#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForteNightshade]

I don't see why combo consolidation has to be all or nothing. I've always pushed for the option to combine your combo into one button while the job is designed with the idea that the combo is one button in mind.

That way, if people find the kit too bloated, they can consolidate the combo. But if someone wants the versatility of being able to reset their combo, they can too.

That said, a 1-2-3 combo addition to healers would be the laziest thing they could do. That would 100% be bloat for the sake of bloat.

My argument against it has always boiled down to it not remaining optional because if they keep adding buttons without pruning others, you'll inevitably run out of comfortable space and be forced to consolidate. For example, if they added 3-4 new buttons on Ninja, I have nowhere to put them if I don't consolidate both my single target and aoe combos.

Now I could come around to the consolidation if I had any faith they'd add interesting abilities but if the trade off is "press this button every two minutes" or "keep Spinning Edge and Gust Slash separate," I'd prefer the latter.

[Shurrikhan]

My argument against it has always boiled down to it not remaining optional because if they keep adding buttons without pruning others, you'll inevitably run out of comfortable space and be forced to consolidate. For example, if they added 3-4 new buttons on Ninja, I have nowhere to put them if I don't consolidate both my single target and aoe combos.

Now I could come around to the consolidation if I had any faith they'd add interesting abilities but if the trade off is "press this button every two minutes" or "keep Spinning Edge and Gust Slash separate," I'd prefer the latter.

This might be one of those cases where I'd actually take their word for it if they said something along the likes of "We will continue to limit the acquisition of new skills as if the previous degree of consolidation persisted from these last few, small but near-unanimously requested consolidations." It excuses doing less work, after all.

[GartredZW]

>be me
>Expert dungeon as DPS
>first boss
>healer dies to the first mechanic
>Me and Viper die shortly after to raidwides
>warrior doesn't die.
>stays alive for 8 minutes trying to solo boss from 90%
>can't even check on his progress because we're outside the arena
>I tell him it'd just be faster to wipe and try again with an actual party
>ignored
>he dies anyway
>try again
>Healer dies again to second mechanic
>"sorry guys, I'm just out of it today. I'm going to bed"
>healer leaves
>I drop a stack marker on the tank in hopes that it combines with his tankbuster and kills him
>"why"
>"So you don't waste 8 minutes just to die again"
>wait 10 more minutes
>he actually clears.
>gets all smug, "What was that about dying"
>I'm already readying the vote kick
>Viper clicks yes, thinking it was for the offline healer
>Tank gets booted
>Viper realizes mistake and leaves too
>refill party
>chad DRK who can survive the minimal healing our new Sage is outputting
>at least Sage can stay alive
>They ask if I got a Strike healer before.
>"Nah, I'm the strike healer."
>I tell the story in between pulls
>Finish the dungeon in record time
>triple-comm'd
>feels good.

I'd say the strike is going just fine. It's attracted a bunch of glue-sniffers who just play healer to see fast queues. This'll do wonders to convince the average person that healing is just completely broken, and they need to bring back old healing mains who know what they're doing.

[ForsakenRoe]

Now I could come around to the consolidation if I had any faith they'd add interesting abilities but if the trade off is "press this button every two minutes" or "keep Spinning Edge and Gust Slash separate," I'd prefer the latter.

I think this is the main argument against some consolidations. If we knew, for example, that having Spinning Edge/Gust Slash be one button, so that your 'filler' on NIN is either 112 (Aeolian) or 113 (ArmorCrush), would result in something interesting being added in the newly-freed hotbar slot, then a lot of people would likely switch views and say 'ok that is a fair consolidation to make', but the issue is, we've often seen SE consolidate things and replace those freed up hotbar spaces with... nothing. And if that's the choice, then to some the 'illusion of complexity' that something like a 123 provides is preferable to the alternative, of dispelling that illusion and just having 111 in its place.

SMN illustrates this quite well, I think, as the current kit could just as well have kept aspects of the old kit (eg it could have probably kept the DOTs in some way/reworked the DOTs into a more thematic alternative, like Ifrit burning the enemy instead of a poison), or is the old kit renamed (eg Gemshine/Astral Flow is just Egi Assault 1/2). SMN's consolidations are a step too far in many players' eyes, but could be forgiven if the EW rework of SMN was shown to be a 'new foundation' to build off of. The issue with it (and MCH before it), is that SE did not meaningfully build upon that foundation, instead replacing our Demisummon with... a reskin that functions pretty much identically. In fact, the new demisummon could have been any powerful entity from previous FF games, Alexander, Odin, heck even more odd, one-off type ones like Eden or ARK, but they instead went with another variant of Bahamut. Not only is the new action 'not really changing anything' from a gameplay perspective, it's not really changing anything from a visual perspective either, as while Solar Bahamut looks a little different from regular Bahamut, they're both dragons at the end of the day.

