JP Players healer feedback is...

[AnotherPerson]

To be honest Japanese gamers do not take video games as serious US players do. Even final fantasy dissidia their lobbies will be so chill and fun compared to US lobbies where its just sweat fest. I am not surprised they like the way healers are.

Chill and fun can apply to anyone and everyone in any data center. Serious gamers isn't unique to any individual data center. It's just a psychological mindset. People just like to think they're doing their best and don't like to know that they're not doing their best. For these healers, having a simple rotation helps them to reinforce that mindset that they aren't doing as poorly as they imagined because it's been ingrained to the general population that healers have the capability to constantly DPS with their overabundant healing toolkit. This results in some players getting concerned when they are not up to par. The other day when I was playing alliance roulette in Dun Scaith, my co-healer SGE apologized to me for dropping their DoT. I'm had to pause for a moment to process that response, thinking "???" before replying to them that it's okay and I don't pay attention.

I didn't have perfect DoT uptime either. Neither does majority of the DPS who are usually not doing their DPS rotations perfectly. I was busy vibing and even joked around saying I also get distracted with good looking party members. I had some good laughs afterwards and we moved on. It's fine to not be perfectly optimal in content like this.

You can be chill and enjoy the game even if there's a more complicated rotation. As long as you're keeping people alive in content like this, you're doing fine as a healer. Most people don't care about your DPS as a healer, they care about whether you're keeping them alive. Any extra is just a bonus. In fact, that Dun Scaith run was actually a better example that it's harder to be optimal when you don't have insane healing capability relative to the content's damage frequency and people won't care about how well you DPS as long as you're keeping them alive. As long as everyone's having fun, who's going to really nitpick about healers doing optimal DPS when healer DPS should be the last consideration to a clear?

[Supersnow845]

I’ve seen that perspective on both the JP forums and on the English tank forums

Honestly what is even the point of healers if you don’t want to rely on them to keep you alive, I don’t expect to stay alive if I’ve got 15 mobs whacking on me as a healer/DPS nor do I believe we will beat enrage without true DPS, why is it specifically “I don’t want to have to rely on the healers

My own reading of the JP forums btw seems to lean towards they agree healer gameplay is boring but their fix basically amounts to make healing more interesting (though they never actually offer suggestions of how), they don’t really seem to like offering more DPS options as a suggestion

[ForsakenRoe]

It's understandable in some senses, that the solution for 'make healer gameplay more fun' is 'make more healing', as it enforces the trinity. But the problem is, the trinity's already getting worn down by DPS having mitigations, Tanks having crazy selfsustain (not you DRK), Tanks getting more and more damage buttons despite not needing them for the sake of 'keep aggro' (aggro is now autopilot because tankstance is so strong), DPS getting more utilities that heal the party (curing waltz, phoenix, etc). So I think it's a case of the JP playerbase believing more strongly in the preservation of 'the trinity' than someone like me. I believe I can respect the stance, but politely disagree with it. We are a healer first and foremost, and that means that if we have to drop damage to heal and save the party, then we absolutely should do that. However, I also do believe that when there isn't damage to heal, we should have more that we can play around than just one DOT and one filler spell.

I wonder if the JP side has considered Abyssos, and it's effect on the raid population for each role. It would not surprise me too much if their stance was 'Okay you tried to make more healing required, but it didn't go so well. But we think that 'more healing required' is the way to make healer role more fun, so please try another approach to reach that same destination (eg, more fast-pace heal checks ala Barbariccia, rather than 'Mit this 4 times or you die instantly' Abyssos)'. Whereas here, we're more prone to 'You tried it, and it didn't work. Try something different, because clearly 'more healing' hasn't worked and you've got the evidence that it won't because you just tried it'. Something tells me that it's part of their culture to try to find a way to make something work, rather than giving up on it and trying a different direction right away. Eg, with the Pure/Barrier split, it's not really worked so well, but I expect it to stick around for a while longer, if not forever, because they'd rather 'try to make it work' than go back to the drawing board and change tact (eg making every healer have a sliding scale of Pure vs Barrier capability, where being good at one means they're bad at the other, and have to rely on one another to cover the gaps in their own kit during raids). I mean, look at Diadem, and how they never truly 'threw it away', but kept reworking it until it became 'passable content', and then iterated on with Bozja/Eureka.

