Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[TheDustyOne]

I think this is fair. I don't play healers but I am interpreting this to mean you want some sort of mechanic (ie BLM Enochian or Reaper Enshroud) to spice up the rotation of WHM? On the other hand I would say I'm sure the devs are hesitant to give healers too much to do as it could actually get in the way of healing. So they would need to tread carefully as such.

Yes. The most WHM has for a burst phase is Presence of Mind, which has us spam Glare still, but now FASTER. Previous expansions gave us multiple DoTs on all healers, and nothing 30s long, so uptime was something to keep an eye on more often. This is what people are asking for when healers complain about DPS being boring, it's currently monotonous, homogenized, and extremely uninspired.

As for getting in the way of healing, well we have a bevy of oGCD heals that let us just not interrupt our damage as is, the only way it would interfere with healing is if they went back to 2.5s cast times and gave us no instant cast options. It all comes back to how well they design the job. And good healers would know when to stop DPSing and focus on healing when things are going south.

I'd personally like some interplay between our GCD heals and damage kit, so that they don't feel like they're "fighting each other" but instead feel complementary. But that's another discussion.

Otherwise I would just say on the subject of downtime-- I don't really see when it isn't downtime if raidwide damage sequences are downtime. In terms of the majority of content (casual), for me as a BLM then, virtually everything is downtime except a handful of seconds I move around to avoid the current attack. That's all this game is. Wait around, push buttons, dodge attack, etc. Yes what you do in the midst of that cycle I suppose can seem meaningful, but the issues with the combat imo are larger than rotations. Things don't always do enough damage and boss encounters lack complexity.

In the context of healers, downtime refers to moments where we don't need healing. The incoming damage is typically separated enough in content (especially casual content) that you can get by with an oGCD heal, and spam your singular nuke until the next time incoming damage happens, which has us press a heal oGCD between the nukes.

The reason people ask for more DPS options on healers, (and note options, not extra damage itself), is because increasing the healing requirements in fights also increases the skill floor in completing that fight. By giving extra DoTs, a gauge to track, buffs to give, or whatever, increases the ceiling of healers while only mildly impacting the floor for less skilled players.

[Lyth]

If anybody wondered, -this- was the original question.

This is the downside of putting your votes in the Q+A thread behind an essay, rather than a specific question. The Living Dead question was quite literally just "Living Dead is terrible, when are you going to fix it?" and they did it within the same Live Letter. You may not have gotten a fix right in 6.0, but at least you'd have a better idea of the design plan going into 7.x.

The bulk of that essay talks about healer checks in harder content, and cites examples of healerless clears with skilled groups that had first cleared the fights using conventional strategies. There's a pretty large variation in healer skill in the playerbase, with some healers having cleared every bit of content on release for the past 10 years, and others who apparently think 24p raids and relic fates count as 'midcore' content. Because healer checks are pass-fail, this is one of the least flexible ways to test skill. Nobody wants to sit around while you raidwipe a group repeatedly in the process of figuring out your timings. Entry to harder content tends to be self-selecting because everyone knows this.

The question should have just been "The 'damage rotation' of healers is utterly boring, what are your plans to address this?" All supports end up with simplified damage rotations because a large portion of the action budget goes into defensive actions. The end result is that tanks end up as a simplified version of melee dps, and healers end up as a simplified version of caster dps. Unsurprisingly, the end result is a one button turret simulator. The only way this will improve is if they revise the action budget for support and offensive actions.

[OdinelStarrei]

This is the downside of putting your votes in the Q+A thread behind an essay, rather than a specific question. The Living Dead question was quite literally just "Living Dead is terrible, when are you going to fix it?" and they did it within the same Live Letter. You may not have gotten a fix right in 6.0, but at least you'd have a better idea of the design plan going into 7.x.

The bulk of that essay talks about healer checks in harder content, and cites examples of healerless clears with skilled groups that had first cleared the fights using conventional strategies. There's a pretty large variation in healer skill in the playerbase, with some healers having cleared every bit of content on release for the past 10 years, and others who apparently think 24p raids and relic fates count as 'midcore' content. Because healer checks are pass-fail, this is one of the least flexible ways to test skill. Nobody wants to sit around while you raidwipe a group repeatedly in the process of figuring out your timings. Entry to harder content tends to be self-selecting because everyone knows this.

The question should have just been "The 'damage rotation' of healers is utterly boring, what are your plans to address this?" All supports end up with simplified damage rotations because a large portion of the action budget goes into defensive actions. The end result is that tanks end up as a simplified version of melee dps, and healers end up as a simplified version of caster dps. Unsurprisingly, the end result is a one button turret simulator. The only way this will improve is if they revise the action budget for support and offensive actions.

