Dawntrail Healers need a rework

[ty_taurus]

Well, they don't like the idea of a healer that doesn't have a statospheric skill ceiling based on doing damage

Is that hyperbole though?

[Renathras]

Is that hyperbole though?

Is it?

All of you have said you don't mind a healer or two being easy to learn, but you want them all to be very difficult to master with a lot of optimization and a large gap between skill floor and skill ceiling - hence "stratospheric". I mean, realistically, the term is pretty variable (stratosphere isn't very far if you're talking about an interstellar vessel, for example), and "height" in this sense is subjective and ill defined - if I said "ten story building", would that be hyperbole or wouldn't it, since there's no agreed upon metric for what a given "story" of "height" to the ceiling actually is.

Regardless, the point also very much stands: That people opposed to the idea want a high skill ceiling*, feel it CAN'T be in the healing kit (due to wipes but somehow and wrongly excluding Enrage wipes from that metric), and so it must be through damage complexity.

Is that not so?

EDIT:

*and want it for ALL Healer Jobs, without exception, despite other roles (WAR for Tanks and SMN for DPS) having an option that has a low skill ceiling. And also that these people think that ALL healers should conform to their desire, so no matter which aesthetic they like, they can personally enjoy the Job (or all of them), despite no other role in this or any other MMO having that requirement imposed on it.

EDIT2:

Also, in retrospect - since you were going for the gotcha/hypocrite line - I shouldn't have even said what Snow was doing was hyperbole. Hyperbole is exaggerating something but still within the realm of truth. What Snow said is actually a verifiable lie. That is, it is something that can be measured, objectively, and found to be untrue; there were absolutely people in 5.0 praising the healer changes, either for WHM specifically or for the healers collectively. The former of those (praising WHM's change) were probably a majority, the latter a minority, but in either case, it was not "precisely zero" - a numeric objective thing that can be measured and is false, therefore, a lie.

[ty_taurus]

Is it?

All of you have said you don't mind a healer or two being easy to learn, but you want them all to be very difficult to master with a lot of optimization and a large gap between skill floor and skill ceiling - hence "stratospheric". I mean, realistically, the term is pretty variable (stratosphere isn't very far if you're talking about an interstellar vessel, for example), and "height" in this sense is subjective and ill defined - if I said "ten story building", would that be hyperbole or wouldn't it, since there's no agreed upon metric for what a given "story" of "height" to the ceiling actually is.

You're exaggerating all the points I've ever made. Why did you specify that they are all "very" difficult to master, with a "lot" of optimization and a "large" gap between the skill floor and ceiling? I've stated many many times in the past that what I wanted before was to see the healers have gradual levels of difficulty similar to the difficulty levels of the tanks: White Mage being similar to Paladin. Scholar being similar to Dark Knight. Sage being similar to Gunbreaker. And Astrologian being sort of tangential to Warrior with a more buff-focused rotation. I strongly doubt there's anyone who would describe Paladin as having a "stratospheric" skill ceiling.

Look, you don't have to like my stance. And like I said, I really can't be bothered to keep caring about the other healers when you're here to fight that every step of the way. But at least treat my perspective for what it is, and not an embellished exaggeration to make it seem far more extreme that it actually ever was. Sure my Sage is extreme, but that's because I want it to be on Gunbreaker's level, and that is extreme from the position the healers are currently in. But "Stratospheric" is an uncharitable exaggeration of my take as well as the takes of many others: The common suggestion in this space is for every healer to offer some amount of skill ceiling with that ceiling ranging from modest to ambitious across the 4 healers. You want one healer to have no or nearly no skill ceiling and are not content with anything higher. That's fine. That's your perspective. Own it. But don't treat my past arguments or anyone else's as "stratospheric" when that simply isn't true. I don't think I've ever seen, for example, a White Mage concept shared on the forums that was even as complex as Dancer's, and I don't think there's a soul alive that has so much as glanced at FFXIV that would describe Dancer's ceiling as "Stratospheric," or if they do they're referring to your proc luck.

[Renathras]

You're exaggerating all the points I've ever made.

Where did I say "Ty says"?

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Also, aside: Why would you make AST - currently the most complex healer - similar to WAR? You'd have to vastly simplify its kit to achieve that. That makes no sense. You'd have to completely gut AST's kit, remove around 1/4th of it just to get it to a comparable amount of buttons to WAR before anything, then you'd have to kill the APM (WAR has among the lowest APMs in the game vs AST having one of the highest, and probably the highest if you counted target swaps as an action), and then you'd have to remove all of the delayed effect and ability modifier stuff, so no more Earthly Star, Macrocosmos, Neutral Stance, Horosope, etc.

