The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Renathras]

This argument has gone on since literally like 2.0 with Cleric Stance.

...

Isn’t the whole point of a balanced argument to acknowledge the opinions of both sides?

...

If nothing else can’t we all at least agree that there’s a gaping contradiction between encounter design and healer job design?

...

I agree with most of this.

My ONE change would be that there's a third "logic" - Bulk of the Playerbase Logic which is the "some dps" position (the Raider logic is the "all dps" position). That there are more than just two extreme positions and the bulk are actually somewhere in between. Both sides posting here fall into that, for example. My own position includes "some dps", and I think even the people contesting me are "some dps" not "all dps" as well. People like arguing against extremes on the opposite end from them, but that's just because it's easy, not because anyone realistically is arguing for those positions. (It's also why I've specifically avoided the "You just want to be a DPSer with healer ques!" argument, because it applies to so few people it's stupid to even use in almost all cases - just as stupid as the "You just want to be a Sylphie and never cast a damage spell!" argument.)

And 100% agree that healing needs a shakeup. It's why my ideal solution to ALL of this isn't just "change 3 healers". It can more completely be stated as:

"Change 3 healers, leave 1 alone, re-add dAST/nAST (basically give us a 5th healer), and completely change healing encounter design to focus more on sustained healing instead of high potency oGCD burst healing on rigid fight timings."

I think you're right in that we all agree that something needs to change and the Devs seem to be building healers (abilities) for a different game than the encounter designers (fights) are making. Also agree it's beyond bizarre that they're dumping yet more healing on other roles instead when healers already have no need of the bulk of our heals unless things are going wrong.

.

If you think that the person who's arguing with you isn't doing so in good faith or is just wasting your time, feel free to ignore them instead of derailing the thread.

That is, in fact, what I'm doing and intend to do.

Note that this person keeps quoting me to reply to me, which is either an attempt to goad me into a response, an attempt to snipe at my points uncontested (e.g. if I don't reply to contest or rebut the point, they can claim I have no counter/defense and/or am conceding the point), and seems to want to keep engaging despite doing so in bad faith, being called out for doing so in bad faith, respoinding in bad faith to the calling out, and then making a bad faith attempt to "level the playing field" by insisting I'm acting in bad faith as well (a type of "what I'm doing isn't really bad if other people are doing it/you are doing it" defense), ignoring that what they're doing that is bad faith isn't a few little things like not having evidence for claims, it's things like outright ignoring that people can have other positions and insisting that other positions do not exist even as people are arguing them.

But yes, I'm going to try to refrain from replying to that bad faith actor further until he/she changes their ways away from bad faith.

.

Specifically this part has activated a part of my brain and made me realise that the real 'compromise' position was actually just SB all along.

I think it was. For SCH and AST, anyway. Agree with you on that.

WHM reached the compromise position in ShB - as I think we can all agree at this point, SB WHM sucked.

Is this not more or less what I've been proposing this entire time? Return SCH and AST to their SB kits (including nAST), and WHM should probably be "ShB WHM + Aero 3". Granted with their EW abilities tacked on and SGE in the game. This would give us a simple healer more or less as it is today with the only big difference being DoT cleave for AOE and macroing Cleric Stance onto Presence of Mind (WHM), a DoT and plate spinning healer (SCH), not one but two buff healers (dAST and nAST for both Pure and Barrier healing spots), and a semi-WHM equivalent barrier healer (SGE). I think that is the ideal solution.

Indeed, when they were adding RDM at that time, I briefly considered it could be the next healer Job. It had White Magic (presumably some heals and a raise) while also having black magic (so substitute Stone, Aero 1, and Aero 2 for Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder). RDM would have fit into SB-era FFXIV healing model as a healer with no one really batting an eye if you think about it.

[Connor]

I agree with most of this…

Yeah, I do agree that it’s not so binary as just being ‘all dps’ or ‘no dps’; there are definitely lots of players that fall into any end of those two extremes, just as there are surely many who are right in the middle with ‘some dps’.

For previous post (on mobile so can’t do double quoting magic please bear with me lol), I agree that Stormblood was a good compromise between ‘some dps’ and ‘some healing’. Personally I also miss some of the pure utility stuff we used to get like Scholar’s Eye for an Eye or even Astrologian’s Disable. Even Stoneskin (though I get they had to remove that because of inflated HP values). They’re not the most useful or game changing but it was still fun to have some utility that was just there to support lol.

That’s just a personal aside though, I feel the same about things like Bard’s Foe Requiem (rest in peace gone but not forgotten. In terms of the dps I’m most familiar with Scholar, and utilising the three DoTs, Shadowflare, etc was definitely more engaging than what we have now.

