A summary of healer issues

[ForteNightshade]

Here's an explanation that was offered in another thread:

Now that we have the actual clear vod, I'll make some corrections. They don't skip any mechanics, which is what I initially thought given the extra damage, they do cheese them with Cover and invulns though

The real stand out here is the downtime between each outgoing bits of damage. Phase 2 illustrates the problem, perfectly. At the start, only the tanks take damage via two busters. Except one tank can aggro both bosses and invuln, completely nullifying any healing requirements. It isn't until the conclusion of Party Synergy anyone else takes damage. They then have a full 50 seconds of zero party damage. Which is ample time for Phoenix, Curing Waltz and Shake to all help top the party up in between Clemency/Bloodwhetting. Tanks are also free to kitchen sink autos and the busters as they'll have everything available for P3. There's two hits roughly ten seconds apart (Flare/Stack and Cosmos Memory) and that ends the phase.

So in a slightly over two minute duration, there's only three instances of the party taking damage, and one of them is extremely generous in the timeline. Between Passage, Shake, Veil, Samba, Arcane Crest and Magick Barrier they have more than enough to trivialize the damage. Not to mention, their Warrior can buff Shake since they don't have to MT phase 3.

That's only one example but it illustrates part of the problem. While yes, tanks having so much sustain and healing allows this, there simply isn't enough damage going out. Healers already barely touch their GCDs even in Ultimate (and don't elsewhere). So it's no real surprise you can get away with simply piling mitigation together.

Just to make it clear, this is a very comp specific accomplishment made by exceptionally skilled players. No one is going to suddenly recruit five DPS for their 6.4 static. It simply highlights TOP, specifically, being poorly optimized and the fundamental flaw with giving so much healing to other roles while simultaneously refusing to increase the damage enough to make it necessary.

[Xelanar]

It simply highlights TOP, specifically, being poorly optimized and the fundamental flaw with giving so much healing to other roles while simultaneously refusing to increase the damage enough to make it necessary.

This pretty much sums it up.

On top of it all, there is no real reason for downtime between healing phases to be as high as it is. At least in savage and ultimate modes, forcing healers to spam their GCD heals should be nothing to be afraid of.
If developers are ok with having me spam Malefic over and over, they should also be ok with having me spam Benefic II non-stop. On paper I'm still just spaming one button, but at least that button does what my job is supposed to do.

[BRVV]

If developers are ok with having me spam Malefic over and over, they should also be ok with having me spam Benefic II non-stop.

AMEN sister!

[ForsakenRoe]

Problem is, if you're bad at spamming Malefic all that happens is that the party does less damage, maybe you see enrage, but also other players can make up for part of that lost damage by being good at their own class. If you're bad at spamming Benefic 2 and the content is actually demanding you're good at Benefic 2, then you cause a wipe. Because of this, SE is super hesitant to ever put actual healing requirements in things, and this tier when they actually did, people didn't react well to it, having gotten accustomed to the 'usual' damage profile of raids. Also doesn't help it was, once again, more focused on 'use more mit' instead of 'heal more'.

All of which is to say, asking for 'can we be forced to heal more' is probably never going to work out, SE's too worried about losing their bottom line because the Limsa AFK squad would have to demonstrate a modicum of skill in their roulettes

Just to make it clear, this is a very comp specific accomplishment made by exceptionally skilled players. No one is going to suddenly recruit five DPS for their 6.4 static. It simply highlights TOP, specifically, being poorly optimized and the fundamental flaw with giving so much healing to other roles while simultaneously refusing to increase the damage enough to make it necessary.

Right, but at the same time, we said similar things when DSR got solo healed. At what point do we see all these 'hardest content in the game' fights being cleared with 50% (or in this case, 0%) of the recommended number of healers and say 'actually you know what, this is messed up, this shouldn't be possible and the fact it IS possible is shameful design'? IIRC there was also a solo heal TEA run back when that was current. So that's three times this has happened (clearing an ultimate with less than 2 healers), and they say 'twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern'. So is SE going to just sit back and let the pattern continue? We're a far cry from the ARR days, when the Ramuh Titan-Egi-Tank strat was fixed super fast. An entire role being made redundant? Can't have that, hotfix it immediately! Now 8-9 years on, and we're here. An entire role being made redundant, and nope, doesn't matter, 'go play ultimate' blah blah

[Renathras]

All of which is to say, asking for 'can we be forced to heal more' is probably never going to work out, SE's too worried about losing their bottom line because the Limsa AFK squad would have to demonstrate a modicum of skill in their roulettes

This argument doesn't make sense, though. Yoshi P is already on the record saying the reason they gutted the Healer DPS kits was because they thought it was too stressful, the same logic they gave for reducing healing requirements. You can argue that one is more stressful (or you think it would be), but it makes no sense to say "They won't do (A) because they said they won't do that, but they might be convinced to do (B), which...they...also said they won't do."

That doesn't make sense.

Speaking personally as a dirty casual - I'd enjoy spamming Benefic 2 more than Malific any day of the week, twice on Saturdays, and three times on Sundays. "But people can die and-" that's no different than wiping to an Enrage because of not enough Malifics. People will get over it.

EDIT:

Right, but at the same time, we said similar things when DSR got solo healed. At what point do we see all these 'hardest content in the game' fights being cleared with 50% (or in this case, 0%) of the recommended number of healers

Just out of curiosity, how many people are doing this?

How many teams have solo healed DSR after the first did it?

.

EDIT2:

Roe's point is that, regardless of what the design team thinks, failing to keep up with increased healing requirements results in wiping. Failing to perfect your damage output results in...

...wiping in any encounter with a moderately tight Enrage check.

So same thing.

