JP Players healer feedback is...

[INovemI]

I was browsing the JP Healer commentary and going through some of the posts I saw with the highest likes, and honestly even if the JP audience doesn't agree with us I do think some of the ideas sound pretty nice. Like there was this one guy who said that tank mits/heals could convert regular damage into a DOT instead. I think this gives room to make them more reliant on healers without punishing inexperienced or unskilled healers too much, especially if they could reflect the DOT on the UI a bit like how shields show up. Maybe even reward skilled healers by allowing them to reduce the DOTs value based on their healing (essentially allowing them to undo the damage before it occurs). Under a system like that, skilled healers would essentially be able to earn DPS windows while inexperienced healers could be punished by having to focus more on healing. But, overall, it would make it so that healer skill would matter more for clear speed than whether or not they singlehandedly determine the fate of the entire party. This could particularly be the case even for solo content if healers could have damage to DOT conversion as a form of utility they could use on allies or themselves. I know of course the damage is kind of everything in this game so inexperienced healers still need a way to DPS, but I definitely think there's solutions to that too like by making healers more focused on DPS buffing party members through healing, having healing cause damage splashes around the target, giving healers ogcd damage skills (with cooldowns balanced so that gcd damage is still more important), etc.

Anyway bigger point is that even if they don't agree with us on the details, I think there's a not insubstantial part of that community which would support changes that make for more interesting healer gameplay so long as it doesn't punish casual players too harshly.

[Azurarok]

Anyway bigger point is that even if they don't agree with us on the details, I think there's a not insubstantial part of that community which would support changes that make for more interesting healer gameplay so long as it doesn't punish casual players too harshly.

Maybe I'm the only one that doesn't get it, but as much as casual/hardcore gets brought up as a big point for why the role is the way it is right now, I cannot tell where the line for casual and hardcore is. It doesn't seem to be the same between the JP and US communities, as well as the devs. Is it the type of content? Would a casual player still do extremes, savages and ultimates? I guess a casual player and casual content aren't necessarily the same either.

I'm relatively newer-ish to the game, having started in 5.3, so I never got to experience StB healers and can only imagine how it was back then. Did healer dps matter to reaching clears as much as it does now?

Also like... I assume playing MSQ stuff and/or leveling jobs falls into casual gameplay, but I really can't say the current healer design caters to it either. It was a honestly a little bit annoying watching friends level and learn new attacks and combos while I learned yet another healing spell. It probably would've been a very different ride if I had access to Cleric Stance, Break, and Aero III considering the most fun I had with a healer was in Bozja with Lost Seraph Strike. They probably would've given me the incentive to learn how to make use of all the healing tools earlier than I did too.

[Supersnow845]

Maybe I'm the only one that doesn't get it, but as much as casual/hardcore gets brought up as a big point for why the role is the way it is right now, I cannot tell where the line for casual and hardcore is. It doesn't seem to be the same between the JP and US communities, as well as the devs. Is it the type of content? Would a casual player still do extremes, savages and ultimates? I guess a casual player and casual content aren't necessarily the same either.

I'm relatively newer-ish to the game, having started in 5.3, so I never got to experience StB healers and can only imagine how it was back then. Did healer dps matter to reaching clears as much as it does now?

Also like... I assume playing MSQ stuff and/or leveling jobs falls into casual gameplay, but I really can't say the current healer design caters to it either. It was a honestly a little bit annoying watching friends level and learn new attacks and combos while I learned yet another healing spell. It probably would've been a very different ride if I had access to Cleric Stance, Break, and Aero III considering the most fun I had with a healer was in Bozja with Lost Seraph Strike. They probably would've given me the incentive to learn how to make use of all the healing tools earlier than I did too.

The complexity of the healers DPS kits is basically inverse to their expected contribution to the raid over the years

Healer DPS was explicitly not included in damage calculations for coils and was only factored into the very very early weeks of prog in Midas and creator (the 5 tiers where healer DPS was the most complex), as the healers became slightly more simple in SB more healer DPS was expected, you were expected to DPS at all levels of prog, but your contribution generally wouldn’t make or break the raid if you parsed green rather than orange, by ShB and EW healers are now expected to between them contribute about 15-20% of the raids total damage coinciding with their horribly boring kits

[ty_taurus]

I'm relatively newer-ish to the game, having started in 5.3, so I never got to experience StB healers and can only imagine how it was back then. Did healer dps matter to reaching clears as much as it does now?

