Delete rescue from the game.

[Tigore]

I am not a frequent poster, yeah. Other games like WoW in the past, Dissidia FF Opera Omnia, Metroid Prime, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, etc. It is kind of disheartening not seeing much discussion of the healer theories in some threads. It sometimes looked like complaining with no solution. But for Ty, I do remember a couple threads a while ago relating to these discussions. I probably should have bookmarked the threads.

I do admit it would also be nice if we get a Square Rep giving us some form of plan they have decided to take too. We recently have 3 proposed directions for Sage from both Renathras and Waxsw for the reasoning why.

As for the RDM or BLM style for Sage, that one looks interesting too. I can imagine both systems rewarding Addersting for getting the systems right. If the RDM version is selected, it might need a Rhizomata-like cooldown to convert the balanced "black and white mana buffs". The BLM version sounds like it would probably be something like every 10 "fire casts" granting addersting. Needs another resource to simulate burning mana down for "fire casts".

The AST I didn't mean to say it will become the simplest overall. I was just meaning the DPS buttons since the cards take up a bit of toolbar space already. If that one had something like the "PLD requiescat combo morphing button" in the WHM part, it may help to squeeze in more spells.

[IDontPetLalas]

Alright. We may have to back off from spell suggestions first to make the rotations different. Waxsw does seem to agree on differentiating the DPS logs. Since even with the differences in WHM, Dosis is still spammed the same as Glare in the end for... 80% - ish of the GCDs according to those graphs? We may need a draft of what type of DPS system each one should have.

According to Waxsw, we may be trying for a semi cooldown combo system for Sage.

Astrologian would be the simplest one by default due to the card system. Probably just needs an AoE DoT with Royal Road. Still need to decide which card buffs to use.

I know you said you would hate it Renathras, but a DoT mage sounds like a potential Scholar fate. The decision between manually Dotting all targets, or using Bane spreading with half pot DoTs. I imagine 4 targets will probably be the Bane point.

This leaves the White Mage. Currently, it is being compared to others for differentiation, but it will still have comparable buttons to what Astrologian has if we keep it the same. Pretty much just Afflatus Misery and Assize may feel different in that comparison.

Sorry, but this disagree with you there. Why, and how would that enhance solo play - if you believe that AST should see improvement in that area - which I do.

Not to mention, while you mention button count- why I can understand that there could be limitations in order to accommodate controller players- I could see "comparable" to WHM, however if AST has more that WHM, it would bother me at all. Not to mention I would still see it spamming its single DPS skill for much of the time in group content.

However if the devs started to improve the skill design, as a number of people have suggested, then probably some skills wouldn't even have separate buttons- with AST having a rework it would likely be the first to see this. I would expect the other healers to lag behind

edit - I posted this just before I saw your post regarding PLD, that's somewhat in the lines of what I'm referring to.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'd see the meleeing aspect of a healer akin to WHM's Lilies, you're DPSing whilst also healing and pocketing further resources for down the line. As long as it's melee focus was a means to generate resources whilst functioning optimally I think it'd be fine. Times where it was forced out of range could be taken as moments to spend said resources in optimised play, not to mention that boss hitboxes are so huge these days that you can smack them from deepest Narnia anyway. I don't think it would be a problem now in the same way it would have been back in 2.x-4.x.

Watch some world prog team Savage PoVs on YouTube. It's kind of surprising how little time you need to spend out of cane slap range.

It can have downtime tools like how RPR has HarvestMoon, or something to bank while doing their normal rotation to use at range like a Toxicon of sorts

[AmiableApkallu]

I do admit it would also be nice if we get a Square Rep giving us some form of plan they have decided to take too.

I don't think they participate in the forums in that capacity. My current go-to for their thinking is this interview from 2021:

Yoshida: So I totally understand that those healers that have a very high player skill level and they've really mastered their jobs go into these different raids or battles and when they do have some downtime between their heals they do cast more offensive spells. of them desire to have more technical aspects of it so they are more active and I totally understand that sentiment. But of course the basis of a healer is to heal so I think the development team and I have this thinking of getting that sense of exhilaration from doing really good heal work.

