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

[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

[ty_taurus]

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

I completely glossed over that actually. Yeah, that is an absolutely insane comparison. You cannot say that whether or not your gameplay revolves around doing damage or providing buffs would be like asking someone to choose which form of lethal torture they would more willingly endure. This total rejection of even the smallest inch time and time again is getting exhausting. Roe's White Mage suggestion that deals 97% of the total potential damage when someone chooses to instead Glare spam will cause people to die to enrages, adding a new gauge element to White Mage's flower cane is too overwhelming, any use of additional cooldowns, resources, or DoTs is somehow all the same and would ruin a healer, having a simplistic branching combo is too many choices... It's all getting out of hand. These are not torture, they are normal expectations of MMO design.

[ForsakenRoe]

This total rejection of even the smallest inch time and time again is getting exhausting. Roe's White Mage suggestion that deals 97% of the total potential damage when someone chooses to instead Glare spam will cause people to die to enrages, adding a new gauge element to White Mage's flower cane is too overwhelming, any use of additional cooldowns, resources, or DoTs is somehow all the same and would ruin a healer, having a simplistic branching combo is too many choices... It's all getting out of hand. These are not torture, they are normal expectations of MMO design.

This is what I'm trying to work out about the stance. Like, if we got a SGE that has it's 'optional complexity' entirely folded into Kardia and Augmentation effect optimizations, with E.Prognosis remaining as 'the panic button/option for more casual players to fall back on', is that acceptable? The DPS rotation wouldn't necessarily need to change at all, as where 'optimizing SCH' for example would be 'have perfect uptime on DOTs, replace Aetherflow heals with other stuff to get more Energy Drains' etc, damage button related methods to optimize, then SGE's 'optimization' would be in reverse: You can easily optimize the damage kit, as it's as barebones as it is now. But the process of taking E.Prognosis casts out of your cast timeline, the thing we think is the 'first step to optimizing a healer', would instead become the final barrier. I think it'd be interesting, at least, especially if the output of the Kardia kit is balanced in such a way that it's not actually 100% possible to get to 'zero GCDs spent on healing'. So you'd have to suck it up and use at least one, somewhere, and then the question is 'where does that one GCD go'.

I remember seeing a vid from Momo about how he and his coheal got the combined rank 1 for O12S, with a total of 4 GCDs spent on heals between the two of them. I don't remember thinking 'lol still 4 to go idiots', I remember being mindboggled at their tech. Using a Super-Potion because they had a fast enough killtime to only have 2 potions anyway, or 'use a Succor for this raidwide, then Deploy the same Succor off the fairy (who is not hit by raidwides, but does get Succor for some reason)

The question is, if the OPTIONAL complexity of SGE goes up on the healing side of things, with a reliable fallback for the causal players in case of emergency (Prognosis being 0 MP cost for example), and the damage kit is the same as now, does that work for the 4 healers thing, because my understanding is 'no, because there is a way for the skilled players to make the less skilled players look bad at the game by comparison'. Everything about the '4 healers' thing seems (to me) to be an attempt to make less skilled players get the same results as skilled players, not by improving the performance of the 'skill floor' level of gameplay, but by hamstringing the 'skill ceiling' level of gameplay so it can't get too far ahead. Happy to be proven wrong

It's all getting out of hand. These are not torture, they are normal expectations of MMO design.

On the topic of hands though... AST sure does 'torture' my hands, doing that opener over and over for reclears /s

[Shurrikhan]

This is what I'm trying to work out about the stance. Like, if we got a SGE that has it's 'optional complexity' entirely folded into Kardia and Augmentation effect optimizations, with E.Prognosis remaining as 'the panic button/option for more casual players to fall back on', is that acceptable?

Slightly tangential, but... how much would be impacted if, say, players again had to level some other classes to unlock the "jump to lv70" jobs, etc., such that those trying SGE would already have had some experience with healing? Or at least... forced some minor degree of training (perhaps increased if that's their first healer)?

Would we still need to give each healer a "baby's first healer" way out?

I'm all for accessible floors, but it seems likely to be a redundant requirement to have every healer rely on an "out" via the most obvious means possible.

