, if you decide you don't want to engage with any of those buttons, and just want to keep spamming Glare, you're still going to clear the content. You can clear the content now even when you don't Glare. This game is not asking anything of you in anything below EX. EX also has a lot of room for error. And Savage is meant to be a challenge anyway, not that the challenge is actually increasing much.

Please stop treating the idea of healers being able to optimize as a royal command that all healers must Parse 99% in every ounce of content or be tried for high treason. The bar on casual content is exceedingly low, so low an ant would lose in a game of limbo.

[Sebazy]

And then what happens to the players who can't handle the new raider style intensive high skill cap high skill floor healing style you want? "Git gud?"

Then they don't play at the new raider style intensive high skill cap. Not sure where you're getting the high skill floor thing from though?....

.... Oh wait yeah I do, it's because you're a troll and you've got to make up stuff to try and seem like you have a point when all you're doing is mindlessly stirring (EG quote necroing other peoples posts only to add absolutely nothing of value to it).

[Fendred]

So according to the census from February, there are slightly more whm and astros that are max level than sages and scholars. However, when accounting for ilvl in an October census, end game white mages and sages who have savage ilvl gear greatly outnumber astrologians and scholars with similar gear. Astrologian was actually kind of popular last tier.

February census: https://ffxivcensus.com/#class

Lucky Blancho's population by ilvl in october: https://i.imgur.com/t6eJLaj.png

Reddit for lucky blancho's post, which includes job disparity charts on top of the population chart from above: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus..._october_2022/

Astro was actually kind of popular last tier when the healing checks were easier, primarily because it added much needed stimulation for some players. That being said, when the difficulty in healing spiked, apparently its extraneous features became a hindrance rather than a source of amusement. If they can get the scholar and astrologian toolkits on the same page as the white mage and sage, we're basically golden.

[Nizzi]

So according to the census from February, there are slightly more whm and astros that are max level than sages and scholars. However, when accounting for ilvl in an October census, end game white mages and sages who have savage ilvl gear greatly outnumber astrologians and scholars with similar gear. Astrologian was actually kind of popular last tier.

February census: https://ffxivcensus.com/#class

Lucky Blancho's population by ilvl in october: https://i.imgur.com/t6eJLaj.png

Reddit for lucky blancho's post, which includes job disparity charts on top of the population chart from above: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus..._october_2022/

Astro was actually kind of popular last tier when the healing checks were easier, primarily because it added much needed stimulation for some players. That being said, when the difficulty in healing spiked, apparently its extraneous features became a hindrance rather than a source of amusement. If they can get the scholar and astrologian toolkits on the same page as the white mage and sage, we're basically golden.

I'm unsure of why you continue to build narratives and draw conclusions that aren't there solely to suit your own opinions. Astrologian was more popular last tier for a number of reasons:

WHM didn't get DPS neutral Lilies until 6.1, making WHM more punishing to heal on as its primary healing mechanic was a DPS loss
They hadn't announced the Astrologian rework, and also had not subsequently then announced that nothing would be reworked until 7.0 - currently leaving AST in a state where if you were unhappy with 6.0 changes you'll just wait until 7.0, and also leaving people who may be happy with it in a place where they see no reason to get invested in trying to learn the job when it is guaranteed to be heavily changed in a year-ish anyways.
Macrocosmos completely invalidating the P3S heal check, "Death's Toll" with a press of 1 button, instead of relying on both healers to press multiple buttons to heal the party to full.
The amount of effort and strain required to play Astrologian optimally versus every other healer compared to the reward put into it. Astrologian's 6.0 changes satisfied very few and made the job significantly clunkier than it was in Shadowbringers.

Also: Scholar and Astrologian have always been played less than White Mage. Simplying their job mechanics by changing cards and removal of SCH's DPS kit has done nothing to appeal to the players who play White Mage. It's almost as if people who play White Mage will not go to Scholar or Astrologian no matter how much you make the jobs "WHM but fairy" and "WHM but card".

If they can get the scholar and astrologian toolkits on the same page as the white mage and sage, we're basically golden.

"We're golden" by making Scholar and Astrologian worse? Scholar is the most played healer in DSR due to how great it's healing kit is; just because you don't like something doesn't mean it needs to change - just play White Mage or Sage.

[Sebazy]

Astro was actually kind of popular last tier when the healing checks were easier, primarily because it added much needed stimulation for some players. That being said, when the difficulty in healing spiked, apparently its extraneous features became a hindrance rather than a source of amusement. If they can get the scholar and astrologian toolkits on the same page as the white mage and sage, we're basically golden.

Or maybe it was popular because Macrocosmos almost entirely sidestepped a huge heal check in P3S whereas comps with WHM routinely ended up using LB3 for it.

Again, I really can't stress it enough here. AST isn't a problem when it comes to healing. for ~1 minute and 50 seconds out of every 2 minutes it's APM is barely higher than the other healers. It's healing capability is absolutely fine. If you take the 2 minute burst window out of the equation, it's absolutely not a hinderance.

AST's biggest issue lays in that burst window period. Repeatedly doing a complex movement heavy mechanic such as P4S PT1 Pinax through the 2 minute burst window for hours on end during prog was a pretty rough experience at least for me. Reprogging and helping other groups on DNC and WHM was utter bliss by comparison.

And of course, another important detail is that if you miss your burst window on AST, that's a sizeable chunk of contribution gone right there and of course it leaves you the delicious choice of skipping your next window or continuing to go late for the rest of the fight. Yummy

[AmiableApkallu]

And then what happens to the players who can't handle the new raider style intensive high skill cap high skill floor healing style you want? "Git gud?"

No one is really suggesting raising the skill floor for healing, though.

Healing in normal mode content is already quite forgiving and leaves plenty of time for dealing damage. A "squishy" DRK in a dungeon still gives me time to throw out a Holy and Stone. If I Swiftcase+Raise someone the moment they tank the floor after failing a mechanic, I still have time to throw stones while I wait for them to accept the Raise and become targetable for healing. It takes a party having a comically bad day before I have to spend every single GCD healing.