WHM being like WAR, SCH like PLD, AST like DRK (they have similar APMs in their bursts), and SGE like GNB would be the most logical pairings, would they not?

And WHM already is roughly comparable to WAR. If it had a 1-2-3 combo, it'd be effectively identical.

I get the thought of WHM and PLD being holy magic users, but that's really not a thing in FFXIV and the two are unrelated (WHM from the 5th era Amdapori mages and PLDs from the 6th Ul'Dah royal guardsmen) anyway. There's not really any lore connection, or at least none that have been addressed. And that doesn't work when we consider any of the others anyway other than SGE and GNB both use "not-guns but really guns" weapons. SCH and DRK don't really have any lore connection (SCH's is closer to WAR through the MRD Royal Marines of Nym), nor would AST and WAR.

Like...this is aside from me disagreeing with you in general. I'd say the comparisons should be something like:

WHM - WAR - SMN
SCH - PLD - RDM/DNC/RPR (a slight step up, but more on the utility side of things than anything)
AST - DRK - NIN(?)/MCH(?) (indeed, the four already have a similar playstyle of high APM burst with relatively uneventful "maintenance" downtime)
SGE - GNB - DRG, maybe? Not sure on the DPS side of that.

And by this measure, WHM is effectively at this level already, give or take. Trading Glare for a 1-2-3 combo basically sets that even, if even that.

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As for the "stratospheric" - when I've proposed increasing skill ceiling but not by a lot, it is shot down as insufficient. So clearly it's not just a little nudge that people are asking for, it is something significantly higher (skill ceiling), not a variable "one being just a smidge higher all the way up to one being far higher". Though I will note, for the record, that some of your proposals have met that better than others, but with the lowest end one still higher. I think the closest we ever came was my SCH change suggestion/proposal, maybe?

You want one healer to have no or nearly no skill ceiling and are not content with anything higher.

No, I don't.

You can't accuse me of hyperbole and misrepresenting you then turning around and engaging in hyperbole and misrepresenting me.

And as I pointed out: "height" of skill ceiling isn't really an objective measurement. Even "on a scale from 1-10" is subjective. You'd probably put current WHM as a 2 or maybe 3 while I'd put it as a 5-6.

If you like, I can think of other words for "high", but I wasn't talking about you specifically.

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The real reason people disagree with my position is they want all the healer Jobs to suit them so they can have a buffet of choices and they don't care about who is now starving and has none or only the scraps they leave behind. I'm not sure a better way to put it than that. Some people believe this is a game design argument, but it still comes down to the same thing of they want all the options for themselves and none of anyone who doesn't like what they do.

I was trying to say it...nicer...than that, though.

If it wasn't that, then there'd be no issue with leaving some at a lower DPS level or without more DPS actions.

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Anyway, this is all a stupid tangent ASkellington got us on which now has people insulting and attacking each other - great job there, ASkellignton - so it's whatever.

...though I am GENUINELY curious how you think you could get AST to WAR level of complexity and why WHM must be paired with PLD instead of WAR...

[Shurrikhan]

Where did I say "Ty says"?

Repeatedly using "you" after quoting someone tends to refer to that person quoted, unless the responder has made very clear that by "you" they do not mean the person to whom they are responding, which hasn't exactly been the case above.

:: For the sake of clarity of a sort necessary only when one (you, Renathras, in this case) is purposely seeding and then evading reasonable communicative expectations, I am responding to you, Renathras, in this post introduced by quoting you, Renathras.

[Shurrikhan]

And as I pointed out: "height" of skill ceiling isn't really an objective measurement. Even "on a scale from 1-10" is subjective. You'd probably put current WHM as a 2 or maybe 3 while I'd put it as a 5-6.

If you like, I can think of other words for "high", but I wasn't talking about you specifically.

That something is individually subjective does not make it unusable data.

"Well, after treating 10,000 people with gut wounds and asking each patient for their level of pain on a scale of 1-10, we have what would in any other case be a pretty solid data cluster, but we must keep in mind that feelings are subjective. We therefore can't really know whether getting shot in the gut is indeed painful."

_______________

On the broader subject:

I would agree that content design is going to be relevant here regardless of what changes we make to kits.

I would agree that we should be aiming to amp up healing requirements to a higher-yet-reasonable threshold, or at least plan room for that, before necessarily trying to accommodate the lowest points of downtime thereafter in group content (yes, solo content on heals will still suck, but... that's an outlier, and likely better fixed by having fellow NPCs who both dish and take more damage when one is on a healer job).