Just a thought.

On the topic of hands though... AST sure does 'torture' my hands, doing that opener over and over for reclears /s

I feel like AST is the counterexample to any/every claim that XIV has wholly sufficient controller control schemes.

One related idea, from another thread:

How about, say, Compass / Party-Wheel Targeting?

Steps:

1. Un-neuter macros and allow [st] / [soft] / [softtarget] as targeting options for abilities. Additionally, allow targeting procedures (such as [on-release], [@cursor], [@mouseover], [@UI, etc.] to be attached directly to skills via the Actions and Traits Pane.
2. Allow players to simultaneously hold a Soft Target and "Hard" Target, perhaps with a UI component added for said Soft Target.
   
   
3. Allow for a "Party Wheel", with a fair few sub-options. This places a radial display at the bottom of your screen that allow you to select, via joystick or D-PAD (but using Top, Top-and-Right, Right, etc., instead of having to list-cycle), the target of your next soft-targeted ability from a wheel of party members. What else is displayed in your Party Wheel is highly configurable, but let's say there's at least contextual display of icons (e.g., cleansable effects, who all has shield HP greater than what you could produce with a non-crit, and highlighting Melee DPS and, in a more subdued color, your tank when drawing a Melee Card) and compact option for HP display either as a compact bar, section divider bar, or as a background.
   
   Optional center section (no D-PAD selection / no joystick nudge) into which you can place self, hard target, focus target, or a trickle-down through them in custom order (casting Malefic with hard target > self > focus would cast it on the Focus; casting Asp. Benefic with hard target > self > focus would cast on self if target isn't friendly; etc.).
   
   
4. [OPTIONAL]No longer require a target to be set before beginning a cast and give the option to swap to new targets mid-cast if/when applicable (yes, this greatly helps prehealing against random-target mechanics, but that doesn't seem so awful).
5. [OPTIONAL]Allow for a "prevent movement while holding button on casted actions" option, so that people can use their movement key to aim while they cast.

Simpler version: Allow players to hit a button that temporarily allows DPAD to select party members directly, with each among P1-P8 having a cardinal or semi-cardinal direction.

[ForsakenRoe]

Slightly tangential, but... how much would be impacted if, say, players again had to level some other classes to unlock the "jump to lv70" jobs, etc., such that those trying SGE would already have had some experience with healing? Or at least... forced some minor degree of training (perhaps increased if that's their first healer)?

Isn't that what the solo instance in the job quest right after unlocking the job is meant to be for? Whether said solo instance actually teaches the player effectively is a different question

Simpler version: Allow players to hit a button that temporarily allows DPAD to select party members directly, with each among P1-P8 having a cardinal or semi-cardinal direction.

I'd do it with Right Stick, dpads can be weird with intercardinals sometimes (I find it especially weird with the Xbox dpad). Letting go of the 'activation' button while holding a direction selects that party member, letting go while holding no direction on the stick (neutral position) cancels the retarget command. So it'd be, for example, 'hold R2, move right stick to up-left to select that player, let go of R2', or some such. Sounds convoluted to explain but in execution it'd be pretty fluid, I think. For M/KB, it can bring up a menu where your mouse cursor is, and you just drag your mouse in the direction you choose to select. Or just don't cos M/KB can select party members way more directly via the list, whichever

[Aravell]

The question is, if the OPTIONAL complexity of SGE goes up on the healing side of things, with a reliable fallback for the causal players in case of emergency (Prognosis being 0 MP cost for example), and the damage kit is the same as now, does that work for the 4 healers thing

I've pitched the same thing and asked this exact question before in another thread. He never gave me an answer, maybe he'll give you one.

Anyway, I have a 4 healers model of my own:
WHM - Powerhouse turret that can outdamage a tank if allowed to
SCH - DoT, fairy and resource management, should be the ultimate spreadsheet job
AST - Bring back a focus on buff management so large that we don't even realise we only have Combust and Malefic
SGE - Give more healing interactions with the damage kit through Eukrasia/Kardia or any such new abilities, become a dps healer not in the sense of having a lot of dps tools, but in the sense of doing your healing through dps

And there you have it, 4 different styles of healer with different complexity considerations, WHM (movement), SCH (resources), AST (buff management), SGE (healing considerations), and none of them are "Help, I tripped over the skill ceiling".

