The death of savage raiding and SE's lack of action

[Havenchild]

I have been in pf reclear parties and it's still boring. Fights are too scripted and too predictable in both the timelines and damage.

It's all subjective, but I haven't grown bored of healers in PF and almost always have to adjust my gameplay around my co-healer or the parties gameplay overall. It is never a dull moment on reclears even considering the scriptability of the damage and mechs. I have had more satisfying saving the raid moments on PF then ever in a static, especially when a co-healer goes down on a big mech. That happens way more often on PF and I stand by the optimal gameplay experience for current FFXIV healers is in PF, not in statics. You can't really use your full toolkit in a static. While that is a problem, it is also a separate one with a separate solution.

If the goal is to increase Healer supply in PF, the solution is to reduce responsibility (including a more lenient gameplay loop) of the role so people would be enticed to the additional responsibility. Separate from any other enticing solutions SE could implement.
If the goal is to make Healers "fun" or "fixing" them, both of which are also subjective in their suggestions, then the best path that everyone can deal with is to redesign all of the jobs from the ground up and how encounters engage with the healer (and other) roles.
Even still for either solution, you will still absolutely have a problem getting people to play the role as the AVERAGE MMO player tends to play a DPS role in literally any MMO. No game has found a perfect solution for this but SE does have some options like Job-in-need guaranteed drops or specialized role tome acquisition bonuses they can implement to soften the blow.

Well thing is, they've lowered the amount of both tankbusters, a fight like o4s has 17 tankbusters while here m4s has 7 in total over the same timeframe.

TB's happening less, does not equate to difficulty in PF. In fact, TB's on average don't matter because they either don't hit hard enough where a healer has to pre shield them (despite tank mits), or if they do hit hard enough, the occurrence of said TB's is so spread out that the tanks can just cheese them with invulns. Something more to PF determining dificulty is like the AoE's that are followed with hard ticking DoTs, which require more of a follow-up of GCD heals on average or overlapping body check/ doom mechs that require re-topping players. The problem is, when this happens in a raid tier, the PF supply of healers goes down not up.

[Supersnow845]

If the goal is to increase Healer supply in PF, the solution is to reduce responsibility (including a more lenient gameplay loop) of the role so people would be enticed to the additional responsibility. Separate from any other enticing solutions SE could implement.
If the goal is to make Healers "fun" or "fixing" them, both of which are also subjective in their suggestions, then the best path that everyone can deal with is to redesign all of the jobs from the ground up and how encounters engage with the healer (and other) roles.
Even still for either solution, you will still absolutely have a problem getting people to play the role as the AVERAGE MMO player tends to play a DPS role in literally any MMO. No game has found a perfect solution for this but SE does have some options like Job-in-need guaranteed drops or specialized role tome acquisition bonuses they can implement to soften the blow.



TB's happening less, does not equate to difficulty in PF. In fact, TB's on average don't matter because they either don't hit hard enough where a healer has to pre shield them (despite tank mits), or if they do hit hard enough, the occurrence of said TB's is so spread out that the tanks can just cheese them with invulns. Something more to PF determining dificulty is like the AoE's that are followed with hard ticking DoTs, which require more of a follow-up of GCD heals on average or overlapping body check/ doom mechs that require re-topping players. The problem is, when this happens in a raid tier, the PF supply of healers goes down not up.

Your final paragraph combined with your third (sorry I would quote them directly but I’m on mobile) is EXACTLY the problem of why people are dumping the healer role faster than usual

Your point is “if you want the healer role to be more popular you need to lower the responsibility of the healer” but then later you say “PF struggles with hard hitting raidwides that apply a DOT”. Do you know why PF struggles with these? It’s because how much the raidwide is mitigated determines the DOT damage.

Right now square is going down the path of removing healing responsibility. How do they do that……..by giving healer tools (mainly mitigation) to the other roles so the healer isn’t the single fail point. Okay but what happens when these other roles don’t use the mitigation they’ve been given? They blame………the healer

Square has picked the worst of every world with the modern healer design because you get no joy out of responsibility if you are a career MMO healer but you also don’t get to enjoy relaxing with no responsibility because you get blamed for everything anyway even when it’s far out of your control.

