Healer role design change?

[Aravell]

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

I'd go one step further and say WHM should get more healing power and everyone else should have some power cut out. If SE wants WHM to be the comfy newbie healer with high throughput, then it should be the only one with high throughput. Unfortunately, SE is not a fan of nerfs and will probably continue making AST's identity be WHM(but better and also your fingers now hurt).

Guess we'll have to see how the AST rework turns out.

[fulminating]

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

Would you call e9 tiles (or e3/p7 to a lesser degree) too tame in the shifting floor gimmick, or are they not quite what you mean because they're more on rails? I can't really think of any recent examples of gimmicks beyond that.
I don't know that I would call puzzle fights a strength of the game - high concept etc - but I would also class them separately to purer gimmicks where the players are more able to influence things. I know it's quite arbitrary, but there's a definite difference in my mind, mainly in that gimmicks still have to be interacted with in some way after being cleared once.

On a similar note, do you think the "tier's favourite mechanic" approach to combat makes things feel cohesive or unnecessarily samey? e.g. tethers in asphodelos/bleeds in abyssos

[ForsakenRoe]

On a similar note, do you think the "tier's favourite mechanic" approach to combat makes things feel cohesive or unnecessarily samey? e.g. tethers in asphodelos/bleeds in abyssos

too samey, a fight should have it's own theme re: mechanics but selfcontained, not 'this is the theme for the whole tier', ie I think doorboss this tier is cool, as it's theme is 'superchain theories' and 'light/dark towers', and the phase 2 is god awful because it's mechanics are just all over the place thematically (shapes, 'move limited distance' Caloric, light/dark towers come back, UAV). She's a researcher/scientist, so Superchain 1 fails to work on you, and she goes 'ah that theory is scuffed, let's try this' and updates it (responding to new evidence, as it were) to Superchain 2, then 2B. She only uses her 'Caloric Theory' twice, and the second one is somehow more simple to execute than the first, her theory's gone backwards

Like, I'd rather have seen something like, go all in on one theme for the fight. I'd vote for the dark/light towers because they're quite interesting, especially with how one person in the Pangenesis ones can be 'unmarked', which is an interesting twist on the usual 'you need X debuff to soak this tower'. So picture for example, you're marked with 'small/big light/dark towers', and if you have small you have to drop it in the UAV because the person taking it has to get small to fit into the tower. Or, when UAV occurs, split the party into two light parties, and when a tower is placed in one side's UAV bubble, it appears on the other side's bubble, in the same location, stuff like that, basically keep the theme running from the previous phase, Pangenesis is my favourite mech in P2 for that reason

Going back to the original question though, think of like, any SHB raid tier, any SB raid tier, what was the 'tier's favorite mech' in Sigmascape? I don't recall anything being used with as much frequency as Aspho's tethers, Abyssos bleeds or this tier's... I guess Limit Cut numbers? The only thing that comes to mind of 'this got overused like hell' is twice/thrice come ruin, and that's not a mechanic, thats a 'mech fail checker' to make sure you didn't do dumb stuff in Basic Relativity to cheese it. To be equivalent to the way things are now, it'd have to be stuff like... every fight in Sigmascape having a Trine of some kind?

[fulminating]

Eden's promise I'd have said clock spreads (e9s dull snakebros, one during tiles, e10s when assigned shadow buddy and I think one other point, e11s had a lot too, even if not present in e12 unless you really squint at shiva), but they're not nearly as abundant as tethers/bleeds have been in their respective tiers. And you know, hardly used less now. Before then I don't think it was really a thing, although there's bound to be something I've overlooked or forgotten.

e: I forgot to write half of this brb
Yeah I'd definitely rather have the theme limited to the fight rather than spread across the tier. I guess if you wanted to be generous you could argue that the tethers were meant to represent puppet strings and the corruption/poison being core to athena's imagery, but ehhhh kind of a big sacrifice for aesthetics. If you removed the bleeds from p7s for example, what's even left? Sleepo turned the key mechanic into a scooby doo chase scene, one harvest was free and you'd only really have to do one successfully aside that to healer lb and limp through it. Perhaps it's not fair to use arguably the worst fight this expansion as my example, but mistakes do need to be learnt from or repeated. The tether-heavy tier also happened at the same time dragon sigh's tether was removed so I'm going to be grumpy about that too, even if it was a coincidence. Not to mention how the frequent use of them highlighted (highlit?) the game's inability to consistently transfer them - perhaps also unfair to blame entirely on SE, but if there were a "gaze tier", I'd likely level the same complaint about inconsistent server snapshotting.

[Post]

Do you think the pure/barrier standard makes healers more or less interesting?

Healers are supposedly further subdivided into those two sub-roles, going so far as to be enforced in raid finder parties (the preferred way to reclears content for JP servers), though for most content this isn't a consideration (a single healer must be sufficient in light party duties; can't guarantee you'll have both in DF full parties). Tanks and most DPS players are all given more freedom to play their preference; this is not so for healers. You often see parties forcing this requirement in PF even when it hardly matters.

Both niches have been around since 2.0. The difference is they were incredibly bespoke for that battle content but now it matters so little that you can clear the most difficult content without healers at all. And yet, what healers can do within the role is even more limited from ARR and HW to keep them from stepping on each other's toes and fit these identities. At a glance to me it seems like healer jobs as a result simply don't have enough space to be different.

[Semirhage]

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.

Then the devs are incorrect. Yoshi-P is incorrect. "Healers are only meant to heal" is a philosophy that disintegrates in sunlight. Anytime I hear a developer make a statement like it, I think "oh, so you don't understand how healing classes work in RPGs then. Got it."

