#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Aravell]

I seriously don't get all the raider hate and bashing, did you know that the people who have been criticising the state of the healer role for the longest are mostly raiders? This isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' situation, so kindly don't make it such.

As a former "evil high-end competitive raider" myself, the reason I quit being competitive is precisely because of the absence of fun. It's fun to work around fight and job limitations while still pulling off a good performance. It's not fun and never has been fun to spam filler for 100 (formerly 105) seconds and then pray all your big potency hits crit within the 20 (formerly 15) seconds of buffs.

[Azurarok]

I kinda think it's SE trying to make their hardest content more approachable, to justify spending as much resources on them as they have been

[TheDustyOne]

I seriously don't get all the raider hate and bashing, did you know that the people who have been criticising the state of the healer role for the longest are mostly raiders? This isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' situation, so kindly don't make it such.

As a former "evil high-end competitive raider" myself, the reason I quit being competitive is precisely because of the absence of fun. It's fun to work around fight and job limitations while still pulling off a good performance. It's not fun and never has been fun to spam filler for 100 (formerly 105) seconds and then pray all your big potency hits crit within the 20 (formerly 15) seconds of buffs.

This, competitive and fun aren't antonyms; high end raiders would stop being high end raiders if they didn't find raiding fun (although some probably wouldn't, but that's another story).

Many of the changes Square has made weren't necessarily in the name of perfect balance either, but rather to "reduce stress" and to "make it approachable". If anything, that sounds much more like they're NOT listening to highly skilled raiders, but rather people who didn't want to improve their skill but still wanted the rewards from high skill.

SCH didn't need to lose Miasma, Miasma II, and Bane to achieve perfect balance, it just needed potency adjustments. The loss of Miasma and Miasma II were purely because "SCH is a healer, you're supposed to heal", "It's easier for someone to play than tracking all of those timers. Imagine if they tunnel visioned and someone died because of that!"; "I don't want to think, I just want to play the game", etc.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I seriously don't get all the raider hate and bashing, did you know that the people who have been criticising the state of the healer role for the longest are mostly raiders? This isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' situation, so kindly don't make it such.

As a former "evil high-end competitive raider" myself, the reason I quit being competitive is precisely because of the absence of fun. It's fun to work around fight and job limitations while still pulling off a good performance. It's not fun and never has been fun to spam filler for 100 (formerly 105) seconds and then pray all your big potency hits crit within the 20 (formerly 15) seconds of buffs.

You don't get it because you've not experienced it from the casual end. Again, I am leery of raiders specifically because I have seen them consistently destroy guilds and FCs because other players weren't meeting their standards.

If you weren't guilty of this, then bravo for you. But, it's been my decades of experience that raiders fall into toxicity far more often than casuals.

Raiders may have been criticising the state of healers but they also were pushing for their damage dealers and tanks to make those big hits and be able to brag about their rankings on the forbidden website. The devs decided the current model was the best way to deliver what the raiders wanted.

We now have to spam filler forever and a day then pray for big hits within a small window precisely because of raiders pushed hard for damage numbers the various jobs within each role to be equal. The fact this also made the game unfun is precisely my point. Healers were made the fifth wheel because the amount of damage each job could potentially deliver was made such a big deal.

Guess who doesn't care so much about making all the damage dealing equal for each role? Casuals.

[Aravell]

You don't get it because you've not experienced it from the casual end. Again, I am leery of raiders specifically because I have seen them consistently destroy guilds and FCs because other players weren't meeting their standards.

If you weren't guilty of this, then bravo for you. But, it's been my decades of experience that raiders fall into toxicity far more often than casuals.

Raiders may have been criticising the state of healers but they also were pushing for their damage dealers and tanks to make those big hits and be able to brag about their rankings on the forbidden website. The devs decided the current model was the best way to deliver what the raiders wanted.

We now have to spam filler forever and a day then pray for big hits within a small window precisely because of raiders pushed hard for damage numbers the various jobs within each role to be equal. The fact this also made the game unfun is precisely my point. Healers were made the fifth wheel because the amount of damage each job could potentially deliver was made such a big deal.

Guess who doesn't care so much about making all the damage dealing equal for each role? Casuals.

I'm pointing out that this is precisely the kind of attitude that will garner pushback from parts of the community that wouldn't have pushed back otherwise. It also risks harming the strike itself as it's made up of all kinds of players, raiders and casuals alike.

I'll say it again, this isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' thing, so please stop bashing an entire subsection of the community because you had bad experiences with some people who claim to be part of that subsection.

Raiders are not a monolith, none of the high-end raiders I played with wanted what ShB onwards did to the jobs. Just like casuals aren't a monolith, as some of them have voiced out that they love current healers precisely because they're easy to play and fun is secondary to them.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I'm pointing out that this is precisely the kind of attitude that will garner pushback from parts of the community that wouldn't have pushed back otherwise. It also risks harming the strike itself as it's made up of all kinds of players, raiders and casuals alike.

