The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Shurrikhan]

There are two examples I can think of where heavy healing mechanics were required:

I didn't say anything about "heavy" healing. Nor did you previously do so. You said "triage."

In triage, healing revolves around an element of leveraged bets, so to speak. You're guessing that there will soon be incoming damage enough to kill X, but not Y, and so you heal X first, or you're guessing, without certainty, you'll have time enough to perform a riskier but more efficient action. In triage healing elsewhere, some degree of emergency cooldowns usually needs to be saved, rather than simply used on cooldown, because spam heals won't be enough to salvage a mis-guess (no prior sustain buff, nor sufficiently topping off the upcoming victim --probably because they were chosen at random-- by which to make spam heals enough to keep them alive). That requires a degree of combat tuning and slightly more hectic encounter design.

We had already approached that a couple times in this game, only to then let it be swamped out by just having so damn much free healing and little worth saving it for that isn't so painfully obvious as to devolve into nearly pre-synced "un-mechanic" buttons. The scheduled rigid dance overtook it, but not necessarily for the better.

Those burst moments can be fun and feel great, but the gaping holes inbetween those phases should be fun too, especially since that gaping hole is sometimes the size of the entire fight in most of this game's content.

Again, you can have both. Having a satisfying set of downtime skills do not require the healing itself to be dry as dust. Yes, the downtime should be our first target because it's so much more easily improved, but it's not as if we have to choose between the one or the other. The contextual value downtime skills add depend also on the state of the healing kit relative to encounter design, so that area should come up eventually, too.

[ty_taurus]

I didn't say anything about "heavy" healing. Nor did you previously do so. You said "triage."

In triage, healing revolves around an element of leveraged bets, so to speak. You're guessing that there will soon be incoming damage enough to kill X, but not Y, and so you heal X first, or you're guessing, without certainty, you'll have time enough to perform a riskier but more efficient action. In triage healing elsewhere, some degree of emergency cooldowns usually needs to be saved, rather than simply used on cooldown, because spam heals won't be enough to salvage a mis-guess (no prior sustain buff, nor sufficiently topping off the upcoming victim --probably because they were chosen at random-- by which to make spam heals enough to keep them alive). That requires a degree of combat tuning and slightly more hectic encounter design.

We had already approached that a couple times in this game, only to then let it be swamped out by just having so damn much free healing and little worth saving it for that isn't so painfully obvious as to devolve into nearly pre-synced "un-mechanic" buttons. The scheduled rigid dance overtook it, but not necessarily for the better.


Again, you can have both. Having a satisfying set of downtime skills do not require the healing itself to be dry as dust. Yes, the downtime should be our first target because it's so much more easily improved, but it's not as if we have to choose between the one or the other. The contextual value downtime skills add depend also on the state of the healing kit relative to encounter design, so that area should come up eventually, too.

I was trying to think of a simplified way of describing "spam healing buttons because damage goes out every few seconds" but perhaps that was the wrong word choice, lol.

And yeah, I want the healing side of things to feel fun and thoughtful too.

[Shurrikhan]

I was trying to think of a simplified way of describing "spam healing buttons because damage goes out every few seconds" but perhaps that was the wrong word choice, lol.

Oh, shoot, we had totally different definitions of the word then. Does what I described sound more attractive, at least?

[Renathras]

During the 6.1 trailer...

Okay, I'm only going to reply with this and not reply to you any more:

I can't have a discussion with someone who is arguing in bad faith.

Imagine if every time you asked for a more interesting damage rotation on healers, someone retorted with "You just want to play a DPS but have better ques! Go play a DPS!". You might respond the first or second or even third time with a gentle explanation that you DO want to play a healer, but why you're asking for what you are. Why people other than "just want to play a DPS but have better ques" would want more damage buttons. Point out that the game's history allows for this. Point out that MMOs allow for this. Point out that many players probably want this...only for that person to say "You just want to play a DPS but have better ques! Go play a DPS!" again with different words.

That's what you've done.

Repeatedly I've told you other reasons why people might want healers - or at least _A_ healer - to remain as they are. Yet you can't help but deride and insult. And worse, you put words in my mouth, insisting you know my motivations and mind better than I do, even when I'm outright telling you my motivations and mind, and you basically say "Nuh uh, I know you and what you are thinking better than you know you and what you are thinking."

