T/H/D/D vs T/3DPS - By the numbers

[WaxSw]

Okay, I guess that's what I'm getting at. So long as we agree on that, I see no further issue.

One of my constant battles in here is hyperbole, so "no healing needed at all" is hyperbole and shouldn't be said. If we're in agreement SOME healing is needed but it's easy to address using very little of our kit (wall-to-walls aside; those actually can be somewhat more engaging), then I see nothing left to argue about there.

No one has ever said no healing at all, otherwise the hps needed would be 0, they mean no significant healing.

The average dungeon run (doing wall to wall) demands around 3k hps from the whole group, this is low enough that with a little of tank mit and party self sustain the healer can be left with half of that (down to near 0 if the tank is decent). When we have kits that can go over 20k without bis that is problematic because the game's not asking for even a 10-15% of all our healing capabilities and thus people say there is nothing to heal

(As a reference of how low 3k hps is, p1n a fight known to be extremely easy demands 6k from both healers)

Also I find weird that you're trying to be that precise about that but you still haven't answered Sebazy's questions

Where the 5-15% come from when the real percentages are 13-22%?
Why are you handwaving 2m as small when in the context of 10-12m runs 2m is huge difference?

[Sebazy]

ARR was a crazy time (people would 3 Healer things like Titan Hard early on because "What Enrage?"). I don't claim to know the motivations of all players, but having a Healer along decreases risk. I'm not sure how well that can be argued against. If you have, say, a WAR/NIN/BLM/BLM party and someone DOES die (one of the deaths from the mono-role parties I did was our all Tank party doing the second boss. Someone got clipped by the X attack, which apparently applies Doom. No Esuna means KO. No Raise means stay KO.), you have no way to bring them back. On the off chance there is a cascade of deaths, this can lead to wipes.

Dead Ends is about the only dungeon I sympathise with deaths tbh, the bosses have a bunch of mechanics that will potentially one shot a non tank. The others are wildly non threatening to the point that the bosses are less dangerous than the trash. It takes eating multiple avoidable hits in succession to die in Experto these days even before you're in BiS gear.


While wipes aren't exactly punishing, they do add to the dungeon complete time, and they are something that people like to avoid. Besides which, if a party already has a Tank, they don't need to bring a Healer for the DF time-to-enter bonus.

I think my issue with the design thing is that it's yet another case of hyperbole.

Say you have a flawless Rolex, worth more than a lot of people's cars or bank accounts. Master craftsmanship, high quality materials. But you play to go deep water diving. The watch isn't useful to you THERE, but that doesn't mean the watch is BADLY DESIGNED. It just means the design is for something else.

My contention is that the Healers are not BADLY DESIGNED - they are designed fine - the problem is the encounter designs of the game have shifted over time to be (relatively) incompatible with them.

Would you say that healers are well designed for solo content then?

This isn't a Rolex that isn't waterproof, this is a Rolex stops working in the evening. It looks beautiful but it's not always useful, it's missing a big part of it's functionality.

You can't say something is designed well without considering the context of what it was designed for. That's not hyperbole, that's a simple principle of good design.

One of my constant battles in here is hyperbole, so "no healing needed at all" is hyperbole and shouldn't be said.

You mean like trying to suggest that 13 to 22% is somehow 5 to 15%?

[ForsakenRoe]

Surely if the Rolex being 'doesn't function underwater' is the issue (healers don't suit the combat design as it has evolved), surely the prevailing opinion that we should update healers is correct, not that we should update the design to suit healers? After all, if the healers were 'left behind as the content evolved', forcing the encounter design to change to match the healers is 'regression'. Also, what's easier, redesigning the Rolex to make it also be waterproof (without impacting it's functionality as a very nice looking watch), or redesigning how water works so that it doesn't damage stuff like clockwork? Or if we were saying 'don't use it in environment X as it's not designed for that', we're forced to use a healer in an EX roulette, which it seems 'not designed for' by the DF demanding at least one. If you don't have one, you don't get the daily bonus of tomes, and that means you'd have to do a whole extra run to make up the difference

