#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Loggos]

I will stop playing healer in PvE because as many have already explained competently and extensively their current state is abyssmal.

I will continue to play healers in PvP though because I think in this piece of content they are executed perfectly.

I would like the devs to know that I really appreciate what they have done with them and that I'd wish for them to transfer their good design choices (when applicable) to PvE.

I know, you can obviously not translate PvP healing 1:1 into PvE healing. That is not what I'm trying to ask.

But PvP gets two things right:
1. Encounter novelty (inherent to PvP)
2. Diverse class design

Extensive feedback below the cut in the unlikely case input from this thread gets forwarded to the devs.

1. Encounter novelty

Encounter novelty cannot be recreated perfectly because naturally the randomness is brought in by the human element.
In PvP no game might feel like the other. Even with random attack patterns this feeling can only be approximated in PvE.
Still, I think there are some valuable lessons that could inspire PvE encounter design to spice it up:

1. Randomness of attacks and attack patterns (as explained above)

2. Constant damage
--> in PvP there is rarely any downtime in terms of damage. You always need to be active. You always need to assess the whole situation and manage the different aspects of your kit - damage, healing and (de)buffing.
In light of the constant damage, juggling these three aspects while making sure your team stays as alive as possible, creates a fun and challening experience.

--> in PvE this could be approximated by increasing the damage intervals. (Damage numbers would have to be adjusted accordingly)

3. Frequent, random single target damage on non-tank players
--> PvP balances the necessity for team-wide healing and single-target healing really well in my eyes. You need to look out for everyone, not just the tank, making your healing job a lot more dynamic and exciting.

--> In PvE instead of a (too?) strong focus on raid wides, encounters could add a lot more random single-target hits. If they occurred at a similar frequency as raid-wides and the overall number of damage instances would be increased, too, then (with damage numbers adjusted accordingly) this might make PvE healing more active and prevent a 90% press rate of your damage skill.

4. Limited healing resources
--> In PvP the limited resources force you to play very strategicly and anticipate situations (frequency and intensity of incoming damage, who gets attacked, etc.). Even straightforward classes like WHM become a lot more complex and tactical. Despite your healing being reactive your mindset still needs to be proactive and you need to constantly plan out your resources. Sometimes you need to decide between two (or more) team members: who gets the heal and who has to die. So even letting people die is in some way strategic.

--> In PvE the focus on ressource management could be increased again (e.g., MP) or the strategic costs of executing certain heals could be increased to force more decision making (e.g. long cast times while creating scenarios that demand GCD healing, certain costs/failure risks attached to oGCD heals). Scholar for example could lean more into their kit design of mutually exclusive aspects to increase their tactical risk-reward gameplay.
(I don't know if enforced deaths/strategic deaths could also be a deliberate gameplay mechanic. Though I do think having to make this decision in PvP is fun at least. And I heard some (healerless...ha) savage/ultimate clears use strategic wipes to cheese mechanics?)


2. Diverse class design

There is one general aspect that all PvP healers get right.

1. Task diversity --> You don't just do one thing. Besides being a healer, you are by all means a dps and a buffer too. Having to juggle these three roles makes the gameplay very flavourful in my eyes. It keeps you busy, it doesn't get dull or one-sided, and as explained above it forces you to manage your tasks and develop a good understanding of game awareness and observation skills. You often have to be strategic or make quick and important decisions on the fly.

This point is a matter of taste though, because other people may prefer if the role's focus is placed purely on healing.
For me personally, this diversity of skills is what makes the job complex and engaging.

Much has already been said about it but each class has its own identity.
PvP gets the core concepts of each healer just right:

1. WHM --> powerful straightforward heals
2. SCH --> Tactitian that has to manage their resources by deciding whether to spend them on healing or damage. (And unlike their PvE counterpart their damage and defense options are almost 50:50. That would be impossible to implement in PvE but perhaps the latter could just move a tiny bit towards the middle.)
3. AST --> Random cards that are all useful (the speed buff might be a bit less desirable but it's not super bad when you get it) and meaningful time magic (even though I just have one time skill its usage feels very weighty because it can often have significant impact and offers up strategic application). Interesting "time magic" component" by having some of your next skills become insta casts but you lose that charge if you press any other button. Enforces very interesting resource management and strategising.
4. SGE --> Green DPS cosplaying as a healer. As it should be. (No but really, sage is exactly what I wanted from a DPS healer.)

