What if Tanks were designed like Healers?

[ForsakenRoe]

I also don't think anyone has ever thought WHM was complex, it has always been the simple straightforward healer and that's fine, I think the reason people find WHM is unsatisfying right now is because there's no reason to use half of their kit. WHM certainly does need something more, but I'm not sure more DoTs is the correct answer.

Which is why my stance is that we should reduce or outright remove the DOT-ness from WHM. Aero's always been a DOT and messing with that is a big step that SE would likely be averse to, so my solution is to lower the duration and massively ramp the potency to compensate. Essentially, get experimental with it and make WHM the 'bursty healer'. Bursty healing, bursty damage. It'd be a massive boost for the job, both for identity and for the newbobs who can see the immediate feedback from their actions, as they press cure 3 and see the whole party jump by 40% of their HP bar

You can see this being 'the way forward' even now. People think WHM is 'the throughput healer' but it's got what, 3 lilies per minute for 1200 (1800 with PI if you dump em all at once). Meanwhile AST has CU (600p cos of the instant tick), CO (700 total), Star (540, 720 if prepped), Horoscope (200, 400 if primed but lets ignore that). That's 2040 per minute, assuming you fail to prep your Star or charge Horoscope up. If we take out CU because WHM has Asylum (900p total), then sure, we go down to 1440 vs WHM's 1200 baseline. So why do people say WHM is 'the throughput healer'? Either because the healing is dealt instantly as a burst, or because they're looking at Cure3 I guess.

So if people think it's 'the throughput healer' already because of that bursty feel, play into it. Reduce Dia to 15s or 12s, make it stronger, have some Phlegma style CD to throw out fairly often (say, every 15s), WHM is meant to have been able to destroy just as much as BLM in the War of the Magi, play into that

edit: the part about WHM being 'the straightforward healer', yes. Because AST has to plan ahead more, it can't just go 'oh damage happened, I'll use one of the regen effects' because what if more damage comes before the regen does it's work? Star is like 25% stronger if you placed it 10s ahead of time. By contrast, WHM can see a hit, and go 'PI Rapture' and deal with it 'simply'. THAT aspect of WHM, we can keep intact. I don't want to force a panicking newbie to have stress because they're fighting their own kit as the raidwide damage kills everyone around them

[AmiableApkallu]

It seems odd to me that this form of Job differentiation is acceptable - "If you like buffing, play AST, if you don't like buffing, play something else" - but doing so with simple vs complex is unacceptable. It seems to me both should be violations of the same principle, does it not?

This differentiation is not odd in the slightest. Buffing is (a major component) AST's job identity/aesthetic, whereas complex vs. simple gameplay flows from aesthetics and job identity. As I said in another comment:

My two cents: Every player should be able to choose any class/job they want based on "identity"/"aesthetic" and find fulfillment in this game.

That means every job should be easy enough to pick up at a basic level -- enough to get through the MSQ and other normal-mode content -- and provide enough "depth" such that someone who wants to eek out every last ounce of performance (damage) has have a fun time doing so.

I'm all for MSQ and normal-mode content being such that "git gud" is not a requirement, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for a game -- this game -- to say that if you want "optimal performance", then you need to "git gud." Those who want the "optimal" without the "git gud" essentially want participation trophies, which is fine for MSQ/normal mode, but nothing else.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm all for MSQ and normal-mode content being such that "git gud" is not a requirement, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for a game -- this game -- to say that if you want "optimal performance", then you need to "git gud." Those who want the "optimal" without the "git gud" essentially want participation trophies, which is fine for MSQ/normal mode, but nothing else.

I do wonder, when people do SSS dummies as whatever class they main, do they think 'hell yes I beat the dummy for P12S (or whatever is current final savage fight)' or do they immediately think 'damn I know I beat the dummy and all but I could have done slightly better by doing this thing instead of that thing I did', because (anecdotal I know) at no point ever have I beaten a dummy and thought 'I was not optimal in that test and I hate myself for it'

[Aravell]

People think WHM is 'the throughput healer'

WHM hasn't been the throughput healer since AST got buffed to be better than WHM in every way, some people do just look at Cure III and think that WHM is really strong, but they don't look at the whole kit where AST blows WHM out of the water. I also don't think being the throughput healer is a great identity even if it were true, unless the damage kit also matches it.

