#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForsakenRoe]

I think a re-assessment of what is considered 'the baseline kit' for the Healers especially, is required. I think SE perceives too much of their kit as 'this is a shared baseline, that every healer needs an equivalent to'. Stuff like SCH/SGE having Adloquium/E.Diagnosis, or Succor/E.Prognosis, okay that's fine. The most basic GCDs to perform your role (applying barriers to keep team alive through the damage) can be 'shared', that makes sense to me. But then we have stuff like Indomitability/Ixochole, or Lustrate/Druochole, or Pepsis/Emergency Tactics, and it starts to get a bit silly. Look at WHM and AST. Certain actions are similar (eg the GCDs, Benison/Intersection, Aquaveil/Exaltation), but there's a fair few that just are not comparable. Where WHM has 3 uses of Rapture per minute, AST instead gets Star, CO and CU, but two of them are Regens rather than 'instant healing', and one (Star) asks the player to use it 10s in advance to make the most of the healing, so the gameplay of the two at least feels a little different there. It's the damage GCD loop that lets them down, and makes them feel 'samey'.

Keep the basic GCDs (the ones that, ideally, we don't use anyway, if things are going well) as the shared 'this is the baseline kit of the job', but allow the additional abilities to be more diverse in their gameplay. SGE more focused on Kardia as a mechanic, SCH more focused on interplay between themselves and the Faerie, WHM can stay the 'basic, press button receive heal' healer, and AST focused more on the cards (to create a gameplay more focused on buffing allies, rather than doing damage directly). Add one or two new damage actions that interact with these diversified healing kits, and the problem is fixed (somewhat). The biggest example of this is SGE, due to how its damage triggers Kardia

I agree I think job balance is important, but job balance means nothing if the jobs themselves aren't fun or meaningful.

'Job Balance' is a very nebulous term, given that we've never had perfect balance between the Healer jobs. Even now, with the majority of our damage as a Healer being from a single nuke button, and a 30s DOT, they still can't get them perfectly balanced. AST's gone through how many reworks, because it's a balancing nightmare, and even now, it's still not balanced against WHM. At some point, people gotta accept that 'good enough is good enough', and if the situation is 'All four healers are fun to play, and all four healers can clear all the content in the game, but the price we pay for those fun designs is that there's a disparity of, say, 2-3% damage between <top healer> and <bottom healer>', that should not be reason enough to remove all the fun in pursuit of 'job balance', because we're never going to get them perfectly balanced against one another.

An example I'm looking at as I type this, is M1S (95th%), AST seems to be 1200 DPS ahead of WHM. Yet despite this difference (about 7%), WHM still has more logged runs for the fight than AST (over twice as many). So if that many people prefer to play the 'weaker job', either A: they don't know it's weaker, or B: they DO know it's weaker, and are actively choosing to play it despite that. In either case, why did we sacrifice 'fun design' in pursuit of 'perfect balance', when we haven't even gotten perfect balance from the sacrifice, and so many players don't seem to care about the balance in the first place (whether by not being aware, or being aware but actively deciding 'don't care')?

[CaptainLagbeard]

Job Balance hasn't ever been perfect, but the current state of things is a complete lack of balance as healers barely count as a role...

As for WHM/AST... I suppose it's just the general bad design of certain things on the job, with stuff like useless cards (10% more overhealing is such a strong effect) and Earthly Star sometimes refusing to place itself down unless you try to set it down like 5 times.

[Xurtan]

It's an interesting issue all around, because I think in a vacuum damage and fight difficulty HAS gone up. The problem is we keep getting OVERLOADED with healing and mitigation each expansion, with traits enhancing them all. Not only that, but DPS are getting group heals or have group shields, tanks can ALSO group shield or have shields/heals, and just... it's a lot. If I need to GCD heal it's pretty much just because things have gone really wrong, or I'm essentially solo healing. We really shouldn't need to only have one person healing to actually have any fun in this game. I'm not sure what the solution is, interesting class design is something that FFXIV was never HUGE on but even the bits of it we had have been carved away bit by bit over the years. There need to be fewer mitigations and heals across the entire job base, and we probably need abilities that force us to actually make decisions for what is most useful at a given point, plus kits that interact with each other. e.g, even if it's just 'You cast 4 damage spells and can then burn these 'stacks' on a higher damage hit OR a heal OR a buff' or something, that's still... nuance? Sure, there's always going to be an "objectively best", but the balance in this game is really tight in comparison to most others as it is. It's never going to be PERFECT. The way fights and dungeons are designed has a focus on healers DPSing, and that's fine - but give us more than 1, sometimes 2, buttons to do it with. Look at Vanguard's Blood Mage, look at WAR's Disciple of Khaine or Warrior Priest, the Friar in DAOC, the Medic in Wildstar, etc etc. Good healing kits are totally possible.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Lucy Pyre mentioned our thread in her latest video. She breaks down everything wrong with the current state of FFXIV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcQfbShd4bM

[Mawlzy]

Lucy Pyre mentioned our thread in her latest video. She breaks down everything wrong with the current state of FFXIV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcQfbShd4bM

Unfortunate that her ideas are presented in that ridiculous voice.

[ForsakenRoe]

Lucy Pyre mentioned our thread in her latest video. She breaks down everything wrong with the current state of FFXIV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcQfbShd4bM

Her mentioning how some people are 'ride or die' defenders of SE and the current status quo jogged my memory a bit. About how 'Great Community BTW' the 'GCBTW can act at times...

For example: You guys remember when someone thought it'd be a good idea to make a spreadsheet that categorized how harcore/casual each of the people in this thread are?

[Absurdity]

For example: You guys remember when someone thought it'd be a good idea to make a spreadsheet that categorized how harcore/casual each of the people in this thread are?

I remember that one, and I put it on about the same level as "Creating a stalking plugin because someone undercut you by 1 gil a few too many times" on my "Go touch some god damn grass"-scale.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Her mentioning how some people are 'ride or die' defenders of SE and the current status quo jogged my memory a bit. About how 'Great Community BTW' the 'GCBTW can act at times...

For example: You guys remember when someone thought it'd be a good idea to make a spreadsheet that categorized how harcore/casual each of the people in this thread are?

Oh yeah, I remember. I was astonished how much effort that individual made to discount the posters in this thread. That player had to be mentally unwell.

Oh well...

[Azurarok]

Well, there is now an FRU clear without tanks (3H5D) so that's neat

[Yeol]

Well, there is now an FRU clear without tanks (3H5D) so that's neat

https://youtu.be/8dwozkUeh04?si=7KQYndQFuzwD9Gf4