G-give it Back T---T; !! (Scholar Edition)

[AmiableApkallu]

*snip*

Somewhat off-topic, but… would it be possible for you to respond to a comment in a post that comes after it rather than doing this whole edit-a-prior-comment thing?

Your replies are borderline incomprehensible if I haven't yet seen the comment you're replying to, and there's a good chance that your replies will simply go unseen if I read those other comments before your edit-reply.

[ForsakenRoe]

That's great...but that's not FFXIV. Further, that's not even how all the Tanks worked in WoW. Nor does that change what I pointed out above that Ty himself mentioned - no one's actually asking for it. You can argue about why that is or other ancillary arguments, but the fact remains, there are some healers that do want slimmed down damage kits, there aren't Tanks asking for Flash spam. When there are seriously a lot of Tanks asking for that, then we can have that discussion and start asking the Devs to implement a Flashspam Tank into the game.

How do you know? What if there ARE tanks that want to have their gameplay be entirely focused on keeping aggro and mitigating, and nothing to do with being Blue DPS? If there's healers that say 'if i wanted to have a damage rotation i'd play DPS' then surely it makes sense for the exact same point to be made about tanks? And as shown, it is possible for a tank to be 'functional' without it dealing damage, every attack can be changed from 'deals X potency' to 'generates emnity equal to an attack of X potency'. But the problem is, it'd feel awful to do that change, because people like to deal damage as a tanks, even if it is lower than a DPS, and a bit more simple than a DPS. Because it makes zero sense to hit a mob with a 2h sword and be told 'yeh it did no damage but it really annoyed the guy so he's focused on you'

So again it comes back to a question of 'why do tanks get to have a simple rotation, but healers are not given that same care designwise' and the only thing I can come up with is, like others have said, the devs don't want to design a 'healer for healers', nor a 'healer for people who are actually competent at healers'. Rather, they are designing a 'healer so simple that it almost plays itself', so that the chance of the DPS players having their day ruined is as close to non-existent as possible. When I think about things through that lens, I remember the idea of 'DPS died to their own mistake of not using Diversion' from SB, and the following Tank Stance threat buff/damage penalty removal, well it makes sense why they did it if that lens is used: so DPS can blast and feel good at the game, without having to worry about pesky crap like 'I'm generating far too much aggro for the tank to keep up, oh well fk em that's not my problem lmao'. True North stacks added because 'it feels bad as a DPS when the tank spins the boss and you can't positionals', Arm's Length because 'it feels bad when the boss knocks you away and you lose a GCD', etc.

This 'it makes sense if you think about it from the POV of 'the devs are designing non-DPS classes in a way so as to alleviate DPS player's woes, not for the actual mains of the role'' makes more and more sense the more I consider it, and honestly that's kinda sad and scary

Somewhat off-topic, but… would it be possible for you to respond to a comment in a post that comes after it rather than doing this whole edit-a-prior-comment thing?

He does it to dodge around the post limit. I find it less of an issue with the time-travel-esque 'see the answer before the question' thing and more an issue of 'this is not a forum post, it is a short novel'. I know I'm bad for it at times but I do try to put things in tags

I'm sure this makes sense in context, but I'm still laughing

Yeh, it's an odd one. I think it was added as the 'cleanup' role, that is, if one of your roles is struggling (ie, you have a Healer who goes 'healers should heal, not do damage!!!!' for some ungodly reason), the cannons can be used to assist them, so you don't get 'softlocked'. You can use red/green/blue eggs to do damage/poison/stun, so I guess it's like a CC/support kind of role? This is what the enemies look like, so that's why it's eggs that you collect. They're so stupid looking, really nails that goofy 2007 vibe

Anyway, thanks to that minigame, I get to experience what it's like having 'close to 100% uptime on healing'. It's bloody stressful, especially when you have someone doing things that makes your job harder (in FFXIV terms, not dodging AOEs). It's fun as a oneoff thing, but it's definitely not something that you'd want to have as 'this is the daily gameplay of the role'. I kept up with it (barely), but there's plenty of people who would not. Which is why, while I'm not opposed to the idea of SE raising healing required, I'm also not of the mind that it will fix the issues the role faces. It'll either be 'not enough of an increase to satisfy bored veterans', 'too much of an increase and now casuals get stomped', or most likely knowing SE, both at the same time. There is, IMO, no sweetspot that allows casuals to still succeed well enough, while also allowing vets to feel challenged enough to find the content fun. And no, writing off content as 'its not meant for skilled players to find it fun' is a ridiculous stance to take in terms of game design