Have to unfortunately agree here. The reason I think we got an answer to what was possibly my question was because I was very blunt about it, gave them multiple avenues of escaping responsibility by not pining them to address a contentious topic (for some reason???), and I had the luck of multiple content creators talking to devs directly about it in the past. Direct, hard questions to the development team will never get answered by the common rabble. So, I ask "Are there going to be any general adjustments to Dark Knight, specifically for Living Dead and Blood Weapon?" That should have been it, but I go a little testy with them and said "Quite a number of people are unhappy with the job at present" or something along those lines. That alone probably should have gotten my question thrown in the bin, but I made a point to not be accusatory, even if I had been essentially gaslit by Yoshida during the EW Media Tour. My heart said "Ask them why they keep destroying all your favorite jobs, like (insert your favorite job here), give them some sources and some hard facts!" and I feasibly could've gotten a lot more likes on that post. But then Yoshida would never answer. So I approached it as neutrally and concisely as possible, while still saying that people, not myself, but others have been voicing complaints about these issues specifically. That's the best you can do when you have a QA whose tone ranges between "Why are you killing the game" and "When can I romance Y'shtola" And even when the question was addressed, I remember it being pretty handwavy. Something like "There will be adjustments soon." which is unironically more information than anyone had gotten in what, two+ years? Big win!

As much as I respect Recon and their posts (blessings be upon him wherever he may be), there was no adequate way to respond to his posts without outing the healer combat development as either malicious, ignorant or incompetent based on the wording of their question. Even if there was a perfect healer/tank/supports question that could concisely cover all of our bases without being too offensive to the development, be concise enough for an easy read, but deep enough to get to the nuance of our inquiry, I still doubt it would be answered, simply due to the optics around supports in general. I say this because of the response to the Kaiten debacle, where it was similarly wishy washy, not actually addressing any feedback, and ultimately, nothing of note being changed or reverted. That gave me all the proof I needed that they would not answer questions like the ones Recon and others pose in a satisfactory fashion for those most invested in their role.

[Absurdity]

Nah, give tanks: a single attack button that generates high aggro, a single dot that generates high aggro, a single aoe and 8-10 mitigations they'll hardly ever use. Let's see how long they last before they start quitting the role out of boredom.

The role is already incredibly boring with the current kits, you don't even need to reduce them to the insult that is healer gameplay. But I guess it would help with shining more light on an issue they've refused to address for 4 years now.

[Turtledeluxe]

FTFY



A lot of healers have accepted the fact that CBU3 refuses to give us decent dps options / rotations because "It'd be too hard for players" despite tanks having them. We heal about as much as tanks mitigate anymore

So in the downtime we have requested buffing / debuffing roles

Personally I have advocated for Protect / Shell / Faith / Bravery / Haste to appear etc etc. All Final Fantasy staples



CBU3 added a poison to most AoE's this expansion and apparently they don't trust healers to do their jobs so tanks / DNC / SMN / RPR get to do it.



Nah, give tanks: a single attack button that generates high aggro, a single dot that generates high aggro, a single aoe and 8-10 mitigations they'll hardly ever use. Let's see how long they last before they start quitting the role out of boredom.

If we give healers more buffing/debuffung wouldn't that tread on DNC and BRD and their future growth? If we continue going in the direction of "trinity is dead let all classes have everything" job identity becomes cosmetic.

This is why I think a lot of Job discussion needs to be directed to what fights in general are demanding and how the dev team can breath new life into combat in general without focusing purely on difficulty or changing up job reaponsibilities. I'm not talking about fights needing more wipes but rather fights that have some kind of challenge aside from finding a safe spot or killing mobs. Maybe that requires entirely new types of bosses.

Let's say we do give healers buffs like protect and haste-- so the non threatening content becomes even more so and the zerg becomes more effective because spell speed and attack speed are hastened. In the current paradigm I don't think that serves us outside maybe savage and Ultimates. In casual content most things that hit you already afford you so much leeway before KO that protect and shell feel like overkill. Addle and Poison already exist in the game. Giving all these things to new classes is putting a bandaid on a bigger problem imo. Once again if we are continuing on this train of "f the trinity" plus the 2 minute meta then that demands more variety in the combat imo. With so many other new games out expanding on the traditional boss fight and design, it's crazy to me that XIV just kind of settles and tells you "well there's a tiny % of content that's engaging but you need a static etc to do it". And let's be honest those fights aren't necessarily innovative as much as they are iust all the mechanics of the game turned up to 11 and accelerated.

Isn't this part of why people enjoy the exploratory zones for example-- Eureka in particular verges on being an entirely different game, in a good way imo.

[Turtledeluxe]

I think you got mixed up there. As a BLM downtime for you would be the bits where you need to move and you can't do your primary job (dps).
For a Healer in a decently competent group, the only time they have to do their job (aka healing) is after raidwides. Esp. As overhealing does nothing to help the group defeat the Boss.

