I really don’t know anymore….

[SweetPete]

I think part of the 'healer A tends to chad healer B' issue is 'delayed effects'. How many times have you, as WHM/AST, seen your cohealer dump something while your regen was ticking, your Asylum down, your Star charging? Likewise, how many times have you had Panhaima on people ready to expire and heal them up, only for the coheal WHM to blast Plenary Rapture and overheal like mad?

When we're in PF we cannot necessarily trust that our cohealer 'got this one', so we just play as if we're the solo healer because it's safer that way. And then because of all of these healers who 'play it safe', certain other healers get into the mentality of 'well they'll overheal everything anyway' and so they focus more on doing damage

Just reading this I can see that you’re a reasonable healer. So let me ask you. We’re running the new ex together. I ask you nicely after 1-2 wipes to the laser “Hey can you maybe use cure 3 once there. It will really help me out. What would you say? I’ve literally had my co-healers just stay quiet or just flat out say no we don’t need it and say if people get vulnerability stacks then it is what it is. I mean this is type of stuff I’m talking about.

You can come at them nice and chill and calm and just get nastiness and attitude. I understand the trust thing but if I’m showing you that I am playing with you as a unit and not against you then why not help each other out? A clear is better than a wipe. A dead person doing 0 dps is worst too…

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeh part of it might be the way it's being asked, or if it sounds like a demand more than a request. If you asked me that I'd say 'ok sure', but I'd imagine that most 'reasonable healers' would be trying to find a way to use PI Rapture for it instead, given that it's the same potency (600) and doesn't cost a GCD of damage. I have yet to bother learning it, so if it's super early in the fight (IE before you have no lilies generated), yes Cure 3 would be what I'd go for from the get-go. I'd of course be trying to find a way to not have to fall back on it, but if worst comes to worst, then it's gonna have to get used.

If I were in your situation, I'd ask it like 'What else do we have that we can throw at this, I'm using all of my stuff I can't give any more', the main thing with ego healers like that is that if you want them to sac their damage by using 'actual heals', they have to come to that answer on their own rather than being asked directly. Because they hate being told 'throw your parse in the trash for the sake of the clear'. Unfortunate but it is what it is. The line 'a clear is better than a wipe', for some people, just isn't true unfortunately. There are players of this game, who are not playing FFXIV, they're playing FFLOGS. And they would rather a wipe than a clear with a bad result for them

Essentially, we're so used to the current format of how logs show your performance, where 'damage is the metric to show if you're a good healer', that asking someone 'sac damage and heal more' is effectively tantamount to saying 'play like shit for a sec', and the reason it's WHMs that take the stance of 'sod the party I'm gonna DPS' is ironically because it's so GCD locked in it's design. If it started with 3 lilies like SGE does I'd imagine this would be less of a problem, or if it had a bit more OGCD potential like AST/the shielders to mix in. It's also why I wouldn't expect 'increase healing required' to go down so well as a 'fix' for the current woes we have, you'd likely run into this behavior even more often

Ooh, potential related idea: having every GCD heal prime the Blood Lily would be very silly imo. But, as a 'compromise' (we all love that word I'm sure), introduce a new trait that means Thin Air causes the next healing action used to grant one Blood Lily growth stage. So you can ThinAir a Medica 2, and not only is it zero MP, it's also damage neutral (once per minute)

[Mortex]

I heard good healers all quit because it is boring.

Funny enough I did the fight as healer out of boredom after getting the mount and I can agree that if you are a bad healer you gonna have a field day getting beaten up by the mechs. Fight isn’t hard just deals more dmg then some other trials and I argue I’d deals less then barbie

[Aravell]

There are players of this game, who are not playing FFXIV, they're playing FFLOGS. And they would rather a wipe than a clear with a bad result for them

People that have this mentality aren't new either, I've seen people with this mentality as far back as SB. Had a MCH (I think) who messed up their opener and walled themselves, trying to force us to reset, we just cleared with them on the floor and someone uploaded the log, that was great.

Honestly though, this is why I want SE to cut down on damage neutral stuff, it promotes this kind of toxic mentality of "Why should I waste dps on healing when I can just only use the things that heal for free?". Sure, there's a lot of people in PF who tend to overheal, but there's also an increasing amount of people who want to log run in a clear/farm party instead of seeking or making a log PF.

[ForsakenRoe]

Honestly though, this is why I want SE to cut down on damage neutral stuff, it promotes this kind of toxic mentality of "Why should I waste dps on healing when I can just only use the things that heal for free?". Sure, there's a lot of people in PF who tend to overheal, but there's also an increasing amount of people who want to log run in a clear/farm party instead of seeking or making a log PF.