And who's saying 'no healing needs to be done', it's 'no GCD healing needs to be done as everything is solved with OGCDs with some to spare, hence our healing kits are considered bloated', I already showed a pic of all the moves I didn't press once in an EX roulette back when Aldazaal was in the roulette and it worked out to be like 40% of my buttons that just never got touched. Not just Diag/Prog but 'oh I guess I don't need Pneuma or Zoe at all because the healing required is just that low'. This is why I think my Sage idea is good, optimal play even in EX roulette would force the player to make use of every tool they have, but a casual player can just Prognosis spam as much as they want because it's 0 MP cost, the only cost is 'its a GCD that could have been damage' which a casual player isn't thinking about

Feels like the goalposts are getting moved so much they're on wheels at this point

[Rilifane]

I'm kind of curious, can any Ultimtes be solo Tanked?

I've solo Healed Extremes without issue, but I've also solo Tanked extremes. And I think there was an all Tank run of something Savage (P1S?)

I hope this isn't you trying to steer this into a "all roles can be dropped" direction but yes, there is a 1/1/6 TEA clear. Solo tank AND solo heal.
Which, again, I don't think should be possible.

As for solo tank clears for endgame content, they are ironically the ones that are generally tied to more mindful and coordinated gameplay than solo healer clears (like the P1S solo tank clear having very specific requirements) while also being the ones with the most frequent guaranteed loss as opposed to rng loss at best like in TOP solo heal or simply no scripted loss, which is true for the majority of the fights.
Double tankbusters will often kill your top dps, there is no good rng to avoid it; you can sometimes avoid it by coordinated mitigation stacking and making sure the most tanky dps takes the hit but good luck trying that with busters like in e8s. So for many fights you would need to constantly sac your top dps in order to pull it off (almost all savage fights, Dia Ex, Barbie Ex etc) - the execution is inherently "not clean".

Another difference is how much of each role's toolkit is dedicated to which task.
DPS have almost all of their toolkit directly dedicated to dealing damage which, barring a few examples in Ultimates when you tempoarily need controlled dps, is always useful by increasing efficiency and lowering the risks by potentially skipping mechanics.
Bloodbath, Second Wind, Addle/ Feint, Samba etc which is is 5 buttons at most with most having 3.
Tanks have a more even split with about half the toolkit for mitigation and aggro and half for dps, give or take a few % depending on the class.
Now healers are the other extreme with everything BUT 4 to 6 buttons dedicated to dps and the rest to healing.

I'm mentioning this because healing is completely binary. Aggro is binary, mitigation has diminished usefulness. Dps is always useful.
So even when you are not strictly required on DPS because the content you are doing has no or a very lenient dps check, your entire toolkit is still designed for something that is always useful, that contributes to a faster kill or potentially skipping later and more dangerous mechanics. You are always a gain.
Once the binary healing requirement has been fulfilled however, a healer is a gimped dps. And if the binary healing requirement can be reliably fulfilled despite dropping one or even both healers then you really are just a hindrance because you're lowering the speed or the chance of skipping mechanics for no good reason. And if this is possible in endgame content, then we have a problem.

So being able to drop tanks is just as bad as being able to drop healers and being able to drop DPS and intentionally gimping the party isn't an argument that it's okay either.

[WaxSw]

Solo heal vs solo tank ultimates

Iirc the solo tank TEA clear was also after dungeon gear was released so the dps could, with heavy mitigation, barely survive some of the tankbusters and there are no recorded solo tank on top or dsr, meanwhile we have:
Dsr solo heal (within the same patch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh9r...l=SlienceRiver
Top solo heal (in patch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B934...hannel=hakoott

As well as the usual, solo heal uwu, tea and ucob runs, as a matter of fact healers are the only role that has seen "solo" clears for every ultimate released

[Deceptus]

This is the reason why its a point of contention. I'm sorry, no trinity game (healer/tank/dps) should allow one of the trinity to be irrelevant, in this case healers, because the outgoing damage is that friggin low. Even if we discard W2W I'm pretty sure on my GNB I can solo an EW boss. In fact, I have! From above 50% hp.

