The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[ty_taurus]

Literally nothing other than people who don't like it can "be bad". When you aren't outright telling them to quit the game, that is.

Briefly, I never told anyone to quit. What I said was, if some doesn't enjoy the way content is structured for healers in this game, how infrequent damage taken is, then there are other games that may satisfy them far better.

But regardless, I want to mention the "be bad." part for a moment, because I have to ask, why do you think that choosing to play the way you want makes you "bad?" Because you're not playing perfectly? So what? Almost no one plays perfectly. I certainly don't. As DNC, it's technically optimal to use dance partner on a DRK early because their burst is extremely powerful, let Closed Position's CD count down before pulling, and swap to a DPS after their burst concludes, but I don't do that. I don't even try. Without really knowing the DRK's playstyle intimately, it may not always work out well, and it just seems like a hassle.

I don't think people who play dragon kick monk are "bad." They're able to get most of their DPS out with far more consistency. If you feel like fully optimizing your theoretical healer rotation is too much of a hassle/too frustrating, and you can get most of that by doing something simpler and be more consistent, then do it. I think it's worse to see SCH and SGE players who spam Succor/E. Prognosis and try to keep a barrier up on the party at all times.

And the thing is, even if we want to set the maximum output of a specific job as "perfect play," and anything less is "bad," why stop there? Why not say playing WHM instead of AST is "bad" because AST outperforms WHM in every way? You could theoretically fall down this rabbit hole of obsessing over perfection in literally every game. In Mario, are you a speed runner? If not, does that make you "bad" that you can't beat the game as fast as they can? In FFVII Remake, can you clear all bosses with no items while taking no damage? If not, does that make you "bad?" There's not a defined line of what is "good" and what is "bad." As long as you get the clear, anything else is a metric you set for yourself. There are parse chasing players who want to try and beat effectively the "highest score" for their job, but that's not the standard of gameplay in this game. I know our community has a habit of pretending it is, but ultimately, a clear's a clear.

Anyway, it may be fruitless, but I'm kind of curious how you guys would self-evaluate your own selves in terms of that three types of player paradigm.

Brain and Heart. I'm an analyzer and a theorycrafter. I build theorycrafts of gameplay elements I want to see for games for fun, and in gameplay, a big part in what helps me learn savage fights is seeing where I am in my rotation as certain mechanics come about and storing that information for later. "Oh, I'm coming up on my 3rd Technical Step in P6S, that means I have to Samba before I begin Technical because that's the raidwide that happens in the middle of me dancing, and I won't be able to mitigate it if I don't use it early." Though apparently now I can Samba during Technical. But I also love elements of chance and risk. I like DNC's procs as it keeps my gameplay fluid. In Tales of Vesperia, I primarily played as Patty the gambling pirate who can be a healer. Her healing ability randomly restores a little HP, a lot of HP, a little SP, a lot of SP, all your HP and SP, or may reduce everyone's HP and SP by 75%, or you have a few spells that will randomly cast any magic spell of specific ranks, and you can force it to choose either offensive or healing spells. Obviously something like that wouldn't work in FFXIV, but chance keeps things from getting stale. I also tend to pick up on mechanics quickly, and I resonate with the idea of psyching out my opponents and controlling the state of battle. My favorite archetype in RPGs are debuffing healers, or harassing poke healers who can chip away at opponents to allow their allies to get an easy kill.