Also, like any other instance of 'healer in a cooperative setting', as you get higher level in that minigame (both in terms of your stats, and levelling up the Healer role for that minigame's system), you need to heal less. You get better gear, so you take less damage. Your Healer Role level allows you to heal 100% more per rank (so at rank 5, the maximum, you're healing 5X as much as rank 1), and so you spend less time healing. It's like an inescapable truth of how the trinity works in games. The better you get at a 'healer', in pretty much every setting, the less you need to actually 'heal'. And the solution to this is to give the healer things to do besides the required amount of healing, not to just ramp up the healing required. Runescape added 'poison the enemy healer mobs' for that reason, they managed to work that one out back in 2007. Of course, as I said above, if SE wants to ramp healing required, I can keep up. I'd just worry for the people who cannot.

now I done wrote a novel too god damnit

[Aravell]

He does it to dodge around the post limit. I find it less of an issue with the time-travel-esque 'see the answer before the question' thing and more an issue of 'this is not a forum post, it is a short novel'.

It's a good way to get around the daily post limit, but it's not a good way to hold a discussion. How many people even backread to a previous post to see a reply to something they just posted?

[Renathras]

How do you know?

Well, for one thing, I can't point to a single post of any actual Tank player asking for this. The only cases I've seen of people suggesting it are from unhappy Healer players who present it as an argument but even they aren't asking for it. What you're asking here is to "prove the negative". It's that philosophical debate of "If you can't disprove something, does that mean it's true? How do you disprove something absolutely?" One of the examples is "prove there are no non-pink flamingos" or something. Basically, the only way to prove this is to search the entire universe and find that there's not one non-pink flamingo. But this is shifting the burden of proof. If someone suggested there was a rainbow colored unicorn flamingo, the burden of proof should be on them to show that one exists, not for everyone else to conduct an exhaustive search of the whole universe to find one.

There are posters here that argue for healers to be more about healing and less about damage. I argue for at least one healer not to be focused on a DPS rotation, which is a pretty moderate (yes, if I do say so myself, but I can present an objective case if you like) position between endpoints of "all healers should have involved damage rotations" and "healers should only heal and shouldn't even be doing damage in the first place". But I've also seen people here make those arguments. Reddit's mainsub, which is probably a bigger sample size and more reflective of the overall player bases has all three positions represented in discussions on healing.

So we KNOW there are healers that want more focus on healing or at least not more focus on damage rotations/damage dealing, either on some healers (like me) or all healers (in other people's cases). We know those flamingos exist, because we've observed them, so to speak.

But I can't point to a single post or thread I've ever seen of someone seriously suggesting they want Tanks to be Flasspammers. Can you?

So while we cannot rule out that they may exist somewhere, if we have no evidence the exist despite thousands of threads and possibly millions of posts, we can reasonably conclude that they either don't exist, or are an extremely small and not vocal group. Now, if you want to advocate we need a Flasspamming Tank - feel free to do so - but the fact remains that no one seems to be doing that, so it isn't a good counter to something some people actually are advocating for.

Fair?

(Also, yes, the post limit. And I do try some hbs, but that only helps so much when responding to so many people.)

Somewhat off-topic, but…

Sure, but that would require everyone to condense their posts and not rehash what others are saying/join together in complaints. Just have one person speaking for their collective view allowing direct reply. This is mostly due to the post limit here. (Also, I'm not the only one that does it...)

It's a good way to...

I don't disagree, but there's not really a better option at present other than saving a bunch of stuff to offload the next day, which leads to even longer posts.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, for one thing, I can't point to a single post of any actual Tank player asking for this. The only cases I've seen of people suggesting it are from unhappy Healer players who present it as an argument but even they aren't asking for it. What you're asking here is to "prove the negative". It's that philosophical debate of "If you can't disprove something, does that mean it's true? How do you disprove something absolutely?" One of the examples is "prove there are no non-pink flamingos" or something. Basically, the only way to prove this is to search the entire universe and find that there's not one non-pink flamingo. But this is shifting the burden of proof. If someone suggested there was a rainbow colored unicorn flamingo, the burden of proof should be on them to show that one exists, not for everyone else to conduct an exhaustive search of the whole universe to find one.

Mate, we're all going to be aware that "something being impossible to disprove doesn't make it true"; you don't need a paragraph to rehash a grade-school maxim. It's also largely beside the point.

If, as you've insisted, there are healers who ONLY want to heal, why would there not be tanks who similarly ONLY want to mitigate damage, let alone mitigate + hold threat? Both healing checks and enmity checks are equally bottlenecked bimodals. Why, then, the double-standard? Why is be okay for healers to have so little else available to them to do something beyond/outside those capped outputs, but not for tanks?