I write far too much about this stuff, someone's gotta stage an intervention

In the long term it would possibly lead to people being a bit less 'all or nothing' on their opinion of heal GCDs. Pushing us back towards SB levels, where zero heal GCDs is the ideal goal, but not an attainable one for the later fights. As I previously linked, O12S was reduced down to 11 healing GCDs (and 4 Indoms). So if a group ends up with their best run being 12 GCDs and 5 Indoms, that's still a damn good run, and is more 'mentally acceptable' (at least, to me if I was in said group'. The fact we can get to zero GCDs wasted, means that even one GCD 'wasted' is a literal infinity% increase of 'wastefulness', so it leads to the 'all or nothing' of either, 'we have the perfect no-wasted-GCD-on-heals run' or 'we had to use a GCD on healing, wall it'.

In the short term, I'd expect people will refuse to adapt. The focus on DPS as the only metric that matters on the log page, as a healer, means that even if the amount of healing required increases, it'll lead to a fairly substantial number of players refusing to adapt, and instead forcing their cohealer into picking up the slack. Going from a Styx that requires the two healers to spend every OGCD they have but no GCDs each, to one that requires them to use 3 GCDs each (on top of the OGCDs), I would expect would instead see quite a few WHMs (it's always bloody WHMs) refusing to use Cure3 or anything, and so the SGE/SCH would be made to do all 6 of those required GCDs (Succor spam for example).

The only way around this (that I can come up with atm) that isn't to just play into it with systems that have, eg, doing damage building towards heal tools, and heal tools that are damage neutral, would be for FFLOGS to rework how the healer parse percentile is calculated. But that comes with it's own issues. For example, we could say 'it should factor in the HPS of the two healers, so that if you chad someone your parse is reduced' but me and my coheal friend did a run of... something this week, might have been the P11S reclear, either way, we had very equal HPS values and overheal %s, but one of us got a purple on HPS percentiles, and the other a grey, because damage prevented by mit is considered 'HPS', meaning shield healers naturally have massively inflated amounts of 'HPS' compared. So that'd potentially cause miscalculations on how much 'chadding' is actually going on

I'll just reiterate what I think: There should be GCD heals, sure. But they should be interesting to use. The ones we have now, should be the fallback option, not the 'pinnacle of gameplay for the role', because they aren't interesting. Lilies, for example, are interesting, because they are damage neutral, are gated by a CD, and provide new opportunities to the player (eg, extended movement lets you consider burning one, even as overheal, to remain damage neutral during a point where you cannot cast Glare). Medica is not, because you press it and it restores 400p of health, no CD, no player-count cap, just press it and it does the thing. At least Cure 3 has a range to consider, but they keep changing that to be more forgiving

Essentially, when we visualize it from the point of view of 'the goal is to do as much damage as possible', we can see that using a lossy GCD like Medica or Cure3 is like 'failing' in that goal, since actually hitting zero lossy-GCDs is an attainable goal. So, saying 'hey can you use Cure3 for this' is tantamount, to a parseminded player, to saying 'purposely fail your personal goal for the sake of these strangers', which, considering we might never see one another again (in PF), kinda does explain why someone would play more selfishly. So the way to address this, as SE, I guess would most likely be what they're doing, ironically: healing tools that are damage neutral, so that while you're doing your job, it's not at the cost of 'failing your personal goal'. Think about all those WHMs that are refusing to use Cure 3. They're all fine with using Plenary Rapture (which is just as strong), right? We're all fine with doing damage AND healing, it's when it's a choice between the two that it becomes a problem. So that's why I think SE should be doing things like that WHM gauge I suggested, make more unique ways to heal while remaining damage neutral. OGCD is one way, GCD with damage attached is another, GCD which provides a damage skill later is yet another. This is, oddly enough, another potential avenue for 'making healers feel distinct in gameplay'. For example, if WHM is all about GCD healing, then SE can build on that identity in the same vein as Lilies, and make it all about cashing in on massive bursts of damage, thanks to the refunds from those healing tools

[Eastwall]

People that have this mentality aren't new either, I've seen people with this mentality as far back as SB. Had a MCH (I think) who messed up their opener and walled themselves, trying to force us to reset, we just cleared with them on the floor and someone uploaded the log, that was great.