Personally, I'd want regens and DoTs gone from WHM, everything should be on the GCD with the exception of some instant heals/mitigation like Temperance or Tetra. WHM has always been the strong healer, make it so again, nerf the other healers throughput, make it so WHM is the only healer that can top the party in 2 GCDs, make heavy hits and heavy heals their identity.

EDIT: On the topic of the thread, I heard some whispers of discontent about WAR spamming 5 Fell Cleaves in a row back when they got Inner Release in the circles I'm in, I'm fairly sure that the whispers of discontent would become a roar of outrage if WAR was squished into the current healer design where they just press 1 Fell Cleave for the entire fight. From the tank mains I know, they put a lot of importance in their damage kit, they would not be happy at all with a massive simplification. Some people were already dissatisfied when WAR no longer needed to set up their Berserk burst and only needed to press Inner Release and spam.

[ty_taurus]

It's not about "play poorly". It's "If you play what is comfortable to you, it's not optimal; you can still do things passably, but you aren't doing them optimally" that is a problematic argument, because people don't want to do things "passably". People don't want "You did good...enough... /headpat".

People will naturally seek to achieve levels of skill that they are comfortable with. Just because someone isn't performing their job perfectly doesn't mean they aren't happy with their current skill level, and anyone who isn't happy with their current skill level will just practice and improve. If someone really tries to seek out the easiest job to play specifically for the purpose of making their parse look better for less effort, well, that's a way bigger "good enough /headpat" than trying their best and successfully defeating bosses even if their parse isn't inhumanely perfect. If someone can't handle that, then that's their problem, not the game developer's problem, and no game designer should cater to that mentality.

[Renathras]

Personally, I'm fine with SGE remaining as it is, SGE has never known any other iteration, there's no nostalgia, there is only current SGE, so leaving it as is is fine.

Obviously, I do agree. Personally there are a few changes I'd make to it, but mostly more minor ones. Offhand, make Phlegma 25y range like everything else (there's literally no reason not to and the Job fights with lasers, even if I do like the look of beifly being Citan Uzuki), make Toxicon damage neutral or at least close to it (someone suggested combining Toxicon and Plegma into one button that does Plegma damage, since that would make Toxicon a slight DPS loss, but not a full Dosis' worth one), do...something else with Zoe, I don't know what (Pneuma should just have the boosted potency to begin with - it's a big 2 min CD already!), and I feel like Krasis needs...something - without a Deploy like SCH, SGE's version is quite a bit more niche. I'm sure there are some other things, but I think those are the big ones:

Toxicon damage neutral (or close to it), Plegma ranged (or combined with Toxicon), Zoe be removed or have some other effects, Pneuma just having the Zoe potency to begin with, and Krasis having...something or other to make it more useful in general content.

Not all those are necessary, though; the first two are really the big ones. The others are more nibbling around the edges. I think the idea I floated about just giving Toxicon Plegma damage, removing Plegma, and having Addersting generate (1) once per 40 seconds no matter what and (b) whenever shields break (same as now; single target EuDiagnsosis breaks or EuPrognosis breaking on you personally). Using no shields, this effectively becomes "Plegma has a 25y range and stacks to 3", but using the shields and them breaking has this double as a damage refund/neutral when you have to use your GCD shields.

I personally believe that SCH and AST suffer most from job design problems and WHM suffers most from fight design issues at the moment, but that's just what it looks like to me.

100% agreed.

WHM's design works fine, the fights just don't need it, making it kind of pointless (the healing kit and its DPS interactions), and that leaves it with little else. AST and SCH's issues are both in the Job design; SCH's is all the clunk and anti-synergies, for example.

This differentiation is not odd in the slightest. Buffing is (a major component) AST's job identity/aesthetic, whereas complex vs. simple gameplay flows from aesthetics and job identity.

I...respectfully, I disagree.

WHM's identity has, for a long time, been that its kit is straightforward - simple, even - but powerful. That's every bit as much its identity as AST. Besides which, that wasn't really the point I was making.

The point I was making is that both are of the form "We can't say X is only on one Healer Job, because that ignores people that like X who want to play the other Healer Jobs, and it ignores the people who don't like X but want to play that Job." They both are using the same form of logic, or the same principle. I feel like the distinction only exists if people are biased towards one or the other.