That being said I don't think we would do any sort of dramatic addition of offensive skills moving forward. By having these offensive abilities some players, like new healers, might feel pressured like “oh do I have to have good DPS while I' m healing?” or some players might be aggressive like “oh hey you have an offensive skill in your kit, why don't you use it?” and I don't think that's optimal either.

But of course we do have the new job, Sage, which will allow for this unique gameplay where if you land an attack it heals at the same time. Or if there's like a particular barrier ability that you cast and once that's depleted it increases the resource which could lead to an attack which is very unique. I think players would be interested in trying that out for sure.

The higher the player skill of a healer and raid player, the more he wants to attack in his spare time. When it comes to that, I want to make more technical use in attacks, well, I understand the feeling. However, if anything, the base is a healer, so after all, we want to make the attack of the content side more intense, and first of all, we want to make it fun by doing good heel work.

That's why I don't think I'll do anything like adding attack methods or attack rotation to healers more violently. Because of that, new healers and newbies think, "I'm a healer, but I have to attack." I don't think it's a very good thing to do because it's just a matter of attacking after that, honestly.

However, even with that said, the new barrier healer called "Sage" this time will heal you when you attack, and when the barrier you put up disappears, you'll get attack resources and want to attack more, so I think it's a bit of an interesting job. So, I think it would be great if people like that could try Kenja once.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yoshida

I'm so exhilarated when Aionagonia casts and I do the 'really good heal work', and make the quick decision to use Rapture instead of... actually no wait, everything is solved by using Rapture when you're in WHM town.

Its the same reasoning we've debunked a million times, it's like an 'anti-strawman' argument. Or a 'please wont someone think of the children' situation maybe. A hypothetical new player is going to be bullied out of the game by a hypothetical veteran, for not using hypothetical new damage skills. I'm not discounting that some people might have that experience. But the frequency of that occuring in casual content like an EX roulette would be miniscule. It's more likely a DPS will get called out for using singletarget in a pull of 9 mobs. Plus, there's a report button for a reason, if someone's a dickhead about a healer not doing damage, the healer can report them. Don't make me break out the watermelon analogy again.

Yoshi-P redesigned this game and took MOP as inspiration. But MOP was 10 years ago, it's time to move on, even WOW abandoned 'healer only heals' mentality

edit: also, what does he mean 'you break the barrier and that gives a resource that leads to an attack, very unique' DRK had TBN in STORMBLOOD and breaking it gave exactly 1 Bloodspiller of gauge, what was he even on about lmao

[AmiableApkallu]

Yoshi-P redesigned this game and took MOP as inspiration. But MOP was 10 years ago, it's time to move on, even WOW abandoned 'healer only heals' mentality

This kinda feels like a case of Anime Healers vs. MMO healers, which, hilariously enough, brings us back to the complaint in the original post: "We go at my pace, Mr. Tank, not yours."

[Renathras]

I make and remake healer theorycrafts all the time. I've shared a few, but it's just not something people really care to read about.

I'm not sure that's true. I think we all like theorycrafting. The problem is (A) that some theorycraft threads are really involved (I think I've told you in a few before I'd have to spend some time just to wrap my head around what's happening - I recall a letter from C.S.Lewis to a young schoolgirl asking for advice, and in one segment, he mentioned being detailed in your description of things "Because while the image may be perfectly clear in your mind's eye, your reader does not innately see what you see" - it is kind of hard to put together all the moving pieces, especially new ability names and mechanics), and (B) we all know the Devs aren't reading them (most likely), so it kind of has that "screaming into the void" feel after a while. (...not that the rest of these discussions do not... <_<)

I think all, or at least most, of us like coming up with ideas and stuff. We've just seen most of each other's stuff at this point and know none of it's going anywhere anyway.

...

Ah, there, that's the full quote.

To this day, I feel they missed the train on SGE. They could have really flexed on Kardia and made SGE "heal by doing (a) DPS (rotation)" and made it work. If they can have a rotation as simple as SMN, having that proc heals every step with some back-up heals should have been easy. I will never understand why they didn't give it something like WAR or SMN's core rotation at the least, but...here we are.

Incidentally (Anime vs MMO healers) I think that's why we should have all types of Healer Job. We have four of the things, no reason to make them all near-identical.