In terms of dps options for a Scholar personally I like the idea of them being for tactical usage as opposed to a direct dps rotation. Like a DoT with lower potency than Broil/Bio but an additional effect like reducing damage dealt. Or a shield that deals damage when broken or struck similar to Eye for an Eye, but has no direct healing potency so it won’t replace Adloquium. I liked Shadow Flare’s slow effect too, again it wasn’t particularly useful or game changing but it still felt nice to be dealing damage with more purpose than just ‘damage for damage’s sake’ (if that makes sense lol)

[glamazon]

I'm thinking they should eliminate shield healers and regen healers being two diff kinds of healers and instead give every healer some form of direct heals, shield healing, regen healing and then to give each healer a distinct feel and play style have them focus on other things.

Sage: Direct Damage. healer who has the most personal damage and damage options.

Scholar: Debuffing. healer who has a solid number of debuff options to affect the enemy.

Astrologian: Buffing. healer who has a solid number of ways to buff his party more than just attack bonus.

WhiteMage: Mix of all three other healers. Second most personal dps, debuff spell like pollen slows enemy attack speed, buff thorns damages enemies when they hit players, all used with lilies.

[Renathras]

...

Agreed. I'm not at all opposed to more complexity in healers as long as there's an out/escape for it that isn't "gimping your party/getting carried".

I would love to see SB SCH back, possibly with some PvP SCH for good measure. I love the way Adlo works with a spread and damage boosting mechanic and Bio with a reduced damage dealt that you can also cleave across the enemy party. I've thought for ages SCH should have an AF dump Divine Benison. When they removed ED in ShB, the problem wasn't "you couldn't optimize DPS anymore", the problem was "okay, so Soil and Excog are on CD, everyone's at 100% health, and I have 1 AF stack to burn before it comes off CD...what do I spend it on?" situations. There was nothing to do but just burn a Lustrate for funzies or, more correctly (since that would require either Ruin 2 or clipping a Broil), just sitting on the stack as you refreshed. Major "feelzbadman" from that. And I've thought for ages that Art of War should have some kind of tactical effect. I'm not sure WHAT - I thought Heavy but (a) that would make more sense for Gravity and (b) that could muck with tanks trying to do wall to wall pulls I guess...though arguably so can an early Swiftcast Holy... - with another alternative being Slow +10% or Vulnerability on the boss of some small amount - but those could also have complications. I'm not sure if those things have diminishing returns like Stun does, and it might be weird (even if they do) to have a meta of SCH using 3x Art of Wars every 1 minute or whatever in boss fights for the Vuln, lol. But I do feel it would be neat if it had SOMETHING, and that would also help differentiate it from Dyskrasia. Right now, the two are basically identical other than AoW doing 10 more potency and Dyskrasia working with Kardia (but since that's SGE's Eos, it's in practice not much of a distinction.)

I think they also need to acknowledge that Faerie Gauge is a total failure. It doesn't HAVE to be, but it is. If they had made Fey Blessing have no CD and just consume 30 gauge, that would have been the answer. But they seemed to not what SCH to be able to stock several AOE pulse heals, which is also a bit silly considering (a) all of SCH's other healing and (b) that Fey Blessing is one of their weakest potency AOE heals anyway. They could just remove it and make Aetherpact a toggle so you can use it like Kardia when you want to focus Eos or something. They also should probably do something with the anti-synergy between Dissipation, Seraph, Aetherpact, and <all Fairy abilities>, but I suppose at least some of that was SB accurate.

.

Likewise, a lot of people loved AST. I've never been particularly partial to it, but I like that options exist. I think everyone agrees the Card simplification - while UNDERSTANDABLE given the way raiders tended to play and optimize at the time - was a mistake and a move in the wrong direction. Even PvP AST has figured this out. Ideally, there should be a way to make the "busywork/bursty" part of AST less likely to give people arthritis while also giving it back some flavor and a focus on buffing gameplay that people really enjoyed the interplay of.

Likewise, as I said above somewhere, there was no good reason to remove nAST. Misshapenchair is hardly the only or first person to mention it. If nAST was in the game today, it wouldn't be causing any realistic issues. Some people think they removed it to make SGE more attractive, but the two have markedly different, non-overlapping playstyles, and if anything, SGE plays far more like SCH than nAST anyway. This is a place they could essentially be adding "a 5th healer" without actually having to do any design work. Not to mention the disconnect now between AST's lore and AST's gameplay is pretty stark.

.

