Paired Threads: What would it take to make Heaker kits "complex/interesting"?

[ASkellington]

/sigh

If that were the case, I wouldn't be routinely attacked here for being wrong - which I am, let's be honest - since I hold those same positions. I do agree on paper it appears that we all agree, but clearly we do not, so you can't wave it away as "Well, we all are saying that exact same thing", when that isn't the case, as so am I.

Where we differ is in our solutions, and what the wider community thinks.

Which I have said already.


[QUOTE]1. Isn't true, as Abyssos DOES require higher amounts of healing and/or mitigation. Ex4 ALSO required more healing than a typical Extreme. So on both points you're wrong on that point. (also, kind of an Either-Or fallacy there, though not QUITE since you do ask the question with there being a potential third solution, you're just expressing doubt it exists)

No. I said consistently. EX1 and 2 of this expansion have been piss poor as have been a good chunk of the first tier of Savage. After ShB we should have had this difficulty already. But the devs said "well, we usually make the first tiers easy". Excuse me? After healers were asking for higher healing in the previous expansion you were going to make these easier to heal than the previous savage tier? Yeah, no. That's the part that I take issue with. SE needs to continuously give higher healing requirements and not back track after a tier (which we suspect they may do the for the next set of savages) or just going forward period.

2. The solution most people seem to be proposing is there shouldn't be downtime with nothing to heal, so the answer there would be healing.

You haven't seen a good one? I've seen others...are you sure you're looking?

Yeah that's the part where I've said I haven't seen anything. There is always going to be down time. So unless you and everyone else are on board with making MSQ more difficult for healers so there isn't going to be any there as well...

Again, the main solution now seems to be "More healing required/more Abyssos is good, just move mitigation to Healers instead of giving it to DPS". While you might accept that solution, the posters in this forum have largely been opposed to it.

...because I've proposed it or variations of it QUITE A FEW TIMES up until now, and let's just say "disagreement" occurred.

And the reason why is above. SE isn't going to make dungeon content harder. Meaning down time is going to be there for experienced healers. I don't agree with their stance on it at all. By 90 you should know how to heal, but that's where SE stands and they don't seem to be budging. Which is fine, but again, if I am going to have excessive amounts of down time, then make the down time more interesting.

I've said for a while there are bridges for agreement. My attempts to propose them have been rebuffed at every turn, with the position of the majority here being I'm an isolated case with whom no one agrees. I think the data is showing that claim to be false. At best, you could say my position is held by a sizeable minority of the player base. My proposal for 1 simple Healer, 1 moderate Healer, and 2 complex Healers was based on this breakdown, and often rejected based on the belief no one holds my position. But if it turns out 25-50% DO?

My rejection of your proposal was never under the belief no one held your position. My reject is because you're going to be leaving 1 healer behind in fixing their down time when there's no reason to other than "well people like it to be simple". Ok. You can give the simple healer a simple set of DPS skills. SGE has Phlegma after all. That is why I don't understand your position. I'm not asking for all healers to be at the same level of complexity.

It also defeats Ty's statements above that "literally" no one agreed with me. At the very least, we can put that one to bed as debunked. Even if the data isn't great or the majority don't agree with me, that there are some that do means that there are, in fact, people who agree with me, proving false the claim that none do.

Eh. This is between you and him.

[ty_taurus]

I didn’t even say no one agrees with him on all of planet earth. I was specifically referencing these forums—that in this space, he is the outlier, so if he wants any of his arguments to hold water, he should get more proof than “because I said so.”

[Renathras]

Which I have said already.

1) Good. Then we agree. Because I have already said so as well.

2) Wait, are we talking about MSQ or Extreme/Savage? The relatively universal position from the community seems to be not to touch MSQ and just leave it as it is. You're not going to find many people accepting the argument that it should require/encourage tons more healing/DPSing in order to clear.

3) Unfortunately, perhaps, but they don't make normal dungeons to be super engaging. They make them to be loot grinds and one-time story clears. They aren't making design decisions around them. Sorry... Maybe Criterion will be the start of a new thing, but considering the lead balloon reception...

4) I didn't say you. I said the majority here. I should also note there are a not insubstantial number of respondents who are asking for the same thing as I have for a proposed solution - for 1 or 2 Healing Jobs (typically WHM and often SGE) to be left alone. That is, in fact, what a lot of people want.

