The Healers should be reworked? New player perspective.

[Renathras]

I don't owe you an apology though. I said it's not the way to approach a conversation. I'm not hiding that aspect.

Yeah...

I'm done with your childish games. You know what you did, you aren't ignorant, and I'm not going to toy with you over this any longer. It's obvious to all and sundry, and doubling and tripling down on it is your failing, not mine.

Guess I get to be "the bigger man".
Again... <_<

Whatever.

You can keep defending your faux pas. I'm moving on. Just so you know, standing on the hill of you being wrong and attacking the people you wronged never looks good and looks far more immature than just owning up to it in the first place and apologizing. But keep doing you. I'm done with this conversation line. Take whatever childish last word you want, I don't care.

[ty_taurus]

Yeah...



Guess I get to be "the bigger man".
Again... <_<

Whatever.

You can keep defending your faux pas. I'm moving on. Just so you know, standing on the hill of you being wrong and attacking the people you wronged never looks good and looks far more immature than just owning up to it in the first place and apologizing. But keep doing you. I'm done with this conversation line. Take whatever childish last word you want, I don't care.

You are the one who talked down to me like a disobedient pet. I don't care what happened. You are not entitled to an apology. This isn't a "no you!" scenario. No amount of the other person being in the wrong makes it acceptable to dehumanize the person you're speaking to.

[AmiableApkallu]

Just, as a reminder, the thread title is 'Thread: The Healers should be reworked? New player perspective.' And is about a player coming from another MMO, and finding the levelling process of the healers dull as dishwater. IDK where the idea that 'WHM is simple and fun' came from, but I'd say it's about half right, it's definitely got the Simple part nailed down. It's really designed to be 'baby's first MMO', but unlike the levelling process of the competitor MMOs on the market, it doesn't ever take the training wheels off

So, I started when post-ShB was current. FFXIV is my first MMO, of any (sub)variety. I started on CNJ, and then moved on to WHM as my main. Not knowing better, my choice of class/job fell back on my usual strategy of, "I aim to win the battle of attrition, if not to win the battle quickly."

I truly did have fun playing CNJ/WHM up through post-ARR.

After that, though, something changed. I don't know that I can say exactly what, and whether anything else I say in this comment isn't just inventing emotions and reasons after the fact. But here's my 20/20 hindsight view:

ARR dungeons had real character. Crits. Untelegraphed cleaves. Tanks that couldn't self-heal themselves through everything. Healers that lacked an overabundance of fix-it-buttons. DPS that might or might not have had AoEs.

As the levels and MSQ progressed, though… the dungeons lost their character, becoming more and more like picturesque linear hallways. Tanks became more able to sustain themselves. DPS found more ways to deal more and more damage. WHM, though… I honestly don't remember being enthused by anything other than Temperance at Lv.80 (woo! angel wings!) and Lilybell (yay! akh morn is… a solved problem?).

[Renathras]

So, I started when post-ShB was current. FFXIV is my first MMO, of any (sub)variety. I started on CNJ, and then moved on to WHM as my main. Not knowing better, my choice of class/job fell back on my usual strategy of, "I aim to win the battle of attrition, if not to win the battle quickly."

I truly did have fun playing CNJ/WHM up through post-ARR.

After that, though, something changed. I don't know that I can say exactly what, and whether anything else I say in this comment isn't just inventing emotions and reasons after the fact. But here's my 20/20 hindsight view:

ARR dungeons had real character. Crits. Untelegraphed cleaves. Tanks that couldn't self-heal themselves through everything. Healers that lacked an overabundance of fix-it-buttons. DPS that might or might not have had AoEs.

As the levels and MSQ progressed, though… the dungeons lost their character, becoming more and more like picturesque linear hallways. Tanks became more able to sustain themselves. DPS found more ways to deal more and more damage. WHM, though… I honestly don't remember being enthused by anything other than Temperance at Lv.80 (woo! angel wings!) and Lilybell (yay! akh morn is… a solved problem?).

Yeah, I think I agree with this. HW had some, too, but much less than ARR. But this isn't a FFXIV problem, it's an MMO genre problem.

Compare Vanilla WoW's Sunken Temple or all the Blackrock Mountain dungeons (5 mans) to the Wrath/Cata/Mists ones (and I think later ones as well). You could spend literally hours in them. Blackrock Depths was an entire city, it even had a bar with vendors in it, an anvil for high level (Vanilla level cap) forging and smelting, you could even get reputation with the patrons there and buy more from the vendors for crafting. The entrance to Molten Core was INSIDE the 5 man dungeon. Blackrock Spire led into the second raid there, and you also had to go into the dungeon to get to the raid, I think. Sholomance was an entire town. Stratholme was TWO WINGS of one. The 3 dungeons over on the west side of the west continent of Kalimdor (don't remember the zone name, but the sorta High Elf one?) had three dungeons that were linked together - I thin you could travel between them without going to the overworld (unlike Scarlet Monastery). ALL of these had quest sets, rare boss spawns, even some spawns that you only got if doing some quests or with some item, and some wacky stuff like the Elf one having that quest where you made a disguise you could turn into or Scarlet Monastery NPCs all being friendly to you if you had the Ashbringer equipped.