Merely switching to another healer already gives you a completely new gameplay experience. I know there are always concerns regarding meta and balance. In PvP there are also clear meta jobs.
But the fun (the thing we should have in games) you can have with all of them outweighs this issue for me.
And in my observation no healer job is so undertuned that you can't climb with it. The kits all seem to be decent enough and the open/random encounters leave enough room for skill expressions.
Even if they are not top-picks for tournaments I know skilled people who've reached crystal with sage for example, even though this job isn't considered very meta as far as I'm aware.

I'm in the camp that, as long as every job can clear everything reasonably, unique job design beats homogenisation.
Yes, perhaps one job will be the most meta pick but I don't think that this should be a reason to optimise the fun out of everything.

[Doopliss]

There's none, I really dislike the combat in this game to me it feels clunky and overbearingly laggy, it doesnt feel responsive enough, thats not gonna chaange and I've pretty much accepted that, and if I get bored I stop playing for periods of time.

Lol. If you think that way and feel like the solution is so simple, why don't you simply keep doing that and let the people who still have the energy to speak up about it, well, speak up?

Real weird of you to be claiming other people are weird for caring, while having these seemingly contradicting opinions and feeling the need to obsessively argue with others here at the same time.

[Kathryn]

Lol. If you think that way and feel like the solution is so simple, why don't you simply keep doing that and let the people who still have the energy to speak up about it, well, speak up?

Real weird of you to be claiming other people are weird for caring, while having these seemingly contradicting opinions and feeling the need to obsessively argue with others here at the same time.

Ahhh ok *sigh* this is my last post, because I know complaining wont change things and im at the point where ill accept the game for what it is if i feel like playing it, only money will bring real change and you'd need a lot of people to stop plying I mean a whole lotta people which would affect the financial stability of the game, not just boycotting the job you are dissatisfied with and gamers have alot of issue with sticking to such boycotts.


But please, prove me wrong, hit SE where it hurts, their pockets and I will personally commend you all for your dedication.

[Doopliss]

Ahhh ok *sigh* this is my last post, because I know complaining wont change things and im at the point where ill accept the game for what it is if i feel like playing it, only money will bring real change and you'd need a lot of people to stop plying I mean a whole lotta people which would affect the financial stability of the game, not just boycotting the job you are dissatisfied with and gamers have alot of issue with sticking to such boycotts.


But please, prove me wrong, hit SE where it hurts, their pockets and I will personally commend you all for your dedication.

Word. Okay. That explanation still makes your combativeness make no sense. Good luck with whatever's goin' on with you, man.

[Zadood]

There's none, I really dislike the combat in this game to me it feels clunky and overbearingly laggy, it doesnt feel responsive enough, thats not gonna chaange and I've pretty much accepted that, and if I get bored I stop playing for periods of time.



This is my last post anyway, and as one of my friends just said to me while I was explaining the situation "no one ever goes to forums to say how much they like something" this holds infinitely more wisdom than this entire forum holds.

Look, friends, you dislike the combat to a point being indifferent and gave up the hope that it will be better, which understandable and totally fair on your side.

But there are some folks here still holding some glimmer of hope and still fightning for tooth and nail in hoping that combat system will change for the better.

Foolish and naive as it may seems to you, and hell we could be ignored for expansion upon expansion, but all it take is one time, just one freaking time for CBU3 to aknowledge the issue and actually work on it, and then thing will only to starting to getting better.

And when it does, at the end of the day, it benefit you too.

If you want to be correct, be a pessimist,
If you want to win, be an optimist.

That's all I can say.

[Kathryn]

Word. Okay. That explanation still makes your combativeness make no sense. Good luck with whatever's goin' on with you, man.

I'm just getting old and bitter and I hve been burnt by games/companies too many times, too tired to care too much but morbidly curious as to what goes on in these forums, I will be a silent observer of this going forward.

I dont meant to be combative, I am just speaking my mind.

Look, friends, you dislike the combat to a point being indifferent and gave up the hope that it will be better, which understandable and totally fair on your side.

But there are some folks here still holding some glimmer of hope and still fightning for tooth and nail in hoping that combat system will change for the better.

Foolish and naive as it may seems to you, and hell we could be ignored for expansion upon expansion, but all it take is one time, just one freaking time for CBU3 to aknowledge the issue and actually work on it, and then thing will only to starting to getting better.

And when it does, at the end of the day, it benefit you too.

If you want to be correct, be a pessimist,
If you want to win, be an optimist.

That's all I can say.

You have my support if you can help bring real change, maybe the pessimist in me really has won for now.

[Rehayem]

Hm, I feel like I've heard that apathethic stance somewhere before...

