Would you rather healers get more complex healing kits or more complex DPS kits?

[Shurrikhan]

That's my point, though. Crank it too far and it's simple either unable to recover from mistakes whatsoever and/or obliges MP-efficient spam, where each healing mistake through an MP-inefficient action is just a wipe that takes up more time to resolve (since you'll oom well before the end). Variety and decision-making, with which enjoyment correlates far more than merely the intensity of incoming damage, requires a fairly precise balance of needs to total available means, and a fairly precise balance between those individual tools/means. When a game is left with shit like a 8000p heal costing barely more than a 3200p or even 800p heal, there's no way for that to scale into increased variety or decision-making because the individual tools are too far out of balance with each other and none of them actually provide any interesting interactions/conflicts with what remaining space for flexible action / downtime one may have.

[IDontPetLalas]

Strong disagree on "70% of of your time spamming a certain healing button," because a lot of incoming damage often requires switching up tools and making decisions on throughput vs efficiency, using procs, using mitigation, deploying cooldowns, building resource layers, etc.

And it's way, way better than spamming glare or broil or whatever for more than 70% of casts. People who play this game like to pooh pooh actual MMO healing, then go back to hitting that glare key like a woodpecker.

There are a considerable number of options in some other games, such as skill trees or similar features, that do not exist in this games, which support multiple choices and styles of "MMO healing" so if I'm likely to "poo poo " anything, it's healer design decisions such as the skills that were removed in this game, so now you see how the designer's changes to healing job design interact with encounter design, and healers making use of one of 2 skills in downtime isn't their fault.

Agree by the way that constantly spending 70% of your time healing is not really interesting, it's more interesting when it's thrown in for intense periods.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

It really depends on how the healings are dished out. XIV healing buttons vastly overpowers many other MMO's healing buttons, especially their access to AoE healings. Some raidwide happening that drops your party by 80%? No worries! Mama's got Asp Helios and Helioses for they are always readily available & heals a good amount per shot!

I remember in most previous MMO I played, as a healer my access to AoE healings are often restricted (be it by cooldown or very huge MP expenditure) or pretty weak on its own (not a sustainable option against tough to heal phases.). As a result, there were more interaction done with their strong, single target healing i.e. switching targets to prioritize healing the squishiest member before the durable ones.

Bringing that framework into XIV... say let's pick WHM as an example, a small part of their healing kits would've look something like this:

Lily system: Storing a lily increases your healing spells by 3 yalm of healing radius and 15% increase in healing potency. You may store up to 3 lilies to stack the bonus or spend the lilies and lose a stack or more of these bonuses to empower your healing spells when needed. This includes turning your single target healing into AoE (up to 9 yalm in radius.)

Lily acquisition is probably tied to their DPS kit but for the sake of simplicity, let's just assume they remain the same except the timer will continue to tick even at 3/3 lilies so this version CAN overcap.

(Numbers in brackets are the maximum potency with 3 lilies stored)

Cure II
Spell | 800 MP | 0 - 9y Radius
Restores target's HP.
Potency: 600 (870)

Cure III
Spell | 1000 MP | 15y - 24y Radius
Restores target's HP and all allies nearby.
Potency: 300 (508)

Afflatus Solace
Spell | 1 Lily | 0 - 9y Radius
Restores target's HP.
Potency: 700 (1,015)

Afflatus Rapture
Spell | 1 Lily | 25y - 34y Radius
Restores HP to self and all allies nearby.
Potency: 420 (609)

Numbers are likely skewed anyway (math isn't my forte lol). But the point is, with such kit, it makes the WHM have to consider before hitting those Raptures. Can they afford to consume the lilies willy nilly for that sweet misery? Can they abuse the increased range that makes their Cure II/Solace a juicy AoE or is it not going to reach everybody? etc. Combined with more spread out and random instances of damage, there will be times when I'd prefer to heal 2-3 targets with my ST rather than just pop Cure III or god forbid, the Raptures when I might need that boost in radius to handle mechanics that makes me run a marathon and be spread apart from my allies. OR there could be instance where triple rapture/cure III spam just won't cut it. Might have to use a couple of Cure III or II (if party is huddled up) then juice the party up with finishing Rapture or Solace to ensure all the earlier heals are all buffed (hello P10S Harrowing Hell lol). Those moments are missing from XIV.

[HappyHubris]

There are a considerable number of options in some other games, such as skill trees or similar features, that do not exist in this games, which support multiple choices and styles of "MMO healing" so if I'm likely to "poo poo " anything, it's healer design decisions such as the skills that were removed in this game, so now you see how the designer's changes to healing job design interact with encounter design, and healers making use of one of 2 skills in downtime isn't their fault.

Agree by the way that constantly spending 70% of your time healing is not really interesting, it's more interesting when it's thrown in for intense periods.

You don't need skill trees if execution is challenging. The choices are on what tool to use when, not on how your character is built.