That's bad faith, and I'm done indulging in it.

If you seek a good faith argument, come back. Until then, if you seek to be willfully obtuse and act in bad faith, that's on you.

[Renathras]

So, you've got 4 starving people...

And this is where you're wrong. We don't.

We have millions of people (probably around 1-1.25 million playing healers), with the vast majority of them well fed and happy with what they've eaten. You have a small percentage who are not and want more. That's the actual situation.

Healers are not "starving" right now.

...but you alone specifically asking...

It might shock you to know this, but if you leave the official forums and read other discussions of FFXIV healers, like in YouTube comments and content creator videos, your position is actually the minority one. Most seem to be entirely satisfied with healing in FFXIV right now, and don't consider it truncated or starving at all.

.

That all said:

But, we've had more triage-based healing. Not for a long while now and not terribly often, but... there wasn't anything exclusive between having more of a rush and sense of gamble from the healing itself AND having far more damage skills. We did have both. The devs gave up caring about it in the face of "just give them more skills(' bloat) as an expansion selling point" before they'd come anywhere close to leveraging it terribly well, but it was there.


Okay, but, who all actually thinks the near-entirety of our healing coming from fixed-timer oGCDs or mechanics devolving into "See A, slap button A," is... an improvement over what we had prior?

On the rest, mostly agreed, but... wanting more of our dopamine to come from the healing itself, wanting to feel like we're making more vital decisions in our healing, etc., isn't a preference that leads to "Well just go play WoW" anymore than just "Well, just go play (older) FFXIV." It's not so much that XIV isn't for that sort of player as... not for that sort of player anymore.

And given that I'm pretty sure those wanting more from healers, or even just the kind of "more" that we already had, outnumber those happy with their current state, that should mark a problem, not just a difference in preferences.

...I basically agree with this entire post.

[Renathras]

Now I've slept I was gonna ask Ren if they'd be ok with WHM getting the changes I suggested back in my 'I hate the pure/barrier split' thread, that is, Dia becomes 12s duration, and Banish is added as a 15s standalone GCD.

Honestly, I think one healer - JUST one healer - should be left alone as it is. I'm not sure why that's somehow the bridge too far for people who would be getting what they want 3 times over across the other healers. I genuinely believe the game needs a healer to stay the same otherwise there are going to be a lot of alienated people. I mean, look at SAM with Kaiten or SMN with the rework or MCH with the rework in ShB (which people generally think was good but a lot of people who mained MCH were upset about) or the changes to WAR back in...uh...HW? SB? Whenever that was. Sometimes changes are major, sometimes minor, but they always upset some people. If the upset is minor (usually with minor changes), most can be relatively happy with it. If the change is more major, but there are "outs", people swap to those. But if the changes are major AND there's no option out, you lose people.

ShB did this with healers and we had a dearth of healers because of the changes to SCH and AST. While WHM's were generally happy (hard not to see why considering WHM's state in SB...ShB WAS an improvement, despite losing Aero 3), but SCHs and ASTs quit healing in large numbers. There was a bump in the number of RDM and DNC players for people that wanted something of that gameplay of being a support healer/DPS hybrid (even if you aren't really in either, it was the closest thing), and there was a crash in healer population. Given all of you guys' position on healer DPS rotations, I'd wager you remember what I'm talking about and how bad it was.

The thing is, doing the same thing in reverse would likely yield very similar results, especially since now ALL healers, not just WHMs, are used to the slimmed down DPS kits. Going cold turkey would likely cause another crash in the healer population. Forcing healers to use GCDs in P5-8S already caused a bit of a crash in healer population. I just can't see how changing all healers into support healer/DPS hybrids wouldn't cause a massive catastrophe on a similar scale.

That said, regarding this question in particular and having played a few other Jobs more this expansion, I wouldn't be as opposed to this kind of change. Thing is, that's kind of what SGE is already. Lower the CD of Plegma to 15 seconds and you basically have...that. Well, also, I'd hate Dia being 12 seconds. DoTs, as I think I told you before, are the single type of ability I hate most in all of MMOs. I'm okay with some in different kind of games - like building a full on bleed build in Remnant: From The Ashes where the DoTs heal you and all kinds of fun stuff like that - but in MMOs, I just honestly hate the things. So having to engage with a DoT more often would annoy me. And I feel having to Dia every 4 GCDs would be too constraining for cases where you DO have to cast GCD heals. Maybe 21 seconds wouldn't be terrible, but then it would drift from 1/2 min windows. Which is probably why they use 30 sec, honestly.