That's not a sign of good skill expression. That's a sign the devs have made healing far too low for w/e reason they claim to be a good one.

It does seem like the lower dungeons, after the stat squish, were rebalanced to the mini ilvl instead of the max.

I got put into a Hero's Gauntlet as a Warrior where the group died at 50% and I proceeded to finish the dungeon, but there were multiple "oh sh!t" moments where I got REALLY low HP because the boss was hitting that hard (glad I keep potions on hand).

Meanwhile in EW, if in that same situation, I wouldn't even go below 50% hp.

[Semirhage]

I have run Vanaspati as a Scholar. I was told by the WAR as the dungeon loaded in "healer don't heal me".

I pressed zero heals during that run. GCD, oGCD, free, aetherflow, none of it. Zero. Every single Aetherflow stack was spent on Energy Drain. Every GCD was refreshing Biolysis, Art of Waring, or Broiling. Every. One.

This is not hyperbole. Stop dismissing healer complaints with "Hyperbole! Hyperbole!"

Would ONE GCD heal have made this hideous design acceptable? How about two? Mayhap three? What about two oGCDs thrown in there? Would that be indicative that there's no problem anymore? Is it useful to sit around and go "NUH UH, you cast TWO healing spells not ZERO, don't EXAGGERATE"? Because two practically rounds down to zero anyway. And we're sitting -at- zero.

[ForsakenRoe]

I have run Vanaspati as a Scholar. I was told by the WAR as the dungeon loaded in "healer don't heal me".

I pressed zero heals during that run. GCD, oGCD, free, aetherflow, none of it. Zero. Every single Aetherflow stack was spent on Energy Drain. Every GCD was refreshing Biolysis, Art of Waring, or Broiling. Every. One.

This is not hyperbole. Stop dismissing healer complaints with "Hyperbole! Hyperbole!"

Would ONE GCD heal have made this hideous design acceptable? How about two? Mayhap three? What about two oGCDs thrown in there? Would that be indicative that there's no problem anymore? Is it useful to sit around and go "NUH UH, you cast TWO healing spells not ZERO, don't EXAGGERATE"? Because two practically rounds down to zero anyway. And we're sitting -at- zero.

Nuh uh doesn't count cos the fairy was casting embrace /s

[Renathras]

No one has ever said...

Sorry, but people either outright say or strongly imply that all the time. It's why I often mention that they still have to use oGCDs and why I've said before removing oGCDs would actually make them feel like they're healing more, since people tend not to think, when using oGCDs, "I'm healing".

As to her question - didn't see it. I was operating at the time on a difference of about a minute in a > 10 min run, which would be +/-10%.

I'm "handwaving" 2 minutes as small because 2 minutes is a very small unit of time compared to everything else I do. My Lopporit quests take longer than 2 minutes to complete. Capping out entirely due to perfect speed runs for 450 tomes per week means running 5 of them. 2 min x 5 runs = 10 mins. Meaning a difference of 2 minutes is saving you all of...10 minutes...a week. Which is a ridiculously small amount of time for most Humans, especially since you're only getting the bonus once per day. Conversely, you could run them all at once, in which case you'd get 90 for the first run and 40 for each other run, needing 10 total runs. In that case, you'd be saving 20 minutes...but you'd be adding a good deal of INefficiency by running them all at once since that would take 10 mins x 10 runs = 100 minutes (1 hour 40 mins) to accomplish. For context, a person running a typical DF 15 min run 5x a week would only take 75 minutes total, so doing this would be you actually wasting 25 minutes vs just doing a standard run each of 5 days in a week. So at that point, we aren't talking about time saved, we're talking about getting it all done at once. (10x 15 minute runs would be 150 minutes, or 2 and a half hours, for comparison)

