Healer role design change?

[vetch]

If you think that, you haven't read much Dzian. That wasn't a general "you". It was to the person quoted.

Ah. Sorry then. Haven't seen their healer takes but I've agreed with them before on general combat matters, like for example how attacking feels more emotionally satisfying when the enemy actually reacts to your attack (e.g. stuns, interrupts from damage taken, even just visibly flinching) rather than me throwing 60 papercuts a minute while the million-HP striking dummy stands there stone-still and takes it.

Everyone has blindspots, I guess.

[Shurrikhan]

for example how attacking feels more emotionally satisfying when the enemy actually reacts to your attack (e.g. stuns, interrupts from damage taken, even just visibly flinching) rather than me throwing 60 papercuts a minute while the million-HP striking dummy stands there stone-still and takes it.

Oh, for sure. And I'd prefer to have more means of situational-but-vital utility rather than just yet another, effectively, X% damage 15|20|30s raid buff (I cannot imagine anything duller than a buff that, even over a 2-minute-long fight, would not be worth holding virtually any CDs for). I'd prefer revamped CC, and perhaps a Stagger system.

But those are beside the point that I was trying to make, which is simply that everything is ultimately weighed according to its contribution towards the encounter's objective:

Since FFXIV has absolutely zero fights that are not one by reducing the enemy's HP to 0, that will, for now, always be damage. We heal people not for the sake of their living wholesome lives, but because the likely clear time decreases (even when accounting for the chance of mistakes elsewhere making risky/worse an option that would otherwise be optimal -- wherein is the reason why it may sometimes, in very certain contexts, be an rDPS gain to overheal rather than risk a[n untimely] death, etc.).

If we had an Escort Encounter, it'd ultimately be all about speed of delivery, with the ability to nuke down non-distractable enemies, rush out of traps, etc., all being bottlenecks to but weighed alongside general rate of the escorted NPC's movement. If we had a Healing Encounter, it'd ultimately be all about that healing. Etc., etc.

Until we get more than just Damage Encounters, then... naturally, everything --no matter how indirect or thematically distinct-- will boil down to party DPS.


As such, I see no fundamental problems with somewhat tying together %HP and output to grant a greater sense of urgency to healing without having to rely necessarily on random-but-bursty(-or-otherwise-significant) damage. I don't particularly think that a player literally so close to death than a breeze would stop their heart would need to still hit just as hard when they were at the peak of their health, and wouldn't mind slightly breaking up the rhythm of our CDs over raid-damage taken so that these things seem like part of our gameplay rather than just something healers deal with, maybe, separately from us.

Though, again, there may be gameplay issues in that. I'm not a huge fan of the idea; it was simply an example of something which could split the difference between 'so much damage that less experienced players would wipe parties constantly' and 'so little damage that healers become redundant', retaining urgency in triage healing without so greatly raising the required skill floor to not repeatedly wipe one's party. I can't say it's a great idea; it just wouldn't be some new "'perversion' of healing equating to rDPS'" or the like.

[vetch]

If we had an Escort Encounter, it'd ultimately be all about speed of delivery, with the ability to nuke down non-distractable enemies, rush out of traps, etc., all being bottlenecks to but weighed alongside general rate of the escorted NPC's movement.

It's funny you mention that because I used to do Escort levequests in ARR zones by aggroing everything and kiting it while /beckoning the NPC to the destination. It was really fun, and much faster than stopping to fight.

(As such, I see no fundamental problems with tying together %HP and output, such that a player literally so close to death than a breeze would stop their heart isn't still hitting just as hard when they were at the peak of their health, which could in turn give a greater weight to healing without so relying on vuln stacks or near one-shots, even if that could mean a greater degree of 'wiping up messes' for healers (albeit to greater rDPS gains than one more Glare, anyways). Though, again, there may be gameplay issues in that. It just wouldn't be some new "'perversion' of healing equating to rDPS'" or the like.)

It's just not that interesting an idea to me.

We already have a similar, much more conceptually forgiving system in place: if you don't heal someone correctly (which can mean more than just 'restore all HP') then they die and their DPS is reduced 25% for two minutes while someone loses 2400MP to raise (or you wipe, if you're in a bodycheck mechanic).

Moreover, it'd have to be restricted to party-only to not make soloing a nightmare, it runs counter to the existing aesthetic of a limit break system (take more damage -> get more anger -> explosions), and -- fundamentally -- I just don't care as much about 5% missing DPS than I do about the risk of you dropping dead, even though both goals are ultimately in the pursuit of DPS. It would be more annoying than engaging.