[Tigore]

Funny thing is, my recent conversation with Waxsw pretty much already supports your C.S. Lewis point, Renathras. Seeing the posts as they were, I was reiterating what I was trying to decipher to ensure we understood each other completely. At that point, I did ask how he would fix the Sage class, so I wasn't going to let him down by running away. I do agree that the 4 healer classes we have should be differentiated enough to feel like a new style each. Some might go so far as to say we might as well only have 2 if the differences aren't enough.

I accidentally did miss Sebazy's point on what their melee healer would be. Also looks interesting that it borrows the RDM idea of transitioning between melee and range. Except it works the opposite way. The healer prefers to stay in melee range and builds up a finisher that can be used at range if they wish. I may not have been in the current raid settings in Normal very much, but I definitely understand the huge melee box from our 7th box. Only something like half the back circle is out of melee range with about 80 - 90% of the total arena being in melee range >.> Even one of the FC members attending a static commented on the devs just not trying anymore with the melee vs. range balance.

@ForsakenRoe

As for the "unique" shield breaking mechanic, Yoshida probably just meant when you compare against the other 3 healers. It kind of works has a small difference from DRK TBN being more spammable. However, I am not trying to white knight the devs and Yoshida either. If we have indeed put our hearts into reaching out to them already, the onus does then switch to them to communicate back. Especially if they seem to know we are unhappy with the similar DPS models and are working on it. I have noticed the news for them re-working AST at least. The interview kind of looks like it says they are dipping their toes in the water with the implementation of the Sage class. He seems concerned that he may accidentally "bully" new players into using the DPS spells, but I don't know where that came from. If the majority of the players want the old Heavensward DoT Mage Scholar back that actually used to exist ... I don't remember new Scholars back then feeling forced by Yoshida to use those spells ... unless I am missing something here ... There are already no enrage timers in about 90% of the mandatory story content and the rest of the 10% tends to be an intermission phase that usually doesn't hit that point unless players aren't even trying to respect the mechanics. cough Titania comes to mind. It's pretty much just Savage and Ultimate where the enrage timers are tight enough to actually encourage everyone to optimally use their DPS buttons and not die. More of the latter of course.

[AmiableApkallu]

The interview kind of looks like it says they are dipping their toes in the water with the implementation of the Sage class. He seems concerned that he may accidentally "bully" new players into using the DPS spells, but I don't know where that came from. If the majority of the players want the old Heavensward DoT Mage Scholar back that actually used to exist ... I don't remember new Scholars back then feeling forced by Yoshida to use those spells ... unless I am missing something here ...

I maybe should have posted the question that Yoshida was responding to:

Mrhappy1227: Healers in Final Fantasy XIV often discuss how often they are casting DPS spells despite being healers. Often nicknaming jobs like White Mage a “Glare Mage” as an example. The Media Tour build has some new healing skills that also have damage components to them. Has the team taken any feedback from the players on improving interactivity with the healers? Whether that be more interesting DPS skills or more prominent healing requirements.

My takeaway is that SE has heard "the usual complaints", and that they're choosing to design healers and content the way they are anyway.

I kinda think it comes down to, at least in part, that old meme, "Healers adjust." DPS can vibe to their rotation and not react to how the rest of the party is performing. Tanks can vibe to their rotation and mostly not react to how the rest of the party is performing (maybe they keep an eye out for someone who needs a spot mitigation/heal). Healers have to contend with everything from dragging clown fiestas kicking and screaming across the finish line to being (almost) superfluous in parties that can do mechanics perfectly while blindfolded.

And the way I see it: Healer design and philosophy seems to focus on the "clown fiesta" end of the spectrum. The complaints focus on the "being superfluous" end of the spectrum.

[WaxSw]

Okay, I know you guys hate me saying this, but it needs to be said:

This is subjective.

Those logs, are numbers, there is absolutely nothing subjectve in numbers, both almost copies 1 to 1, similar casts, similar cpm, similar % of total actions... there is absolutely no argument that can deny it.

You say you gain optimization (which SHOULD increase the skill ceiling...), but then handwave that away as just a small difference (but don't say what the difference is now to compare it to), then say "losing literally every kind of GCD and cooldown optimization whatsoever" but don't explain how or why you're losing these and what these optimizations are that you're losing.