[Renathras]

Every job in the game needs...

So a couple things:

1) What Jobs NEED is an audience and to be at least somewhat suited to the playerbase - that is, to be fun. What that is varies from person to person, so each Job in the game should appeal to a swath of people. There may be some overlap with others, but the idea is to cover as many general preferences as possible so everyone has something they kinda like. Like we have BLM for people that like complex Caster Jobs with fight knowledge optimization. There are some other Jobs for people that like Casters, people that like complex, and people that like fight optimization, but they aren't all BLM with different animations. And there are also Jobs that appeal to people who don't like Casters, don't like fight knowledge optimization, and don't like complexity, or that like some but not all of those things.

2) Healing can - and even has been earlier in FFXIV's history - the neutral state, and has been in other MMOs. Very clearly, it's POSSIBLE to design a game that way, and this one once was. Whether you think it's likely or preferable or not is a worthwhile discussion, but it's very much in the realm of possible.

3) Healer #4 does exist - you're moving the goalposts. "No one thins this state is the best possible state of healers". Where did I say "best possible state"? I said "Some people like things as they are". At least don't shift the goalposts dishonestly. There are legitimately some players do NOT want to see things change. And also, no, I don't prefer to never press my DPS spell at all. And I've said this enough times by now, I'm somewhat shocked you still are wrong in your belief of my position...

4) Not everyone likes "set up and execute" Jobs. I know you do, but I generally don't. The only times I do is if it feels good to execute, which is a pretty moving target and requires it to be optimal. For example, I like Recitation Adlo Deploy. But it's always suboptimal and not damage neutral, thus I dislike it. In short, you didn't make a Job for people like me. You made a Job for people like you who are stand-ins for what you think people like me are/should be.

Love that my semi-sarcastic implication of...

Well...

A) Poe's law.

B) Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were posting/arguing in good faith and assumed so. Should I assume bad faith posts from you as the standard going forward instead?

C) Ah, I see, instead of getting the point, you'd rather argue about how I made the point. Pretty sure that's one (or multiple) logical fallacies...

D) The "4 healers thing" is compatible with that; the only things it's not compatible with are (a) if every Job is the same (either as we are now or moving to all be a different same) and (b) doesn't have options for the people who dislike the kit/all have the same general playstyle and focus. You seem not to understand what the 4 Healers Model is, despite me explaining it, including in simple terms, so many times... Also, "5 Healers Model" would just mean "the new Job isn't identical to any of the existing Jobs", which should be the expectation, yes. Should it not?

E) Agree with your response to Ty, I think, though I'd note that different players like different things. There are some that loved SB SCH and some that hated it and played AST and WHM because they hated it. Again, the goal should be to make the healer Jobs different. Because different players like different things.

F) Not entirely untrue on the redesign argument, though...though that doesn't explain all of #4, only some. In my case, as I've said before, I genuinely believe WHM in EW is the best iteration of the Job in FFXIV's history. It's the first time the Job has ever not been hostile to new players (Cleric), MP functional (instead of incarnations that literally cannot do long encounters without running out of MP), doesn't have incredibly stupid systems like SB Lilies (remember when you had to cast Cure 1/2 on people to generate them? AND TO interact with Plenary?!). ShB was nearly the same, and I did like its Thin Air better, but Lilies are now actually damage neutral and WHM in EW is really just ShB's WHM with iterative improvement. I don't believe that of SCH and AST (SGE is obviously just the one), but I absolutely believe that of WHM. But also, that 6.0 WHM was in a bad way, and so don't entirely trust changes to be...good. Especially when we already have a thing that works really well and I find really fun to play. I'd personally make a few changes, but minor ones. But I like it as it is vs all the alternatives, and so am happy with it staying as such.

I completely glossed over that actually. Yeah, that is an absolutely insane comparison.

