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

[Renathras]

It's frustrating that I can't articulate what I want out of a healer other than "feel good gameplay" based just off ideas I think are neat and would like to see, but I KNOW I'd like a healer (or even just a support dps caster) that focused less on stringent adherence to a rotation or 30s/60s/90s/120s, and more on something at least a bit more dynamic. That being, incoming and outgoing damage. Similar to how Sage's PvP versions of Kardia and Eukrasian Dosis III function, but fleshed out into an entire job and given more depth.

Maybe I'm naïve, maybe a concept like that wouldn't function well in 100% of content 100% of the time, but I bet it'd at least be pretty damn fun.

Agreed. I think it's a far better line of discussion.

That wasn't my argument, and you'd know that if you had actually read to the end of my comment.

"the absolute floor to be not quite so low"?

The proposals are all more complex than the SB healer damage kits, even what SCH was at the time, and I think Roe's WHM proposal is the only one that's not more complex than the SB SCH damage kit (though it is moreso than the SB WHM and AST kits were).

Here's my problem with the more DPS actions/complexity - it affects everyone, whether or not people insist it will, including the people that don't/won't like it. And if it ISN'T ultimately satisfying for the people that want more, then they'll just continue to ask for more. Moreover, it doesn't fix the underlying issues of the role and encounter design/kit mismatch, nor the issues of healer players that are currently dissatisfied but DON'T want more DPS as their solution.

Fair?

Ren has been saying nonstop that both DPS and Healing kits need to be reworked with both of those interacting with each other all the while that each healer be unique from each other so each plays differently. and that several aspects of the game need to be reworked anyways to fix the dull, mind numbing aspect of Healing as a role such as how damage is sent out and mitigated by several classes, massive healing potential and mit from most tanks, and how mechanics are handled by design. He hasnt said healing should be the ONLY change, but that you COULD let the healing kit be the only change TO healers.

While we both agree (i think) that there should be more consistent damage during encounters, I am the person who firmly believes that healing kits should be the only change to healing kits (aside from using DPS actions should interact your healing actions in some way).

Its just so bizarre to watch someone, advocate FOR having both, and people yell at him that we do not need a rework of healing kit or that the damage profile of encounters doesn't need to change, and people just saying he is wrong because of what healers have right now and what is expected of them right now.

Like, you guys know the first thing that goes into designing an encounter is how it interacts with healers, then Tanks, then DPS right?

Oh my god THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

Ren, can you honestly say what you think most people want to see in each healers’ damage kits? Honestly. No “I guess”, no silly quips, no straw manning, just plain and simple. On average, what do you think people like myself, Ty, ForsakenRoe, Sebazy etc, want to see done to healers? Because at this point idk if you’re trying to be clever and exaggerate or if you actually don’t understand.

Most people? Hard to say, since we have little data about what the majority of the playerbase want.

However, specific to the common Healer Forum posters and people here wanting more DPS actions?

Collectively, they seem to want healers to have rotations somewhere in the ballpark of PLD/SMN/GNB/DNC/RDM (general ballpark) on the lower end, with some few examples being more complex. The feeling overall is that healing takes so few GCDs and cannot in their minds ever take up enough that they will still have a majority of downtime/not-healing GCDs, during which periods they are bored. They feel like they should be entertained by even the most braindead content, where they have even less healing to do, and so require more damage actions/complexity to consume mental space to keep them highly engaged.

There is a feeling that there's no amount of damage that could satisfy them, even in Ultimates or Savages, and thus they need a DPS rotation. SOME have also made comments about not wanting to be a "healbot" or "heal bitch" or "party cheerleader", indicating a kind of disdain for that playstyle or players that do. There seems to be an uncomfortable amount of disdain for players that like to play healers to heal in general (including a general rejection that people can actually enjoy filling health bars), coupled with a belief that such players are lazy and want to get clears or good pares (or both) with a minimal effort, despite the fact one of the most frequent questions people have is "what's the easiest DPS?" and that players that want no effort carries typically don't like playing healers or tanks because of the presumptive belief of more responsibility. There seems to be a strong desire to sort of put such players in their place by having them do lower damage and, in some cases (Semi has said this outright, and several others have said so roundaboutly though insisted that isn't what they meant when called on it...despite doing so over and over again) that such players should not be able to clear high end content, even midcore content like Extremes.