Who wants to play a role that’s both boring with no responsibility but according to the party has limitless implied responsibility. Just as you’ll never break the law that healers are less popular than DPS you’ll never break the law that mistakes are always implied to be the healers fault. Why try to give zero responsibility to the role that players have been trained to associate responsibility with for as long as MMO’s have existed

[Havenchild]

Your point is “if you want the healer role to be more popular you need to lower the responsibility of the healer” but then later you say “PF struggles with hard hitting raidwides that apply a DOT”. Do you know why PF struggles with these? It’s because how much the raidwide is mitigated determines the DOT damage.

Right now square is going down the path of removing healing responsibility. How do they do that……..by giving healer tools (mainly mitigation) to the other roles so the healer isn’t the single fail point. Okay but what happens when these other roles don’t use the mitigation they’ve been given? They blame………the healer

First, people aren't dumping the role "faster than usual". Its the same thing that always happens in this time frame.

As for my point, you misquoted and changed the meaning of what I wrote. I stated you need to lower the responsibility on the role to entice new players (specifically DPS) to want additional responsibility they don't have. If the role seems too gatekept, no one will ever jump into it. It is after all specifically DPS we need to switch.

PF doesn't necessarily "struggle" with a raidwide DoT but the average pf healer doesn't like it regardless.

And I'll disagree that healer gets criticism when everyone can see their mits on there characters. If I have 2 mits up for every mech, that's an everyone elses problem if we die and no one has ever dared to say otherwise. If people so much try to say it and you are doing your job on heals and mit, you can easily deflect anyone. The benefit of shifting mit off healer is exactly to change the perception of Healer role and what it's "expected" of after the fact. Meaning you train the playerbase to not expect as much from the Healer role.

[Aravell]

I stated you need to lower the responsibility on the role to entice new players (specifically DPS) to want additional responsibility they don't have. If the role seems too gatekept, no one will ever jump into it. It is after all specifically DPS we need to switch.

You say that responsibility needs to be reduced to entice DPS players to switch, yet you also say that it's impossible to make a DPS player play a healer. So by that logic, catering further on the off chance that some DPS players would give healers a try is a very bad decision. Especially since if you want a larger healer population, you'd need to not only entice DPS players to swap but to stay on the role in a more permanent basis.

[Havenchild]

You say that responsibility needs to be reduced to entice DPS players to switch, yet you also say that it's impossible to make a DPS player play a healer. So by that logic, catering further on the off chance that some DPS players would give healers a try is a very bad decision. Especially since if you want a larger healer population, you'd need to not only entice DPS players to swap but to stay on the role in a more permanent basis.

Yes, sadly a pretty crappy task but something that has to be done. The overwhelming amount of DPS in the game compared to support roles will have it's own negative affect in PF. Now granted, it could balance out naturally after some time with people just getting fed up of waiting for support queues and switching but SE has to bring the role down to a position ready to greet DPS players that are just trying it out. Is that really so hard to understand about the games current battle design?

I never said it was impossible to make a DPS player switch only that it's very difficult to do but that is what SE needs to do, regardless. You cannot sustain a raid scene for years where an overwhelming amount of DPS trumps support roles.

[Aravell]

Yes, sadly a pretty crappy task but something that has to be done. The overwhelming amount of DPS in the game compared to support roles will have it's own negative affect in PF. Now granted, it could balance out naturally after some time with people just getting fed up of waiting for support queues and switching but SE has to bring the role down to a position ready to greet DPS players that are just trying it out. Is that really so hard to understand about the games current battle design?

I never said it was impossible to make a DPS player switch only that it's very difficult to do but that is what SE needs to do, regardless. You cannot sustain a raid scene for years where an overwhelming amount of DPS trumps support roles.

Oh I understand very well that the balance of DPS vs supports cannot be tipped too far or the raid scene would falter.