Again, I'm floored that people think that adapting their healing to different stimuli is "not really interesting," but glare spam is "super fun yeahyeahyeah." It's like healers in this game have Stockholm syndrome. If DPS spent 70% of their time spamming a buff button because the bosses could only absorb X damage per minute, would players similarly be placid?

[HappyHubris]

That's my point, though. Crank it too far and it's simple either unable to recover from mistakes whatsoever and/or obliges MP-efficient spam, where each healing mistake through an MP-inefficient action is just a wipe that takes up more time to resolve (since you'll oom well before the end). Variety and decision-making, with which enjoyment correlates far more than merely the intensity of incoming damage, requires a fairly precise balance of needs to total available means, and a fairly precise balance between those individual tools/means. When a game is left with shit like a 8000p heal costing barely more than a 3200p or even 800p heal, there's no way for that to scale into increased variety or decision-making because the individual tools are too far out of balance with each other and none of them actually provide any interesting interactions/conflicts with what remaining space for flexible action / downtime one may have.

This is like saying that we can't have enrage timers, because you can't entirely screw DPS up and be fine. MMO encounters are generally designed with a tolerance level that requires a floor of performance but not perfect execution.

[IDontPetLalas]

You don't need skill trees if execution is challenging. The choices are on what tool to use when, not on how your character is built.

Again, I'm floored that people think that adapting their healing to different stimuli is "not really interesting," but glare spam is "super fun yeahyeahyeah." It's like healers in this game have Stockholm syndrome. If DPS spent 70% of their time spamming a buff button because the bosses could only absorb X damage per minute, would players similarly be placid?

That's not what I wrote. If you had read it you would have seen "such as skill trees or similar features" , or if you had even asked me what I meant (if it was unclear), i.e. options. What you call a "tool" is typically a skill. it may or may not be via a skill tree , however it still needs to be available, in some way.


Insulting people (again), by stating that they're held hostage to a game - i.e. "It's like healers in this game have Stockholm syndrome" isn't really going to persuade me, nor is categorizing people as being "placid". Particularly so if you want to start misquoting people with statements like "glare spam is "super fun yeahyeahyeah"- no one has said that - except you, that is.

[OgruMogru]

I said this in another thread a while ago now but I'm gonna repeat it here too: If the devs don't wanna just flat out give more damage buttons to healers, or harshly raise the amount of incoming damage then I think overhealing needs to be reworked to offer some kind of buff to team damage. That way there wouldn't have to be a huge overhaul of the healing kit, or the amount of outgoing damage in a fight. People that want to just heal heal heal can do so and they can contribute to dps if they're really that averse to pressing dedicated damage buttons. Healers that *do* like doing dps can continue to do so, whilst also making use of the glut of powerful oGCDs to keep the party topped up and the damage buff rolling. It would make resource management more engaging. Every DPS mitigation then also becomes a DPS tool.

[Absurdity]

You're trying to argue with someone who thinks spamming Heal rank 3 or Greater Heal rank 2 and then waiting for your MP5 to start ticking again was peak healing design...

[KenZentra]

The state of the game right now is (assuming after first week of something being released) Normal mode stuff is way too easy, where healers spend 90% of the time pressing the two DPS buttons, while Savage content practically kills you outright if you get hit by anything you shouldn't be (and should be if you aren't max hp with shields and mits). So its both either too easy due to a severe lack of consistent damage dealt to the party or too hard cause of near instant death (which chain into bodycheck mechanics killing everyone).

For folks who dont do a lot of Savage for sure get super bored with their healing kit as they dont really need to use all of it. As for their DPS kit, of course it would be boring and the want for something more complex is obvious as they are basically just DPS anyways for Normal modes. So in both instances, the damage is problem. Its either so negligible that you could roll with 2 Dancers instead of healers, and in most Savage content, you need 2 healers, but if you mess up, you die and all of your party members along with you.

[Aravell]

This thread has been enlightening in putting to bed the oldest lie spread around the healer forums, the lie that people who want more dps buttons just want to dps and not heal.

I can see several people who say they only want to heal, but not a single person that said they only want to do damage. Why? It's because the people who only want to do damage and not heal are already happy right now. We currently spend 70-100% of our GCDs not healing, why would the people who just want to do damage be here asking for change? So let's stop accusing people who want more damage buttons of only wanting to dps.

Anyway, the first step I believe SE should take is to do 2 things immediately:
1) Rework encounter design to be more attrition and less dance for healers in particular. DPS and tanks can still have dances to do, but healers should be pressured to pick and choose how to optimally heal a situation at risk of not having tools for a later mechanic.

and

2) Rework and expand healer kits so that every healer is different in the way they heal and in the way they do damage.

These 2 things are the required first step that would satisfy everyone. Other things such as healing requirements, healing potency and dps checks can be set to the side for now as numbers can be tuned mid-expansion, SE has shown that they're very reluctant to do any sort of reworking of systems mid-expansion, so reworks have to be done at the start of the expansion and numbers tuning can wait.