There are so many little ways to make things better without revamping the entire system, and of course there's also ways they could make things better if they DID want to revamp the entire system. And there is a way they could do this with pleasing basically everyone.

I think right now, the Devs honestly don't know what to do with healers. They gave more oGCD heals because people asked for it, removed the damage interplay because some people asked for that, simplified systems because people either asked for it or (AST Cards) were playing like it anyway, etc. They've tried shoehorning all healers, together, into a single paradigm and are confused because people are always complaining and they have no idea how to please everyone because they're trying to make all healers fit into the same single mold at any given time.

.

I'm thinking they should eliminate shield healers and regen healers being two diff kinds of healers and instead give every healer some form of direct heals, shield healing, regen healing and then to give each healer a distinct feel and play style have them focus on other things.

Not sure I agree with you on WHM or on every healer having the same healing kit (part of the distinctions between healers IS their healing kits being different). I think the Pure/Barrier split has been a failure, but that's just because (a) every healer needs mitigation the way raids are tuned now and (b) dAST and nAST were combined, so AST is a Pure healer with Barriers anyway.

Splitting dAST and nAST apart again and giving dAST and WHM one more mitigation would probably fix that.

But I do agree with the niches/specializations being a good direction to go.

[AnotherPerson]

WHM reached the compromise position in ShB - as I think we can all agree at this point, SB WHM sucked.

Is this not more or less what I've been proposing this entire time? Return SCH and AST to their SB kits (including nAST), and WHM should probably be "ShB WHM + Aero 3". Granted with their EW abilities tacked on and SGE in the game. This would give us a simple healer more or less as it is today with the only big difference being DoT cleave for AOE and macroing Cleric Stance onto Presence of Mind (WHM), a DoT and plate spinning healer (SCH), not one but two buff healers (dAST and nAST for both Pure and Barrier healing spots), and a semi-WHM equivalent barrier healer (SGE). I think that is the ideal solution.

Indeed, when they were adding RDM at that time, I briefly considered it could be the next healer Job. It had White Magic (presumably some heals and a raise) while also having black magic (so substitute Stone, Aero 1, and Aero 2 for Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder). RDM would have fit into SB-era FFXIV healing model as a healer with no one really batting an eye if you think about it.

With all due respect, ShB WHM still sucked. It only sucked less because it was the only job that was uplifted because everyone kept complaining the job gauge still sucked, and the job gauge finally upgraded to get a DPS refund skill. However, if you look at the big picture, WHM gameplay still sucked even in Endwalker 6.0 and only finally got DPS Neutral lilies in later patches (finally making the gauge something you use instead of avoid or use as sparingly as possible). The problem still exists, however. Until lv 74, where you don't want to touch your gauge since regen is more potent than Afflatus Solace per GCD. Even Medica II is probably better than Afflatus Solace in most circumstances until you unlock Afflatus Misery. Doubly so if you need to pop a Confession before Medica II at level 70.

WHM is the only healer that takes until Heavensward to get their job gauge, which is ridiculous in its own right. At the same time, WHM is also the only healer that doesn't want to utilize their job gauge until lv 74. Just because WHM got improvements, it's a far outcry from actually being "good" when you look at its state as a whole. It's just serviceable.

[ty_taurus]

With all due respect, ShB WHM still sucked. It only sucked less because it was the only job that was uplifted because everyone kept complaining the job gauge still sucked, and the job gauge finally upgraded to get a DPS refund skill. However, if you look at the big picture, WHM gameplay still sucked even in Endwalker 6.0 and only finally got DPS Neutral lilies in later patches (finally making the gauge something you use instead of avoid or use as sparingly as possible). The problem still exists, however. Until lv 74, where you don't want to touch your gauge since regen is more potent than Afflatus Solace per GCD. Even Medica II is probably better than Afflatus Solace in most circumstances until you unlock Afflatus Misery. Doubly so if you need to pop a Confession before Medica II at level 70.

WHM is the only healer that takes until Heavensward to get their job gauge, which is ridiculous in its own right. At the same time, WHM is also the only healer that doesn't want to utilize their job gauge until lv 74. Just because WHM got improvements, it's a far outcry from actually being "good" when you look at its state as a whole. It's just serviceable.

The only thing that is genuinely a positive about WHM is that it's the only healer to offer an incentive to use recovery GCDs over DPS GCDs once you've learned Afflatus Misery; however, that does come with caveats. Like with what you stated, level 74 is far too high to actually gain access to your gauge mechanics, and there's no reason for Afflatus Solace to exist without Misery. Really, both of these should become accessible (while also scaling with your current iteration of Stone or Glare) in the ballpark of level 30. Additionally, there is a pressure to throw away lily heals to nourish the blood lily during all instances of downtime. I mentioned this before in my scribbles of ideas, but a really simple way to address this issue is to just give WHM a Meditate/Anatman for the blood lily. I normally don't like these types of actions, but I feel discouraging throwing away lilies unnecessarily and encouraging players to use them for actual healing is important in accomplishing this.