5) No, though he's the worst and latest offender. He's hardly the only one who has said it here. See (4)

...

I didn’t even say no one agrees with him on all of planet earth. I was specifically referencing these forums—that in this space, he is the outlier, so if he wants any of his arguments to hold water, he should get more proof than “because I said so.”

I wish, just once, you could type the words "I'm sorry. I was wrong about that. I will try not to lie about you again."

And you also have failed to present an argument for why your "because I said so" is valid. "A majority agrees with me" isn't proof of anything in general (unless we're asking about opinions; here we're talking about projections of what people will do, such as if they will quit a role or not after proposed changes), especially when that majority is a sample size of about 10 people. Your sample is too small to appeal to the "wisdom of the masses" even if it IS a majority HERE. It's still a bandwagon fallacy.

You think that jobs are fine as-is because most people are content with them, and change is not required.

You lied about this, I proved it TWICE; in the first you quoted other parts of the post and avoided this, then when I made one post ONLY this so you couldn't reply to it without addressing it, and you simply ignored that post.

.

As for the "you're all alone":

My position was that the community a whole - the playerbase as a whole - feels a certain way. Something you vaguely touched on here:

My argument and the argument that many have made elsewhere is that reworking jobs like the healers, or SMN, or other hot topic jobs to appeal to the people who used to play them would either be well received or neutrally received by the vast bulk of players that play them currently, because that's just how gamers are.

So we weren't talking about a mere majority here, we were talking more broadly. You shifted the goalposts, and switched to talking about only this forum, but even there you're wrong. The part of the post I wrote up but deleted because I wanted to confront you about lying about me being opposed to change I noted even on this forum I'm not alone. Excerpt here:

3) "Are you or are you not almost always at odds with literally every other person..." - I am not. If you like, I could point you to several of the people in the DPS forums that agree with my positions in those threads. I may be at odds with the MAJORITY, it's not "literally ever other person" with me alone on an island and no one else agreeing with me. To name a few, "dpsguy" outright called my points good. Connor also seems to agree with a lot of my posts or play "good cop" to try to get people to answer the arguments I'm actually making in my posts. After people replied to my posts asking them questions with hyperbole or a personal attack, he'd post "Yes, but that really doesn't answer Renathras' question. Can you give an answer to it?". Mikey_R also seems to agree with my positions. Those are literally people, therefore, literally every other person is not at odds with me. Moreover, there as here, it's the same roughly 4-6 people that disagree with me. The only difference is that the DPS forum isn't as much an echo chamber, so there are some people that are more neutral and there are several that agree with me.

So no, I am not, in fact, almost always at odds with literally every other person on the DPS forums. That's further proof for how much this Healer forum is an echo chamber that is toxic and antagonistic to different points of view. And why I've pointed out in at least two threads how someone coming in who had views similar to my own was attacked (or, AT BEST, given a snarky reception) for having them. Kele_Star seemed to find me agreeable enough, and Faidid (at least with SGE) and boopadoop seemed to feel that way about all the healers (and then deleted his post and hasn't posted here since his reception). Come to think of it, Kele hasn't posted in a bit, though seemed to get a better reception, so that could be unrelated.

Note I didn't even mention the Tanking forum, where there were a number of people that agreed with me in discussions on the PLD changes, among other things. (That forum is much slower with far fewer posts, but I could point out some of my posts there that got a lot of Likes). So it's really only THIS subforum, which I've noted is a hard echo chamber that pounces on people that don't tow the line with it, where this is at all an issue.

So even in the far more limited, far more favorable to your position goalpost of "only on the official forums" (Healer + DPS all included; I didn't even mention the Tank forum in the above reply, where I've had a number of people agreeing with me), you're wrong, and even in JUST the Healer one you're still wrong - it is, in fact, the only one you're even remotely close to being correct in, but you're still wrong there.

But even if that were all wrong - the majority is not always right, so appealing to the majority is a fallacy in the first place.

But it's NOT true that I'm isolated. And with a broader audience (the survey), it's looking like I'm FAR less isolated than you would like to believe.

.