In short, it's a decent amount in percentage terms, but is still a negligible amount of overall time saved. MOREOVER, there are caveats:

We're not talking an average team. Note that we're basing this "analysis" on THE FASTEST RUNS RECORDED. The average T/3D run is not 10 minutes or 8 minutes. Those are the fastest runs. Meaning the general speed run team - already more skilled than the average playerbase - is probably going to be taking longer. I'm not sure how to get the average of only non-healer comps, but the average mathematically MUST be slower than the top/best run, yes? One can argue this will apply to the standard composition run, and I would agree, but the gap may not be as pronounced, we'd have to look at said averages to know.

In any case, the overall point is, for the bulk of the playerbase, who doesn't want to deal with PF and doesn't have a pre-formed static, standard composition runs are going to be safer and - FOR THEIR PURPOSES - a negligible time difference of their weekly playtime.

Dead Ends is about...

I dunno, people seem more than capable of dying or nearly dying in runs I'm in. Frequently.

By the quirks of the que, I was a RDM in Lapis last night. (I hit que as Healer and it was an odd 7 min wait, so just curious if DPS would be 10+, I tried as RDM and the que instantly popped. "Well, crap..." I thought as I hit accept - don't want to turn down a que due to the penalty and I hate when people do it when I que and it resets the party.) The Tank (a GNB) did not use a single mitigation ability until the last trash pull. The VERY last one, with the 2 Monks then the 3rd Monk and the little adds that spawn out of the air. I actually had to use Vercure a few times. The Healer, with a Savage 635 weapon and full 630 armor, kept saying "mit" in party. AFTER WE WIPED on the last trash pack, I did autotranslate (maybe the person doesn't speak/read English) of "Heart of Corundum", "Nebula", and the other DPS did "Rampart". So then the Tank enters combat again (I'm the only one already there because I Sprinted ahead, the other DPS and Healer aren't even there yet), and poops those CDs. All at once. The WHM Healer says "but not all at once". Anyway, we somehow survive this time, then move onto the final boss. I wasn't watching AS closely, but I don't think the Tank actually used a single mitigation. Oh, and did I mention the Tank started the instance without stance, almost getting everyone killed from the wildly rotating agro? Because that happened.

Yes, this does happen in real life.

I was honestly somewhat shocked (and felt for the exasperated Healer), as I'd never seen this before. I've seen Tanks not use Arm's Length or Reprise, and rarely the "I need to save them for emergencies" Tanks not use the BIG CDs...but I've never seen one not use ANY CDs before, and only use them (all at once) when prompted one time after we wiped on a given pull. It's like the Tank version of the Cure 1 Healer. I was honestly in equal parts sympathy for the Healer and equal part astonishment/awe at this unicorn I had discovered.

Would you say that healers are well designed for solo content then?

Depends on the Healer. Doing solo PotD/HoH runs, I really enjoy SGE. It has the right amount going on to be interesting and I can actually make use of Toxicon. If Plegma's CD was a bit shorter, that might be a smidge more engaging, or if Addersting generated at the same rate as Addersgall, but that's really the only issue I have with it. And Kardia means healing is LARGELY automatic, which is kind of nice, using Karachole/Taurochole to reduce incoming damage as well, and Eukrasia Diagnosis to prep for big damage I can't avoid, Gloom floors, or untimely/unfortunate Vuln ups.

I like SCH, too, though part of it is that I like the IDEA of SCH. I like Eos traveling with me so it doesn't feel like I'm going through the dungeon alone, and she's pretty good about keeping my health in a good place. Ruin 2 is a good and fun tool for when I need to kite, Expedient is great, and I like using Eos' oGCD abilities (Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing, and even Aetherpact), and if I don't need Sacred Soil (or even if I do use it on CD), I have an extra Aetherflow or two to throw in as an Energy Drain. Adlo also makes great shielding for big hits, and SCH has a good overall mitigation toolkit that I'm actively using.