Before dungeons were merely hallways for loot and tomes.

ARR's original Thousand Maws, one of the first dungeons in the game, had a branching path. You don't see that anymore, and that's the simplest possible version of "not a hallway", which was largely an homage to 1.X's version (if you haven't, go to YouTube and watch the Remnants of a Realm series and the other one they did on 1.X dungeon walkthroughs). Brayflox normal had multiple side places to go - I don't even think I had the whole map unlocked until later HW when I was leveling PLD and went to them all - and saving all the Gobbies would give you extra chests and stuff.

.

Again, that's less a Job design thing or even a FFXIV thing and more a genre-wide thing.

Criterion seems to be them flirting with an answer to that, but as long as it's not in the general que system in some way, nothing they add will work. They need to stop with the "hardcore 4 man premade" stuff and just make some that are in general matchmaking. Sure, tons of people will just take the shortest path, but if we submit to that mindset, we'll never get unchained from it.

Note this isn't to say they can't have hardcore versions, but most people playing just que for stuff. They aren't going to PF stuff. If there was a "Criterion" que or "Deep Dungeon all the way to the top floor" que, I'd be all over those.

[ForsakenRoe]

And at some level, that shouldn't be surprising. A lot of the games in the franchise are single player games. As the single player, you control multiple characters. If one of the characters under your control has barely any skills for dealing damage and spends 100% of their time focussed on "healing", then it's still the case that far less than 100% of your player time is focused on "healing." Variety of gameplay comes from the fact that you have multiple characters under your control, and from the fact that you can sometimes even choose those characters.

One notable point comes to mind. Remember the Via Purifico in FFX, where you're playing as Yuna and you're solo? Imagine doing that, without being able to summon aeons to help (because you're a WHM in FF14, not a WHM/SMN hybrid). Just you, your White Magic at the time (you likely don't have Holy at this point), and your staff to bonk things with. There's a reason the first party member you re-find (think it's Lulu) is like one room over. Also aren't 4x WHM runs of FF1/FF3/FF5 for challenges absolutely awful in terms of how slow they are at killing things to grind? I remember seeing an FF1 TAS that used solo WHM but... that's TAS.

[AmiableApkallu]

One notable point comes to mind. Remember the Via Purifico in FFX, where you're playing as Yuna and you're solo? Imagine doing that, without being able to summon aeons to help (because you're a WHM in FF14, not a WHM/SMN hybrid). Just you, your White Magic at the time (you likely don't have Holy at this point), and your staff to bonk things with.

I do actually remember that!

I played [FFX] ~20 years ago. Yuna might not literally be called a White Mage, but if you're coming from FF1 and FF4, she obviously fills the same role. Her starting section of the sphere grid is obviously inspired by white mage. She's one of, if not the only, characters who's naturally set up to learn Holy, an archetypal white mage skill. The story required her to be a summoner; her game play slotted her as a white mage. The fact that you can blur over all these distinctions at the end game is the exception that proves the point.

The White Mage of the original Final Fantasy dealt respectable damage with their hammer. Rosa of FFIV could deal damage against zombies using standard Cure spells and had a special attack ability when wielding a bow and arrow. Yuna of FFX wielded summons of sufficient power that the game could design a dungeon where she was the only party member.

[Silver-Strider]

But this isn't a FFXIV problem, it's an MMO genre problem.

I interpreted their statement entirely differently.
It's not that the dungeons had more to offer. It's that everyone else had less to offer.
Tanks don't have their insane levels of self healing
DPS don't have many AoE or powerful AoE skills
Healers don't have a plethora of oGCDs that cancel every mechanic that gets thrown at them and then some.

You are very limited in what you as a player can do in ARR. WHM doesn't have oGCDs to heal during that time. In level 50 content, you might get 2-3 uses of Benediction in any duty at best but for the most part, you're using your healing GCDs since you really have no choice. Regen is your bread and butter skill during that time, not only because it heals for more total potency than Cure 2 but because it's also much cheaper to maintain where WHM has no other sustain tools at their disposal, apart from Lucid Dreaming but every healer has that available and is often not enough on its own at level 50, if your go to heal is just Cure 2. So in the context of ARR dungeons, WHM has to manage their MP much more closely than the other healers while also not being completely shackled to the Glare Spam paradigm because your using your GCD on Heals as well as DPS skills. This starts to get lost however, once you get into HW and beyond. Tanks start getting their self sustain tools, DPS start getting flashier and stronger AoE skills and healers start getting the bulk of their oGCDs that make the old GCD heals redundant.