To try and paint you a picture of how healing downtime feels, imagine as a BLM a fight where you die if you stand still outside a handfull specific mechanics that last 1-3 GCDs. That's how much healing is usefull in EX trials and a lot of savage.
Sticking with the above example also might help illustrate the other part of the issue. Afaik, outside Triple Cast BLM has like 1 or 2 instant casts you'd be expected to spamm all of that hypothetical'we hate castbars fight'. That's about what healers have as well. A DoT a spell and some once a minute extra options. And outside AST with the card system, there's really nothing to any of that beyond sastasha level'watch the cast bar fill up again and again' casting mechanics. None of it interacts with each other, nor the Healing part of the kit.

This makes sense but can we really say the average group is a competent group? I am just wondering if its the average healer driving the changes or the skilled healers ( or both). As you correctly point out, additional healing doesn't fix the problem. The problem is if the loop is too complex or if it (theoretically) expands the role in any way, the divide between average and talented player becomes massive. I would suspect that's what is driving a lack of progress in this area.

[Zakuyia]

Except there is no logical problem there

If you want to be engaged as a healer you need to do hard content

We want all content to be engaging on healer, yoshi told us to take a hike

Still doesn’t change the fact that healing is only engaging on hard content

sure but we also need casuals to step up their game at this point. Stop running content with no materia o. o

[Sebazy]

I'm sorry to burst this bubble people have talked about for like 8 years but when you say "healers need something to do during (alleged) downtime" can you be more specific? I see people say this all the time but never suggest anything. Perhaps because we all know there is nothing to do other than damage and fights barely have what would be classified as downtime..

(alleged)
fights barely have what would be classified as downtime..



Nothing alleged about it sir. That's 2 AoEs in total in a 4:30 fight, one of which is the very first mechanic (like it always is).

In other words why not just say what you mean...healers should do top dps bc why exactly? They are not a DPS.

You realise that actual numerical healer DPS is the lowest it's ever been comparative to the rest of the group right? Do you see anyone complaining about the amount of damage we do?

I don't think you do.

What we are complaining about is the MANNER in which we do it.

Smashing 1 button endlessly for minutes at a time isn't fun, nor is it engaging.

How about you put your sorry little main character complex down for just a second and consider just how effing boring fights like the above get for a healer when there is LITERALLY NOTHING TO HEAL for ACTUAL MINUTES AT A TIME.

Lets have a fight that forces melee to disconnect and sit in the corner for several minutes because there are only there to carry me to the end credits amirite? Wait no, that's utterly stupid.

[Sani2341]

This makes sense but can we really say the average group is a competent group? I am just wondering if its the average healer driving the changes or the skilled healers ( or both). As you correctly point out, additional healing doesn't fix the problem. The problem is if the loop is too complex or if it (theoretically) expands the role in any way, the divide between average and talented player becomes massive. I would suspect that's what is driving a lack of progress in this area.

The thing is, if we had more engaging things to do when not healing, be that buffs, debuffs or what have you, assuming healer dmg over all is tuned similar to how it is now, droping those if there is a need to heal more for whatever reason would at absolutely worst cost the party what 15% of the overall dps if both healers stop all their dmg? And even then only in the phases where that amount of healing is needed. Be it through mechanics or mistakes.

And assuming that these fancy new options would only account for half a healers optimal dmg, not using them would be a 3% difference in Party dps per healer. Considering that 5% difference between Tanks is already a thing, those less experienced healers focusing more on Healing would rarely be the deciding Factor between making enrage and Not.

[MintnHoney]

If we give healers more buffing/debuffung wouldn't that tread on DNC and BRD and their future growth? If we continue going in the direction of "trinity is dead let all classes have everything" job identity becomes cosmetic.

I think it's important to note that, when DNC was being introduced, many jobs (particularly AST and BRD) lost many buffs and debuffs that created "synergies" because, as YoshiP described, DNC was going to be the job that offered "synergy" as an identity. So, actually, it was DNC who did the "treading" in the first place.

With that in mind, buffing and debuffing are not currently exclusive to DNC and BRD anyway, as most jobs have their own sets of buffs and debuffs. The knee-jerk reaction you had regarding healers possibly getting anything that isn't just more healing spells being an absolute problem just kind of shows how undervalued the actual Healer player is, because the role itself is not allowed to have that variation in their gameplay like every other job in the game simply due to concerns over the healer possibly making a mistake, or the player being initially incapable of healing through those times where one just couldn't (or otherwise chooses not to) avoid damage without some practice.
For any other job, in any other role, having little to do and lacking gameplay variation would be tragic. Mistakes are inevitable, but expected and okay!
But for healers: nah. Gotta keep the fun rolling for the rest of the party, so the healer can't be allowed to do anything else, just in case they need to press the sparkle button later.

And now I miss Semhirage.

Also, regarding job identity: it wouldn't necessarily suffer if "the trinity" suffers or even dies, but, given my prior observation/opinion/statement, I think it'd be fair to say that job identity suffers due to "the trinity." This is especially true when suddenly (as is the case for healers, apparently) trying to strictly adhere to the "roles."