To give you a summary of how healing has changed throughout the years...

During ARR, the running theme was underestimating how strong healers actually were. Because as a new game, we didn't really understand it as intimately as we do now. And the content landscape was different. Bosses could crit, tankbusters were instant and untelegraphed (and could also crit), bosses would auto attack through their casts, and tanks had far less sustain, so even though the damage profile of ARR fights vs now isn't all that different, it was more unpredictable at times. Add to the fact that MP management was also a lot trickier, particularly for white mage. Ethers were actually a regularly used resource for healers, because there were almost no sources of OGCD healing. Need to heal? That's very often going to eat 1/10th of your MP or so if not more sometimes. So while healers absolutely had time and wiggle room to be very aggressive if they wanted to, casually, many players just didn't. Even in the coils, which was the more experimental attempt at harder content, many players would rather play safe, especially for a first clear. And back then, fights didn't demand healer DPS. Fights were also more about soft enrages and mid-battle DPS checks rather than tight, hard enrages. And with Cleric Stance being as scary as it was for many a casual player, DPSing wasn't that big back then despite being very manageable.

As time went on, our understanding of the shear power of healer DPS gradually became more well known by the later half of ARR, and by the time we reached HW, you could say the community was largely aware of how important it could be even without being required. Scholar could out-parse a Ninja back then, to give an example. HW added more OGCD healing and made it easier to manage MP, but the new savage raids still didn't require healer DPS to meet DPS checks yet. I believe by the second savage tier (though Sebazy or someone with more familiarity with on-release raiding at the time can correct me on this), the hardcore community started really valuing the healer's ability to help the party skip more mechanics through their DPS. You started to see it become more the norm where before, a slower, safer clear where healers would stop DPSing early in the fight to focus on topping off the tank was more common. Meanwhile in the casual circle, there were more heated discussions about it. Many would describe not DPSing as griefing, or more specifically, the act of idling when no healing was needed. Some people were not against DPSing, but were more afraid of doing it at the wrong time and not being able to heal in Cleric Stance, while others simply took the stance that healers shouldn't have to DPS because that's not their job. And it was the later example that started forum fights.

Then came Stormblood. Cleric Stance was reworked into just an insignificant DPS buff, and healer DPS was changed to scale off MND. In addition, each healer lost a DOT as Aero was changed to upgrade into Aero II, as was Bio into Bio II, and Combust into Combust II. DPSing became easier than ever to perform because now there was no polarizing Cleric Stance to scare the casual healer, and a lot of that "DPS or no DPS" bickering quieted down. It's also when healer DPS really started being a requirement for harder content. Now there was no excuse for not DPSing, and presumably they didn't want healer DPS to enable the party to skip so much of the end of a fight, so despite Yoshi P maintaining a stance that healers shouldn't feel like they're forced to DPS, the game absolutely did if you wanted to do things like extremes or savage, or at least if you wanted to do so when those fights released. Gearing could make it possible without. But healers still had a decent amount of DPS options. White mage was also absolutely dreadful during SB by the way. Its gauge mechanic was a joke, about as terrible as Sage's Addersting if not a little worse. I took a look at old Omega clears, and from the sample I checked, only 1% of teams used white mage for the last tier.

Then we reached ShB where Scholar had literally everything related to its identity removed, and Astrologian's card system was turned into the convoluted mess that it still mostly is. It did change a bit in EW, but the basic concept of all cards being the same 3%/6% DPS buff was established. And the rest is as you know it pretty much.

[Aravell]

Many would describe not DPSing as griefing, or more specifically, the act of idling when no healing was needed. Some people were not against DPSing, but were more afraid of doing it at the wrong time and not being able to heal in Cleric Stance, while others simply took the stance that healers shouldn't have to DPS because that's not their job. And it was the later example that started forum fights.

Small addition to this part: Not everyone expected you to do any damage in HW not only because of Cleric Stance, but also because of the accuracy stat. If you didn't meld a single bit of accuracy, you'd miss about 30-70% of your attacks depending on where you were relative to your target as you had different accuracy caps for front, flank and rear (I forgot the exact hit chance numbers). So using attack spells without accuracy melds doesn't actually contribute much, some healers back then also opted to meld determination because the tanks did get slapped hard.