Leaving one healer in a sorry state is NOT compromise.

The problem is, we don't agree on what "sorry state" is. Many players think the current healing is in a fantastic state. Many others think it's in a passable/acceptable one. Until you acknowledge that it isn't a "sorry state" objectively (that's your subjective position), it's impossible for you to actually understand the problem or the solution.

And, for the record, even if you WERE correct: That would still be compromise. It would only not be a compromise if EVERYTHING you want is being rejected OR if you got everything you wanted and everything those who disagreed with you wanted was rejected - which is your proposal (ergo, your proposal is the one that is not a compromise). As it is, changing 3 healers to suit you and 1 not would absolutely be what compromise is. Not only that, it'd be a compromise weighted in your favor.

Leaving the healer skill floor as accessible as it currently is, is a very acceptable compromise, and one that I don't think any of us advocating for more complexity would argue against.

Considering one of your number has advocated for people with this skill floor to not be able to clear even Extremes and that they should quite FFXIV and go play WoW, I'm not sure you're quite right on that point...

I still can't fathom the answer to the contradiction though. If Ren 'doesn't care about parses one whit', how does the presence of an extra GCD to do damage with on WHM, tuned in such a way that you could fairly safely ignore it if you're not pushing bleeding edge content, negatively affect their gameplay?

If it were tuned that you could remove it from your bars and clear all content? Sure. But that doesn't seem to be what is being asked for. Again, Ty's posts seem to indicate otherwise, and he's not the only one with that sentiment.

Though I do acknowledge you may not be quite that strict, even you say that people wouldn't likely be able to clear Savage without it absent good Crit luck. But at least you aren't in the "quit the game" camp...so that's something.

[ForsakenRoe]

Oh, shoot, we had totally different definitions of the word then. Does what I described sound more attractive, at least?

Triage healing works in other places because the game engine can actually keep up with the quick-reaction demand that 'triage' is at it's core. If you see the tank get clapped by a TB down to 20%, and a melee DPS happened to get clonked by it, and both are bleeding out to the attached DOT, FFXIV wouldn't allow for the quick decision making of 'I'll let the DPS suffer for the one GCD of cast time I'll use to keep the tank up, then Tetra them' or 'I'll Tetra the DPS now, and then cast time Cure2 the tank, and hope the tank has enough sustain/mit left to keep themselves up till my cast finishes', because every action in this game's crusty engine doesn't actually register on time, 'Bene lag' is the prime example. It'd be cool to have actual 'triage' situations, but the reason it works better in, say, WOW, is that AOE healing is not plentiful. It's either kinda weak but spammable, or has some internal CD like WildGrowth, Circle of Healing, Dream Breath, Spiritbloom, PowerWord:Radiance, etc. In order to have a similar environment here, Medica and it's equivalents would need to have a 10s CD at minimum.

Maybe they could do it with a hacky workaround though, some kind of debuff that means 'only single target healing affects this player for X seconds', then have it applied to, idk, 2 DPS while they get clapped by adds. At the same time, have both of the tanks be getting slapped around by hard autos from the boss. Now each healer has to handle one tank and one DPS, with single target healing. How long can they leave the tank alone to selfsustain? Is their 120s like Vengeance up soon to help mitigate? Is the DPS actually going to bother using Bloodbath? etc. All of this is kinda pie in the sky thinking though, as a key part of triage is that you can't save everyone, every time. Sometimes you have to choose to let the DPS die, to keep the tank, and therefore the pull, going for a little longer. And I feel like 'the healer purposely let X die', regardless of reason, is just gonna generate animosity, especially in a game that's used to healers being HPS demigods who can, in some cases, keep party alive without even intending to, because of incidental healing like Assize or EarthlyStar going off