I argue for at least one healer not to be focused on a DPS rotation, which is a pretty moderate (yes, if I do say so myself, but I can present an objective case if you like) position between endpoints of "all healers should have involved damage rotations" and "healers should only heal and shouldn't even be doing damage in the first place".

Here's the thing, though: The latter position isn't even one about making healing available. It's a position about restricting what other gameplay is even available to other players.

It's effectively "If you have downtime, you've gotten too good or geared for this game to be meant for you, and should quit until next patch or, ideally, forever."

That's not a position worth placating.

[Renathras]

Mate, we're all going to be aware that...

Please stop this.

Someone: Ren, why do you think...?
Me: <explains>
You/someone like you: Ren, we didn't need an explanation.

APPARENTLY WE DID, otherwise the initial question wouldn't have been asked. She literally asked me how I knew that, and I explained why it's reasonable for me to conclude it. That was straight up the question and the answer. You coming in to try to make out like I'm being pedantic or something for answering a question asked is part of the problem here. You didn't need to say that. You could have just recognized someone asked a question of another poster and said other poster answered it. Maybe you didn't like the answer, so you could have presented some counter-argument, but you chose instead to attack the poster's style than their content.

And it's not "largely beside the point"; it's literally the point. "How do you know <there aren't tanks asking for this>?" "Because we have a large sample size and have not seen anyone asking for this". That's literally the answer to the question.

If, as you've insisted, there are healers who ONLY want to heal, why would there not be tanks who similarly ONLY want to mitigate damage,

Because they aren't the same kinds of things?
Because they aren't the same kinds of players?
Because there's something fundamentally different between the two roles and they aren't the same role?

You just said above that everyone's aware of this "grade-school maxim", yet you then immediately turn around to suggest that these people must exist. Which is it?

It's not a "double-standard". When we get people SERIOUSLY ASKING FOR TANKS TO ONLY EMNITYSPAM AS A PLAYSTYLE, then we can discuss it. For my part, I'd be perfectly fine with one Tank Job working that way to appeal to those people, so I'm entirely consistent on this. But for that to even be on offer, we first have to have people actually wanting it. Right now, can you point to a single person who does?

Yet I can walk up to a mirror and point to a person that wants healing without a damage rotation.

We KNOW by examples people exist that want healers focused either more on healing, ONLY on healing, or at least NOT more on damage buttons/damage rotations. These people very much exist, as we have observed one.

We do NOT know that Tanks who want only Flashspam exist, as we have not seen any legitimate examples. If they do, they are a very small and quiet minority, and that's if they even do, as they may not at all.

AND EVEN IF THEY DID: That wouldn't strongly support this argument since (a) I'd advocate for them having one Job anyway and (b) Tank and Healer roles ARE NOT THE SAME. So trying to draw strong parallels between them is already a tough sell. Yes, you believe it, but you have not convinced everyone else to, and there's no evidence that a vast majority agrees with the notion that Tanks and Healers are more or less the same thing. You have some arguments of how they are the same, but they're not universally accepted, and they do not negate areas where they are different (and some of them aren't even accurate).

Here's the thing, though: The latter position isn't even one about making healing available. It's a position about restricting what other gameplay is even available to other players.

Not to be snarky, but this is, as it turns out, "largely beside the point". Her question wasn't about the specifics of requests, only the existence of them. Your personal take on the situation isn't relevant to that.

That's not a position worth placating.

I disagree. If people like a thing, then it's worth having it represented in the game if it can be done fairly and in a way balanced (in throughput/output) with others (that is, WHM Glarespam shouldn't be out-damaging other healers, it should be doing comparable damage; we see in cases like Tanks what happens when the balance is broken).

AND: That's your subjective opinion, not a factual statement. And has nothing at all to do with whether or not there are Tanks out there that want to be FF13 Sentinels that spam Flash and only do damage through Counter.

When we get Tank players seriously asking for a agro-only, non-damage, "Flashspam"/FF13 Sentinel playstyle, then we can discuss it. It cannot be used as support for a "healers should have more damage buttons across the board" argument when there's clearly a difference with Healer players asking for a heal only or less dps focused playstyle vs no visible presence of Tank players asking for a agro only playstyle. (AND, if there somehow WERE, I'd legitimately support one Tanking Job being made/added to the game/etc for them to get that, or if Tanks were already that way, which they are not, for one to remain that way for them.)

