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

[xbahax92]

I think DPS is more than constant value but the highest value, because that's what the game design encourages and what dps trackers encourage. I wish the focus was on unique gameplay for every class that's adaptable to average OR expert players, gameplay that challenges and satisfies players as you were when you fulfilled your AST role to help your friend clear. This is why I'm so averse to DPS-ifying everything, not because I don't want fairness amongst players but because I don't think in the long term that makes the game fun. Unless we all want the jobs to be purely defined by their gameplay but otherwise homogenous, which appears to be what some are arguing for.

As I mentioned earlier SE hasn't come outright to say it, but I get the vibe they want the game to be a story based experience (style over substance) outside the minority of static based content. People looking for job depth are expected to play said content (which imo isn't really answer to the problem). Whether that's their philosophy or a matter of resources is unclear.

Sorry, not trying to be rude. But playing the story as a healer sucks hard and I think you're way faster progressing solo content AND/OR open world content with a dps. And even tanks clear trash mobs faster than your silly 1-button smash on a single target. Epic fights like Zenos with your non-existent kit feels underwhelming, like... no way I can imagine that is an immersive experience?

Other MMO's manage to create fun healers/supports with amazing dps kits too. And let's not act like healer's have been always lackluster, there was a time when scholar was really fun to play. Spreading dots on top of shadow flare... man it felt so rewarding while keeping up your tank. Now it's just a snooze fest walking wall to wall.

[technole]

Thread is still alive, and rightfully so.

I'd probably roll back some of the oGGD bloat that Sebazy mentioned, they also may need to roll back tank self-sustain capabilities. It's almost no wonder why tanks are in nearly in the best place they ever been in this game. Content doesn't even need to be out for a day to be cleared with tanks only kind of things. The state of the game in a nutshell, just axe out the healer and put 8 competent tanks and crush through content and older ultimates with a little coordination.

Someone on the battle team needs to be a healer coordinator, they could simply just ensure there is a better balance of heal buttons versus damage buttons required in a given instance, especially savage and above level. They need to stop being afraid they will make something difficult, people have been around long enough and can be fast learners. That's just my quick thought update, I just don't have a lot of faith the status quo is going to change. CBU3 has gotten too comfortable with their position and it shows how the majority feel about post 6.0 Endwalker nowadays, neutral to negative.

Sorry, not trying to be rude. But playing the story as a healer sucks hard and I think you're way faster progressing solo content AND/OR open world content with a dps. And even tanks clear trash mobs faster than your silly 1-button smash on a single target. Epic fights like Zenos with your non-existent kit feels underwhelming, like... no way I can imagine that is an immersive experience?

Other MMO's manage to create fun healers/supports with amazing dps kits too. And let's not act like healer's have been always lackluster, there was a time when scholar was really fun to play. Spreading dots on top of shadow flare... man it felt so rewarding while keeping up your tank. Now it's just a snooze fest while walking wall to wall.

Stormblood launch was the final straw for me with healer leveling for the story, when they neutered the healer kits and potency was rather low. Everything was slow as Astro. I just go with Scholar first so I can Summoner my way through things.

[Turtledeluxe]

Sorry, not trying to be rude. But playing the story as a healer sucks hard and I think you're way faster progressing solo content AND/OR open world content with a dps. And even tanks clear trash mobs faster than your silly 1-button smash on a single target. Epic fights like Zenos with your non-existent kit feels underwhelming, like... no way I can imagine that is an immersive experience?

Other MMO's manage to create fun healers/supports with amazing dps kits too. And let's not act like healer's have been always lackluster, there was a time when scholar was really fun to play. Spreading dots on top of shadow flare... man it felt so rewarding while keeping up your tank. Now it's just a snooze fest while walking wall to wall.

This is true. MMOs have healing classes that are expected to do solo content. They theoretically do less damage but have healing to offset that. Of course that doesn't neccessitate a boring experience-- it is SE's job to make that fun. Is the game easier as a DPS? I would say it's insanely easy and, pretty boring, with any class. Healers do dps just fine from what I've seen in open world fates, exploratory zone play, etc. Whether it's fun is another question. In fact I would say the story and the open world elements are most easy for melee and tanks, easily, due to their dps and attack speed (not to mention self heals and mitigation). A given class might not do as much dps as BLM in raids but it will still be more fun in open world bc the gameplay is better suited to it (low hp mobs). That's what I've observed as a BLM main, which has zero self healing, long cast times, and minimal mitigation. What saves it though, is being fun to play (imo).

As such I stand by that the solution to this problem is meaningful gameplay. As you and others have rightly pointed out, healers used to at least have more options and be more fun to play. I'm just saying I don't think the solution is significantly raising dps (as has been done to warriors) or slapping on basic dps abilities (as has already been done to healers). The whole rotation should feed into the class identity and fulfill a role. I just don't think they should be SO dps centric that it becomes redundant. It's a delicate balance.

Every class becoming too dps centric and increasing potency too far just makes the content even easier than it already is (group content wise), which by extension makes healing and raise even more irrelevant. Once again it's SE's job to give healing classes sufficient rotations and options to satisfy their solo dps experience.