The other thing is how much consolidation is acceptable, and that's a subjective thing. Some people like SMN in its current form. Some people like that healers have effectively 2 buttons in their main GCD rotation. The devs can't consolidate too much, though, else jobs lose their 'interactivity'. Compare playing SMN, with playing SMN using the 'one button macro'. It's funny that you can play it via a single button pressed over and over, because of the macro, but it's also going to get very boring very fast for a lot of the playerbase. Pressing the same button over and over is going to just lead to burnout, you can see this in this very thread, with healers complaining about their Glare key breaking etc. So the devs have to be very careful on how far they take consolidation.

Bringing it back to healers, however, we can see the end result of 'consolidate X and Y please'. SCH, having previously had 4(?) DOTs with 100% uptime to maintain as its gameplay in HW (Bio, Bio2, Miasma, Shadowflare IIRC), now only has one DOT. While this is more accessible to casual players, it comes with its own downsides. Firstly, the potency of those four DOTs has been redistributed through the rest of the SCH kit that remains. In essence, where Broil used to be just 170p (on HW release), now Broil 4 is 310p in DT, making missing a single filler spell cast more punishing (coupled with how much more we have to move about for mechanics). But also, Biolysis is now 750p total potency over its duration. Compare that to the HW potencies of these DOTs:

Bio: 40p, 18s, total 240p
Miasma: 20p on cast, 30p, 24s, total 300p
Bio 2: 35p, 30s, total 350p

And you can see that while there are more DOTs, the potency a player would lose from missing a tick from one would be less than what we see today. Coupling that with the fact that having one DOT that is refreshed less often, means it's more likely for a player to simply 'forget' about the DOT and lose ticks, means that these design choices that are meant to 'help' players, can actually be detrimental. I find myself forgetting about the DOTs quite often, because they're so non-interactive and forgettable. Contrast that to SB SCH, where I'd be refreshing Bio because I see it's running out, and at the same time, looking at Miasma and Bio 2, and noting 'okay, Miasma is at 6s, and Bio 2 is at 12s, I need to refresh Miasma in 2 GCDs time', by constantly having to refresh the timers on several DOTs, it'd give me a reason to look at the DOT timers, and remind myself of the status of the other DOT timers.

If the devs wanted to consolidate healer actions, they could have looked at things like Cure 1 (upgrade to Cure 2), Benefic 1 (upgrade to Benefic 2), Medica/Helios (upgrade to Medica2/Aspected Helios by just attaching the HOT to the base version), Physick to Adloquium (changing Adlo from 300/180% to 450/120% keeps the shield potency identical, while making the base potency equal to Physick), and adjusting the MP cost of the 'upgraded' forms if needed. Most players nowadays consider the true 'cost' of casting an Adlo or a Cure2, never to be the MP cost but the GCD that it takes away from your damage. Additionally, the removal of all of our 'extra' damage actions in SHB (leaving us with just the filler and a single DOT) has effectively kneecapped a lot of design options, because of the lack of variety in the damage kit.

We can't have, for example, a gauge that fills up as you deal damage, because it only fills at one speed: how fast you cast Glare/Broil etc. Take a WAR, Maim/Storms Eye fill the gauge at a different rate than Storm's Path. This means that, even though it's one of the most simple things imaginable, there's the risk of overcapping the gauge by having 90 stored and using Storm's Path, and so you have to consider that and Fell Cleave to prevent that overcap. Now, you might say 'that takes literally one braincell' and you'd be right, it's pretty obvious, but the problem is that healers don't even get that. We can't have a gauge that builds based on dealing damage/casting healing spells, or some interaction with our DOTs, and the one time that we see a system that has some potential, to change up how we tackle healing our party, the Kardia system, it's hamstrung from the get-go and turned into 'the Fairy's auto-heal, but you can direct who it goes on'. There's so much potential for SGE to play completely differently from SCH, and for WHM to grow beyond the bonsai pot that the devs keep it in.

Don't get me wrong, the new damage actions in DT are a step in the right direction, and I'd rather have them than not have them. But they feel like they were designed by someone who was scared of going any steps further, like they were worried that if Psyche was used more often than once per minute, or Glare 4 was useable more often, that someone would be very angry with the decision. We need changes like that, but bold changes in that direction. Healers can have a 'rotation' that is still simple, but has more depth to it than our current 'press 1 many times in a row' gameplay, and by doing so, it enables so much more design-space for the healers. WHM has Misery, a way for its heals to interact with its damage, so why not explore the opposite, a way for its damage to fuel some kind of healing? Why not explore a way for SCH to have interaction with its DOTs again? Why not have SGE's healing be more based around Kardia, and temporarily 'Augmenting' Kardia to have different interactions (Soteria is a great example, boosting the potency), eg converting it to shielding, causing it to be AOE, etc.? Why not have AST as a healer who focuses less on the filler spell of Malefic, and instead has its damage contribution be more 'buff-your-allies themed' via cards?

