Why Refunding Damage for Healing is Bad.

[Valence]

As I mentioned above, it will be fun to see the fallout from FFLogs, and people who swear by it, when it turns out 'Overheal Oscar' out-parses the heavily-optimized runs, solely because Oscar's Holy Sanctuary casts (all of which are max empowered by Healing) Crit/DH like crazy

Feel like I saw it being a 20s CD for HS, not 30s, but A: I might be wrong and B: blah blah numbers subject to change

From what I gathered fflogs's owner has said they would probably stop working on the site if evolved stays as it's been shown. They're not interested in it.

[ForsakenRoe]

From what I gathered fflogs's owner has said they would probably stop working on the site if evolved stays as it's been shown. They're not interested in it.

I saw that too, yeh

[BlueMageQuina]

Snip.

I don’t really think refunding damage for healing is a bad design. I think it’s a necessary design in how this game functions. I’m not sure how many times it has to be iterated and reiterated, but in FFXIV you spend more than half of your time attacking as a healer. Until that changes fundamentally, anything opposing that isn’t really an argument worth having.

And currently, there is no realistic amount of reorganizing this system for the whole game in a single expansion. The math just doesn’t work out. Currently we average about 250 attacks to 50 heals per instance. Even if they replaced every Dia we used to cast with a cast of a necessary heal (35 Dias), that is still 165 attacks to 85 heals. There would have to be a significant overhaul of healing and damage across every piece of content over several expansions to make something other than damage to healing the more optimal design option in this game.

See, holy sanctuary is one of the dumbest things ever added to FFXIV because they literally just spent white mage’s development budget creating a system that it already had.

What bothers me more is what people have kept saying here in this thread (above): Holy Sanctuary is being framed as something different and completely unique from Afflatus Misery. This has already happened several times before with healers, especially WHM, and it’s happening again. Shroud of Saints to Lucid Dreaming. Divine Seal to Largesse to Temperance. Take away and give back with a new name like we don’t know any better. It feels as if they hope you don’t see that this should have just been a trait upgrade, and not marketed in the demo as something fresh and exciting like a capstone.

Snip.

Yikes.

[Rithy255]

I don’t really think refunding damage for healing is a bad design. I think it’s a necessary design in how this game functions. I’m not sure how many times it has to be iterated and reiterated, but in FFXIV you spend more than half of your time attacking as a healer. Until that changes fundamentally, anything opposing that isn’t really an argument worth having.

And currently, there is no realistic amount of reorganizing this system for the whole game in a single expansion. The math just doesn’t work out. Currently we average about 250 attacks to 50 heals per instance. Even if they replaced every Dia we used to cast with a cast of a necessary heal (35 Dias), that is still 165 attacks to 85 heals. There would have to be a significant overhaul of healing and damage across every piece of content over several expansions to make something other than damage to healing the more optimal design option in this game.

I don't get what your point is here as its clearly not a necessary design. Healing being refunded into damage has never been necessary, It was somewhat necessary for white mage as they didn't have a lot of OGCDS unlike every other healer.

I think the fundamental difference between now and new healers is that they have been given Even more free heals, as you pointed out White mage's whole design with lilies has generally been since shadowbringers to refund your healing with lillies for damage, I actually don't think this is a bad thing inherently, but the rate you get your refund aka 3 heals free for every 30s is way too much for the games damage profile that refunding heals for damage becomes something you dont need to think about.

Problem is now Healers are going to be even more boring to play as the skill in harder content and fights like M11S was balancing between making sure you use your resources correctly or having to fall back to your gcd heals so people survive; all of that is gone now, all healing is trivial refunded heck theirs no point of any sort of resources outside your gcd heals other then active mitigation skills.

Sure the damage profiles will not change, but making it even harder to the point of it basically being impossible to mess up with over healing just feels kind of ridiculous, Like healers weren't easy enough? are we serious... I just don't get how any of this is necessary design.

my main point being none of this was necessary, it all negatively effects healers I think for the most part when people play with the refund healing healers they're going to realise how it's even worse to play now. I guess time will tell but I'm here to make my concerns known not to necessarily debate if people will find a refund system fun or not.

[BlueMageQuina]

I don't get what your point is here as its clearly not a necessary design. Healing being refunded into damage has never been necessary, It was somewhat necessary for white mage as they didn't have a lot of OGCDS unlike every other healer.