At their best, it seems that, collectively, the desire is to not be bored, a thinking that everyone else enjoys what they do (or will realize they do once forced to do it), and that changes to encounter design, healing kits, Job kits overall (healers and non-healers), and so on CANNOT work and will never satisfy them (or the rest of the playerbase they seem to believe think like them and enjoy what they do), so the only way to make everyone happy (despite many people telling them over and over it wouldn't make them happy) is to have Green DPS kits that are on par with the lower end of DPSers (SMN/DNC), including some variability in the rotation so it isn't the same every time (DNC procs and "Diacloud" are often mentioned). Note I say SMN/DNC here, the phrase "Tank-like" is often used, but let's be real, SMN is Tank-like at this point in terms of complexity and optimization. GNB (and probably DRK...and possibly WAR) arguably has more. But this isn't a nitpick so much as an attempt at a better descriptor. I think if you could take DNC's rotation (change ability names, of course) and replace/merge SGE with it (where you had all DNC's DPS rotation/abilities + SGE's oGCD heals and GCD heals), these people would find that a pretty acceptable Job and would like all the healer Jobs to be in that sort of vein.

At their worst, ...well, you know, I'm not going there. I really don't want to, believe it or not. I do get annoyed with the ad hominems and personal attacks and all that, but I'd rather us focus on actual discussion, not personal attacks.

In fact, I think I might even [hb] my other post for now (and may delete it) because I REALLY don't want to go there, I just want to point out that it's the people choosing to attack me that are disrupting these conversations, not me.

As KenZentra pointed out, I'm not the one trying to advocate for only some people getting what they want. I legitimately DO want everyone to get something they want.

.

But, I'd like too turn this question to you - and the others here:

Not a caricature or ad hominem: What do you think I want? Can you honestly say what it is that I want to see? No "I guess" or silly quips, no straw manning. What is it you think I want to see done to healers? AND to encounter design/overall game design regarding healing - since that's a big part of what I personally think needs to happen?

[AmiableApkallu]

Here's my problem with the more DPS actions/complexity - it affects everyone, whether or not people insist it will, including the people that don't/won't like it. And if it ISN'T ultimately satisfying for the people that want more, then they'll just continue to ask for more. Moreover, it doesn't fix the underlying issues of the role and encounter design/kit mismatch, nor the issues of healer players that are currently dissatisfied but DON'T want more DPS as their solution.

Fair?

No.

To the first bit I've put in bold: Be charitable and assume that when someone asks for more DPS actions/complexity — and when they make this ask with details including specific actions and procs and gauges and potencies – unless they themselves state otherwise, maybe that person would actually be satisfied with what they just asked for.

"If it isn't ultimately satisfying" is just as useless a retort to "people that want more required healing." The actual responses take a different tack and are more nuanced – mine being that there is room for more required healing (for example: continuing autos through cast bars; random, untelegraphed cleaves and mini tank busters), but you also need to leave time for recovering from mistakes.

To the second bit I've put in bold: I believe your "usual" conversational foils agree on that point, so I'm not entirely certain why you keep bringing it up as if it's a point of contention. (It's also true of "more required healing.")

[ForsakenRoe]

No.

To the first bit I've put in bold: Be charitable and assume that when someone asks for more DPS actions/complexity — and when they make this ask with details including specific actions and procs and gauges and potencies – unless they themselves state otherwise, maybe that person would actually be satisfied with what they just asked for.

"If it isn't ultimately satisfying" is just as useless a retort to "people that want more required healing." The actual responses take a different tack and are more nuanced – mine being that there is room for more required healing (for example: continuing autos through cast bars; random, untelegraphed cleaves and mini tank busters), but you also need to leave time for recovering from mistakes.