As for HPS pump requirement phases, personally I think the 'more HPS requirement' of this tier was fun in a way. Keyword, WAS. For starters, it was mainly 'you need more mit on raidwides' which was a little bit /shrug, especially if you're the Pure Healer, not much changes. I've said in the past, imagine if P7S had the front/back fist slams do proximity damage, but the bleed is removed from Spark of Life. Less damage on Sparks, but way more frequent raidwides. Enough that the OGCD kit might not actually cover every single one. Also thanks to the passage of time, I'm BIS, everyone's BIS, we're back to outgearing the fights. The tale as old as time. And no matter how many times the tale is told, the ending is always the same. Can we take a leaf from the Minstrel's book, and try a DSR-esque timeline change, to a future where we didn't lose our damage skills in the jump to SHB. A future where WHM has Glare 4, Dia 3, Dia 2, Banish, Misery and the fixed lilies, Assize, maybe a way to proc an empowered Holy that does 300% damage, so it's a gain to Holy in single target, etc. Or SCH has like 7 DOTs like that one time in ARR. Or SGE is the Disc Priest equivalent a fair number of people had hoped it'd be.

A future, where the job design team sat down and never had to say 'hang on, we give tanks new DPS skills every expansion, we should do that for healers too', because it was understood to be a given, a 'blatantly obvious', that the two non-DPS roles should have equal amounts of DPS skills added with each expansion. That it was an inherently understood tenet of design, that if tanks get Primal Rend, or Inner Chaos, or Confiteor, or Blade of Blade, or Double Down, or Shadowbringer, despite being 'not a DPS', then it only makes sense that WHM would get Purgation, or SCH would get Meltdown, or AST would get Comet, or SGE would get... whatever they'd get (idk greek medical terms). A future, that, if it were possible to experience, as we do the alternate events of DSR, I think a great majority of players, from all skill levels, would say 'actually this slaps can we have this instead'.

Maybe they should do a PTR with some changes to try out, for people to give feedback on. Changes are hard to give feedback on without having it in your hands to mess around with, certain things like 'is this fluid' or 'is this clunky' can't really be interpreted from patch notes. So if they had a PTR of sorts, with a change like, idk, Taurus's AST changes, for people to try, and give feedback on, I wonder how many people who originally insisted 'I don't want healers to change at all from current' would think 'actually this isn't half bad, I quite like the gameplay for this class being super buff-heavy, I really feel like I'm empowering my team!'

If you seek a good faith argument, come back. Until then, if you seek to be willfully obtuse and act in bad faith, that's on you.

Bye, hf with the 24man and stuff

[Shurrikhan]

It might shock you to know this, but if you leave the official forums and read other discussions of FFXIV healers, like in YouTube comments and content creator videos, your position is actually the minority one. Most seem to be entirely satisfied with healing in FFXIV right now.

So your position is that the forums comprise too small a user base... so let's instead look to only the dozen or so big, consistent XIV streamers --whose revenue is better met by skipping gameplay criticisms in favor of upbeat play-- and who make up a group a thousandth or so the size of the already small forum community???

But, okay, by all means, let's go ahead and test that.

If I type in "FFXIV healing" into YouTube, my first several videos are...

• A Crap Guide to Healing in FFXIV - which basically notes that the only ones who'd like healing in XIV are those who like the ego-trip of being able to let others die.
  
  
• The Ultimate Beginner Guide to Healing - gives no comments either way as to whether XIV healing is fun or well designed, but simply how best to think about it.
  
  
• Healer Guide | Introduction to Healing in FFXIV | Tips for Becoming a Better Healer - neutral (<picture of fight spreadsheet> "healing in XIV... means researching a fight or making mental notes of outgoing damage as it happens and planning your toolkit around it with little to no variance") - makes no attempt to say it's fun or that people should try it, only what it is.
  
  
• Comparing All Healers in FFXIV Endwalker - Neutral - Notes that there is a preferred healer duo, "Mechanics in FFXIV's raids are very predictable and easy to play around. Healers at that level generally don't struggle to keep up with heals once the fight is known, and overall healing output becomes less important than the damage dealt."
  
  
• Healing in FFXIV is Not Fun - (It wasn't sarcastic -- about that, at least.)
  
  
• 5 Jobs for People Who Lack Brains - [I](Warrior + Healers give or take an AST and a RPR.)
  
  
• Healing in FFXIV Has Big Problems - (Zepla's response video to "Healing in FFXIV is not fun") - she notes that likewise healing, especially, on AST, has got more boring / made it lose that spark for her.