If someone dying to a missed Benefic 2 and getting Raised means you're not clearing Enrage, then that fight is tuned tightly enough not having optimized DPS such that you do 5-10% less DPS (common proposals around here) would result in a wipe as well.

And in casual content, neither one would result in a wipe, so nothing changes there, either.

.

EDIT3:

I don't know, and I don't think it matters.

I think it matters a lot.

If one group does a thing, that means it really isn't true of the vast majority of players (like...literally everyone else, in this case), meaning that one group could do it is completely irrelevant.

On the other hand, if dozens of groups have done it, if 25+% of the clears now are solo healer (or even 10+%), then that's a pretty different argument, since it suggests just anyone (or, at least, most people) could do it, leading to groups dropping healers going forward - which is the argument people here are making.

That's EXTREMELY relevant.

[ty_taurus]

This argument doesn't make sense, though. Yoshi P is already on the record saying the reason they gutted the Healer DPS kits was because they thought it was too stressful, the same logic they gave for reducing healing requirements. You can argue that one is more stressful (or you think it would be), but it makes no sense to say "They won't do (A) because they said they won't do that, but they might be convinced to do (B), which...they...also said they won't do."

That doesn't make sense.

Speaking personally as a dirty casual - I'd enjoy spamming Benefic 2 more than Malific any day of the week, twice on Saturdays, and three times on Sundays. "But people can die and-" that's no different than wiping to an Enrage because of not enough Malifics. People will get over it.

Roe's point is that, regardless of what the design team thinks, failing to keep up with increased healing requirements results in wiping. Failing to perfect your damage output results in a marginally longer fight duration. You cannot compare the amount of wipes that would be caused by a lack of healing in all forms of content across the game to the amount of wipes that would be caused by a savage healer parsing green instead of purple.

[ForsakenRoe]

Speaking personally as a dirty casual - I'd enjoy spamming Benefic 2 more than Malific any day of the week, twice on Saturdays, and three times on Sundays. "But people can die and-" that's no different than wiping to an Enrage because of not enough Malifics. People will get over it.

Difference is, your team can more easily make up the difference if you're missing DPS because the healer is not able to DPS as much, compared to non-healer healing.

Just out of curiosity, how many people are doing this?

How many teams have solo healed DSR after the first did it?

I don't know, and I don't think it matters. The fact of the matter is that the first DID do it, and THAT is the problem. It shouldn't have been doable in the first place. The fact it was, shows there's a design failure that needs fixing. The fact it was done for TEA, DSR and now TOP, not only shows that the design failure has persisted for over two years, but TOP removing both healers instead of just one means the design is going further in the wrong direction.

Imagine an Ultimate gets cleared, on content (remember, we're on patch 6.35, TOP came out 6.31), by a team of any composition of your choice, as long as no member of the 8 is any kind of a DPS. 4/4 tank/heal, 2/6, 1/7, doesn't matter, just no DPS. Would that be fine, that the enrage check is so lax that it's possible to clear without any DPS at all? Of course not. I don't know for sure, having paid very little attention to the minutiae of the fight, but I'm under the impression that you're almost hardlocked into having 2 melee because the melee LB is so important in the final DPS check. Additionally, you're hard-locked into a physranged and a caster because you need to have those LBs. Yet somehow, the 'you need Healer LB for this' mechanic was bested, and a group did not in fact need healer LB. Or a healer at all. So rather than asking 'oh how many other groups did a run like this after the first', ask 'why was it possible for a group to even do this'

[ty_taurus]

And in casual content, neither one would result in a wipe, so nothing changes there, either.

If you're increasing healing requirements so much so that in group content, from dungeons to ultimate, damage would come out frequently enough that even a skilled healer would need to spam spells like Benefic II and Helios in addition to using their healing cooldowns, you believe that that would not increase the amount of wipes that any given group of players would experience?

[BRVV]

If you're increasing healing requirements so much so that in group content, from dungeons to ultimate, damage would come out frequently enough that even a skilled healer would need to spam spells like Benefic II and Helios in addition to using their healing cooldowns, you believe that that would not increase the amount of wipes that any given group of players would experience?

ULTIMATEs should require that healing. And well... practice parties would die to it. Sure. Just like you die when your tank forgets to invuln or a failed mech. Or an enrage.

[ty_taurus]

If someone dying to a missed Benefic 2 and getting Raised means you're not clearing Enrage, then that fight is tuned tightly enough not having optimized DPS such that you do 5-10% less DPS (common proposals around here) would result in a wipe as well.

Hold on, actually. 100 seconds of Weakness on a DPS is absolutely more significant than a healer doing 5%-10% less damage than they normally would. So even in this magical land where your average players would be perfectly capable of keeping up with that level of intense healing requirement in easier content, like when doing their roulettes, even the groups that are doing Savage are penalized far more by steeper healing than they are modestly improved DPS loops not being optimized.

Weakness is a 25% reduction to your offensive stats, and Brink of Death is a 50% reduction. And even week 1, you can afford a death or 2 if the team is otherwise on the ball (assuming the fight is actually balanced correctly *cough* P8S). But also remember that the type of healer who probably has a hard time managing healing and keeping up with their DPS is also not a week 1 raid clearer. If damage is so frequent than even a skilled healer needs to spam Benefic II/Helios instead of Malefic, gear's ability to slow down the severity of damage taken by the party likely would not ease up enough to make the healer that would struggle day 1 have that much less of a struggle on day 54. Meanwhile gear would make it easier and easier for that same healer to worry about their DPS less, because DPS jobs have greater returns from gear than healers do and add enough padding that gives teams a lot more room for error.

No matter what way you slice it, even if you want to pretend casual healers wouldn't drown in their roulettes from this much damage output, you'd still see less wipes going the DPS route.