New players will literally never see the scales mechanic in Aglaia final boss. That's crazy. I understand your frustration but I'm also just saying as a group we do so much dps the game is breaking within months. Maybe that also means boss HP is too low-- but what is certain is that if there's no difference between a reaper and a WHM boss HP will need to be upped, like a lot.

[Sani2341]

New players will literally never see the scales mechanic in Aglaia final boss.

That has absolutely nothing to do with job Design. And everything With having since had two full savage tiers worth of gear improvements.

Aglaia rewards are 35 ilvls below the minimum needed to enter Thaleia.

Which if my math checks out is just 10ilvl less than Differenz between the loot of the last ShB alliance raid and Aglaia's min ilvl.

[Payadopa]

Honestly, just remove enrage already. It's one of the reason why every raider is so focused on their DPS or why jobs are balanced into the ground.

A fight should evolve around the mechanics and whether you have it in you to save a run when you got downed before but what we have now is just boring and sad in terms of RPG design on so many levels.

Give an achievement for a swift completion or something to throw people a bone who enjoy that kinda stuff but don't force it on everything. And suddenly "muh DPS" isn't that important anymore. Big win in my book.

[TheDustyOne]

Enrage already doesn't exist in most casual content, remove it in Ex and Savage and you've now removed the need for even DPS to, well, DPS. The looming threat of enrage is what ultimately forces you to learn how your job works, and how you should interact with the fight with whatever tools your job offers. Remove that and what becomes the point of trying to get better at your job?

Also, what would be the point of taking 4 DPS if there's no enrage when you could instead take 6+ tanks and give everyone tank privileges? Sure the boss dies slower, but now there's room to just... not die either when you mess up mechanics. Heck, make most of them Warrior and PLD and you won't need the healers either, just 8 tanks clearing all Extremes and Savages because there's no enrage threatening them. Healers were complaining enough when an ultimate was cleared without them, could you imagine if DPS wasn't needed at all for any future content?

[Sebazy]

Honestly, just remove enrage already. It's one of the reason why every raider is so focused on their DPS or why jobs are balanced into the ground.

Or better yet, use add phases or specific key mechanics as the real enrage timer with the rest of the fight being more focused on surviving and setting up the burst phase rather than min maxing all the DPS things all the time.

Removing enrage entirely opens up a whole different can of worms unfortunately.

[Payadopa]

Or better yet, use add phases or specific key mechanics as the real enrage timer with the rest of the fight being more focused on surviving and setting up the burst phase rather than min maxing all the DPS things all the time.

Removing enrage entirely opens up a whole different can of worms unfortunately.

Sounds like a compromise but if it's too tight you'd just have the same problem again. At this point I find them too restrictive. Instead of removing everything and only leaving DPS and DDR in the game they should start putting stuff back into the game or make positionals worth something at least. Bonus points if healers get to cleanse. The current design is so single-minded it's crazy. But then I look at XVI and it all makes sense. xD

[Turtledeluxe]

That has absolutely nothing to do with job Design. And everything With having since had two full savage tiers worth of gear improvements.

Aglaia rewards are 35 ilvls below the minimum needed to enter Thaleia.

I'm not saying it is the sole reason but I'm saying arbitrarily adding DPS to jobs certainly doesn't make that better and, given sufficient time and expansion of DPS it does make the content easier as such. It's not even just gear but food buffs and potions.

And honestly, groups were skipping the end phases of Euphrosyne at or close to launch too. Obviously gear plays a role but player experience, the dps balance at base level, etc. It's not ALL about gear even if that makes up a majority of the damage increase.

There have also been numerous buffs over the post 6.0 patch cycle, some of which are very significant per class.

[ForsakenRoe]

New players will literally never see the scales mechanic in Aglaia final boss. That's crazy. I understand your frustration but I'm also just saying as a group we do so much dps the game is breaking within months. Maybe that also means boss HP is too low-- but what is certain is that if there's no difference between a reaper and a WHM boss HP will need to be upped, like a lot.

First, we can blame SE's insistence on having each tier give +30 ilvls over the previous for this. If it were up to me, I'd make crafted equal to the previous BIS, so that instead of us having 630 Abyssos gear and immediately throwing it all in the Glam Dresser in favor of the new 640 gear, the new gear would ALSO be 630, so you could use it to fill holes in the BIS (eg, a tank has Crit SS ring, and Det Tenacity ring, new crafted comes out and the ring is Crit Det, you swap out both rings for the new one). This would take our ILVL bloat per expansion down from 90, down to 60. Crafted gear would lose some value but lets be real it has very little value anyway after the first day, so with the 1 week timeframe to get prepped for the next savage tier, the value already craters by the end of said week. Even then though, pentameld potential means that Crafted would still be 'better' in some ways than the previous tier's BIS

As for the damage talk, we don't need to have more damage output, just more interesting ways to deal that damage. For example, if we add a button to WHM with a 15s CD, and we made Dia shorter, that doesn't mean we have to be dealing more or less damage. It could be tuned so that we deal roughly the same damage as now, with the new rotation. But having these extra changes would break up the constant Glare spam, making it feel less bland-mush to do the rotation