And yes, I AM angry about you lying about me. I gave you two opportunities to correct it, which you avoided like the plague since you'd have to admit you were wrong, something you seem incapable of doing - and yes, I AM angry about that since you not only outright lied about me TWICE, you avoided answering to it TWICE, and you KNOW better since you've been in dozens of conversations with me at this point where I've proposed various change schema, both ones that change some Healers and some that change all of them, and I've been VERY consistent in saying that at the very least SCH and AST need change, and I'm also a proponent of changing the encounter designs themselves. It's impossible, at this point, for you to think I'm opposed to all change, so you OUTRIGHT lied about me and have refused to fess up to it.

I think that's the most infuriating part - YOU KNOW it was a lie, but not only did you lie about it, you refused to admit to it or even do a face saving "mublemmuble okay you aren't against all change...you're right, and I knew that, I'm sorry". You just...refused to address it. If you're going to lie outright about someone, at least have the decency to apologize when they call you out on it.

And we all know you won't admit to lying about someone even when called on it twice and given an opportunity to walk it back.

Hell, you have an opportunity RIGHT NOW. Can you do it, or will you be either defensive OR make only a partial apology that allows you to attack back (a "qualified/conditional" "apology"), or just once more ignore that you lied about me and were called on it?

/sigh

Moving on...

But this is a stupid argument. We all now know my position is not an isolated one in the playerbase as a whole, OR even on this forum, and hopefully our data will give us a decent overview of the playerbase as a whole.

That, I think is more important. Figuring out what people on the whole actually think, since any good solutions should be based on that, and perhaps you lot will temper your positions if we find that the majority is not so in agreement with you as you think, adapting yourselves to the new data; as a rational person should.

[AnotherPerson]

/sigh

2. The solution most people seem to be proposing is there shouldn't be downtime with nothing to heal, so the answer there would be healing.

You haven't seen a good one? I've seen others...are you sure you're looking?

No, no one suggested there shouldn't be downtime with nothing to heal. Downtime is a necessary component to making fights flexible and giving brevity to healers or else their MP bottoms out ASAP.
The problem is that downtime is too prevalent -- to the point where you can go upwards to over 80% or 90% casting your GCD damage skill.

In normal content, downtime can actually even reach 100% of the time based on the dungeon, party composition & skill level. I know this is to be true... because I just did a PF challenge where we went into The Dead Ends with a traditional party with 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 DPS with the condition that the healer cannot heal.... and we cleared it with wall to wall pulls and cleared bosses without the healer contributing to any healing. In other words... the healer doesn't even need to perform their role to clear the fight. They're more or less superfluous... especially when you compare healing to ARR dungeons where you definitely did need a healer to clear the fight.

And the problem with increasing the amount of healing was that... this was already suggested, and it backfired. People tried to suggest to increase more healing time, and then healers quit because they couldn't heal it. Even Yoshi P came out to say he figured this would happen, but there was no mention about just giving healers more DPS abilities.

2) Wait, are we talking about MSQ or Extreme/Savage? The relatively universal position from the community seems to be not to touch MSQ and just leave it as it is. You're not going to find many people accepting the argument that it should require/encourage tons more healing/DPSing in order to clear.

The universal opinion about MSQ is to make it accessible. Accessibility does not directly make one role feel unneeded... or only to be there "as an emergency". That's pretty much the problem with healers right now in normal content.

Edit: I do want to clarify that originally, the reason why increasing healing backfired was because the way they increased healing was more along the lines of mitigation checks rather than increasing the variety of healing methods (DPS actually needed to mitigate, but healers got blamed if DPS forgets to mitigate). I can't be certain if that's truly the reason why healers all just decided to quit (though I suspect it's a mix of both instances of increased healing and foisted responsibility). Most healer skills are also lately centered towards healing their party rather than being targetable on external sources, so I feel a good portion of the healer toolkit design is also flawed in this regard allowing versatility in fights, such as healing NPCs to ensure they live as well. Though I largely suspect the reality is that we just have too many healing skills for most fights that aren't applicable outside of extreme/savage/ultimate if the game is meant to be accessible in normal mode content. The main glaring flaw is just how low damage is in normal content and even solo content, which puts healer in a very weird place with just how much healing skills they have.