[Dzian]

Then the devs are incorrect. Yoshi-P is incorrect. "Healers are only meant to heal" is a philosophy that disintegrates in sunlight. Anytime I hear a developer make a statement like it, I think "oh, so you don't understand how healing classes work in RPGs then. Got it."

Which comes back around to a sentiment I and many others have shared for along time...

There's a huge disconnect between job design and content design..

I think they understand very well how healing classes work in rpgs. The issue is ffxiv isn't much of an rpg any more.. so many rpg elements have been stripped away..

[ty_taurus]

If it was the design philosophy for healers to only heal and not attack, then the game would reflect that, but it does exactly the opposite. You would have constant damage to have to heal through. Savage fights wouldn't require healer DPS to clear. Healers would be responsible for 15-20% damage dealt across the fight. There wouldn't be a reason for healers to have tools like Afflatus Misery, Phlegma, Divination, etc.

And yet, here we are, in a world where healing is needed so infrequently that each healer's 1 boring filler button is used more than every other action on the hotbar combined even in Savage and Ultimate--where healers are designed to have as much free healing as possible--where fights cannot be completed without healers attacking as aggressively as every other role.

Doctors go through years of expensive education to do what they do, can have years of experience treating all types of illnesses and injuries, and yet they can still be wrong. If Yoshi-P states that healers are not designed with offense in mind, then his entire combat design team clearly didn't get that memo and have not had that memo for years. Ironically, the further we have moved away from Cleric Stance days, where healer DPS actually was largely optional, the more enforced it has become.

[ty_taurus]

I think they understand very well how healing classes work in rpgs. The issue is ffxiv isn't much of an rpg any more.. so many rpg elements have been stripped away..

I completely disagree. Case and point, Yoshi-P specifically stated that Sage was designed to appeal to the players who were complaining about wanting to have more attack options.

Yoshi-P*: "Our thought process behind Sage was where we looked at what the players were demanding. And we had a lot of demands come in from the players who go into high-end content. For example, raids and such. And those types of players, they were playing healers, but they wanted more opportunities to attack the enemy rather than just healing... So based on that, we thought 'Ok, what can we do?' So we designed Sage so that Sage can attack, and then can also heal or have a barrier effect on another player. And, for example when the barrier runs out, you also get a resource for attacking. So the playstyle is something that's like a playstyle which, even though a healer-- someone who does healer as their main - is playing Sage, they're still going to be having a new play experience. It's going to be refreshing and original for them. So really, from a conceptual standpoint, we were looking for 'technical barrier healer' for Sage. So when we look at the specifics of the Job, the Sage is putting up the barrier, and when the barrier runs out, you get back a resource for attacking. So in that respect, it is a little bit complicated. It's a little bit more technical in terms of how you need to play the Job."

*This is a translation, not a direct quote, so there may be some inconsistency with his exact thoughts. Source: Zepla Interview

Okay, so going into EW, they were aware of players requesting more attack options on healers. If Sage was truly designed to be an answer to this, then it is a complete failure. Kardia has no effect on the healer's decision-making because all attack spells provide Kardia effects, and all Kardia effects are the same, so no Sage player is actively making different offensive choices as a result of Kardia. It is automatic healing. Yoshi-P spends the majority of that explanation describing earning Addersting through barrier application as if that were the central aspect of Sage gameplay, but it's not. Addersgall is, which Addersting has no connection to. Addersting is one of the worst resource systems this game has seen--not quite as bad ad Stormblood Lilies, but it's pretty close. A mobility resource is underwhelming and undesirable, especially when it comes at a huge loss of damage. Addersting is only ever a resource generated from forced GCD healing. Of all the healers, Sage's time spent on offensive tools is effectively the same as all other healers except for White Mage whose Lily healing actually does reduce that Job's overall time spent attacking by a small amount. Additionally, it actually has the lowest total number of functionally consistent and useful offensive actions.

Sage (3): Dosis/Eukrasian Dosis OR Dyskrasia, Eukrasia, and Phlegma.
White Mage (4): Glare OR Holy, Dia, Assize, and Afflatus Misery (You can also increase that to 5 if you want to include Afflatus Solace/Rapture which are not offensive but contribute to offense)
Scholar (5): Broil OR Art of War, Biolysis, Energy Drain, Dissipation, and Chain Stratagem.
Astrologian (11): Malefic OR Gravity, Combust, Draw, Play, Redraw, Minor Arcana, Crown Play, Astrodyne, Divination, Lightspeed, and Earthly Star. (Lightspeed is forced to be offensive because of the necessary weaving of cards currently)

Sage has failed on every front to be a healer for players who have been asking for more offensive options on healers, which shows a complete lack of understanding of how healers function in their own game. What I think the design team is capable of us creating enough healing output to ensure healers have the adequate tools necessary to complete different parts of their game. When they create a mechanic like Harrowing Hell, they actively look at what the healers can use and how they can play to endure that mechanic, but don't even consider what a healer does outside of that mechanic, what that accomplishes, or how that feels. There is a dissociation of time and gameplay with healer design that leaves them very ignorant to these designs which is what leads to such hilarious short-sighted design elements like Sage's entire kit.

[Dzian]

snip

I don't disagree.

But again they've stripped away so many rpg elements the game isn't even an rpg any more..

It's impossible to make fun and interesting jobs in a game that has no fun or interesting systems for those jobs to work with or manipulate.

Which again leads to a thought path where 7.0 should have no new jobs at all as they'd just be more of the same.. and instead overhaul the existing jobs.