Again, I respect that mentality and approach to a flawed system. But I also think that sometimes, you have to know when something's beyond saving, and personally I think that we need to look at adding more to the damage rotations for healers, for the inevitable downtimes we'll face in any level of content. And hey, the addition of 'more damage rotation' doesn't exclude the possibility to add more healing required later down the line. As a quick example, if we did the thing I've mentioned for a year, where WHM generates a new gauge by doing damage or non-Lily healing GCDs, and can spend that gauge on a damage-neutral AOE heal, then the addition of that not only adds some depth to the optimization for the class in the short term, but opens up the opportunity for more healing to be required in later expansions, because they have access to that healing tool. The mere addition of that gauge opens up opportunities for new skills that use that gauge. Maybe a shielding variant, maybe something that places a damage-neutral HOT on everyone (cough Purgation), maybe something that dumps the whole gauge and scales in power based on how much gauge was dumped. Maybe even something which costs the whole gauge, and is the equivalent of WOW's Holy Word Salvation, which in FF terms would be an AOE heal hits everyone with Cure 3, 6s of Medica 2 and a full duration Regen, with a 12min CD (reduced by 15s each time you spend a Lily). Long CD, but it's VERY strong and feels super cool and impactful

Additionally, as part of the 'remove the Pure/Barrier split, make it a sliding scale', I suggested adding an AOE shielding Lily spender to WHM. If every healer has some form of AOE Shield capability, then like how SE has made things like White Hole, Charybdis, Heartless Archangel, True Walking Dead, etc, moves where you have to 'blast Pure healing in a short timeframe' (effectively a 'pure heal check'), we could have a new 'Shield Check' style of mechanics, where you can 'block' something by having a shield active. A good example already exists in any instance of Ifrit, including UWU where it was the required solution at the time: Vulcan Burst's knockback only applies if you take damage from it. If you fully shield through it, the KB is negated. So we could have, for example, a raidwide that applies a Bleed. You can block the damage with a shield to prevent the bleed, you can Esuna the bleed (making a return of an AOE Esuna skill have some interesting use cases), or you can just power through the bleed with additional HPS. Giving parties multiple options, and therefore more agency, on how to deal with the mechanic

wow that's long sorry, never 'let samantha cook' when it comes to game design, it turns into a metaphorical 3 course meal every time

[Solakor]

I’ve seen that perspective on both the JP forums and on the English tank forums

Honestly what is even the point of healers if you don’t want to rely on them to keep you alive, I don’t expect to stay alive if I’ve got 15 mobs whacking on me as a healer/DPS nor do I believe we will beat enrage without true DPS, why is it specifically “I don’t want to have to rely on the healers

My own reading of the JP forums btw seems to lean towards they agree healer gameplay is boring but their fix basically amounts to make healing more interesting (though they never actually offer suggestions of how), they don’t really seem to like offering more DPS options as a suggestion

Yea this is weird. They say they wanna heal but then they don't want to take any responsibility that they actually have to heal. They don't want to dps other than use a few glares here and there while waiting doing nothing and god forbid you give them extra dps tools and its a dps job now. I'm wondering what these ppl were doing in arr - sb. The same thing as now, as in putting 1 dot and then spamming stone? They keep flip flopping and have no clue what they actually want.
If these kind of ppl are the ones SE took the feedback from then oh boy... Oh yea and Yoshi has the audacity to say the community needs to decide these things. Yea no. Gonna wait to buy DT until i see how the jobs play.

[Mayhemmer]

Now I'm curious how they feel about tanks, as my main personal issue with healers is the same issue I have with tanks, in that there feels like a lot of missed opportunity in terms of creative job design direction for both roles. Do they not believe it's possible to add more depth to jobs, which inherently raises the skill ceiling, without forcing lower-end players to make use of that depth in lower-end content? This is rhetorical, of course. Not even the devs have shown to believe that's possible anymore.

The only downside to that is that jobs would feel even more powerful in that low-end content in the hands of a player who is utilizing that depth. Do they have the same issue as many players in other regions, where they see that sentiment and read it as "we want more dps," go glossy-eyed and start foaming at the mouth?