[Shurrikhan]

Moreover, it'd have to be restricted to party-only to not make soloing a nightmare, it runs counter to the existing aesthetic of a limit break system (take more damage -> get more anger -> explosions), and -- fundamentally -- I just don't care as much about 5% missing DPS than I do about the risk of you dropping dead, even though both goals are ultimately in the pursuit of DPS. It would be more annoying than engaging.

Fair. Again, was merely a counterpoint to the idea that 'Making healing any more worthwhile can only result in wipes'.

It's funny you mention that because I used to do Escort levequests in ARR zones by aggroing everything and kiting it while /beckoning the NPC to the destination. It was really fun, and much faster than stopping to fight.

Personally, I would love a tier where every fight has a different objective of sorts: a kill-fight, a heal-fight, an escort-fight, and sort of hybrid fight, for instance.

On that tangent, though, whether we can afford to just pull everything all at once, as in our 'Dungeons'/'Hallway Sprints', depends simply on their difficulty. I would hope that the best answer wouldn't be so simple nor consistent in raids.

[ForsakenRoe]

Personally, I would love a tier where every fight has a different objective of sorts: a kill-fight, a heal-fight, an escort-fight, and sort of hybrid fight, for instance.
On that tangent, though, whether we can afford to just pull everything all at once, as in our 'Dungeons'/'Hallway Sprints', depends simply on their difficulty. I would hope that the best answer wouldn't be so simple nor consistent in raids.

Whether it worked out well or not, Alexander tried this didn't it, 2 being trash mob city and the weird walker controls, 6 being a gauntlet of 4 bosses in a row, 8 being as multi-phase as an ultimate is nowadays

As much as it'd be interesting (?) to have more variance in 'objective in the duty', it'd also cause insane differences in balance for certain classes. If there's a raid fight where we have to keep one guy alive through it, ala Haurchefant-but-the-whole-fight, SGE probably becomes busted because you just Kardia the NPC. And if you can't target the NPC with Kardia, then that means a lot of OGCD stuff wouldn't work either, meaning AST loses out a hell of a lot compared to WHM's lossless GCD healing via lilies. Well, I suppose Synastry would finally see some use at least. If the devs don't want to deal with balance issues to the point where they made every AST card the exact same effect, they'd recoil in fear at the thought of this kind of stuff

[Semirhage]

As much as it'd be interesting (?) to have more variance in 'objective in the duty', it'd also cause insane differences in balance for certain classes.

Fair, but I'd take some variation over current content design: encounters which favor the exact same sets of strengths over and over again, leading to a shortlist rogues gallery of jobs with basically a permanent spot in the meta because all content is samey, and therefore it always favors their strengths.

[Aravell]

As much as it'd be interesting (?) to have more variance in 'objective in the duty', it'd also cause insane differences in balance for certain classes. If there's a raid fight where we have to keep one guy alive through it, ala Haurchefant-but-the-whole-fight, SGE probably becomes busted because you just Kardia the NPC. And if you can't target the NPC with Kardia, then that means a lot of OGCD stuff wouldn't work either, meaning AST loses out a hell of a lot compared to WHM's lossless GCD healing via lilies. Well, I suppose Synastry would finally see some use at least. If the devs don't want to deal with balance issues to the point where they made every AST card the exact same effect, they'd recoil in fear at the thought of this kind of stuff

I personally would love to see fights designed in ways that make certain jobs shine more than others. Such as in P3S, people were so angry that Macrocosmos negated the heal check of Death's Toll that they completely ignored the fact that Lilybell completely negated Fountain of Fire as a mechanic too. Of course, if some jobs shine brighter than others, there also has to be balance, not like back in HW where PLD was rendered almost completely useless because most bosses did magic damage and DRK is basically better at everything.

[Sebazy]

Agreed, IMHO SE should try to go back to having 1 or 2 gimmick fights per tier.

They've had some flops for sure, but then these gimmick fights have also spawned some absolute classics IMO;

Solo healing Ratfinx on AST whilst also handling potion and bomb duty to pad my cohealer's damage ranks as maybe one of the most enjoyable raids I've ever done in this game. Every last GCD counted, the pinnacle of being a busy healer IMO.