[ty_taurus]

And we all know you won't admit to lying about someone even when called on it twice and given an opportunity to walk it back.

You offering me the chance to walk it back is truly touching. I am deeply humbled that you would offer me such charity out of the goodness of your heart. Honestly, I am undeserving of such grace.

[Renathras]

No, no one suggested there shouldn't be downtime with nothing to heal. Downtime is a necessary component to making fights flexible and giving brevity to healers or else their MP bottoms out ASAP.

Actually, quite a few people in the survey results are making this argument - that healing should be continuous through the encounters with more unavoidable damage and more "mini-spot-tankbusters" striking non-tank party members. Quite a few people in the survey seem to want more healing requirements, and more consistent healing requirements, filling that "downtime" with healing.

Right now, we get LARGE spikes (often several in quick succession) of healing, then nothing for 30-60 seconds. The result is we use several oGCDs to deal with the spikes that come back to back, then a slow burn long solution (HoT ticks) so that everyone's restored by the next wave. This further results in us having the 111211111 rotation for 80% of the encounter time.

While the universally desired solution here on this forum is to fill that downtime with damage, the generally held solution per the survey respondents seems to be they want more sustained, unavoidable damage during that intervening time so they have reason to fill that time with GCD heals instead.

The problem is that downtime is too prevalent -- to the point where you can go upwards to over 80% or 90% casting your GCD damage skill.

Agreed.

In normal content,

The prevailing view seems to be that NORMAL content shouldn't really be touched, or if it should, it should be more healing, not more damage dealing. A lot of people seem to be complaining the issue is Tanks are too sustain heavy (especially WAR - you didn't mention which Tank you took, just curious, was it WAR?), and Tank sustain needs to be brought down.

especially when you compare healing to ARR dungeons where you definitely did need a healer to clear the fight.

It's so weird when I do a Leveling Roulette and get an ARR dungeon because I'm using GCD heals. It's almost like if we had no oGCD heals, healing would be more engaging...

And the problem with increasing the amount of healing was that... this was already suggested, and it backfired.

The respondents to the survey talk A LOT about this, too. The prevailing view is that the more healing was A GREAT IDEA, and THEY LIKED IT.

The problem, almost universally, is people saying that Healers had to rely on Tanks and DPSers to use mitigation, and if they didn't, it made the encounters murder on the Healers, who were also blamed for wipes. So the universal solution proposed is to keep the Abyssos damage, but shift most or all party mitigation tools to the Healers exclusively so the Healers are in full command of the damage profiles of the encounters. This seems to be by FAR the desired change to encounter design post-Abyssos.

In fact, it also dovetails with a LOT of Healers wanting more non-damage/non-healing support tools, and considering mitigation to be a some of what they want.

I haven't seen a single response yet saying they want to revert to pre-Abyssos levels of healing and get more damage buttons. Even the people wanting more damage buttons haven't been saying that. It seems the Abyssos healing requirement was actually a hit overall.

The universal opinion about MSQ is to make it accessible. Accessibility does not directly make one role feel unneeded... or only to be there "as an emergency". That's pretty much the problem with healers right now in normal content.

The problem I have with this argument is it's true of every role. You can do most dungeons with 1 Healer + 3 DPS. Or 1 Tank + 3 DPS. Or 2 Tanks + 2 Healers. Or 4 Healers. WAR can solo pretty much every modern level cap dungeon. It's not Healers aren't needed in normal content, it's that literally ANY role isn't needed if you have either a Tank or a Healer. DPS are the most superfluous, as you don't actually need them at all. DPS do nothing but speed up the time to clear the dungeon, but they aren't required. On the other hand, having 4 DPS might be difficult to clear encounters unless you have a RDM/SMN/DNC for healing the party and a RDM/SMN for reviving people. 4 Healers could clear all modern dungeons doing single pulls. Solo Tanks can do the same thing.

This suggests it's actually DPSers that are unnecessary in modern content, though you could clear with 4 DPSers if you had the right mix of healing and revival tools.

You offering me the chance to walk it back is truly touching. I am deeply humbled that you would offer me such charity out of the goodness of your heart. Honestly, I am undeserving of such grace.

Yeah, I thought so.

