Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Aravell]

Right, but I just mean, you're not really that far off from the expected healing. Like at the end of the day, Ultimate difficulty doesn't really making the act of healing any more aggressive than what we're otherwise used to even in the fights that haven't been cleared healerless.

Oh I agree that the healing requirements aren't that high across the board, I'm just mentioning that TOP is unique among the ultimates as the only one that doesn't really have a defined stress point.

You ask anyone where the stress point is in any other ultimate and they can usually tell you. Tenstrike, Primal roulette, J-Waves, Wroth Flames. TOP doesn't really have a defined stress point, and that's weird.

[Supersnow845]

This is probably the first time I've actually seen someone ask for the right thing. All I've seen is folks asking for more DPS buttons to press during 'downtime' when they really should be asking for less healing downtime. Some folks in this very thread have it in their signatures, ffs. Go play a DPS class.

But, that's the majority of the playerbase - they want to DPS; it's easier than being actually responsible for keeping people alive outside of them staying themselves out of bad. Nevermind keeping them cleansed and buffed - I can't remember the last time I actually had to use an esuna. We don't even get haste.

How did that phrase go? If the Tank dies it's the healer's fault. If the healer dies it's the tank's fault. If DPS die it's their own damn fault.

There's something fundamentally wrong with the whole design the devs have adopted.

If you actually read the healer threads then literally nobody on the healer forums opposes these sorts of things. Healing requirements are constrained in this game, there is functionally no way in semi modern raid design you can reasonably spend more than 50% of your total button presses on heals and this is excluding the slow GCD confounding the situation

If 50+% of your total button presses have to functionally be non healing buttons then they have to put something interesting there, buffs are an option, it’s why SB AST was fun even though it’s functionally always only had malefic spam, SB SCH rotation is another option, there is nothing inherently wrong with a semi interesting damage rotation on healer but it’s also not the only option, what shouldn’t be an option is the situation we are currently in

[Maltothoris]

This is probably the first time I've actually seen someone ask for the right thing. All I've seen is folks asking for more DPS buttons to press during 'downtime' when they really should be asking for less healing downtime. Some folks in this very thread have it in their signatures, ffs. Go play a DPS class.

But, that's the majority of the playerbase - they want to DPS; it's easier than being actually responsible for keeping people alive outside of them staying themselves out of bad. Nevermind keeping them cleansed and buffed - I can't remember the last time I actually had to use an esuna. We don't even get haste.

How did that phrase go? If the Tank dies it's the healer's fault. If the healer dies it's the tank's fault. If DPS die it's their own damn fault.

There's something fundamentally wrong with the whole design the devs have adopted.

Here's the other thing. We had buffs and debuffs before.

SCH used to have Fey Caress, Silent Dusk, Eye for an Eye, Virus, Fey Wind, Fey Covenant.

Astro used to have Disable and bole as a defensive card with Time Dilation to extend buffs on a party member and Celestial Opposition to extend all of the astro's personal buffs.

WHM didn't really have much outside of protect and stoneskin (changed into divine bension).

You can see why they moved away from debuffs and the like because there's always the change for it to become very lop-sided.

Also trying to give more heal still doesn't work for the most part because two big things with fight design.

FIGHTS ARE SCRIPTED AND DAMAGE IS SCRIPTED!!!!

[Aravell]

FIGHTS ARE SCRIPTED AND DAMAGE IS SCRIPTED!!!!

Not only is the boss following a strict script in every fight in terms of order of mechanics, they also removed an element of extra damage at random times by removing the ability for enemies to crit.

So not only did the promised increase of healing requirements (since ShB) not manifest, they actually further reduced the healing requirements by removing crit autos.

[ty_taurus]

It's kind of sad just how often avenues for unique utility are demolished in this game. What I mean by that is, it's extremely difficult to come up with new or unique effects a job can have that would actually feel useful in FFXIV's combat without being completely broken either. If enemies could still crit, for example, then that leaves an opportunity for some jobs, including non-healers, to have crit defense buffs as a way to differentiate themselves--buffs that prevent enemies from scoring critical hits.

If we had enemies regularly healing themselves, than the disease that summoner and scholar used to inflict could be useful. If cleansable debuffs were more commonly used even if just as a punishment for failing mechanics, then esuna effects could be useful. If bosses had interruptable actions, then silence could be useful. The list goes on.

[Supersnow845]

They’ve designed themselves into this problem by outright refusing to let any job be noticeably weaker than any other job in a piece of content (which the community contributes way too much to as does FFLogs)

For example one of the biggest things people use as a reason for why we can’t have fey caress back is because it would give SCH a big advantage in the first phase of TEA because it would invalidate needing to esuna multiple times………but why is this a bad thing, who cares if one class has a niche like this that’s not just “my mobility is better or your shields are better” or any manner of thing that basically just amounts to how much the class contributes to your mitigation plan

Even expedient is ultimately more style than substance considering it’s not like they can make a mechanic that forces sprint because that would force SCH as the actual sprint button is unreliable and expedient just ends up tied up in your mitigation plan anyway (and in casual content you basically use it to force the lazy DPS to run between dungeon pulls)

No job is allowed to be good at anything everyone has to be good enough at everything, which then leads to people scrutinising smaller and smaller aspects of the jobs (MCH being left out till it got an extra mitigation, WHM being left out because of its 6.0 changes etc), it should be okay that you optimally want to play SCH in 9, SGE in 10, double regen in 11 and SCH/AST in 12, you shouldn’t make other comps unviable but if the WHM has to cast esuna 5 times to compensate when you don’t have a SCH to just press fry caress that should be totally fine, same as in a later fight with a white hole SCH should struggle while WHM can just delete it with cure 3

[Absurdity]

So not only did the promised increase of healing requirements (since ShB) not manifest, they actually further reduced the healing requirements by removing crit autos.

Not just crit autos. Because all the difficulty is contained within the fight mechanics nowadays they have to make the boss spam them, which means the boss spends most of the fight casting something, and since the devs still haven't figured out how to make enemies cast and attack at the same time you have significantly less auto attack damage in general. And as a bonus this comes with the additional issue of making boss movement annoying, because the boss simply stops moving every 5 seconds on top of enemy movement being kinda jank in general.

I still remember that in P4S I had maybe 2 GCDs worth of stutter stepping to move Hesperos for Pinax and on Gunbreaker it aligned with your Gnashing which just made it a pain in the backside.

This might actually explain why all bosses just auto position themselves now, it's a bandaid for them constantly casting something and being completely static during it.

[rawker]

Awareness also used to be a mit since trash used to crit as well.

[Supersnow845]

Awareness also used to be a mit since trash used to crit as well.

Trash still does crit at least in the old dungeons, first pull of Ala mhigo after the first boss is the first example I think of

[rawker]

Oh they still do? I'm not paying enough attention then.

Let's just hope that we get Awareness back in DT.