At the same time, though, downtime agency could absolutely use some fleshing out and diversifying.

[ty_taurus]

And as I pointed out: "height" of skill ceiling isn't really an objective measurement. Even "on a scale from 1-10" is subjective. You'd probably put current WHM as a 2 or maybe 3 while I'd put it as a 5-6.

I would put White Mage at a 1, or maybe a 0.5 if we're allowed to use decimals. I genuinely do not understand how you would look at a 30 second DoT, a 40 second cooldown, and the ability to use Afflatus Misery during buff windows as a 5 or 6. How high does the scale go? Where would you put Ninja? a 27/10? Like, I'm not trying to rag on your abilities or anything, but I would probably consider Ninja to be the hardest job to master (maybe others can disagree with me on that), but there's no way Ninja could only be 4-5 points higher than White Mage on the complexity scale. Comparatively speaking, that is "stratospheric," at least in relation to the healers.

[Katish]

I would put White Mage at a 1, or maybe a 0.5 if we're allowed to use decimals. I genuinely do not understand how you would look at a 30 second DoT, a 40 second cooldown, and the ability to use Afflatus Misery during buff windows as a 5 or 6. How high does the scale go? Where would you put Ninja? a 27/10? Like, I'm not trying to rag on your abilities or anything, but I would probably consider Ninja to be the hardest job to master (maybe others can disagree with me on that), but there's no way Ninja could only be 4-5 points higher than White Mage on the complexity scale. Comparatively speaking, that is "stratospheric," at least in relation to the healers.

Off topic, what would you rate Dragoon as it is now? Just curious.

Honestly, looking at the arguments on the healer forums lately, I have to ask, "Why are we settling for just one aspect?".

More than one single aspect has to change to truly fix healers:
1) Healing requirements and healing kit bloat
2) Lack of kit interactivity and uselessness of MP
3) Barebones damage kit and lack of skill ceiling
4) Encounter design

We're going to need all of this to change for healers to actually feel like they matter again, anything less is just a band-aid and nothing but temporary satisfaction.

1000% agree, I feel as the ones who look at this and say, "Why do you want more DPS skills?! You just want healers as support..."
The issue is definitely the entire job design but it's easy to disregard what you say and only focus on one portion of your argument. I have said exactly this, which is why I accuse those arguing against are doing so in bad faith. "The, you only want DPS healers." No, I want to see it as a start for future designing because it's the easiest thing to do for developers as they change jobs every expansion and sometimes in between. Then work down the line...

[Supersnow845]

Off topic, what would you rate Dragoon as it is now? Just curious.

I’d put DRG at about an 7.5-8 right now

It’s not the hardest melee but it’s harder than all casters (except BLM) and the phys ranged

This is of course going with the assumption that my hardest job hits a 10 and not “no job is hard enough to be a 10”

[ty_taurus]

Off topic, what would you rate Dragoon as it is now? Just curious.

I agree with Snow that no job really reaches a 10. I think back to past versions of the jobs as well, so some of the jobs during Heavensward might've hit a 10 for FFXIV, which is why I think none currently reach that level, but as for EW jobs:

10 - N/A
9 - N/A
8 - Ninja, Black Mage
7 - Dragoon
6 - Monk, Samurai, Bard
5 - Machinist, Red Mage, Gunbreaker
4 - Dancer, Reaper, Dark Knight
3 - Summoner, Warrior, Paladin, Astrologian
2 - Scholar
1 - White Mage, Sage

There are a bunch of jobs I'm only somewhat familiar with, and I just sort of ran that up quickly, so I might move things if I think about it some more. Even now, I'm going back to it a bunch of times and moving things around a little. Not all jobs in the same ranking are equivalent to each other for the record, and some are where they are for different reasons. Black Mage, for example, actually has one of the simplest DPS rotations, but is made really challenging by the unique nature that the game is constantly kicking you out of your rotation. You have to know when you need to move ahead of time in order to play Black Mage effectively and plan your mobility resources around that accordingly. Astrologian is mostly a 1, but its buff window burst is very physically demanding to perform on your fingers. Paladin is a little more complex than Warrior, but I don't think that's enough to push it into a 4 at the moment. Dark Knight's complexity is over-hyped I feel. Its just got a bunch of weaving in its burst, and is otherwise very straightforward. Your action order doesn't really matter. I don't know, I'm iffy on some of those still.

Dragoon I'd say has more to its skill ceiling because it has a lot of different cooldowns to keep track of that are really easy to desync until you get really good at the job.