To the second bit I've put in bold: I believe your "usual" conversational foils agree on that point, so I'm not entirely certain why you keep bringing it up as if it's a point of contention. (It's also true of "more required healing.")

Ah yes, the reason I pitched 'just Dia at 12s and a new button at 15s' is because I wouldn't be satisfied with just that, it's actually the first step in my master plan to get SE onto the slippery slope of turning us into NIN opener. Never mind the fact that I am on record saying 'if we have only one chance to get SE to try changing things up, I'd want that one chance to be a solid try of it, not a halfarsed attempt'. Does anyone (except Ren) really think I'd say that, and then suggest something that I considered 'half arsed'? And additionally, I'm on record saying that 'by adding Shielding Lily spenders to WHM (and a more accessible way for AST to get shields than Neutral, eg bringing back Sect swapping or something), we can add healing complexity in ways that are not just 'heal more/faster/harder', such as 'Shield Checks', ala Vulcan Burst, Photon from A11S, etc, where you want a shield to either fully neutralize a mechanic, or mitigate an aspect of it, eg blocking a nasty debuff from applying to you?

I'm not sure we quite have a concensus on "rotation" as applicable to healers specifically, but we at least have a many-times-liked post here, from 8 pages back:

Maybe I should draw out my proposed rotation (and the current one) on xivrotation, so we have a visual reference of the difference in Glare-Per-Minute (as if the pie charts weren't good enough at making that point)

[ForsakenRoe]

Maybe I should draw out my proposed rotation (and the current one) on xivrotation, so we have a visual reference of the difference in Glare-Per-Minute (as if the pie charts weren't good enough at making that point)

Further to this post, decided to make good on what I said. Here is our current rotation, using Stone and Aero for icons instead of Glare/Dia because all the blues just blend together (assume we're at level 70 and doing UCOB or something). The listed actions take place over a roughly 3 minute time frame (I probably should have done 4 lines, to make it a 2min loop but oh well)



Man oh man that's a lot of Stones. We can replace any three Stone casts in this per minute (displayed as two full lines) with Solace/Rapture, and one in raidbuffs with Misery, but that is not shown here as A: it's versatile in the timing of when you do it in your 'rotation', and B: this is just to illustrate the 'core gameplay loop' without all the fancy schmancy optimizations. Anyway, here's Fig B. The Tetragrammaton icon represents 'Water', the 15s GCD.



Again, three Stones can be removed per minute to make way for Solace/Rapture, one in raidbuffs for a Misery, if timings mean that a Water/Aero is 'replaced', then that Water/Aero gets bumped down the timeline by one GCD and the Stone that is now in the way gets removed instead. Additionally, if so desired for optimization's sake, one Stone can be removed per minute to use the funny gauge spender heal, and three more to use Quake, Flood and Tornado (which is done by doing the same rotation admittedly, but at least it looks different)

Need I say more? Because I will, don't tempt me

[Shurrikhan]

Maybe I should draw out my proposed rotation (and the current one) on xivrotation, so we have a visual reference of the difference in Glare-Per-Minute (as if the pie charts weren't good enough at making that point)

Hard to be much clearer than the pie charts as is, but quick question: does xivrotations let you put up custom actions/icons? If so, I'll have to make use of that for a mock-up (even if my hope is that actually healing should almost never be well represented by a visual like that).

[ty_taurus]

Not a caricature or ad hominem: What do you think I want? Can you honestly say what it is that I want to see? No "I guess" or silly quips, no straw manning. What is it you think I want to see done to healers? AND to encounter design/overall game design regarding healing - since that's a big part of what I personally think needs to happen?

I can only speak for myself. That being said... What you've described of what I want and what I think about other players above, is absolutely, 100% a caricature of my perspective. Things like "no amount of damage could satisfy me," that I have a distain for players who want to heal, or that I cannot believe that there are people who enjoy healing (It's almost like I've suggested there be a healer specifically designed for players who do not like DPSing on healers countless times at this point.)