Summary (since I think people want that):

1) Explaining one's answer when someone is asked a question is not bad or "beside the point".
2) That one thing clearly exists does not prove that something else exists of which we have no evidence to support.
3) Your personal opinion is irrelevant to a question being asked of someone else.
4) Your personal assessment is not universal nor proof of a thing being a good or bad idea to do.
5) When we get Tank players seriously asking for a agro-only, non-damage, "Flashspam"/FF13 Sentinel playstyle, then we can discuss it. Until then, it's an irrational canard.

[ty_taurus]

I argue for at least one healer not to be focused on a DPS rotation

I agree. Which is why we should have one healer whose gameplay revolves around utility and support rather than DPS--i.e. neither having a DPS rotation, nor focusing on one-button DPS spam. That healer will still need to compete with the DPS output of other healers and be able to perform in solo environments, which is why it needs to generate DPS passively as a byproduct of setting up its buffs that they can also use to burst enemies down when playing solo, but that passive damage is not the focal point of their gameplay.

Regardless of whether or not you liked my particular take on the concept, I don't understand why you aren't on board with that idea since it describes exactly what you just said.

[Renathras]

I agree. Which is why we should have one healer whose gameplay revolves around utility and support rather than DPS

Here's the problem I have with that - many people aren't asking for that (some are, I'll get back to them).

In essence, people have told us, collectively, what they want:

1) Some people want more DPS rotation.
2) Some people want more buffing/debuffing/support gameplay.
3) Some people want more healing gameplay.
4) Some people like things as they are.

You are in camp (1) and suggest the solution to people in (2), (3), and (4) is to give them one healer Job that does (2). The problem is, "utility and support rather than DPS" isn't the answer for (3) or for (4). It's only an answer for (2). So it doesn't appeal or address the concerns of people in (3) and (4) at all. In some cases, it may appeal more than (1) does, but that's like asking a person if they want to be burned alive or electrocuted to death, and if they ask for lethal injection, firing squad, or not being put to death, you offer them the electric chair and are confused why they don't want that option, either.

What you're missing is the fundamental reasons that players who oppose (1) do so in many of the cases.

.

Besides, I've been on board with all of your proposals other than not having at least one healer that works as they do today.

A) I've fully supported giving SCH its SB kit back (INCLUDING beneficial changes since like Expedience; the recent Healer Forum thread was asking about a different thing, but I do actually support "SB SCH with benefits", as it were).
B) I've fully supported giving AST its SB kit back and/or your other AST change proposals to make it more buffing focused.
C) I've even supported your suggestions for changes to WHM or to SGE to give them more "Caster DPS"-like gameplay.

I've supported most of your positions in ways you may not have realized through me saying I don't want all of them or my critiques about individual elements.

The one thing I haven't supported is changing all the healers away from the current gameplay (or leaving only AST as it is, because it's the least popular with people who actually enjoy the current paradigm and is generally the go-to pick for people who do not).

My own view is SCH to be "SB with benefits", AST to embrace the buffing gameplay, and either SGE or WHM (but not both) to embrace a more dps rotation (as opposed to SCH's DoT based priority system), ideally SGE since Kardia already allows it to be modified into a Discipline Priest fairly easily.

I've also been entirely clear on this. Many multiple times. So I'm a bit confused why you say yet again I'm not.

[ty_taurus]

Here's the problem I have with that - many people aren't asking for that (some are, I'll get back to them).

In essence, people have told us, collectively, what they want:

1) Some people want more DPS rotation.
2) Some people want more buffing/debuffing/support gameplay.
3) Some people want more healing gameplay.
4) Some people like things as they are.

Every job in the game needs to have a "neutral," or in other words, the state of equilibrium in their gameplay--what they do at ground zero. Healing cannot be a job's neutral because the rate at which you and other players take damage is neither a constant factor nor a consistent factor. Whether or not healing is needed is determined by the frequency of outgoing damage. The best you could do would be to rework the entire game from the ground up to output damage to all players every 3-5 seconds to keep up with a healer player's GCD usage while still giving them some amount of time to double up on healing or recover. This means every dungeon, even Sastasha, needs to be reworked to accommodate this if you want a healer to have a healing-focused neutral. And quite frankly, I do not think that change is possible at this point. I am all for increasing healing requirements, but you cannot change them enough for a healer to have a healing-focused neutral, and it would also greatly impact the other healers who would need an answer. If that answer allows them to still output DPS while healing, then your healing-focused neutral healer also needs to output competitive DPS values somehow. If two healers exist, one who heals, and the other who heals and does damage, the latter is objectively superior.