I'll say it again, this isn't a 'righteous casuals vs evil raiders' thing, so please stop bashing an entire subsection of the community because you had bad experiences with some people who claim to be part of that subsection.

Raiders are not a monolith, none of the high-end raiders I played with wanted what ShB onwards did to the jobs. Just like casuals aren't a monolith, as some of them have voiced out that they love current healers precisely because they're easy to play and fun is secondary to them.

You are right. I'm having a bad bout of "fibro-flu". It's made me irritable and I'm acting out.

Not all raiders are like the bad ones I've encountered. It's clear many of them, perhaps the majority of them, are just as unhappy with the current state of the game as I am. I apologize for bashing them.

I'm going to sit back, take my pain meds, and chill.

[ForsakenRoe]

We now have to spam filler forever and a day then pray for big hits within a small window precisely because of raiders pushed hard for damage numbers the various jobs within each role to be equal. The fact this also made the game unfun is precisely my point. Healers were made the fifth wheel because the amount of damage each job could potentially deliver was made such a big deal.

Guess who doesn't care so much about making all the damage dealing equal for each role? Casuals.

This may not be a relevant snippet anymore (due to your later post) but I want to focus on this for a sec. We used to have, for example, SCH with Bio, Bio 2, Miasma and Shadowflare as its DOT repertoire (in HW). In SB, they merged Bio and Bio 2, such that the former upgraded to the latter, and Shadowflare changed from a 100% uptime GCD, to a 'press this once per minute' OGCD. These two changes vastly decreased the amount of 'timer juggling' that a player had to do, but apparently it still wasn't enough. If some players are to be believed, even the single 30s DOT we have now is still too much and that should be removed too.

But SE seems to take a hammer to every issue (especially for healer design), even when a screwdriver would work just fine. For example, back in HW, SCH's potencies were (according to consolegameswiki, via waybackmachine):

Broil: 170
Bio (18s): 240
Miasma (24s): 300
Bio2 (30s): 350
Shadowflare (30s): 250

Rather than removing DOTs entirely, the DOT potencies could have been reduced, and that potency redistributed into Broil. Here's some exceptionally fast and dirty maths. As it stands, we do 4 Biolysis per 2min, and the rest of our GCDs (44) are Broils. Biolysis is 700p total, and Broil 4 is 310p. So, we have a total possible potency-per-2min of 16,440 (via GCDs, and ignoring Chain/Baneful). So in a hypothetical rebalancing to make a more HW or SB style kit work with current DPS checks, that's the number I'd be trying to aim for. To prevent confusion between Bio1 and Bio2, let's create a more SB-style kit as an example to aim for with this hypothetical balance experiment, so we'd have just 3 DOTs: Biolysis, Miasmalysis, and Shadowflare. So, in each 2min window how about, and bear with me on the potencies, there is reasoning to them:

Broil 4: 340p
Biolysis: 370p (as 35p per tick, plus 20p on cast)
Miasmalysis: 360p (as 10p per tick for 24s, plus 280p on cast)
Shadowflare: 350p (as 50p per tick for 15s, plus 100p on cast)

(This assumes Art of War remains at 180p. If AOW were made stronger, more of the damage of Shadowflare could be moved out of the DOT portion and into the 'initial cast' portion)

These DOT values would, assuming 'optimal play' (which would mean 8 Shadowflares, 5 Miasmalysis and 4 Biolysis per 2min), have a total-per-2min potency of 16,620, almost within 1% (it's 98.9%) of the current design's per-2min output from GCDs (again, ignoring Chain/Baneful as critrate complicates maths too much for 'quick dirty example'). But at the same time, due to the small difference in potency-per-GCD of each of the DOTs, ignoring them entirely in favour of simply using another Broil, means that using 48 Broils in 2min (instead of 31 Broils, plus 4B/5M/8SF) is a total per-2min potency of 16,320. This means that, a player who decides to just use Broil for their rotation and forgo the DOTs entirely, would function at 99.2% of the Dawntrail design's potential output (IE using the DOT perfectly on time and not losing a single tick), and at 98.1% of the 'use all the DOTs perfectly optimally' output of these values. And we see differences in DPS output of around 5-8% between SMN/RDM, versus BLM PCT due to 'the res tax', so a mere 2% on a healer is not going to make or break any enrages.