Three times. Now I'm just going to hang that over your head from now on. Good job, friend.
Naaah, I'm just going to ignore it for the most part, since it's par for the course. But it proves what I said once before: That you cannot admit when you're wrong.

At least we both know you realize you were wrong, you just can't actually bring yourself to admit it due to immaturity or...something. (If you DIDN'T realize it, you'd have contested the point, but even you know there's no grounds for you to defend yourself on the claim.)

You did exactly what I said you would.

I wished I was wrong about that...oh well.

[ty_taurus]

You did exactly what I said you would.

I wished I was wrong about that...oh well.

What did I say? I told you I was humbled by your good faith. Where's the issue?

[AnotherPerson]

The prevailing view seems to be that NORMAL content shouldn't really be touched, or if it should, it should be more healing, not more damage dealing. A lot of people seem to be complaining the issue is Tanks are too sustain heavy (especially WAR - you didn't mention which Tank you took, just curious, was it WAR?), and Tank sustain needs to be brought down.

This topic was actually in another thread about the difficulty of dungeon content more recently. It originally started about finding fun dungeons and how the dungeon content was too easy, then there were comparisons drawn saying the difficulty gotten harder vs much easier. At some point people also brought up content was finally clearable with 1 tank + 3 DPS when it wasn't that case before as healers were one point required in synced content (You wouldn't be able to clear Aurum Vale or Stone Vigil without a healer, for example). Then people started setting up a challenge to see if it's doable with a healer that doesn't heal in the traditional party settings to truly see if the difficulty has gone down from ARR/HW and SB/ShB/EW. Other people got interested to whether it was doable or not after it kept on getting talked about, but the original people who set the challenge couldn't do it due to being on different DCs.

I was curious to see if it was actually doable as well so I tried PLD, WAR, and DRK and made a post about my findings. I was really skeptical at first to be honest. I knew 1 WAR + 3 DPS can do it. I didn't think DRK can clear the bosses without a healer healing because they just had no self-sustain other than their personal shield, but I was proven wrong. When the amount of actual healing needed is so low in the traditional party setting with 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 DPS that the healer doesn't need to do their main role at all, it starts setting off alarm bells to me.


I wouldn't be against healing more to be honest. I'm just aware how easily it can backfire after Abysseos happened. Moving all the mitigations to healers might work better, but it also means a higher responsibility /penalty (in the event a healer dies, no more mitigation for the party). We'll have to see if that's better or worse in gameplay afterwards because I can see that being much worse for people who aren't as good in healing due to the higher skill floor requirement which goes against their accessibility design.

[Renathras]

...

Just got done testing this. Latest dungeon, Lapis.

I love actual data/facts/testing, actually...a quick call on my (slightly crazy) CWLS that likes doing crazy things (our class only ZodEx one which has also done class only 24 man runs), then a trip to PF to pick up the rest, did the trick

4x Healers - Cleared EASY. Tankbusters we dealt with using mit and sometimes not even mit and just raw healing to top off the target before the strike then bring them back up after it. I don't think we had even a single death. We did full wall to wall pulls the whole way. Party was 2x WHM, SCH, SGE - I was SCH, found out after the run someone else could have run SCH and I could have run AST, but I think the result would be about the same, we'd just have had even MORE mitigation.

4x Tanks - Cleared easy. This was actually SLIGHTLY harder than the Healers. Full wall to wall pulls, had a death and close calls (one on the second boss and one super near-death on the final trash pack). Party was PLD, WAR, DRK, GNB - I was the GNB (seemed I was the only one that had it leveled)

4x DPS - We wiped on trash. Several times. We had to single pull the trash packs because otherwise damage was too high. The final trash packs we actually had to use Sleep since there was too much damage otherwise. The first boss we barely cleared on the first shot with the party barely alive. The second boss we wiped on twice before we could clear it. The final boss...was a beast. I think we had to do it 5-7 times. The all DPS run actually took the longest at around 55 mins to clear. The final boss was only possible - in fact, ALL the bosses were only possible - due to having a RDM in the party casting a ton of Vercures. (me being said RDM). The final boss, I think I only did 2 melee combos the whole time, via Manafication, since all my other GCDs were spent healing the "tank" or healing the party during the parts like the add phase where it hits 3 people with targeted markers then does a stack marker then does the phase transition big hit, then does another stack marker shortly after that. Tankbusters were fatal and required Rasing in all but the first boss fight. We actually had to use food buff to clear the final boss. It was pretty brutal. I cannot stress enough that without the RDM's HEALING, this would not have been possible. Any all DPS party that did not have a RDM likely could not clear the dungeon. Party was DRG, RPR, SMN, RDM - I was the RDM. (I started to go NIN but realized my gear was a bit dated; had I done so, we would not have been able to clear.)