The reason it becomes infuriating is that I have explained my perspective multiple times over the years, and still I am grouped into a caricature of the big bad DPS wanabee healers that you are effectively describing. That is why things break down, because after the cordial discussions and calm back and forths, it always ends up coming back to this cartoon villain description sooner or later. And surprise pikachu face, people stomp their foot down.

What you are correct about is that I don't want to be a healbot. That's the entire reason why I fell in love with FFXIV healing in ARR, because I wasn't just a healing turret. That balance of going back and forth between healing and attacking is what FFXIV did right in the beginning. If FFXIV's healers were healing turrets from the start, which they never were, I wouldn't be here today. I wouldn't have kept up with the game probably past 2.0 even. I wouldn't have returned to future patches. I would've just finished the story, played a little of the post game, and I wouldn't have been incentivized to come back, but loving the feeling of playing Scholar brought me back and is ultimately why I'm here now.

As for what I believe you want... You want White Mage as it is now. You'd tolerate a tiny bit of wiggle room overall, like returning Aero III, or giving Holy a single target conditional effect, but there's very little flexibility in what you find acceptable for White Mage. You've talked before about getting nothing from using DPS abilities enjoyment wise, but are also against a healer that buffs instead of attacks, at least for your own personal take. You want to heal more, but also have described content like Barb EX as overtuned on damage, so truthfully I can't make sense of what actual levels of incoming damage you'd like to see because I have no idea what would encourage more healing but also not be overtuned. You would like to see healing emphasis taken away from OGCD healing and redirected to GCD healing, which is something commonly agreed upon in this space, but you also want every GCD heal to be DPS neutral, or at least, conditionally with lilies on White Mage, so DPS neutral with a 20 second cooldown effectively. DPS performance does seemingly matter significantly to you. It's not enough that in anyone's suggestion, simply Glare spamming gets you very close to maximal performance. Or when I suggested including an auto-battle system, your response was something to the effect of "If using Auto-battle is just as optimal or more optimal than playing manually, then sure." You've argued with people over a 1%-3% difference in total potential DPS output.

So from all that, you basically want current White Mage with minimal changes over the rest of FFXIV's lifespan, that's as competitive or the most competitive healer in terms of DPS performance, but you also want that DPS performance to be able to come from healing spells that are more GCD focused and considerably weaker in an environment that has far more frequent outgoing, constant damage, so that you can have optimal DPS through healing, but also that outgoing damage shouldn't be stronger than Barb EX in Extreme and below, somehow.

[Aravell]

I can only speak for myself. That being said... What you've described of what I want and what I think about other players above, is absolutely, 100% a caricature of my perspective. Things like "no amount of damage could satisfy me," that I have a distain for players who want to heal, or that I cannot believe that there are people who enjoy healing (It's almost like I've suggested there be a healer specifically designed for players who do not like DPSing on healers countless times at this point.)

The reason it becomes infuriating is that I have explained my perspective multiple times over the years, and still I am grouped into a caricature of the big bad DPS wanabee healers that you are effectively describing. That is why things break down, because after the cordial discussions and calm back and forths, it always ends up coming back to this cartoon villain description sooner or later. And surprise pikachu face, people stomp their foot down.

It's really funny when he complains that people make a caricature out of his arguments but he's totally fine with making a caricature out of other people's arguments. Like when he stretched so far to call me an elitist that doesn't want anyone worse than me to clear any content simply because I said that the skill ceiling should be higher and that job mastery should be rewarded (I often parse grey btw, so there's not many people worse than me in the first place), this is despite me going to math out how much impact that my suggested 10-20% gap would have (not much impact at all in first floor savage and below).

[ForsakenRoe]

What you are correct about is that I don't want to be a healbot. That's the entire reason why I fell in love with FFXIV healing in ARR, because I wasn't just a healing turret. That balance of going back and forth between healing and attacking is what FFXIV did right in the beginning. If FFXIV's healers were healing turrets from the start, which they never were, I wouldn't be here today. I wouldn't have kept up with the game probably past 2.0 even. I wouldn't have returned to future patches. I would've just finished the story, played a little of the post game, and I wouldn't have been incentivized to come back, but loving the feeling of playing Scholar brought me back and is ultimately why I'm here now.