Also, you may notice the seemingly bizarre potencies of Miasmalysis in the example. By frontloading the DOT potency so hard, it allows the DOT's total 'per GCD' potency to still be 360, thereby making it more 'worth it' to use in the rotation than a Broil (if you're looking to optimize), but the exceptionally low potency per tick means that it's great for movement (as you'd lose less potency to an early refresh), which allows us to replace Ruin 2 as a button (which has not seen an animation update since ARR, and probably ought to be replaced). Additionally, Shadowflare's low base cast potency means it functions in the opposite way, it can be used for SingleTarget and AOE combat situations (being more damage per GCD than a Broil), but refreshing it early is not good. This means that, in AOE situations like a dungeon pull, you would want to use it and maintain the DOT effect, but NOT to outright replace Art of War with it as the 'spam action' (as that doesn't solve the 'one button' issue for AOE, just moves it to a different button).

Lastly, by having a simple trait that upgrades Energy Drain to Bane at, say, Level 42-46ish (and returning Aetherflow/Energy Drain to Level 6 where they belong, SE please and thank you), ED would find actual use in AOE situations, by spreading Bio/Miasma like the 'good old days'. This would take the potential AOE button count from 1 (AOW) to 5 (AOW, Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare, Bane). I'd argue that it'd actually be a good design choice to leave off the additional effect Bane had in SB, where 'the durations of Bio and Miasma are reset when spread'. By making the durations carry over as they are (eg: you have 10s left and spread the DOTs, the spread copies have 10s left), we can replace the 'reset' effect with a much better/cooler one: 'Chain Stratagem can be spread with Bane'. By doing this, we can turn Chain Stratagem into an AOE raidbuff, which then synergizes with Baneful Impaction also being an AOE action


So I hope I've been able to demonstrate that SE's approach to balance, of 'remove X gameplay element entirely' (in SCH's case, the DOT management), is not the only solution

[Kacho_Nacho]

This may not be a relevant snippet anymore (due to your later post) but I want to focus on this for a sec. We used to have, for example, SCH with Bio, Bio 2, Miasma and Shadowflare as its DOT repertoire (in HW). In SB, they merged Bio and Bio 2, such that the former upgraded to the latter, and Shadowflare changed from a 100% uptime GCD, to a 'press this once per minute' OGCD. These two changes vastly decreased the amount of 'timer juggling' that a player had to do, but apparently it still wasn't enough. If some players are to be believed, even the single 30s DOT we have now is still too much and that should be removed too.

But SE seems to take a hammer to every issue (especially for healer design), even when a screwdriver would work just fine. For example, back in HW, SCH's potencies were (according to consolegameswiki, via waybackmachine):

Broil: 170
Bio (18s): 240
Miasma (24s): 300
Bio2 (30s): 350
Shadowflare (30s): 250

Rather than removing DOTs entirely, the DOT potencies could have been reduced, and that potency redistributed into Broil. Here's some exceptionally fast and dirty maths. As it stands, we do 4 Biolysis per 2min, and the rest of our GCDs (44) are Broils. Biolysis is 700p total, and Broil 4 is 310p. So, we have a total possible potency-per-2min of 16,440 (via GCDs, and ignoring Chain/Baneful). So in a hypothetical rebalancing to make a more HW or SB style kit work with current DPS checks, that's the number I'd be trying to aim for. To prevent confusion between Bio1 and Bio2, let's create a more SB-style kit as an example to aim for with this hypothetical balance experiment, so we'd have just 3 DOTs: Biolysis, Miasmalysis, and Shadowflare. So, in each 2min window how about, and bear with me on the potencies, there is reasoning to them:

Broil 4: 340p
Biolysis: 370p (as 35p per tick, plus 20p on cast)
Miasmalysis: 360p (as 10p per tick for 24s, plus 280p on cast)
Shadowflare: 350p (as 50p per tick for 15s, plus 100p on cast)

(This assumes Art of War remains at 180p. If AOW were made stronger, more of the damage of Shadowflare could be moved out of the DOT portion and into the 'initial cast' portion)

These DOT values would, assuming 'optimal play' (which would mean 8 Shadowflares, 5 Miasmalysis and 4 Biolysis per 2min), have a total-per-2min potency of 16,620, almost within 1% (it's 98.9%) of the current design's per-2min output from GCDs (again, ignoring Chain/Baneful as critrate complicates maths too much for 'quick dirty example'). But at the same time, due to the small difference in potency-per-GCD of each of the DOTs, ignoring them entirely in favour of simply using another Broil, means that using 48 Broils in 2min (instead of 31 Broils, plus 4B/5M/8SF) is a total per-2min potency of 16,320. This means that, a player who decides to just use Broil for their rotation and forgo the DOTs entirely, would function at 99.2% of the Dawntrail design's potential output (IE using the DOT perfectly on time and not losing a single tick), and at 98.1% of the 'use all the DOTs perfectly optimally' output of these values. And we see differences in DPS output of around 5-8% between SMN/RDM, versus BLM PCT due to 'the res tax', so a mere 2% on a healer is not going to make or break any enrages.