For example, were Semi here, she'd probably complain about WHM not getting to be the buffer one with Protect, Shell, Wall, Haste, Brave, Faith, and Float being FF series staples for the WHM Job. Why would it be acceptable for AST to get to be the buffer one and not WHM, one might ask?

I don't think they are distinct unless one has a preference for one over the other, and thus is more inclined to see one as acceptable and not the other.

I can appreciate that you've changed from the first time I spoke with you because you didn't immediately say I attacked you, thank you for that.

....
I do try...

This is deeply off topic and also wound up fairly long so I'm going to put it behind a spoiler, but in answer to your question, Ren...

There's a lot to respond to there. I'll have to think about it some...

At the risk of TMI, never been diagnosed with anything, but I probably am somewhere on the spectrum - though who isn't these days? - probably some "high functioning/adjusted" Asberger's or something. I don't have the inability to sense or detect emotion, I'm just generally hyper-logical and detached when talking about things, which some interpret as aloofness or arrogance when it's just "being dispassionately rational" or...something like that. It's also how I attempt to demonstrate through action that I'm not emotionally charged on something, by talking about it thoroughly and without heavy emotional overtones. It's because I've thought the things through and am speaking from a position of reasoned out thinking, not emotion, and with at least some effort to control for biases.

The extensive explanations is two parts. One is that I do try to make what I'm saying clear, another is that when I'm surrounded by people trying to parse my every word to find a mistake to pounce on, I'm forced to be even more long winded than normal to try and blunt such attacks. Like consider how people attack my tone. Could you imagine how much worse those attack would be if I made posts like Fulminating or Semiherage? So part of that might be spectrum coping mechanism, but part of it absolutely is being in a hostile environment.

People will naturally seek to achieve levels of skill that they are comfortable with. Just because someone isn't performing their job perfectly doesn't mean they aren't happy with their current skill level, and anyone who isn't happy with their current skill level will just practice and improve. If someone really tries to seek out the easiest job to play specifically for the purpose of making their parse look better for less effort, well, that's a way bigger "good enough /headpat" than trying their best and successfully defeating bosses even if their parse isn't inhumanely perfect. If someone can't handle that, then that's their problem, not the game developer's problem, and no game designer should cater to that mentality.

I...

I can't explain this to you, apparently.

Can anyone else give it a shot? I'm not sure how.

I should also note here - since we've all agreed insulting, caricatures, etc are bad...we do all agree those are bad, right? - that the idea of "If you don't want to spend ours and considerable time mastering extremely technical Jobs, you're just lazy" is kind of an insult, as would be "you just want an easy Job so you can be rewarded while being lazy". If I'm going to do my best to avoid insults and caricatures, that's a two way street...

I would if...

I mean, if you can explain it, please do. You don't have to agree with a thing to be able to help someone understand it.

Also, it probably is a fairly large group...but that's kind of beside the point.

Ty just seems completely resistant to the idea there are people that play FFXIV that don't inherently enjoy complex technical mastery, skill expression, and/or that aren't super competitive "by the bootstraps" types that will rise to any task with a drive that is kindled in them merely by catching a whiff of a challenge. That...or he thinks that such people are...beneath concern/contempt. I don't want to put words in his mouth nor interpret his position in a negative light, so I'm operating on "doesn't understand" instead of "does understand and is being intentionally demeaning and only feigning obtuse". But if that's the case, it means someone else has to explain it, since to me, Eorzian_username's post made it super clear, especially the specific points I drew attention to. I'm not sure how to more concisely and simply explain it than that.

It's kind of like a person in a wheelchair looking at some stairs and a person saying to them "If you want to get to the second floor bad enough, you'll force yourself to walk up the stairs". For some people it's not possible.

Likewise, maybe there's a second person looking at the nearby elevator and the same person in the first saying to them "You just want to be lazy and get something for no effort".

I just don't know any other way to say this since none of my attempts seem to get through. I'm not sure if it's that he doesn't want to understand, or if it's just the way I'm explaining isn't compatible with the way he processes information...

Hence, I'm asking the friendly community here that wants to act in the spirit of cordiality to help out. \o/ Don't let me down, folks.

[Shurrikhan]

I can't explain this to you, apparently.

Can anyone else give it a shot? I'm not sure how.

I would if I thought it was a sensible position / large enough group to risk the game's broader health over, but here I actually have to disagree with Eorzean for once.