Honestly though, this is why I want SE to cut down on damage neutral stuff, it promotes this kind of toxic mentality of "Why should I waste dps on healing when I can just only use the things that heal for free?". Sure, there's a lot of people in PF who tend to overheal, but there's also an increasing amount of people who want to log run in a clear/farm party instead of seeking or making a log PF.

That's So funny. Best grief l have heard in a while.

[Renathras]

I...actually like this fight, I think.

Just got to dip in it with an ad hock group from the FC, but it seems fun to me. Damage is moderate, but not too overwhelming for the most part, and GCD healing is actually pretty useful. The enrage seems loose enough that healer balls to the walls DPS isn't a requirement (got to a 7% wipe - wipe, not enrage, since a phase 3 mechanic got called wrong and took out 3/4ths of the party, lol), and there don't seem to be a TON of OUTRIGHT bodychecks. Meteors is the killing mechanic. It's oddly easy for me, but for some reason a...lot...of people have trouble with it. And unfortunately, it causes total wipes.

But aside from Meteors, it's really fun.

The damage is high and fairly consistent like BarbEx, but the movement isn't as constant. For example, both the multi-hit death lasers allow you to firmly plant your feet and use Medica 2 and Cure 3/Emergency Tactics Succor and Seraph (only attempted with WHM and SCH thus far). The damage isn't spaced so that oGCDs are always the right answer, and so GCD healing actually shines in some parts of the encounter. This allows for a lot of potential ways of dealing with damage, which is lovely, and doesn't lock in to the oGCD/Instant Cast heals or nothing that BarbEx did or that so many encounters do.

I dunno, I kind of have enjoyed this one. At this point, it's just getting the folks having issue with meteors and the later spread mechanic a few more runs for comfort and we should be gravy. Even losses in this one aren't terribly annoying, and on the plus side, meteors is somewhat near the start, so it's not like RubiEx where you have to go 4/5ths through the fight just to try to prog through the death mechanics that all come stacked at the end.

[Zolvolt]

snip

I have so many thoughts.

If healing is easy, why are we not happy about situations like this where we have the opportunity to heal more? It's for the same reason your cohealer is not GCD healing. Because we are designed around GCD healing being the wrong choice. Every global possible being spent on dps spells is the "right" way to play a healer in this game only because of the way healers have been designed and it has bred a playerbase that doesn't use their healing gcd's even when you just gatta, or in scholar's case won't use their aether flow on OGCD's even when they gatta. (Theres a big reason I pf'd as scholar instead of my main ast nearly every fight this expansion)

The truth is that it feels bad to have to GCD heal because we are designed around not having to do so and this is one of the biggest problems that should be addressed in healer design.

[SweetPete]

I have so many thoughts.

If healing is easy, why are we not happy about situations like this where we have the opportunity to heal more? It's for the same reason your cohealer is not GCD healing. Because we are designed around GCD healing being the wrong choice. Every global possible being spent on dps spells is the "right" way to play a healer in this game only because of the way healers have been designed and it has bred a playerbase that doesn't use their healing gcd's even when you just gatta, or in scholar's case won't use their aether flow on OGCD's even when they gatta. (Theres a big reason I pf'd as scholar instead of my main ast nearly every fight this expansion)

The truth is that it feels bad to have to GCD heal because we are designed around not having to do so and this is one of the biggest problems that should be addressed in healer design.

I’m sorry but I’m gonna have to disagree with you. To GCD heal or to only use OGCD healing is a choice. Game isn’t designed one way or the other. You have the skills so use them. The problem is people are lazy and want things to be easy. If the spell doesn’t go off immediately they don’t wanna use it.

However, in white mage case. I get it sorta. Using lilies gets you closer to blood lily but even that shouldn’t stop you from using a singular medica 2 out of maybe 15 raptures. I’m not giving healers a pass on this. When I heal I utilize my entire kit. Meaning gcd and ogcd healing. Can’t tell you how many times I use emergency tactics and succor for a pure heal and it’s fine. I’m not gonna die if I use it. The point I’m trying to make here is you’re a healer. Utilize your entire kit. That’s the difference between a decent healer and an amazing one in my book.

Also I’ve been playing this game since the beginning and the community conditioned itself with this mentality.

[ForsakenRoe]

I’m sorry but I’m gonna have to disagree with you. To GCD heal or to only use OGCD healing is a choice. Game isn’t designed one way or the other. You have the skills so use them. The problem is people are lazy and want things to be easy. If the spell doesn’t go off immediately they don’t wanna use it.

Some people also have no idea how to have a 'prog mindset', and just immediately jump to 'optimize mode', partially the reason we get these situations in new content where the WHM is spamming Glare as the party falls around them