In my suggestion, you could also make your engine building support healer also set up HP recovery that way as well, which would help try and achieve your healer #3 is a more reasonable way; however, because healing requirements are still not a consistent factor, how much they engage with that will vary depending on the difficulty of content and even the specific content in question. They will have more healing gameplay in Dead Ends, but almost none in Smileton.

Your healer #4 doesn't' exist. No one thinks this state is the best possible state of healers. While many players are content with the current design, it does not mean they wouldn't want to see certain things change. You who has champion one button healer DPS would prefer if you never had to press your DPS spell at all, correct? If it were possible, you would rather play a healer that never attacked at all even if you aren't bothered by attacking constantly as long as there's absolutely no thinking involved in the DPS. So why not advocate for a healer that, instead of spamming 1 DPS spell more than every other action on their hotbar, would focus on everything else instead: setting up both healing, support, and utility effects instead of attacking.

Also, you do know that in all the support-focused AST theorycrafts I made previously, you actually did have the option of just spamming Malefic if you wanted to and getting just as much damage out of that kit as you would building your utility engines. And utility is never necessary for clears. It's not like there's a utility enrage or anything, so even if someone really does prefer just a one-button green DPS who heals once in a blue moon, that option would technically exist with my theorycraft without being gimped.

[ForsakenRoe]

Love that my semi-sarcastic implication of 'well maybe there's tanks that don't want to deal damage' got taken so seriously. I don't actually expect any tanks would want to have their damage removed, even if it came alongside 'aggro is an actual mechanic', because we're so ingrained into the mindset of 'do damage on every role'

You are in camp (1) and suggest the solution to people in (2), (3), and (4) is to give them one healer Job that does (2). The problem is, "utility and support rather than DPS" isn't the answer for (3) or for (4). It's only an answer for (2). So it doesn't appeal or address the concerns of people in (3) and (4) at all. In some cases, it may appeal more than (1) does, but that's like asking a person if they want to be burned alive or electrocuted to death, and if they ask for lethal injection, firing squad, or not being put to death, you offer them the electric chair and are confused why they don't want that option, either.

How is anyone meant to take the discussion seriously when your point of comparison is the bloody death penalty of all things??? You're not going to die if you have to press a third button every 15-20 seconds or so as part of your MMO gameplay

My own view is SCH to be "SB with benefits", AST to embrace the buffing gameplay, and either SGE or WHM (but not both) to embrace a more dps rotation (as opposed to SCH's DoT based priority system), ideally SGE since Kardia already allows it to be modified into a Discipline Priest fairly easily.

Oh good, because that is what I'd like to see too. Just, SGE in my ideal world gains A LOT in 'healing complexity' rather than damage rotation complexity. Optimization for the job would ideally be hard not via 'the damage rotation is hard', but 'getting to zero GCDs wasted on healing' being much harder than the other healers. And that's presumably a change that is not compatible with the whole '4 healers' thing. Because there'd be a way for the 'good players' to stand taller than the 'more casual players', even if it's not directly via 'optimizing damage rotation'

Also, what are you gonna do if SE eventually releases a 5th healer job? Will it become the '5 healers' model, or the '4+1'? Just curious

Your healer #4 doesn't' exist. No one thinks this state is the best possible state of healers. While many players are content with the current design, it does not mean they wouldn't want to see certain things change. You who has champion one button healer DPS would prefer if you never had to press your DPS spell at all, correct? If it were possible, you would rather play a healer that never attacked at all even if you aren't bothered by attacking constantly as long as there's absolutely no thinking involved in the DPS. So why not advocate for a healer that, instead of spamming 1 DPS spell more than every other action on their hotbar, would focus on everything else instead: setting up both healing, support, and utility effects instead of attacking.

I do actually partially disagree with this, I imagine there are people who 'like the current state of healers'. But I also agree, that the reason they 'like the current state' is down to them not being able to experience other designs and additions. They could be an improvement, they could be worse, we don't know. We can only speak from experience (eg, some of us prefer SB SCH to EW SCH), but we cannot say for sure, beyond 'educated guess', whether adding DOTs back to SCH will improve the gameplay. We can infer, from the previous incarnation having more DOTs and being 'generally more well received', that the two correlate, but we can't be sure until it goes live.

You could also say that those healers, who 'like the current gameplay', say as much because they worry that SE cannot rework a class if their lives depended on it. Perhaps they worry that 'I like it now, but I fear SE is more likely to 'ruin' it than make what I like even more likeable', which, can't blame them for that one tbh