The real question is, if T5 released today, and we had the kit of back then, the balance of back then, the jank netcode of back then... But we had the knowledge and skill of today, would we still have GCD healed and stood around so often on WHM for safety's sake? Or, knowing the fight timeline, how Twister actually works, etc, would we go balls-to-walls on damage regardless of healer, so as to get the fight down quicker, with the knowledge of how our MP costs work, how fast our MP regenerates, and how often (or not, as the case might be) damage actually goes out onto the raid? I suspect that part of the reason we didn't do damage as much back then was because we didn't know the game as well as we do now. We played safe back then in raids, to be able to see further into the fight. To try and get to Twisters again, to find out 'actually what tf is going on why are we blowing up here'. And in that regard, nothing's changed, we still play safe for prog to see further into the fight

Also same, healing a WOW raid (WOD at the time of me switching over on the account I use now) was hella boring. I never made it to level 50 as WHM on my first account, but I did make it to 58 on SCH before even entering Ishgard on this account. Playing the class was fun enough for me to want to do Levelling roulette AND MSQ roulette AND Alliance roulette, every single day. Crazy, huh

So from all that, you basically want current White Mage with minimal changes over the rest of FFXIV's lifespan, that's as competitive or the most competitive healer in terms of DPS performance, but you also want that DPS performance to be able to come from healing spells that are more GCD focused and considerably weaker in an environment that has far more frequent outgoing, constant damage, so that you can have optimal DPS through healing, but also that outgoing damage shouldn't be stronger than Barb EX in Extreme and below, somehow.

My understanding of his issue with Barb is that because of his preference for the 'hard GCD heals' like Medica, the movement required in the fight screws over the cast times. Effectively, this means that making healers more reliant on said heals, would directly conflict with such a damage profile to heal (one of fast paced movement and small fast hits against the party). I think his preferred 'heal check' is the ones where you can stand and turret heals, like Styx, Harrowing Hell (normal mode), or things like True Walking Dead from SOS (the HP-to-1 thing). Again though, that goes back to what I said about the '3 kinds of heal check designs': Hit harder, hit faster, or prevent the player from healing. And that preference of 'stand still and pump' removes option 3 as a design choice, leaving us with 'hit harder' (which we tried with Abyssos), and 'hit faster' (which, without the movement restriction of Barb EX, probably doesn't do enough on it's own to impact much unless it's insanely fast). I wouldn't mind more GCD heals on WHM, I even suggested one. But I think that the ones with cast times, the basic crap like Medica, should be looked at as 'this is the last resort', not 'this is the peak of healer gameplay'. I find it more fun to effortlessly weave healing GCDs (Raptures) while moving to dodge Barb EX's Pantokrator thing, than to stand still for two whole seconds to Medica 2, and I'm quite sure a fairly sizeable portion of the playerbase would agree

Imagine the lightning dogwolf thing in Aetherfont, the second boss. Every time it jumps, spins, whenever lightning AOEs appear on the floor, we could have it do 40% max HP damage to the party, every time, as a raidwide on top of 'actually dodge the lightning too'. It'd make you need to heal more, sure, but would it make the boss 'more fun'? I don't think it'd change the 'fun', it'd just change the button that you mash from Glare to Medica (and OOM you in less than 30s unless you change MP costs)

edit

At this point, I've said WHM getting Aero 3 and an 18 sec Dia would be acceptable (note that this would be MORE DPS buttons than SB since we'd also have Misery AND note that this is MORE to the "more DPS buttons" side than you guys used to ask for; there was a time you guys were ONLY asking for Aero 3, then it became Aero 3 + 18 sec Dia, and now it's Aero 3 + 18 sec Dia + Quake/Tornado/Flood, some burst CDs, and a gauge).