[Solakor]

Now I'm curious how they feel about tanks, as my main personal issue with healers is the same issue I have with tanks, in that there feels like a lot of missed opportunity in terms of creative job design direction for both roles. Do they not believe it's possible to add more depth to jobs, which inherently raises the skill ceiling, without forcing lower-end players to make use of that depth in lower-end content? This is rhetorical, of course. Not even the devs have shown to believe that's possible anymore.

The only downside to that is that jobs would feel even more powerful in that low-end content in the hands of a player who is utilizing that depth. Do they have the same issue as many players in other regions, where they see that sentiment and read it as "we want more dps," go glossy-eyed and start foaming at the mouth?

The basic gameplay has always been there for ppl who don't want to invest more into the class gameplay and you don't need near optimal gameplay anywhere else than 2 last floors of savage and ult. I think most players arguing against better class gameplay are ppl who don't want to learn and are afraid of being told to do their job and not just sit there or failure. I dunno what happened to learning from failure or trying to be better but many games have been infested with this mentality in the last few years.

[Absurdity]

Among the English forums, I see plenty of nuance in healer feedback and requests getting handwaved and reduced down to "want more dps," when that obviously isn't the primary takeaway from the issues. I have no reason to believe this habit doesn't extend to the JP player base. They're just as capable of being head-in-ass levels of dismissive as the English-speaking player base loves to make a contest out of being.

I also wouldn't be surprised if JP has just as many "Sylphies" who like the status quo because they get easy savage clears just by performing the absolute basics of their role, since that's all said role offers.

The basic gameplay has always been there for ppl who don't want to invest more into the class gameplay and you don't need near optimal gameplay anywhere else than 2 last floors of savage and ult.

You don't even need any kind of optimal gameplay in the last 2 savage floors (not counting P8S as it's a clear outlier). I've been in parties that can't sync up buffs for the life of them and have terrible DPS. They can still clear, that's what gear upgrades are for.

[Raikai]

Having more healing to do isn't exactly a great solution tbh if the damage profile remains the same. What is going to happen is that we'll just map out the script with whatever new tools we get or space the old ones more, which they are already very excessive for the damage that needs to be looked at. For a healing overhaul to happen they first need to rethink the way they design the fights, and I'm skeptical that this would ever happen since it would probably impact old content.

Interestingly, Blue Mage healing is actually way more engaging because you spend a good chunk of your GCDs with healing/shielding/defensives, while you have a surplus of ogcd damaging actions to add in between the healing. Of course, BLU healing tools are kinda barebone, but the idea is there.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

It's understandable in some senses, that the solution for 'make healer gameplay more fun' is 'make more healing', as it enforces the trinity. But the problem is, the trinity's already getting worn down by DPS having mitigations, Tanks having crazy selfsustain (not you DRK), Tanks getting more and more damage buttons despite not needing them for the sake of 'keep aggro' (aggro is now autopilot because tankstance is so strong), DPS getting more utilities that heal the party (curing waltz, phoenix, etc). So I think it's a case of the JP playerbase believing more strongly in the preservation of 'the trinity' than someone like me. I believe I can respect the stance, but politely disagree with it. We are a healer first and foremost, and that means that if we have to drop damage to heal and save the party, then we absolutely should do that. However, I also do believe that when there isn't damage to heal, we should have more that we can play around than just one DOT and one filler spell[...]

Funnily enough when I read that bolded part, it got me curious enough to look for what's going on in other role's subforum. One question that immediately springs to my mind was "What do they think about WAR's Bloodwhetting invalidating 1 from 3 major roles in dungeons?"

And I found it! The amount of pushback the OP gets for wanting to nerf that absurd healing potential in AoE situation is staggering.

It's depressingly amusing to know that the double standard reeks not only around here but also on the motherland. Tanks gets some button to further immortalize them? Yes yes! Healers gets some button so they won't break their 1 button? Not in my fourteen!!!

[Supersnow845]

Honestly somehow the JP collective forums makes even less sense than the EN forums, of course nothing is a monolith and often there is clashing opinions but JP seems to be way more uniform than we are

They don’t want more damage buttons on healers, but they also support the disgustingly high sustain on tanks but they also want more to heal despite the fact that you could multiple succors potency by 10 and it still doesn’t change the fact the tank doesn’t need you and never will because you can’t outscale bloodwhetting

What are these people doing in an average dungeon and what are they actually trying to get out of healers because it makes no sense to me, “lazy sylphie” gets about the closest but I still don’t get it