If I more specifically put in "FFXIV healing bad," "FFXIV healing problem," it narrows further towards the negative, but if I put in "FFXIV healing fun," "FFXIV healing good," or "try FFXIV healing," or "FFXIV healing for you..." I get no increase in positive posts. There's just the one positive video, which opens already with the very words "Healer is not well designed."

:: Heck, there are entire series of videos specifically on ideas for healer improvements or in hashing out what the crux of the problems are...


Now, if we take a list of content creators typically considered "big" around FFXIV and don't solely cover lore or music, we might end up with something like...

• Desperius - "even [dealing self-damage] would address the problem of how boring dealing damage can be [as healer], since then you'd have to heal yourself up after..."
• Zepla - 'healer changes since Stormblood have, on the whole, made them less interesting.'
• LucyPyre - {Essentially calls it a shitshow, but fine for brain-dead-ing.}
• MisshappenChair - {Essentially calls it a shitshow, but fine for brain-dead-ing.}
• Drak - <doesn't heal>
• Larryzaur - notes that their distinctions are almost solely in their visuals
• Merri - frequent critiques
• Shenpai - <no comments>
• Meoni - fights are overly one-and-done
• MrHappy - modest critiques, usually more on the Twitch side
• Xeno - has critiqued, despite likely having been bred/evolved, and subjected to many surgeries, to make him better fit a two-minute burst mold.
• Grael - <just does fight guides>
• Misteq - <just does fight guides>

So where's this grand majority consensus, then, that XIV healing are "entirely satisfied with healing in XIV right now"?

[Renathras]

Bye, hf with the 24man and stuff

O...kay?

That was to Ty not you (my reply to you was far more cordial as while I do think you're blindered to arguments, I don't think you're arguing in bad faith), though. So not quite sure why you replied to that quote and not my actual response to you, but whatever I suppose...

Oh, triage healing works in FFXIV - has in the past - it just requires healer kits to not be bloated with powerful oGCDs and for encounter designs to have different damage profiles than they've come to have. More like ARR and HW, less like SB/ShB/EW.

And there will never be a case of healers having as many DPS abilities as tanks. Tank's MAIN role (maintaing threat) requires they to do at least token damage outside of having abilities like Flash, which no longer exists. Moreover, Tanks don't have to juggle party needs on top of their damage. If a party member screws up a mechanic, it either wipes the group or its the healer's job to fix it, not the Tank's, generally. Their utility also works differently. They're all oGCDs - which you could argue healers' could be as well - but they also aren't designed to be spamable as a backup. If a party member repeatedly screws up mechanics, tanks don't chain cast Heart of Corundum or Nascent on them. They don't work as GCDs in that way, other than PLD Clemency, which you get yelled at if you use.

Healers, on the other hand, are STILL designed with that paradigm, even if it's not used in practice in scripted encounters where everyone executes mechanics perfectly. You'd have to give healers some oGCDs like Tetra that have no CD and can be used over and over again without a hard lockout in place for you to even begin to talk about healers in the same design space as tanks, and as yet, I've seen none of you present such a system.

A WHM can chain cast Cure 2 on a screwing up party member quite a few times - just tested this on a striking dummy and the number is 11 with a tick making it 12 (more Piety would make it absolutely 12, but let's go with that) Cure 2s with no use of Lucid, Thin Air, or pausing to use the Lily that was generated in that time.

So we'd need to have Tetra with 12 charges before we could safely remove Cure 2 and give healers a tank-level damage rotation.

12. Charges.

And that recharge quickly (within a minute), so you'd be generating charges of Tetra every ~6 seconds or so.

...though that does sound oddly amusing now that I write it out. Heh, that might be an interesting thing to do. Give WHM basically Solace and Rapture as oGCDs that stack to 10 and recharge ever 6 seconds. It would make healing ridiculously trivial, but if we did that (and, of course, had party mitigation like Temperance and maybe a lesser mitigation on a 60 sec CD), then we could start thinking about having a rotation on par with WAR or MCH. That might be fair.

...I'd wager none of you are proposing THAT.

EDIT:

So your position is that the forums comprise too small a user base... so let's instead look to...

Large collections of the playerbase that are a more representative sample of the player base than here? That sounds pretty smart, actually.