I've literally only ever asked for what I've asked for. You might be conflating me asking for the 'now its' stuff, and/or people seeing that and going 'wow actually that sounds pretty cool i'd play that', with everyone who's disagreeing with you shifting positions over time to trend towards.. apparently my idea. Which makes me a cult leader of sorts I think. Shame, I'm really not big on 'leadership positions', I'm not a fan of the responsibility, but if it gets healers fixed I guess I'll carry the burden

Also, you vastly overestimate the additional complexity added by all that stuff. You have to remember that you're a level 90 WHM, you should have a solid grip on the current job design such that picking up the new changes is very intuitive, it just slots into your current knowledge as would an expansion's additions, or a patch note change for durations and CDs. And for the newer players starting after this change were implemented (eg if it were added in 7.0 and someone started in 7.2), the new durations would be starting from level 1/4/whenever low level you get those base skills, the gauge would be at level 50 (so they are introduced to systems over time, not all at once), and I don't even know what you mean by 'burst CDs'. Cleric? I dropped that from the design a couple months ago. But you also listed Dia at 18s where I ask for it to be 12 (and have done for a year), so I think maybe you're actually on about someone else's ideas. Or you've mixed mine with another, idk

[Aravell]

My understanding of his issue with Barb is that because of his preference for the 'hard GCD heals' like Medica, the movement required in the fight screws over the cast times. Effectively, this means that making healers more reliant on said heals, would directly conflict with such a damage profile to heal (one of fast paced movement and small fast hits against the party). I think his preferred 'heal check' is the ones where you can stand and turret heals, like Styx, Harrowing Hell (normal mode), or things like True Walking Dead from SOS (the HP-to-1 thing). Again though, that goes back to what I said about the '3 kinds of heal check designs': Hit harder, hit faster, or prevent the player from healing. And that preference of 'stand still and pump' removes option 3 as a design choice, leaving us with 'hit harder' (which we tried with Abyssos), and 'hit faster' (which, without the movement restriction of Barb EX, probably doesn't do enough on it's own to impact much unless it's insanely fast). I wouldn't mind more GCD heals on WHM, I even suggested one. But I think that the ones with cast times, the basic crap like Medica, should be looked at as 'this is the last resort', not 'this is the peak of healer gameplay'. I find it more fun to effortlessly weave healing GCDs (Raptures) while moving to dodge Barb EX's Pantokrator thing, than to stand still for two whole seconds to Medica 2, and I'm quite sure a fairly sizeable portion of the playerbase would agree

The 'hit faster' style isn't very interesting on its own either. As a SCH on Harrowing Hell (Savage), all you do is just stack everything, Soil, Expedient, Dissipation, Deploy at start, spam Succor as necessary, then Indom at the end after the knockback before the Bonds. Does it make you heal more? Yes. Is it interesting? Not really.

[ty_taurus]

Imagine the lightning dogwolf thing in Aetherfont, the second boss. Every time it jumps, spins, whenever lightning AOEs appear on the floor, we could have it do 40% max HP damage to the party, every time, as a raidwide on top of 'actually dodge the lightning too'. It'd make you need to heal more, sure, but would it make the boss 'more fun'? I don't think it'd change the 'fun', it'd just change the button that you mash from Glare to Medica (and OOM you in less than 30s unless you change MP costs)

Probably one of my favorite boss mechanics in all of EW, and perhaps even ShB, is the thunderclouds in the fight with Shishio in Mount Rokkon, where there are dozens of thin line AoEs shooting all over the arena, and none of them hit all that hard even, but there's so many and they're all going off at different timers. Honestly having lots of line AoEs shooting all over is probably my favorite long-time mechanic. I vividly remember the first time I cleared Temple of Qarn in like the first week of the game's release and thinking dodging the lasers was so much fun and feeling exited to see other fights like that in the future. In hindsight, that mechanic is actually very slow, but when the game was less than a week old, it was exciting. Ultima Weapon EX did that also, and was much quicker, but Shishio brought it back in the best way. Imagine taking it one step further and you not only have all the little line AoEs, but the really massive ones are going off as well. Ugh, why can't we have more chaos mechanics where its technically all avoidable damage, but you're intended to get clipped a few times, and the damage of each clip isn't that dangerous, but the fact that it's different each time means how you heal it isn't the same every time either.