I think the fundamental difference between now and new healers is that they have been given Even more free heals, as you pointed out White mage's whole design with lilies has generally been since shadowbringers to refund your healing with lillies

My point there was that because of how the battle system works—where we spent most of our GCDs attacking in ARR, and HW, and SB, and then we got Misery in ShB and continued attacking in ShB, and EW, and DT—that it was always going to be the inevitable outcome that healer(s) would be refunded damage for healing. It was “necessary” because of the corner design has pushed healing into. It’s the logical consequence of the battle system as it is currently implemented. I think you were getting caught up on my use of “necessary”—by necessary, I meant unavoidable, inevitable, inexorable. If you spend <75% of your time attacking as a healer for 12 years, then refunding damage from your healing becomes the logical direction—the inevitable direction—where the design will lead you.

That is all I was a saying: it’s a logical step with how they designed the game.

My second point was that it would take a lot of effort to restructure the battle system in a meaningful way where this consequence wasn’t inevitable. By this consequence, I don’t mean Misery existing, but Misery as a damage refund being doubled down on through making Sanctuary. Afflatus Misery was a consequence of healer design and Holy Sanctuary is a further consequence that the design hasn’t really changed.

I do agree with you though. I think every heal going toward Sanctuary is a bit much. Using it at different levels of refund. Yes, I think that’s okay. Every GCD contributing rather than just your job gauge… no, thanks, I agree it’s too easy.

[Rithy255]

My point there was that because of how the battle system works—where we spent most of our GCDs attacking in ARR, and HW, and SB, and then we got Misery in ShB and continued attacking in ShB, and EW, and DT—that it was always going to be the inevitable outcome that healer(s) would be refunded damage for healing. It was “necessary” because of the corner design has pushed healing into. It’s the logical consequence of the battle system as it is currently implemented. I think you were getting caught up on my use of “necessary”—by necessary, I meant unavoidable, inevitable, inexorable. If you spend <75% of your time attacking as a healer for 12 years, then refunding damage from your healing becomes the logical direction—the inevitable direction—where the design will lead you.

That is all I was a saying: it’s a logical step with how they designed the game.

My second point was that it would take a lot of effort to restructure the battle system in a meaningful way where this consequence wasn’t inevitable. By this consequence, I don’t mean Misery existing, but Misery as a damage refund being doubled down on through making Sanctuary. Afflatus Misery was a consequence of healer design and Holy Sanctuary is a further consequence that the design hasn’t really changed.

I do agree with you though. I think every heal going toward Sanctuary is a bit much. Using it at different levels of refund. Yes, I think that’s okay. Every GCD contributing rather than just your job gauge… no, thanks, I agree it’s too easy.

A think a small/simple solution is to at least double the length of Sanctuary (Triple even), That way you can keep the healing refund for damage without making everything just DPS neutral.

Though yeah I agree that theirs so many issues with encounter design and also healer design that theirs no way they'd adress it all, I think right now I just want cast times to make a return on glare/glare2 (or even have glare 2 be instant cast like a budget red mage) because positioning is very fun with casters, I am really tired of them changing that, but most importantly they need to make sanctuary something you need to actually consider carefully where you dont over cap on GCD heals too much or you will lose out on damage.

I get what your saying though I think it's a issue with the game design, I do think we can tune the game but at somepoint it becomes impossible. I'm mostly just against making healers even more bland to play, I think refunding healing for damage is a big concern for me if its done in a way where you can face roll it (sort of like mp management currently)

[Carighan]

From what I gathered fflogs's owner has said they would probably stop working on the site if evolved stays as it's been shown. They're not interested in it.

Oh I just ate the popcorn, darn! Gotta buy more.

[Carighan]

Sidenote: I would prefer if they did a bar that has a bigger resource meter (say, 1000), and you fill it based on how much healing you actually cause (direct or HoT). And then use that. "But what if people don't take damage?" - well, supposedly HS is damage-neutral, so obviously if you're just nuking it's easier to just spam the filler. Rather this'd allow big clutch-heal moments to then come back as giant single hits of damage, which would just feel nice. Although the name is pretty terrible. Afflatus Misery, pls? :<