What you don't realize is every "neutral" is someone not agreeing with you. The bulk of your initial searches were that. Reinforcing the position that the bulk do not agree with your position. As the saying goes "Those who enjoy the game aren't on internet forums complaining about it". Neutral means "Enjoy it/like it/have no major complaints with it." It DOESN'T mean they might not like something else even better - let's get that clear - but it DOES mean they disagree with you of it being people "starving" and the like.

Also, note I said the COMMENTS, not the CREATORS. Chair also said the same thing I have - to change three healers and leave one braindead. I think that may have been his exact wording, with "probably White Mage". So again, this seems like the logical and best solution.

Specifically here at this timestamp in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbWubxOTUWU&t=376s

...I'm guessing that's the video you're talking about. And I'd also note I basically agree with him overall. A bit less dripping sarcasm and I don't find 1-2-3 NEARLY as exciting as he does, but overall I agree with him. And to this day, I don't see why nAST needed to be removed. Because...there's no reason it needed to be removed. It's not like having ShB d/nAST would break the current game in any way at all. And I say this as a person that really dislikes AST!

Also what he says at 11:48:

"If someone complains that they need to be rewarded with more DPS for their complicated Job, simply tell them that their reward is being able to HAVE FUN and not being BORED out of their ------- minds! Shut the ---- up about a whole 2% dps variance!"

Also rules to live by. Basically, I'm fine with everything he said in that video and agree with the overall position entirely. I'd say it's my own, but it's a bit different - with the return of nAST, that would be FOUR healers with you guys' preferred playstyle to 1 without.

[Shurrikhan]

Triage healing works in other places because the game engine can actually keep up with the quick-reaction demand that 'triage' is at it's core. If you see the tank get clapped by a TB down to 20%, and a melee DPS happened to get clonked by it, and both are bleeding out to the attached DOT, FFXIV wouldn't allow for the quick decision making of 'I'll let the DPS suffer for the one GCD of cast time I'll use to keep the tank up, then Tetra them' or 'I'll Tetra the DPS now, and then cast time Cure2 the tank, and hope the tank has enough sustain/mit left to keep themselves up till my cast finishes', because every action in this game's crusty engine doesn't actually register on time, 'Bene lag' is the prime example.

I think you'd be surprised by how much more could work if simply removed of certain arbitrary obstacles.

Take the "Bene lag" for instance. It actually was unique in how long it took to take effect, specifically because it didn't actually apply the heal until after its animation had completed, whereas others may apply it at the start of the animation. But, shit like that doesn't require a change in netcode to fix. They just need to not purposely delay, for thematic "grand heal" purposes, an emergency action's activation to... well after/longer than the cases it'd otherwise best be used for.

That said, I do agree that a HUGE number of opportunities could be opened up for healers through broader (or, more underlying) improvements and little quirks to better leverage them. Pre-healing, for instance, is kind of absurdly fun to me -- to hit an ally with the very end of a precisely timed preemptive cast and instantly follow it up with another banked instant cast to bounce their health back up the moment a TB had reduced them to critical (rather than just... oGCDing it). And, we were able to support that already -- we just had it covered up too much to matter. These days, I'd also love to see manipulable (diminishing-per-bounce) chain-heals, stored or time-locked heals, life-linking, and other fun little mechanics becomes available to our healing roster. Yeah, our netcode may get in the way of some of those somewhat, but I don't think it'd cripple them.

It'd be cool to have actual 'triage' situations, but the reason it works better in, say, WOW, is that AOE healing is not plentiful. It's either kinda weak but spammable, or has some internal CD like WildGrowth, Circle of Healing, Dream Breath, Spiritbloom, PowerWord:Radiance, etc. In order to have a similar environment here, Medica and it's equivalents would need to have a 10s CD at minimum.

Maybe they could do it with a hacky workaround though, some kind of debuff that means 'only single target healing affects this player for X seconds', then have it applied to, idk, 2 DPS while they get clapped by adds.

I don't think we need anything particularly wonky to do that. We just need to stop making AoEs so damn OP.

Heck, the most fundamental difference between XIV AoE heals and WoW's isn't that WoW's are tuned more weakly, but rather that AoEs don't have to be simultaneously useful for a half-sized party and a full-sized party.

You can make up for that light party / full party wonkiness quite easily, though, just by having a portion of the AoE's potency be split among all receivers. The AoEs' total potency would still increase with party count, but not so steeply as to make all else irrelevant.