The Dungeons themselves also lost much in the way of character, not just because they became Hallway simulators but also because of the stark differences between old ARR dungeons and the newer dungeons.
Spontaneous Tank Busters when the boss is auto attacking.
Random Crits from anything and everything.
Roaming Adds that would get pulled in if you ventured too close and were actually threatening if not dealt with quickly.
Even some small environmental hazards on occasion.

ARR dungeons had all of this. Now look at something like Tower of Zot in EW.
At the start, you are walking on, what are essentially, power cables and the Magus Sisters get summoned midway thru the 1st and 2nd group of mobs. Why are the cables not flickering electricity to be a floor hazard? Why are the Magus Sisters not hurdling random Fireballs, Ice shards, creating clones, etc. at all to impede us as we ascend and are only regulated to the boss rooms of that dungeon? This is stuff that were were dealing with back in ARR, with Cutters Cry having quicksand that would appear below your character, Stone Vigil with the Dragon Aevis roaming around the rooms not to mention those little dragons that would breath fire down on you in the hallways again and again if you stopped in front of their little spawn locations to just widdle you down bit by bit during trash pulls, and Aurum Vale with its poison floor and roaming mobs (especially the 1st room). They added not only flavor to the dungeons but also an extra layer of challenge to deal with. You can have Hallway simulator dungeons but unless there's something in those hallways that actually threaten the party, that's all they are. The side corridors of old ARR dungeons were cute but they weren't particularly challenging nor were the really worth much outside the odd mats needed for crafting things, like Manor Varnish or some extra lore and while I can appreciate that extra touch of detail, I don't really look back on them and think, "Wow, this extra corridor was fun". If the corridors actually allowed for branching paths with different loot, bosses, mechanics, etc. then I'd have seen them as something worth keeping but there weren't so I'm not really sad to see them go.

[Renathras]

I interpreted their statement entirely differently.

That's fair. I think both of our perspectives are two halves of a whole. The parts I was keying on were:

"ARR dungeons had real character. Crits. Untelegraphed cleaves." and "As the levels and MSQ progressed, though… the dungeons lost their character, becoming more and more like picturesque linear hallways."

I don't at all disagree Tanks had FAR less sustain - in ARR's higher level dungeons, on WHM you might legitimately have some pulls where chain casting Cure 2, inter spaced with Cure 1 depending on MP pool, actually WAS the correct play because Tanks couldn't just roll their CDs, self-heals, and self-heals in their rotation to shrug off things left and right. Granted, even now Tanks CAN die without healing, but that gets to the oGCD problem if we have those now to the point we don't need to use many actual GCD heals. On some Healers, none at all. You could not slap Regen on the Tank and ignore them for 30 seconds, nor could you DPS to the walls knowing you had a ton of pocket oGCDs to throw out. Your bread and butter spell on WHM was often Cure 2, and sometimes even Cure 1. And likewise, if the DPS was low enough, Tanks could go through the fewer CDs they had and Healers their MP, and if the DPS weren't killing fast enough or the Tank pulled too much, it would be a wipe.

Both of these things are true at the same time, I think.

Kits are far more expansive and Tanks far more self-sufficient now. Then they were not. Healers far more limited, encounters more unpredictable and more threatening, DPS less capable (due to their kits, not just player skill and us not knowing optimization stuff back then like we do now), and the dungeon designs themselves being significantly more varied and hazardous.

[FTP]

Changing some of the Healers but leaving one alone - probably WHM because it's the most logical.

It's not the most logical. It's the one healing job most likely to be leveling through MSQ, ie the healer job most likely to HAVE to do dps, for an extended period. Currently that dps is mind numbingly monotonous, apply dot then press one single button, from level 1 to level 90.

Don't pretend it's too hard for anyone, new or old, to have more dps depth than one button. It's optional anyway, there are no healer dps checks. I mean, it's not like hordes of new players get hard stuck on the the way, way more complex dps job rotations.

(I'm obviously talking about leveling here, not savage/extremes.)

[FTP]

I truly did have fun playing CNJ/WHM up through post-ARR.

After that, though, something changed.

The feeling is familiar. The ARR post quests were my turning point, but that is more an MSQ topic: I tend to like the early-ish leveling process, you get to know the world, the world is larger than you, you steadily aquire new skills, rise in power, it's all new and fresh. (I've come back for a second round, dps this time, but a second time is different in many ways of course.)

The very end of ARR and HW worked for me, but below ebb and flow of story there were steadily fewer surprises, fewer rough edges, and too much of the actual gameplay felt the same. Duties followed their schema, corridor (tank pulls wall to wall)-perfectly flat arena (boss fight)-corridor-arena-corridor-final arena, with more and more one way slides or teleports so it was difficult to explore after clear. I think it's in The Vault where you can see an absolutely beautiful courtyard full of flowers. It's not part of the corridor, so you can't go there.

But this is a digression.