Creative Studio III: Please Reconsider Healer Design Before Evercold

[Supersnow845]

There is a difference between dooming nebulous concepts “this will 100% kill the game” and them showing how they expect x healer to go roughly and it’s basically in line with how bad healers already are and the idea of it being good relies on a promise they have broken 3 times in a row now and go “yeah okay this probably isn’t going to be great”

If you want to look at a 14 example of “we told you it was bad and it’s bad” look at toilet paper lilies, the origin of this entire class’s mechanic

[ForsakenRoe]

~27 years of playing MMORPGs, honestly. It never works out the way the community doomsings it beforehand.

People said that WHM's Lily System (and Confessions) in SB would be terrible, in the lead up to SB. SE insisted that it'd work, it'd be great, their vision for the Job of it 'focusing on Healing' would be incredibly fun, etc.

It worked out exactly the way the community doomsang about it.

SE decided to remove Energy Drain from SCH going into 5.0, and while some voices thought it meant 'we would have to heal more', many thought 'this means we'll either overcap on stacks (feels bad) or blow them on overhealing we don't need (feels bad)'. It worked out exactly the way the community doomsang about it, and Energy Drain was added back pretty quickly. Then SE did the same thing again with SGE's design for some reason (overcap or spend stacks on overhealing) but this time you're FORCED to overheal because your MP economy is tied to doing so

When it comes to doomsinging about Healers, there tends to be a higher degree of accuracy compared to other roles. What is your example of 'the players were completely wrong'? I'm guessing Expedient, but not every player was doomsinging about it pre-release, I was one of those who saw it for its true potential, and occasionally replied to Reddit comments calling it pointless/dumb to try to explain some usecases where it'd be busted-OP (to no avail, Reddit moment). It just became the 'popular opinion on the internet' to clown on SCH, because SGE's Job Action trailer looked so fast-paced and fun by comparison, showing off like 6 different attacks and getting people thinking that the 'deal damage to heal allies' concept would have some meat on the bone (turns out that was a lie). So people would see 'SGE fun SCH bad' and join in, not even knowing why SGE would be fun or why SCH would be bad (hilarious in hindsight how wrong people were), just doing so because everyone else is, surely that many people can't be wrong, right? Besides, SE did an incredibly poor job of trying to show Expedient off, both in the Job Action Trailer and in the LiveLetter where they showed off the changes to each Job

[Sani2341]

So what healer design for EC do you know that you are critiqueing?

Because you have only seen the WHM skills (not even all), you have not seen the healer-side of the skills in action (and hence can't judge ~75% of the skills), and you don't know any of the other 3 healers to draw conclusions from comparisons between them, either.

Could it be bad? Almost certainly not, on account of how phenomenally (and frankly comically) bad the current design is.

The thing is, our healing kits have not actually been the relevant part of Engagement since ShB.
They have promised we would need to focus on healing more every Expansion since. It has yet to meaningfully happen for the average normal and even EX content, outside a 'technicly true' reading that numbers go up bc gear gets better.
And considering how bad some outlier runs can get (I am sure we have all ran into that lvl 50+ conjurer at least once) Most people here assume the devs are unwilling to actually meaningfully change that.

So what was shown is basicly everything relevant for most concerns that have been around since ShB tool away a noteable amount of our non healing tools.

Filler dps, dealing with an unavoidable aoe once in a while.

They have also homogenized healers to the point you can set up your hotbars with them basicly identical because for most content in the game, the minutia of our aoe heals slight difference doesnt matter bc 'HP go up' is enough. And it's not like you can reasonably cap weekly tomes (or presumably their new gearing system) with EX trials and Savage raiding alone. So even those people not focused on the easier content are pressured to engage with it to do what they like doing.

And just because what we have now is Bad, does not mean anything less bad will actually be good.

[ty_taurus]

So what healer design for EC do you know that you are critiqueing?

Because you have only seen the WHM skills (not even all), you have not seen the healer-side of the skills in action (and hence can't judge ~75% of the skills), and you don't know any of the other 3 healers to draw conclusions from comparisons between them, either.

From the sound of your individual details, you should be on board with making healers mostly about healing, and mostly about support. Which the skills shown for WHM seem to indicate, but of course that's a big if because it assumes they'll change encounter design (or passive defense on tanks) to actually induce a lot of healing requirements (as in, everyone has tons of health, takes tons of damage constantly, but doesn't die quickly -> lots of healing to be done all the time to top people back up). We cannot know this yet, I suppose this'll be a thing they talk about in Berlin tbh.

You said here, "you should be on board with making healers mostly about healing..." but it's not about blindly accepting any attempt to get white mage to cast cure. What we want as healers is for our choices to matter, but everything about their direction of white mage seems to indicate the opposite, that no matter what you do, you'll be able to Glare or refund Glare's potency. It's not impossible that the other healers can come out better than this, but each comment they made about healer player feedback seems to show a complete lack of understanding about what that feedback means. Like how they commented about players being tired of spamming Glare, so now there's High Glare... I can't think of a more obtuse and ignorant way to possibly "respond" to that feedback. If they're this disconnected from healer design, how is that meant to inspire confidence that the other healers will turn out okay?

Also, I'd like to add, this general viewpoint of 'White Mage is going to heal more. Why aren't you happy?' in this case to me feels like 'you wanted an excuse to get out of work. I shot you in the leg with a nail gun. Why are you upset?' Just saying.

[Carighan]

The thing is, our healing kits have not actually been the relevant part of Engagement since ShB.