Then came Stormblood.

As for SB, my memory isn't 100% exact, but I remember that the dps checks were not that hard for extremes even on release day, so healer dps wasn't strictly required back then even though they did make it easier to do. Of course, if you wanted to do savage then healer dps was required, for example, the O8S P1 dps check was notoriously tight early on for pug groups even with healer dps included. Healer dps basically only became expected and required of every healer come ShB because they made it so easy to do up to 70% of your maximum dps output.

Funny that, by majorly simplifying healers, SE made it so that healer dps became an expectation rather than a bonus, the very thing they wanted to avoid.

[ty_taurus]

Funny that, by majorly simplifying healers, SE made it so that healer dps became an expectation rather than a bonus, the very thing they wanted to avoid.

At the time of Stormblood, I made the argument that the change to Cleric Stance was SE taking a stance in favor of healer DPS. They have always tried to stay neutral on the topic, but when arguments between whether or not healers should DPS, taking away the biggest obstacle that made healer DPS challenging to me is a clear statement of telling players to DPS, not the opposite. And you also make a good point about accuracy... the removal of the accuracy was almost exclusively there to support healer DPS, because accuracy was built into DPS gear and tank gear, but not in healer gear. While healers had to meld accuracy in Heavensward, the removal of it effected them the most going into Stormblood. Every single change we saw in Stormblood pointed toward SE indirectly telling players that healer DPS is expected and is something they should engage with.

[ForsakenRoe]

Every single change we saw in Stormblood pointed toward SE indirectly telling players that healer DPS is expected and is something they should engage with.

Problem is, SE could directly say 'you must DPS as a healer, if you do not you are playing your job incorrectly' and there will be some players that say 'that clearly does not apply to me', 'indirectly' saying things is how we've gotten to this point, they should have been more firm/less 'on the fence' about telling us if healer damage is expected of us or not, instead of this 'well you can, but dont bully people and hurt their feewings' that gives lazy players cover to be lazy and have netflix up on the second monitor while they do EX roulette

[Mayhemmer]

Problem is, SE could directly say 'you must DPS as a healer, if you do not you are playing your job incorrectly' and there will be some players that say 'that clearly does not apply to me', 'indirectly' saying things is how we've gotten to this point, they should have been more firm/less 'on the fence' about telling us if healer damage is expected of us or not, instead of this 'well you can, but dont bully people and hurt their feewings' that gives lazy players cover to be lazy and have netflix up on the second monitor while they do EX roulette

Is "If you have it, and can use it, and can benefit from using it, then you should use it" not the default mentality for any video game? It should be the default, because that's just game design... Any player, or even SE themselves, claiming otherwise should be flatly told they're wrong.

[ty_taurus]

Problem is, SE could directly say 'you must DPS as a healer, if you do not you are playing your job incorrectly' and there will be some players that say 'that clearly does not apply to me', 'indirectly' saying things is how we've gotten to this point, they should have been more firm/less 'on the fence' about telling us if healer damage is expected of us or not, instead of this 'well you can, but dont bully people and hurt their feewings' that gives lazy players cover to be lazy and have netflix up on the second monitor while they do EX roulette

In general, it's kind of difficult to report griefing done when players intentionally perform badly for a selfish objective. Like we can go back to the ancient example of 'I want to be an ice mage!' black mage RPers. At what point do you draw the line between someone just not playing at a particularly high skill level and griefing? Because we could look at someone doing nothing but spamming Blizzard and say, yeah, that person is griefing, but when the line blurs, and you have someone who maybe swaps into Astral Fire, immediately casts Flare/Despair, then goes back into Umbral Ice... Is that griefing? Or is that just someone playing the way they think is best?

[Niroken]

Then we reached ShB where Scholar had literally everything related to its identity removed, and Astrologian's card system was turned into the convoluted mess that it still mostly is. It did change a bit in EW, but the basic concept of all cards being the same 3%/6% DPS buff was established. And the rest is as you know it pretty much.

*Watching SE rip abilities from WHM to give to every other healer then removing Stoneskin only to give it back later as a limited instant cast ability.*

I can't wait for my new 100 cap ability to be an older ability that is functionally the same but with white/blue sparkles. SE is going to run out of sparkle effects eventually.