For all the talk of Healers being unneeded, it seems that DPS are actually the role that's unneeded. You MUST have either a Healer or a Tank. So 1 Tank + 3 DPS could be substituted with 1 Healer + 3 DPS with likely the same result, just a bit slower. I didn't test that specific configuration, but considering I was able to shoe-horn healer the DPS party as a RDM with single target Vercure and Magick Barrier my only tools, I'm pretty sure literally ANY Healer would have made that a breeze instead since they'd have targeted mitigation and shielding for the tankbuster and a party mitigation plus easy access to AOE heals for the hard phases that gave me trouble on RDM. And it certainly would have made the trash packs easier.

I think DPS is actually the role that's unneeded in normal content, not Healers. When people say "1 Tank + 3 DPS" what they're really saying is "The party requires something that isn't a DPS otherwise the run won't work". If it wasn't that I formed a PF group specifically to do the three runs in a row, a normal dungeon run would probably have disbanded after that many wipes.

.

As to the more healing - the problem now is that Healers still have all that responsibility, they just have to HOPE other people hold up their end. If those people don't, though, the Healers are still the ones blamed for the failure. I think right now, Healers just want more agency, and that would give it.

What did I say? I told you I was humbled by your good faith. Where's the issue?

I'm tired of fighting with you over immature nonsense. You can be an adult or a child, but I don't care as long as you drop the nonsense.

On the off chance you somehow read all 5 of my last posts and SOMEHOW didn't get it such that you're asking this question in good faith:

You said I oppose change for the sake of it and that I think Healers are just fine and need no changes.

Lest you think (or want to throw out there as a last ditch defense) I'm misquoting you, here are your exact quotes:

You think that jobs are fine as-is because most people are content with them, and change is not required.

Otherwise you just seem like someone who hates change for the sake of hating change.

I'm sure you'll try to 13th hour "what I ACTUALLY meant was..." them, but in those quotes, plain text, you're saying that I think Jobs are fine because people are content and no change is required, and that I seem to hate change for the sake of hating change.

The second can't be a thing I seem because I've outright proposed and supported changes.

The first I've said about literally ONE Job, SMN. Even WHM I've said needs additional party mitigation abilities, and that's the Healer I'd change THE LEAST.

Those are two points I don't even hold, and you know I don't because every single discussion just about, I've said that encounter design needs changing and at THE VERY LEAST SCH and AST need adjustments, and even my own proposals for "leave 1/2 alone" include making some minor changes like making Toxicon damage neutral and giving WHM a second/third party mitigation per two minutes (something on a 60 sec CD).

As those are, by definition, changes - it's clear I'm not opposed to any and all change for the sake of it, and it's also clear that I haven't said no changes at all are needed for Healers. YOU DISAGREE WITH THE CHANGES I HAVE PROPOSED, but that isn't me making no proposals or opposing all change and/or insisting none was needed.

Aside from that, you also can't admit you were wrong about me being the only person who holds my views and that literally everyone else on this forum (which you included the DPS forum) disagrees with me after I cited specific other people agreeing with me ON THESE FORUMS. And looking at the wider audience, it appears many other people agree with my position to, to the point it may be a plurality or even majority position (results still pending)

If you AREN'T asking in good faith, and are just trying to string me along while avoiding ever admitting error on your part, then I don't care to indulge you further. Especially since I've done/am doing what you asked with the survey, and the result of THAT is going to be you saying "Well, no, THAT was my argument all along..." even though many of you are only at odds with me because it ISN'T your argument. If it was, we'd never be fighting here, since my own seems to be matching up well with the survey results thus far.

[ty_taurus]

I'm being an adult. I'm being direct. You're reading too much into what I'm saying.