WHM is great. It's simple, direct, and Misery is just fun to hit. It also has a neat tool in Holy, which can be used strategically as an interrupt to block casts, including Mimic Infatuation (well, at least on lower floors), which no other Healer has. Regen is also nice, though if it was oGCD or a Lily spender/Blood Lily generator, that'd be a lot nicer. It's one reason that I'm consistently in favor of having a Regen Lily spender/making Regen consume a Lily and generate a Blood Lily 1/3rd when used. I think WHM would be amazing in that kind of content if all GCD heals generated 1/3rd Blood Lily since I could cast Regen and Medica 2 and be almost to a Misery right there. More Misery = more fun, and breaking up Glare a bit with GCD heals would be my ideal solution.

AST I don't play except once in a blue moon when I want to try it in a 4 man (amusingly, I almost always parse blue on it even though I never play it, though that may speak more to the average player's dearth of skill rather than my own), so couldn't tell you on that one. But I don't like AST's aesthetic or playstyle (all the oGCD weaving), so that's the reason.

But of the three Healers I do play in solo content, WHM is fine (though could be better with the GCD heals generating Blood Lily change) and SCH and SGE are both pretty enjoyable to me.

That's my honest opinion to answer your question.

Double tankbusters will often kill your top dps, there is no good rng to avoid it; you can sometimes avoid it by coordinated mitigation stacking and making sure the most tanky dps takes the hit but good luck trying that with busters like in e8s.

I kinda wonder if this is worse or better, though. For the solo Ultimates, they have to run the content for literally hours of wipes until RNG works their way. In the case of guaranteed one DPS dying, that's predictable. Meaning once you have the fight down and have your solution to how to deal with that (Raise and heal then go back to it or mass mitigate the person), then you can execute it the first time and every time.

I guess my point here is more perspective than anything. While not identical - and let's go with your take that it's the worse/more messy outcome (though I'd feel 49 wipes on the way to the 50th time RNG working out is more messy...) - it does seem to show there's a general breakdown with encounter design and the trinity AS A WHOLE.

That said, it would be interesting if we actually had off-tank capability by DPSers for limited times like, say, WoW. FFXIV even DID have this back when Titan-Egi could legitimately tank some fights. The only DPS Job that seems somewhat able too do it (for limited times) would be, what, SAM with Third Eye? (Granted, SAM will often be lead DPS, so...that part checks out.) MNK with Riddle of Earth could have before RoE was changed... Monks as short duration off-tanks actually does have some support in Final Fantasy history since it's often a Job that has low defense but high HP allowing it to "meatshield/sponge" damage for very short periods of time.

But, again, that points to a problem of encounter design. And yet another point into "FFXIV's combat system/roles are too rigid".

Oh, but one other minor counter-point - there are periods in high end content where you DON'T want to push phases and so hold damage, are there not? So "more DPS" is not always useful. (Though that's typically just for specific phases of fights, but it's still important to keep in mind.) Even as far back as ARR and Ifrit Extreme nails, though this more became a problem once people significantly overgeared/unsynced it in later expansions.

...

This is not hyperbole. Stop dismissing healer complaints with "Hyperbole! Hyperbole!"

...

Roe's sarcasm aside (Embrace was healing if Eos was out), it would be interesting to see if this works with all the Tanks or only WAR. Pretty much everyone has pointed out WAR is too powerful in AOE/4 man content, but people also tend to say 4 man content doesn't matter.

That said, it's like the Cure 1 spammer or the no mitigation Tank - they happen, but are still rare. What makes it hyperbole is when you act like every run is that when they are not.