I don't think giving players a job they can do everything correctly on despite far less effort that is required for other jobs is in any way a good thing for the game.

If they don't want to put in more than half the effort of a near-perfectly-optimizing person, then I feel they should be fine with whatever that produces, which is likely to be far better than proportionate anyways (some 80+% of that optimizer's results).

Ty just seems completely resistant to the idea there are people that play FFXIV that don't inherently enjoy complex technical mastery, skill expression, and/or that aren't super competitive "by the bootstraps" types that will rise to any task with a drive that is kindled in them merely by catching a whiff of a challenge.

Can't say I get that impression, no. At which point it's difficult to make sense of anything following that seemingly flawed premise.

It's kind of like a person in a wheelchair looking at some stairs and a person saying to them "If you want to get to the second floor bad enough, you'll force yourself to walk up the stairs". For some people it's not possible.

That's a hell of a stretched analogy for a position along the lines "Maybe we shouldn't utterly compromise balance in favor of those who want to do Week 1 Savage/Ultimates with none of the internal optimizations that'd require on any other job (which would then reduce the breadth of job choice available to both the player type in question AND all whom they'd have trickle-down effect upon in influencing community expectations)."

There's a difference between accessibility across the vast majority of content and degrading even the purposely hardest content in the game to satisfy a hypothetical group.

[ForsakenRoe]

do...something else with Zoe, I don't know what (Pneuma should just have the boosted potency to begin with - it's a big 2 min CD already!), and I feel like Krasis needs...something - without a Deploy like SCH, SGE's version is quite a bit more niche. I'm sure there are some other things

Shurrikan said stuff better than I could regarding the other stuff so I'll just stick to this bit: I can't be sure about Krasis, only mainly using it in concert with Soteria to doubledip juice Kardia, but my assumption re: 'where is deploy analogue' is that Zoe IS that analogue, potentially. Both skills are learned at the same level, have the same CD, have that CD reduced by a trait learned at the same level. Where a SCH would do Adlo, Deploy (GCD, then OGCD), the SGE does Zoe, E-Prog (OGCD, GCD). Now this has some caveats, mainly that A: Zoe E-Prog is not comparable in potency of shield to a Deploy Adlo. It's 320p + 50%, so 480p before external heal buffs? Whereas an Adlo is 300p base heal, and 180% of that as shield, so 540p base. This 540 though, can be modified way easier, both due to being single target (so ST heal buffs like Krasis would work here), and the fact that if it crits (which SCH can force with Recitation if needed), while the second shield Catalyze is not spread, the base potency of the spell (and therefore Galvanize's strength) is still increased by the crit.

TLDR change Krasis from 20% heal up to 10% heal up but party wide

[Aravell]

Ty just seems completely resistant to the idea there are people that play FFXIV that don't inherently enjoy complex technical mastery, skill expression, and/or that aren't super competitive "by the bootstraps" types that will rise to any task with a drive that is kindled in them merely by catching a whiff of a challenge. That...or he thinks that such people are...beneath concern/contempt. I don't want to put words in his mouth nor interpret his position in a negative light, so I'm operating on "doesn't understand" instead of "does understand and is being intentionally demeaning and only feigning obtuse". But if that's the case, it means someone else has to explain it, since to me, Eorzian_username's post made it super clear, especially the specific points I drew attention to. I'm not sure how to more concisely and simply explain it than that.

It's kind of like a person in a wheelchair looking at some stairs and a person saying to them "If you want to get to the second floor bad enough, you'll force yourself to walk up the stairs". For some people it's not possible.

Likewise, maybe there's a second person looking at the nearby elevator and the same person in the first saying to them "You just want to be lazy and get something for no effort".

I just don't know any other way to say this since none of my attempts seem to get through. I'm not sure if it's that he doesn't want to understand, or if it's just the way I'm explaining isn't compatible with the way he processes information...

Hence, I'm asking the friendly community here that wants to act in the spirit of cordiality to help out. \o/ Don't let me down, folks.

I don't think he's being completely resistant, it looks to me like the two of you have a fundamentally different view of the matter stemming from your personal views on job design. You seem to believe that people get frustrated when they people tell them that they're merely average because people want to be the best that they can be. Ty seems to believe that certain people are happy no matter how good they are, as long as they reach their goal, whether that be 30%, 47% or 73% efficiency, they set that goal and are happy if they reach it.