But what I do not understand is how alienating the people who were already enjoying healers for the very slight chance of getting a DPS main to become a healer main is anywhere within the same galaxy as a good idea.

If your population is already small, you don't start culling people and hope more people join your village, that's not even remotely a good idea.

[Havenchild]

Isn’t that exactly where we’re at now though? Healers practically play like crappy dps with more ogcd healing than they’ll ever need, next to no need for gcd healing, and the vast majority of healing ‘mechanics’ can be dealt with using like 1+2 oGCDs. Like they literally cannot make healing any easier outside of giving all healers an AoE Benediction. They’ve already made the healer role for ‘dps who don’t want to heal’ and it hasn’t exactly made people jump to try out the role lol. So I’d say that designing healers for not-healers has been a pretty major failure all around in my view. Now nobody likes it.

No we aren't there yet. Responsibilities for Healers have not changed.

The current situation of Healers in the current game design is as follows:

- The PF Healers already have shown with previous tiers they don't like more heal checks on the role or more DPS requirements on the role. Increasing either of these causes the Healer population to decrease more than usual.
- For better or worse, the majority of Healers are ok with the current design of it, no matter how good or bad that is to the forums. Making the tweaks people have suggested for more Heal or More DPS "as is" are not going to help bring people to the role. The forums doesn't like it but that's a small minority compared to the amount of Healers clearing the content every tier.

Despite this we still have a support role (but especially Healer) shortage, as we always have. Now we've had a surge of players over the years so we need to evaluate how that factors in. With the overwhelming amount of most players choosing to play DPS over other roles, PF will eventually collapse not only from a lack of healers but of all support roles. Which means SE has to do something anything to prevent that outcome.

My suggestion is two fold:

1) Remove mitigation from Healers. If I had to choose between (Healing, DPS or Mitigation) with the games current design (an important point here) I would hands down choose mitigation. It makes the most sense. Why? Well with the game's current design, you have to wait for more healing to show up then not and in between that we have a 1-2 button DPS string. Not exactly great but at least we have that. There is no encounter they will or can design where if you remove those 2 DPS buttons we have (giving Healers all the Healing and MIT from everyone now) that will be a good fight. It would be a stress test bonanza that most PF Healers will falter on because such an encounter would have to include so much damage going out that warrants Healers owning all healing and all mitigation. Just take a second to imagine the Pandemonium fight but with more damage going out. Perhaps you are capable, bravo. Average PF Healer is definitely not.

Mitigation off the role is actually a newer concept too. In coil days and a bit in HW, Healers did not have as much mitigation tools as exist now. And surprise surprise what else existed then? DPS stance dancing for Healers. Now I won't argue we should return to stance dancing BUT we can have some sort of a rotation added to DPS. Again, only AFTER we remove responsibilities from the role first. Remove MIT beyond say that one shield (like succor,adlo) and then SLOWLY add back a DPS button or 2 and see how PF responds. Things like a healing/DPS rotation become possible at that point.

2) Job-in-need bonuses: If a PF is sitting with a specific role unfulfilled for more than 10-15m, system creates a bonus for a player who joins on that role. The bonus rewards players with a separate loot roll (a 5th gear drop) that only those who joined the "job-in-need" bonus can roll on.

Either of these options will bring people onto roles that are in shortage. But to target Healers, I think both are needed. Both the incentive and the easier perception. Shifting Mitigation to DPS instead also trains them to have a different mindset. "Oh I have to do my rotation AND mitigate consistently properly?" Getting that mindset on DPS trains them to now pick their option of DPS / Mitigate or Heal / DPS and I genuinely believe if you do that, you will see alot more people willing to shift.

Oh I understand very well that the balance of DPS vs supports cannot be tipped too far or the raid scene would falter.

But what I do not understand is how alienating the people who were already enjoying healers for the very slight chance of getting a DPS main to become a healer main is anywhere within the same galaxy as a good idea.

If your population is already small, you don't start culling people and hope more people join your village, that's not even remotely a good idea.

Going to disagree here on one point. If you don't like current Healer, then they aren't alienating you if you left already. You already moved on from the role so at this point, you aren't really part of the solution.