Meanwhile farming Lamebrix with the static all trying their hardest to murder each other with traps was a highlight of the tier. If you've got a static that's never run it, go try it, it's not a hard fight and honestly that's a good thing as it gives the group plenty of headroom to have fun++

Lastly, Chadernook was a good demonstration that gimmick fights don't need to be memes to be good, it was a great fight with a solid gimmick. It had tons of room for optimisation, it had teeth and would merrily eat tanks but wasn't so unforgiving as to be annoying.

Personally, I'd merrily sit through a few more Catastrophies if it meant the chance of tiers with fights as fun as the above. Anything to help mix up the recipe and get things feeling fresh again.

[Dzian]

This hasn't been true in XIV, even as far back as 1.0, nor for virtually any other MMO. Even in Everquest, healers did more than heal, even if their rDPS contribution was given by indirect (but still non-healing) means, such as through damage, mobility, anti-knockback, anti-stagger buffs, etc..

They can do more than heal. Just not in this game. Dps dps dps..

Weaknesses don't exist debuffs don't exist, elemental wheel doesn't exist, Can't paralyse a boss and feel a sense of power when a paralysis proc interrupts a tank buster. Or slow a boss and laugh when his cast bar takes twice as long to fill. Can't do anything fun.

Even in early live letters you can find yoshi making statements about healers aren't meant to dos they're meant to heal...

do I agree with it? Nope.

I loved early scholar and hurting things. But agree or not that was the devs philosophy for quite some time.

Ah. Sorry then. Haven't seen their healer takes but I've agreed with them before on general combat matters, like for example how attacking feels more emotionally satisfying when the enemy actually reacts to your attack (e.g. stuns, interrupts from damage taken, even just visibly flinching) rather than me throwing 60 papercuts a minute while the million-HP striking dummy stands there stone-still and takes it.

Thanks. I'll admit sometimes I don't always find the best way to convey my message but nice when people "get it"

[ForsakenRoe]

I personally would love to see fights designed in ways that make certain jobs shine more than others. Such as in P3S, people were so angry that Macrocosmos negated the heal check of Death's Toll that they completely ignored the fact that Lilybell completely negated Fountain of Fire as a mechanic too. Of course, if some jobs shine brighter than others, there also has to be balance, not like back in HW where PLD was rendered almost completely useless because most bosses did magic damage and DRK is basically better at everything.

Yes, but the problem with P3S was that it wasn't 'Lilybell negated FOF', it was 'several things negated FOF, and Lilybell was one of them'. SGE could Panhaima it after one hit (to get the big heal buff), SCH has Fairy stuff, WHM has Lilybell, and AST has CO big regen, and Earthly Star. Contrast to Death's Toll, where only Macrocosmos 'negated' to the degree that Macrocosmos could. It would probably be less of an issue if WHM was able to completely negate FOF to the extent that AST could negate Death's Toll, because then each of them has a mechanic that they can trivialize and it balances out (and dissuades SCH SGE comps), but instead we got 'WHM can make a mechanic comfier, AST can straight up delete one' hence the 'imbalance'

It's like having a 'heal this thing to full check', WHM can just Benediction it and job's done. You'd think 'oh so WHM is best for this fight' but since every healer has so many healing tools to use now, WHM's 'strength' there is infringed upon. You'd think raidwide-bleeds we keep getting now would help incentivize WHM because Lilybell, but AST has 2 regens on a 60s CD, so that kinda evens things out too. I've said for a while, we should do something like removing a stack of Lilybell, and reduce it's CD to 120 or even 90s, so that it's niche is 'it's up twice as often'. 4 stacks every 120s (or even 3 every 90s) would feel way better/more versatile to use than 5 every 180s, unless it's a raidwide bleed, or the final Styx of P11S, not all the stacks will get used. It's currently 2000p, 180s CD. that makes it 666p per minute, which is comparable to AST's CU (600 total cos of the placement tick, 60s), CO (700/60s), and Star (720 when charged/60s). If we reduce it to 3 stacks/90s, that's 1200p of healing on a 90s CD, or an average of 800p per 60s. Asylum is 900/90s, Pneuma/Zoe is 900/120s. If we remove the 'early detonation penalty' too, then WHM could actually lean into it's supposed identity of 'big bursty heals', while also being able to keep the versatility of spreading the healing out into 3 smaller bursts to avoid overheal if needed

Yes I'm suggesting WHM get 'more healing power' it's a weird world