I think this stems from the difference between what you and Ty believe a well-designed job is supposed to be. You believe that a well-designed job is something that anyone can pick up and master by reading tooltips. Ty seems to believe that a well-designed job is something that gives someone room for improvement and cannot be immediately mastered. This fundamental disconnect is probably preventing you both from agreeing.

Of course, I could also be completely off-base in my observations.

EDIT: I don't claim to speak for either of you, these are just my observations, so please take them only as such.

[ForsakenRoe]

I don't think he's being completely resistant, it looks to me like the two of you have a fundamentally different view of the matter stemming from your personal views on job design. You seem to believe that people get frustrated when they people tell them that they're merely average because people want to be the best that they can be. Ty seems to believe that certain people are happy no matter how good they are, as long as they reach their goal, whether that be 30%, 47% or 73% efficiency, they set that goal and are happy if they reach it.

I might also be wrong, but I think the reason Ty holds that position (it seems similar to mine) is that we have very few benchmarks to decide what 'max efficiency' actually looks like. Of course we have the funny numbers website, but the 'number' can be subject to factors completely outside of the player's control like crit variance, kill time, or in the case of anyone with a raidbuff, 'how good is my team during 2min windows'. So instead, my personal metric I'd be using as 'the goal to reach' is 'can I clear Savage', for example. It's ingame, immediate feedback of 'did I do well enough at the class to meet a skill check, as set by the developers themselves?' Ren believes that if someone can clear Savage now, they should be able to clear Savage even if a hypothetical rework to the classes were to occur (which, adding more damage buttons to the healers would potentially threaten). My stance is that if someone can clear Savage now, they're of a skill level that means they can learn how to implement new buttons into their rotation, being as they have to learn things like High Concept, or more recently, Superchain, Classic Concepts, or my personal wall for far too many pulls (sorry to the gamers I was with), Caloric Theory. I cleared P12S week 2, having griefed my team by failing to understand Caloric for so long (it was explained to me in a way my brain didn't comprehend), and I got an 8 for it. I don't give a damn that it was an 8, I was glad to be out of that hell, glad to be free of 'I have to hyperfocus I dont want to be the reason we wiped again', and personally, that's gonna be my stance on that fight for every time I do it. I gave up caring about logs quite a long time ago, and the majority of the playerbase does care about logs whatsoever. So if they don't use the funny number site, or care about what it says, surely they're using an ingame benchmark like 'can I clear' or 'can I beat SSS', and if they can, they're happy regardless of what optimizations they may have missed.

If it helps, maybe we could look at the classes as being different martial arts styles. It should be possible to pick up the basics of them pretty quickly. Learning the knowledge that would get you to, say, orange or green belt in Karate is not going to take the average person an insane amount of time. Being a green belt is enough to have knowledge enough for self defense purposes. But there's plenty to learn beyond that, with all the belts going up to Black Belt, and then all the Dans or whatever they're called after that. It might be possible for someone to see a master show each technique exactly once, and somehow Sharingan copy them perfectly on the first try, there's a non-zero chance of someone being able to do that sure. But the road to mastery of a discipline is usually going to take some practice, and I don't personally see why it isn't the same here. I don't expect 'you have to practice WHM for 50 years to master it' kinda thing, but as a melee for example, I do at least have to go hit the dummy for a couple hours to drill the opener into my head. As healer, there's nothing to drill. I precast a Glare, Dia on pull, Glare again, press POM at the same time everyone else uses their raidbuffs, weave an Assize on the next available OGCD window, and then Glare away.

But comparing the classes to martial arts again, if we look at, for example complexity for casters. BLM goes from white belt to black belt, with Dans included for super optimization triangulation lines or whatever they're called now. RDM is like if karate only went up to brown belt, the one before black. SMN right now is like if karate was to start at green and end at blue. And the suggestion I saw in the thread Ren linked seemed to vary from 'can we at least add the possibility for someone to reach blackbelt SMN complexity', 'we should make it so SMN starts at orange belt' (not ideal, just makes casuals have lower performance for zero gain for optimizers), and in one case, 'well SMN can only reach blue belt difficulty, so the solution is to take away RDM's brown belt'

shit I just did a hot wings I've become that which I despise