Also, you may notice the seemingly bizarre potencies of Miasmalysis in the example. By frontloading the DOT potency so hard, it allows the DOT's total 'per GCD' potency to still be 360, thereby making it more 'worth it' to use in the rotation than a Broil (if you're looking to optimize), but the exceptionally low potency per tick means that it's great for movement (as you'd lose less potency to an early refresh), which allows us to replace Ruin 2 as a button (which has not seen an animation update since ARR, and probably ought to be replaced). Additionally, Shadowflare's low base cast potency means it functions in the opposite way, it can be used for SingleTarget and AOE combat situations (being more damage per GCD than a Broil), but refreshing it early is not good. This means that, in AOE situations like a dungeon pull, you would want to use it and maintain the DOT effect, but NOT to outright replace Art of War with it as the 'spam action' (as that doesn't solve the 'one button' issue for AOE, just moves it to a different button).

Lastly, by having a simple trait that upgrades Energy Drain to Bane at, say, Level 42-46ish (and returning Aetherflow/Energy Drain to Level 6 where they belong, SE please and thank you), ED would find actual use in AOE situations, by spreading Bio/Miasma like the 'good old days'. This would take the potential AOE button count from 1 (AOW) to 5 (AOW, Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare, Bane). I'd argue that it'd actually be a good design choice to leave off the additional effect Bane had in SB, where 'the durations of Bio and Miasma are reset when spread'. By making the durations carry over as they are (eg: you have 10s left and spread the DOTs, the spread copies have 10s left), we can replace the 'reset' effect with a much better/cooler one: 'Chain Stratagem can be spread with Bane'. By doing this, we can turn Chain Stratagem into an AOE raid buff, which then synergizes with Baneful Impaction also being an AOE action


So I hope I've been able to demonstrate that SE's approach to balance, of 'remove X gameplay element entirely' (in SCH's case, the DOT management), is not the only solution

You have, quite well, Forsaken Roe. I am happy you took the time to dive into this.

Honestly, I wish the job devs would take a step back and take a look at the state of all the jobs from the perspective of players instead of designers. Square Enix has said many things about these changes being made to make the jobs less stressful; but, they're just making these changes to make the jobs easier to balance for their job designers.

There were different things the devs could have done instead (as you have demonstrated many times) to have maintain balance and keep jobs interesting. They just chose to remove things instead. It's frustrating.

[Aravell]

While there's nothing wrong with playing difficult content as intended, it's been made clear multiple times that a majority of the playerbase will not attempt things beyond their skill level and *will* leave said content to gather dust, and thus comes the deluge of Square-Enix's design decisions to bring said content down to an "approachable" level and sure enough, jobs get caught in the rain too. I do not know how one can make dynamically shifting difficulty though to make sure players can partake in all content, and instead we end up with patch cycles that specifically cater to "casual" or "hardcore" content with the obvious flaw that it always leaves someone out (like how this last patch was very much geared toward the raiding scene and everyone else got scraps if anything).

And this is precisely the fatal flaw of segregating each subsect of playerbase into their own level of content.

Let's say I'm a savage raider, I like doing savage. Now let's say they make savage easier next patch, where do I go now? Extremes are still a step below and ultimates might be too high, so where does one in that position go when their content is taken from them?

Now let's say they implemented a nice mix of difficulty distributed across job and content. Let's say I'm a casual player in this scenario, I play SMN, I enjoy flashy skills and breezing through MSQ stuff. Now next patch, they increased the optional ceiling of the SMN job, so I, as the casual who enjoys SMN, still get to fire flashy spells and breeze through MSQ content, nothing changes for me.

Jobs in particular would be even harder to keep dynamically able to move from pick-up play to complex, because players can and will ignore jobs and even entire roles they don't like because they're either too hard or too easy, and nobody wants "their" job to end up in a basket that doesn't appeal to them, with healers right now being a perfect example when toning down gets taken too far.

I don't see why they can't implement a spectrum of difficulty, just look at the caster role before EW, it was designed really well. RDM was the introductory caster that was simple to pick up but also has some intricacies to master. SMN was the middle ground, a bit harder to get into but rewarding when played well. Then we have BLM, very hard to play well but had tons of little tweaks you can do to your rotation which you'll benefit from if you're smart about it.

In this sliding scale scenario, we can also change jobs to better suit the content. Perhaps I can only do up to extremes on BLM but if I reduce my mental load by swapping to RDM, perhaps I can go up one difficulty tier to savage content.

[Iedarus]

I do thank this game for making me appreciate my main game, Gw2 more for being significantly more innovative if still janky and frustrating at times. Even if all the classes can basically be any role, now (which I don't mind since we can't swap classes), they are infinitely more exciting to play due to the fast paced combat. Even healer builds give me that long craved dopamine hit after coming back to it. Don't even get me started on the leagues better race design, fashion and revolutionary mount system.