[ForsakenRoe]

Is this not more or less what I've been proposing this entire time?

You'll have to forgive me for assuming that, when you said your wish for healers is 'change 3, leave one as is', that meant that WHM would be completely untouched. Adding back Aero 3 (and not just as 'it does dia but in an aoe', but as 'a seperate second dot timer to manage') would be 'touching' it, right?

WHM is the only healer that takes until Heavensward to get their job gauge, which is ridiculous in its own right. At the same time, WHM is also the only healer that doesn't want to utilize their job gauge until lv 74. Just because WHM got improvements, it's a far outcry from actually being "good" when you look at its state as a whole. It's just serviceable.

Exactly, with SHB, if we were to assign 'out of 10' scores, we could say WHM went from a 2/10 to a 4/10, SCH from a 8/10 to a 5/10 and AST from a 8/10 to a 3/10 (cos its healing potencies on launch sucked bad). The fact WHM went up from a 2 to a 4 is an improvement yes, but it's still only a 4/10, there's a lot more work that needed to be done. It could have been eg a 7/10 if the only change was adding the better lilies and making the MP cost changes, but they counteracted those changes with 'oh also you are down to just one nuke one dot. Like AST, but without the Card system that partially justifies AST having that'.

[IDontPetLalas]

I still don't see a reason to promote the "leave one healer as it is, change the others". I am listening, I can understand the motivations, I can see why some people may like it, just as with anything , you will have a segment that feels that they are perfectly happy, or are indifferent since they have adapted, or those that are apathetic. There are also those people who will resist change, for multiple reasons.

i can also see that some people that play healers want a simpler type of gameplay, I don't want to exclude those players at all, however I don't feel that it is fair for those people who may have been with a job for years to be unable to grow within that job. There should be a way to start in each healing job and have a feeling of accomplishment, and to have some accomplishment, and ideally some options in gameplay- i.e. skill selection. This is why i would want to see those changes in each job, I don't see that reflected right now in the healing jobs.

I stress that as others have said, this affects those players who are interested in optimizing their gameplay, those players who don't participate in that type of content now aren't going to be affected, but it would help in retention and might attract more healers.

[Renathras]

With all due respect, ShB WHM still sucked.

This is a personal taste thing, but no, it didn't. WHM in ShB was pretty fun to play, and most people loved the heck out of the Lily system and Misery. It even got to briefly stand in the meta comp here and there. I'm trying to remember for sure, but Misery was close enough to damage neutral that using Lilies for movement and downtime was still a thing. WHM overall felt good to play WHM was probably a 2/10 in SB and somewhere from 5-7/10 in ShB. It went from being borderline unplayable with systems that made no sense (e.g. Cure 1 and Cure 2 having a CHANCE to generate a Lily and place a Confession stack on the target for Plenary to pop into a heal) into actually being entirely DPS functional while more than capable of being an effective healer with good personal DPS.

6.0 actually made it worse because Glare got stronger and Misery didn't, so instead of Misery being worth 3 Glares, it became worth something like 2.5, making it a significant damage loss in most cases and counterintuitive to use. Aquaveil's all right, but Lilybell should really be a 2 min CD. Allowing it to be detonated early and making Misery truly DPS neutral were both good changes.

I do agree that the LEVELING makes no sense. At the VERY least you should get Solace sometime before level 50. Personally, I'd make Solace at level 30 (where PoM is now) OR 35 (where Regen is now) (in which case make Regen 30), Tetra or Presence of Mind at 50 (where Bene is now), the other of the two at 52 (where Solace is now), Benediction at 60 (where Tetra is now), Rapture at 70 (where Plenary is now), Plenary at 76 (Rapture is now), and probably make a low level oGCD "Stoneskin" as a weaker Aquaveil that upgrades to Aquaveil (or vice versa) at 86.

Could also swap Thin Air (58) with Misery (74) to let people start casting Misery early.