Brief explanation, I thought it was not necessary

Healers 101 and why GCDs are to be minimized: GCD heals are a damage loss because while you cast them you cannot attack. This means that why they are reliable in the way that you can use them anytime they have poor eficiency because every GCD used is a loss of (insert potency of the standard nuke) potency, this is very positive in the big picture because healers also have oGCDs (and in the case of WHM limited damage neutral GCDs). oGCDs are strong tools that allow us to heal without getting in the way of dpsing or even increasing it and thus have better efficiency, Why did I say earlier that GCDs having lower eficiency than those oGCDs is a positive thing then? Because oGCDs are limited, they are tied to either a time based cooldown and/or a resource exclusive of the job and have deeper interactions than the GCDs, this basically means in order for healer to maximize their damage output they are forced to interact with those different and more limited resources while having the GCD as a safety net, think of it like the small wheels you put as a child on a bicycle while learning, they increase your safety at the cost of having a limitation in mobility and speed, GCD heals (with the exception of afflatus) work like that they provide better safety at the cost of MP and Dps and in the same way of the small wheels you remove them as you learn.

What you propose by increasing the damage increase of toxicon to the point that it becomes damage neutral is removing the efficiency penalty to the GCDs and making them equal to the oGCDs, and thus shrinking the difference between ceiling and floor because all that potency that was lost in safe-but-not-needed shielding from healers that do not know really how strong is their kit is not lost anymore, they would deal per GCD the same potency as someone who stretch their kit to their absolute limit.

You are correct on increasing the RNG reliance, but it's more increasing the buff window reliance. If this is bad, then every DPS and Tank Job in the game right now are bad because they all do this.

Welcome to one of the reasons why everyone fucking hates the 2 minute meta and why in raiding scenarios damage now is more swingy than ever xD

You say it's disencouraging[sic] job knowledge...but don't explain how. Everything I can think of has this rewarding Job and kit knowledge as well as encounter knowledge. You're going to have to explain to me how this isn't so, because I'm not seeing it here.

Because with a damage neutral toxicon no one really has to know the extent they can push the rest of their tools that are not GCDs to deal more damage, there woudn't be any more "I'm gonna use holos 14s before the beggining so it covers and comes back at X time in the fight for Y mechanic so I squeeze 1 more nuke instead of having to lose damage in a GCD heal" because that GCD heal woudn't be a damage loss anymore, this is a loss in both job knowledge (not enforced to know that holos can cover Y mechanic) and fight knowledge (no need to know that using holos at -14 allows it to come back for Y)

I think what you're trying to say is people can more freely shield (but that's a trap if they dry out their MP) and that if they use Toxicon outside of burst it's a DPS loss but gives them more movement or something

I think I explained in the first I'm just quoting this to ephasize that MP is not a relevant metric, basically every Bis set outside ultimate prog has 0 piety cause healers are just that mp efficient.

You say you gain optimization (which SHOULD increase the skill ceiling...), but then handwave that away as just a small difference (but don't say what the difference is now to compare it to)

Go FFLOGS, go to any savage fight you want and look at the difference in Adps and Rdps for a Sage at the 99 percentile. There you have how big playing into the buffs optimizes the damage and you're only increasing a % of it (spitballing numbers should be around 30%), and usually is around 200 dps-300dps so a 30% of that would be 60-100 dps gain here

Now do the same but compare the Rdps of a 99 percentile with the Rdps of a 70 or 60 sage, there you have how big is the healing optimization is and what a damage neutral toxicon would remove in almost its entirety. Should be around 1k dps, there is your comparision

It is, in fact, deniable, as it's DPSing side isn't identical to any other Job...

...Literally at least 65% of their casts through the whole fight are exactly the same and I'm leaving out assize and phlegma nor doing a damage only comparision cause I want to be nice. Those numbers do not lie

About the poll thing you're saying that Sge is the most liked, which is true, but at the same time in ty's poll minor rework is the most wanted option, its aproval is still below average and below median across jobs and only gets a 5 cause the numbers go from 1 to 10 not from 0 to 10

Not only that but I think you're missing that one of the things why people want to rework Sch is because from Shb onwards they decided to gut everything from its identity, we have a better iteration to compare it to but we lack that for Sge