That's kinda my point though.

At worst, the new implementation has no gain in engagement, design or gameplay. It's exactly as 0/10 as far as feeling like a healer goes as the current one. But, it does so with a third of the buttons, so for that alone it is a big improvement. A very lame one but hey, still a net improvement.

But that's the worst case scenario, and even that improves it. Hence my point that it kinda always gets better, or well, can only get better. You can't make it worse than it is right now, the whole current class system is bursting at the seams and should have been replaced mid~late Shadowbringers at the very latest, if not early SB-ish. Don't get me wrong I'd prefer far more dynamic healing and an actual need to heal, too. That's kinda why you'd click on healer instead of damage in the first place, wanting a majority-focus on healing. But even if that fails to materialize (and like you say, prior evidence suggests this) then the changes are still purely positive, distilling the design from 30 buttons providing 0 design to 10-16 buttons providing 0 design. Still a win, all bad but less of the all-bad. :P

On an extra note, they do seem to have someone else in charge and he is the guy who came up with the PvP implementations. If he also gets input on the encounter design that'd be somewhat hopeful, at least.

[Sani2341]

That's kinda my point though.

At worst, the new implementation has no gain in engagement, design or gameplay. It's exactly as 0/10 as far as feeling like a healer goes as the current one. But, it does so with a third of the buttons, so for that alone it is a big improvement. A very lame one but hey, still a net improvement.

You are way to optimistic with that.

The expected outcome of this is that we don't need to do anymore healing then right now. But lost part of what little WHM had to do otherwise. There's no more dia to maintain, and it seemed like there's no option to burn heals on overhealing to generate the new blood lily replacement. Though I am not sure on the numbers of that without heals compared to the new glares.

The worst case is we need to heal even less in anything below extremes looking at how both PLD and BRD got seemingly new AoE heals.

Just because the class designers force feed us more healing Buttons, does not mean the encounter designers finally start making us use them more.

[ty_taurus]

You are way to optimistic with that.

The expected outcome of this is that we don't need to do anymore healing then right now. But lost part of what little WHM had to do otherwise. There's no more dia to maintain, and it seemed like there's no option to burn heals on overhealing to generate the new blood lily replacement. Though I am not sure on the numbers of that without heals compared to the new glares.

The worst case is we need to heal even less in anything below extremes looking at how both PLD and BRD got seemingly new AoE heals.

Just because the class designers force feed us more healing Buttons, does not mean the encounter designers finally start making us use them more.

Even if it did, you'd have this awkward schism between all the content that came before and the content that came after which would be a negative for both the people who could handle the increased healing requirements and for those that couldn't. Because for us, maybe the added healing requirements would make the healers feel fun sans anything remotely interesting to do when healing isn't needed, but the hundreds of hours of content we've at at this point would still be a snoozefest (not to mention all the non-group content that I continue to bring up because it is a part of XIV and it is important to ensure is an enjoyable experience on any job). But then you have the hyper casual audience who found difficulty in Dawntrail's dungeons that are suddenly going to be drowning in damage and likely have panic attacks trying to keep up with that demand. I don't see how that's a plausible future for the game, nor would I want that for anyone involved.

[RiseBlackheart]

Do you know what specifically you'd like to see change? I can understand that there are parts of the job you feel aren't engaging enough, but do you have any specific ideas on what should be changed in particular?

[Sani2341]

Do you know what specifically you'd like to see change? I can understand that there are parts of the job you feel aren't engaging enough, but do you have any specific ideas on what should be changed in particular?

I can only really speak for myself and my limited experience with WHM but otomh:

I would like the blood lily's ability to generate charges even when not actually restoring HP back to better handle resources during downtime or movement heavy phases with insta cast lily heals.
Give glare it's cast time Back, and do Something more interesting with high glare than 'it sparkles differently every other Cast' maybe tie it to Sanctuary somehow. So instead of Sanctuary doing more damage per Stack, let spare stacks give us a 'high glare ready' buff. Then make only that Instant cast (and dmg neutral to 2 glares) so you get a bit of a trade off between burning it all now for burst (i.e. if there's a Transition coming up) vs saving it for movement over the next how everlong sanctuaries final cd will be. Also overlay it over Sanctuary instead of glare to give us that choice without locking us Out of Buttons.
Give Dia back on a Duration off set from Sanctuary so WHM gets two downtime plates to spin, generating not!Blood Lilies and keeping the DoT up.
And if I could get fancy, I'd ask for an Aero 3 return, that can stack with dia. And again a different duration. So i.e. 30s Dia, 45s Aero 3, 1min Sanctuary.


And not related to mechanical class changes, but I really hope there will be action skins to get the old elemental WHM vfx Back.

[Alice_Rivers]

Do you know what specifically you'd like to see change? I can understand that there are parts of the job you feel aren't engaging enough, but do you have any specific ideas on what should be changed in particular?

For me, the issues with healers isn't in the healing jobs, it's in the content that doesn't need them. To that end I'd like to see greater and more frequent damage, tankbusters that kill if not mitigated and healed, healchecks as opposed to mit checks. Healing should involve more than pressing a raidwide heal once or twice a minute.

Edit: I have most fun as a healer when I'm weighing my options, figuring out how I keep the most people alive when everything is going to hell. While I don't want that ALL the time, I do what to have to think a little bit in the moment to moment play about how I'm healing, not about how I get the most movement out of my dps buttons do I don't drop a cast while I solve this mechanic.