Imo, things like Thin Air, Presence of Mind, Plenary Indulgence, and Benediction are really "high level" abilities. Partly in their effects, but they're things you use more in high end gameplay like raids and stuff, but they're kind of pointless overkill in leveling dungeons. It would make far more sense to get Solace at 30 than PoM, and Tetra should be given earlier than Benediction - that's just a relic of ARR level cap being 50, not a logical progression of the modern 90 levels of curve. I've always felt the base/core rotation of Jobs should be established relatively early (by level 50 or 60) and then all the extra modifiers and oGCD CDs be sprinkled in (along with upgrades like Stone to Glare) after that. And I don't mean direct oGCDS - things like Tetra or MCH Gauss round should be early. I mean things with indirect effects. PoM does nothing on its own. Thin Air does nothing on its own. Plenary does nothing on its own. Those are modifiers used in optimal play rather than direct spells, which is what you need while leveling.

.

You'll have to forgive me for assuming that, when you said your wish for healers is 'change 3, leave one as is', that meant that WHM would be completely untouched. Adding back Aero 3 (and not just as 'it does dia but in an aoe', but as 'a seperate second dot timer to manage') would be 'touching' it, right?

Well, keep in mind I AM thinking about it as "Dia but for AOE", not a second DoT to use in single target fights. Right now, Holy is 150 while Glare is 310, making Holy (approximately) damage neutral on 2 targets (a slight loss but for trash packs the Stun mitigation may make up for it; it would need to be 155 Potency to be damage neutral on 2 targets) and a DPS gain on 3. Likewise, making Aero 3 an AOE DoT of 30 potency for 30 seconds would make it do 300 Potency of total damage, slightly below a Glare. This would likewise be a SLIGHT DPS loss on 1 target while being a DPS gain on 2 or more, making it logically slot into AOE situations without changing the single target rotation.

I suppose you could do something like have Assize proc "Aeroga" or something where it does 150% damage all at once (instead of a DoT) so every 40 seconds you'd want to use it and that would also mean using it (just after Assize) during burst windows or something. But absent something like that, this would only be a change to the AOE rotations, which isn't so much a rotation as a one-button light show.

Though I do apologize/forgive you for that since I didn't make it clear (in either case, single or multi target) other than saying in passing I liked Aero 3 and wouldn't mind it back.

But I take it you agree with the rest (AST/SCH/SGE) being more or less what I've been proposing this entire time?

.

I still don't see a reason to promote the "leave one healer as it is, change the others". I am listening, I can understand the motivations, ...

I think the problem is, "this affects those players who are interested in optimizing their gameplay" tends to ALSO affect those players who are not. The only way to do it is to make the gap trivial OR make it entirely unnecessary (e.g. such lax Enrages that no one cares about healers doing damage or not). As no one is arguing for either of those changes, there's no way to do this that won't affect those other people.

The only solution - absent that - which I can see would be to make one healer not require it. Then players on that healer simply don't have to worry about it, and no one will be blackballing them since they'll be doing the same general overall performance as the people who are pushing optimization playing the other Jobs.

Can you show me a case where this isn't so? Where the optimized difference is not trivial/unneeded AND people that don't want to optimize can play those Jobs in the same content (this includes Savage) and get the clears they can get in live right now AND where the community won't be blackballing them for not doing the optimal damage?

I don't think there's a way to achieve that. Do you?

And if there is not, then the only solution is to have one healer that does its optimal damage as it does now. As the Misshapenchair quote I gave earlier states, the people complaining about not doing enough more damage should be told that they're playing their more complex Job to be engaged and have fun because that was what they wanted.

.

Further, if we did change 3 healers (and readded nAST), would this not attract more healers and help in retention?

I do recognize it means WHMs who want more complex rotations would have to switch Jobs, but it also means all AST/SCH/SGE who want simpler rotations would ALSO have to switch to WHM. If we changed all 4(5) of them to be more complex, it would mean all players of all healing Jobs who want simpler rotations while still clearing the content they do today would have to swap out of the role (probably to WAR) or quit the game.

Changing all the healers strips people of content they have right now entirely.

My personal position is that changes should always be made when they add to things but don't take things away. My proposed change might mean people have to swap Jobs, but it means everyone who has access to content today has an avenue to still access it while the healer role is opened up to more playstyles to attract and appeal to more additional players (or healers that play healer right now but are bored/want more from it). This means taking a BIT away from Paul but making Peter happier while not really taking from Paul as he's still able to do what he wants.

The position proposed by you guys actively strips some players of gameplay they are allowed to engage in today, and thus is taking away from Paul to make Peter happier at the expense of robbing Paul of the things he's doing today that make him happy.

[Katish]

I was thinking of a round about way of "fixing" healers and what of inventing mechanics, enemies, buffs, that convert healing into also damage...that way healing would seen more to be worth it when it isn't and it would be in a step in the right direction. Think how good is would feel that healing affected undead...