What its people had gained from ease, they lost to apathy.

[Zadood]

Hm, I feel like I've heard that apathethic stance somewhere before...

I think it's more on John B.Calhoun's Behaviorial Sink theory, rather than the fellas of The Plenty from The Dead Ends.

[Jojoya]

“I’m not going to screw over their experience because the developers can’t……..”

So you are basically saying healers are a functional enforced burden on the party that doesn’t get to have fun, they are just there to facilitate others fun

Do you not see a problem here

I don't have a problem because I do have fun as a healer. I rarely end up in a party with players good enough not to need a healer. I'm getting to use most if not all of my healing toolkit.

Healing is still a very needed and valid role if you spend your time playing with the average player. The problem lies in making it interesting for the highly skilled players, which I have said several times. On the rare occasions I get matched with a party good enough not to need a healer, I admit it can be pretty boring.

So is the problem with the job design, which has to account for both skilled and unskilled players, or is it with encounter design in high end content? Or is it with highly skilled players that feel all group content needs to be tailored to their skill level and be damned to those who aren't as skilled? Wildstar showed what happens when developers choose that route. You get a dead game because the high end crowd isn't large enough to sustain a MMORPG.

If you're a high end player, there's a very good chance you've got tools at your disposal that will break down how much of your time you're spending healing and how much time you're spending damaging. They will show you what heals you're using and what heals you're not using. Do not go to those healer free outliers as proof of anything because they're outliers. Look at your own personal statistics. Are you genuinely healing that little in high end content? Could it be that you're only having the problem in normal content, which isn't designed for players of your skill level in the first place and so is naturally going to feel unsatisfying?

Maybe the real problem is the smaller amount of high end content to be done. There's a huge difference between grinding your way through 10-12 raid bosses (plus trash) each week in WoW and only having 4 boss encounters with loot lockouts plus an Unreal in FFXIV. That means spending a larger amount of time in roulettes and other normal content that just will not be challenging no matter how the job team twists job design around. They have to design around what the average player is capable of doing.

I disagree that it's high end healers that want changes to healer. I think the vast majority of players could arguably survive without one, in casual content, after their first time playing the content. And that's a problem when the game is predicated around repeating content over and over for 2+ years.

In other words, it's casual healers, mid core healers, and high end healers.

You vastly overestimate the skill of the average player.

Queue solo for dungeon roulettes as a healer then don't heal at all (including yourself). Give the group a warning about your experiment. See how it goes.

I mean creating drama is what gets results most the time...

If it happens over on the JP data centers...

Is anyone reaching out to the JP healers about this?

I'm still going to max out every job, but I won't be running roulettes as a healer outside of Frontline for the EXP. The reason is that I do find PVP healer to be fun. Mostly in CC matches but Frontline has its moments.

What makes it fun in PvP but not PvE?

Could those things be adapted into PvE or is PvE too scripted?

I genuinely don’t understand what you people want

It's just a warning that such strikes never gain enough traction to accomplish anything. Most players don't come to the forums or pay attention to game topics on social media.

The strikes that work are the ones where players close their wallets and walk out the door.

[Aravell]

So is the problem with the job design, which has to account for both skilled and unskilled players, or is it with encounter design in high end content? Or is it with highly skilled players that feel all group content needs to be tailored to their skill level and be damned to those who aren't as skilled? Wildstar showed what happens when developers choose that route. You get a dead game because the high end crowd isn't large enough to sustain a MMORPG.

Ok, but nobody is asking for the game to exclusively tailor itself to the top end of skill, people have just been asking for the game to not exclusively tailor itself to the low end of skill. You can point to Wildstar all you like but exclusively catering to either end is equally as bad.

What people have been asking for is precisely jobs that cater to both skilled and unskilled players, we had precisely that in Stormblood before it was ripped away and replaced with this current slop.

No one was locked out of MSQ back then because of low skill, they had trouble with Shinryu, sure, but that eventually resolved itself when more people became accustomed to it.

For jobs, let's take SCH for example. The bare minimum responsibility of a SCH of the healer role is to keep people alive. You can accomplish that bare minimum by using Succor, Adlo and Physick while having the fairy out, that's 4 buttons pressed to achieve minimum requirements to pass any and all casual content. But you also have all the DoTs and other buttons for those who want to go further beyond the minimum.

Now let's take a look at SCH now. The bare minimum remains the same, you can achieve it still with just those 4 buttons. And what awaits those who want to go further? Broil, just Broil, only Broil, nothing but Broil.