Surely if the Rolex being 'doesn't function underwater' is the issue (healers don't suit the combat design as it has evolved), surely the prevailing opinion that we should update healers is correct, not that we should update the design to suit healers?

No.

That would be true if the encounter design WAS GOOD. If the encounter design was good, then it would make sense to change things to fit that, if that's what the Devs want their game to be like. The problem is, the encounter design is bad. Pretty much everyone acknowledges 5-10 seconds of activity followed by 1 minute without is bad design. Ex5's boss stopping EVEN AUTO ATTACKS during the maze game segments we all agree is probably bad encounter design, yes? The 2 min meta is also having trouble working into the boss mechanic design, and the body checks are often things that players don't like either.

Fitting Jobs that are designed well IN VACUUM into an encounter design that everyone agrees has major issues and needs to be changed doesn't make sense. If the encounter design is bad, then the encounter design needs to be changed. If it's changed into something the Healers/Tanks/DPS still don't fit into, but the encounter design is widely lauded as fantastic, THEN it would make sense to change the Jobs.

Changing the Jobs to fit bad encounter design doesn't fix problems, it would only cement bad encounter design for all of the foreseeable future, which is the last thing we want.

For example, all of you DO believe an Ultimate that can be solo-healed is bad, right?

So changing Healers to fit this design means that the next Ultimate CAN STILL BE SOLO HEALED, which you all THINK IS BAD, right? Why would you want to cement a design in place that you think is bad? I'm not understanding the logic there. I get you want to be LESS BORED, but that wouldn't change the fact you could still solo heal 8 mans and 0 heal 4 mans, which you all believe is bad. It seems that what you don't like is the encounter design, but your proposed solution is to keep the encounter design - which you agree with me is bad.

Healers having more DPS buttons wouldn't change T/3D runs of 4 mans being faster. It wouldn't change Ultimates being solo-healed. So how is that a true "solution" when it, at best, only masks the problem, and at worst, doesn't even mask the problem? If you aren't being taken to 4 mans with the DPS buttons you have now, why WOULD you be taken with more DPS buttons? If you're being benched to solo heal 8 mans now, why would having more DPS buttons fix that? You'd still be doing less DPS than a DPS Job, meaning people would still be benching you/going in 4 man premades without you, yes?

Just based on what I understand of your (collective) arguments, that seems to be doing the OPPOSITE of you want and not fixing the problem.

If the problems are that people can 0/solo heal content across the board, and that this is WRONG and the game SHOULD NOT ALLOW 0/solo Healer to be viable how does Healers having more DPS buttons change that?

It seems like it's a band-aid that isn't fixing the problem.

[Sebazy]

Depends on the Healer. Doing solo PotD/HoH runs

Ok cool, that's one specific niche bit of side content. Now what about actual solo content. You know, MSQ, solo duties, solo fate farming?

Healers having more DPS buttons wouldn't change T/3D runs of 4 mans being faster. It wouldn't change Ultimates being solo-healed. So how is that a true "solution" when it, at best, only masks the problem, and at worst, doesn't even mask the problem? If you aren't being taken to 4 mans with the DPS buttons you have now, why WOULD you be taken with more DPS buttons? If you're being benched to solo heal 8 mans now, why would having more DPS buttons fix that? You'd still be doing less DPS than a DPS Job, meaning people would still be benching you/going in 4 man premades without you, yes?

Because at least I won't be so bored stiff doing casual content on my healer. I honestly don't care if non standard comps are viable, I don't care if they are better, I personally don't even really care people can do Extremes without any healers at all. By all rights I'm part of the problem as I was all for this kind of wild experimental stuff in previous MMOs and I've been all for it here too - Case in point : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5TDzbqfEAo from over 9 years ago.

Where the problem starts for me is when I'm clamouring to get off the healer not because I want to experiment or because it might be 20% faster for some dungeon. But rather because the role I've enjoyed playing for over 20 years has been reduced to this level of monotony.

Pps you're still sidestepping how you got to 5-15%.