This probably should have been 2 posts

[sharknado]

>be me
>healer dies to the first mechanic

I'm not a fan of dungeons running with personal mechanics and "if healer wipes we wipe" while a tank with multiple stacks is fine. Did the MSQ as a healer and that was the end after the final dungeon and trials. Switched to an alt account on the other DC and tank queues take somewhat longer while healer can be instant so there are definitely fewer and fewer healers :P

[Tunda]

the problem with healer jobs is they are soooo boring man i just slept 3 times in 1 dungeon playing astro

[Evergrey]

>be me
>Expert dungeon as DPS
>first boss
>healer dies to the first mechanic
>Me and Viper die shortly after to raidwides
>warrior doesn't die.
>stays alive for 8 minutes trying to solo boss from 90%
>can't even check on his progress because we're outside the arena
>I tell him it'd just be faster to wipe and try again with an actual party
>ignored
>he dies anyway
>try again
>Healer dies again to second mechanic
>"sorry guys, I'm just out of it today. I'm going to bed"
>healer leaves
>I drop a stack marker on the tank in hopes that it combines with his tankbuster and kills him
>"why"
>"So you don't waste 8 minutes just to die again"
>wait 10 more minutes
>he actually clears.
>gets all smug, "What was that about dying"
>I'm already readying the vote kick
>Viper clicks yes, thinking it was for the offline healer
>Tank gets booted
>Viper realizes mistake and leaves too
>refill party
>chad DRK who can survive the minimal healing our new Sage is outputting
>at least Sage can stay alive
>They ask if I got a Strike healer before.
>"Nah, I'm the strike healer."
>I tell the story in between pulls
>Finish the dungeon in record time
>triple-comm'd
>feels good.

I'd say the strike is going just fine. It's attracted a bunch of glue-sniffers who just play healer to see fast queues. This'll do wonders to convince the average person that healing is just completely broken, and they need to bring back old healing mains who know what they're doing.

Hmm..
I'm not saying that I'm disagreeing with you.
But seeing how Yoshi during the Pre-EW interview when he talked a little about Healers and he said that they didn't want to give them more DPS skills as it could make it more stressful for newer healers, this story only makes it feel like Yoshi would double down on it.
As in your story, those who don't often play healers, or healers in learning, Idunno, are portrayed as they're lacking in performance.
So Yoshi would probably just try and make them even easier to play so people who do have "difficulties" can still perform at an optimal level.
And/or even boost Tanks self sustains even further as some healers might be lacking. So to take off some of that burden from the healers the tanks can survive even better on their own.

[Kozmakis]

Hmm..
I'm not saying that I'm disagreeing with you.
But seeing how Yoshi during the Pre-EW interview when he talked a little about Healers and he said that they didn't want to give them more DPS skills as it could make it more stressful for newer healers, this story only makes it feel like Yoshi would double down on it.
As in your story, those who don't often play healers, or healers in learning, Idunno, are portrayed as they're lacking in performance.
So Yoshi would probably just try and make them even easier to play so people who do have "difficulties" can still perform at an optimal level.
And/or even boost Tanks self sustains even further as some healers might be lacking. So to take off some of that burden from the healers the tanks can survive even better on their own.

While adding more self-sustain, wouldn't it be easier to remove healers altogether? The Trinity can become the bi-inity, or whatever the word is supposed to be

[ZephyrMenodora]

Snip

I'd say the strike is going just fine. It's attracted a bunch of glue-sniffers who just play healer to see fast queues. This'll do wonders to convince the average person that healing is just completely broken, and they need to bring back old healing mains who know what they're doing.

I mean, I am still healing and I see people dying to mechanics all the time that are DPS. I had a run last night where I had to rez the two dps about 15 times. It was a lot. Tank and I were the only one who didn't die.

Does that make them glue sniffers who are just playing DPS to strike, or...are there just bad (or learning) players of all types and it's the healers and DPS who get 2 shot now?

[AmiableApkallu]

But seeing how Yoshi during the Pre-EW interview when he talked a little about Healers and he said that they didn't want to give them more DPS skills as it could make it more stressful for newer healers, this story only makes it feel like Yoshi would double down on it.
As in your story, those who don't often play healers, or healers in learning, Idunno, are portrayed as they're lacking in performance.

But here's the thing: Getting Venn diagrammed by a mechanic or knocked off a platform or what-have-you has nothing to do with the number of DPS actions at one's disposal or being bad at healing. It's just... needing to learn fight mechanics.