However there are two types of PF healers. Hardcore who generally don't give a crap how SE changes the role, they still enjoy playing it and regardless of any changes

and

casuals who aren't hardcore so depending on how "stressful" the role is on any particular tier they either play it or abandon it. If you already abandoned the role because it's not "fun" then odds are you weren't really in the Hardcore group that will play anything and not care to complain to begin with. As for that casual healer, we need to create that audience and understand why role can be interpreted as "difficult" to begin with. This is where the majority of the healers in game fall into (in PF).

As for it being a slight chance, I don't generally believe it's that slight. Arcadion proves that more people are willing to Heal if the content isn't overtly stressful. I would even argue that Arcadion was the perfect difficulty for Savage PF. Anecdotal, but I know more people that wish they could heal savage or willing to give it a shot but see how much healers deal with and are immediately turned off.

why exactly would they have to switch off DPS to heal.. SE is in the process of giving healer abilities to DPS... we'll see how that works wont we?

I don't think it's the same mentality personally and would prefer more healing coming out of the healer role specifically but if they indeed shift enough healing off the role unto other classes, they essentially do the same thing as removing the mit and thus they can focus more on something else like DPS. However I don't see the gain in creating Healer / DPS and DPS / Healer hybrids here as it's kinda the same thing. We should be establishing more Hybrids like

Healer: Prio 1 Heal / Prio 2 DPS
DPS: Prio 1 DPS / Prio 2 MIT
Tank: Prio 1 MIT / Prio 2 DPS / Prio 3 Heal (passive maintenance)

They could also do

Healer: Prio 1 Heal / Prio 2 MIT
DPS: Prio 1 DPS
Tank: Prio 1 MIT / Prio 2 DPS

The issue with this I foresee is that it changes nothing to approach the shortage of Healers and I don't see them creating an encounter that puts so much emphasis on Heal and MIT coming out of one role.

As for why we need to shift DPS role players to Healer role players, its because we can't just have tanks swapping to healers, that's creating the exact same issue for Tank role. Game, as it is, needs to entice the overwhelming amount of DPS players onto the role. And there is a difference between DPS -> Tank, which is a more seamless transition of responsibilities and DPS -> Healer. Understanding first how easy DPS can switch off to tanks or the willingness to do so is key to solving a shortage for the Healer role. It works because they have the same amount of responsibilities by design now. Tanks are essentially blue DPS.

All in all, the current game encounter design and the job design of all jobs is the problem. If we aren't going to redo / get rid of the whole trifecta balance nonsense then we need to work within it.

[Kes13a]

Yes, sadly a pretty crappy task but something that has to be done. The overwhelming amount of DPS in the game compared to support roles will have it's own negative affect in PF. Now granted, it could balance out naturally after some time with people just getting fed up of waiting for support queues and switching but SE has to bring the role down to a position ready to greet DPS players that are just trying it out. Is that really so hard to understand about the games current battle design?

I never said it was impossible to make a DPS player switch only that it's very difficult to do but that is what SE needs to do, regardless. You cannot sustain a raid scene for years where an overwhelming amount of DPS trumps support roles.

why exactly would they have to switch off DPS to heal.. SE is in the process of giving healer abilities to DPS... we'll see how that works wont we?

[Maltothoris]

If the goal is to increase Healer supply in PF, the solution is to reduce responsibility (including a more lenient gameplay loop) of the role so people would be enticed to the additional responsibility. Separate from any other enticing solutions SE could implement.
If the goal is to make Healers "fun" or "fixing" them, both of which are also subjective in their suggestions, then the best path that everyone can deal with is to redesign all of the jobs from the ground up and how encounters engage with the healer (and other) roles.

Well then, how do we reduce responsibility? Do we take away damage, therefore making it more tedious for solo and msq quests while making deep dungeons harder, if not impossible? Do we reduce the stress of mp, which they've done heavily since Shb? Do we reduce mitigations that the healers have and then just give everyone else a super mit that they need would need to press for harder hitting stuff?