Good GOD you guys are terrible. FINE I'll come up with a different example, gee-zus! You wonder why I get annoyed with you. This kind of BS is why. Especially since we ARE talking about effectively killing off Jobs. But whatever:

Imagine you offer someone sushi and they tell you they don't like raw food. So you offer them sushi and salad, not understanding they didn't say they don't like raw SEAFOOD, but RAW FOODS in general.

You think you've offered them something to meet their needs, but you haven't, because you aren't actually listening to them, and/or you think you know better. But then you say you're offering them a thing that they'll like and seem confused when they say it is not what they like. And that's if we're just considering 2 groups of people.

Stop getting so locked onto a tree that you ignore someone explaining the forest to you. Both of you. It's like the Centaurs in Harry Potter when asked any question of importance:

<look up at the sky>
"The stars are very pretty tonight, aren't they?"

Someone inclined to believe others act in bad faith MIGHT be inclined to think you do it intentionally to avoid getting the actual point, which is obvious to you and something against which you have no defense... <_<

But consider what that thing is. It's not "I want more to heal" but literally just "No one should be allowed more downtime agency than I, personally, want to optimize."

Except it's not.

That would be if I was demanding ALL FOUR HEALER JOBS be the exact same so there's nothing that others can do during downtime. Which it's not since I'm not asking for that.

"But for this one Job..!" BUT YOU'RE DEMANDING YOUR CHANGES FOR ALL FOUR. So no, YOU are doing that, I am the one NOT doing that.

NO ONE is saying YOU are not allowed to optimize things or have more/different downtime gameplay. All I'm asking is that YOU not get to force YOUR preferred downtime solution ON ME. You're literally doing the thing you're accusing me of doing while I'm the one person NOT doing that.

The question is, if the OPTIONAL complexity of SGE goes up on the healing side of things, with a reliable fallback for the causal players in case of emergency (Prognosis being 0 MP cost for example), and the damage kit is the same as now, does that work for the 4 healers thing,

Yes, it is. As long as it's not something that all 4 healer Jobs are doing and as long as there's an option left (one of the other Jobs) for people that like current healer design better.

because my understanding is 'no, because there is a way for the skilled players to make the less skilled players look bad at the game by comparison'.

This is because you DON'T understand the 4 Healers Model, despite me explaining it - including to you specifically - multiple times. You keep preferring your caricature of it to the reality because that caricature is something you can easily defeat. It's a strawman fallacy that you, for whatever reason, don't want to give up. The 4 Healers Model has LITERALLY NOTHING to do with "skilled players" making others "look bad at the game". NOTHING. That is, in exactly NO WAY, a part or component of it. Never has been. And I've even told you this before, I think. Directly.

I've pitched the same thing and asked this exact question before in another thread. He never gave me an answer, maybe he'll give you one.

I just did.

And I've answered this question before. You'll have to point me to that exact thread, but someone (I thought it was you) accused me of not answering before and I directly answered (I already had, but I made it far more explicit and direct), and it was just ignored.

You can't ignore when someone answers something or has answered it over and over again and accuse them of refusing to do so when they literally have.

And there you have it, 4 different styles of healer with different complexity considerations, WHM (movement), SCH (resources), AST (buff management), SGE (healing considerations), and none of them are "Help, I tripped over the skill ceiling".

And which of those is someone who likes healers right now going to like?

Because I find none of them likeable.

I don't care for BLM, so I'd hate WHM that is "BLM but healer". I generally dislike resource Jobs, but especially if the resources seem tacked on or highly limiting how much you can engage with the fun abilities of the kit. Buff management can be interesting, but isn't my preference (in EQ terms, I prefer a Cleric to a Bard or Enchanter, I guess). And SGE sounds less like "healing considerations" and more like "heals by doing damage Discipline Priest", which is fine for SGE to be and I support SGE becoming...but I wouldn't enjoy.

So which of your four healers is for people like me? Right now, seems none of them.

Meanwhile, my suggestion is for 3 for people like you and 1 for people like me.

.

It's fine for there to be some you like. And some you don't like. It's not fine to take away all of them from people who like what they are right now.