The Healer Double Standard

[Sloprano]

I played sch exclusively since 2.0, because it felt good in anything. Then also played pld in sb since it felt more busy both damage and support wise. Now Im leveling and playing mch(77) and smn for the role quests and they feel good to play, always busy and something different to press.

This was how good sch felt in 3.0, only it did without combos. Just a large reactionary suite of dots, mitigation skills, ed and manual fairy control is what did it. We already have combos with ET, DT, Recit and Swiftcast. And each of those carry a choice even it's just two.

At first I thought damage combos would be too dangerous as healers would try more than ever to finish a cast before healing. Yet it might be the way to have a similar thing to Cleric stance.

Just filling up healthbars is just not that engaging compared to what was before. Id be fine with lower overall damage in seeing the original arcanist skill set returned.

[LariaKirin]

Great questions. I speak of SCH because it is my favorite job of the three, the one I played most and the one I know best.

Is a kit with more buttons and lower potencies better than a kit with higher damage and fewer buttons?

How many DPS options are required to make an entertaining kit?

Neither, because I don't think a small or big number of buttons makes the kit "better".

Let me give an example: let's say we give SCH 5 new dps buttons - five different dots (let's say 30 sec duration each - but make them variable if you think that's more interesting), each adding up to a total of 290 potency to make them preferable over Broil. Are you pressing more buttons? Yes. Will you play SCH?

How many DPS options are required to make an entertaining kit?

Not an arbitrary number of abilities, but specific types of abilities. What I think is actually more entertaining - real options, choices and trade-offs.

Examples:
- Energy Drain was good - option between healing potency and damage potency, a trade-off. You would actually choose to exercise this option depending on the circumstances.
- HW Cleric stance was good - option between healing and damage, a trade-off with a punishing refresh timer. Obviously the MIND/INT internals were stupid - but say you nerfed potencies accordingly and reworked it into a +X% damage/-X% healing stance.

- Miasma was bad. You didn't get to choose whether you used it or not - it was simply better than Broil and acted as an occasional Broil replacer. The dot tracking point is moot, because after enough play time you would simply refresh it without thought. I think one dot is fine, because it has neat interactions with buff windows and boss phase transitions. More than one I think is just button bloat.
- Shadow Flare was bad. On-cd maintenance ability, barring few circumstances. It had a neat interaction with Soil, but it made no difference. It could be good if it were reworked to an actual choice between Soil and Shadowflare.

With that in mind, let me give you an option. Take our current kit and add either HW Cleric Stance or the 5 dots in my previous example. Which would you choose? Which gives you more options?

Would people accept a kit that required more work, if it gave us generally the same DPS output as now?

It depends. I'd personally say yes, if it means actual choices and trade-offs. Energy Drain? Yes, please. Something that interacts with the fairy gauge or Aetherflow? Yes, please. Miasma back? No, thanks. The 5 dots? No, thanks.
It'd also say no in the case of one healer requiring more work than the others for similar results. I noticed alot of preference for complexity, but just take a quick look at the state of SMN and AST. AST is a special case at the moment because it's undertuned, but I don't see the majority of players jumping on the AST wagon if optimal card play would merely bring its contribution equal to that of SCH.



The following are just some points I'd like to make related to the issue:

SHB SCH is in a much cleaner state if your goal is to balance the healer jobs and expand upon them in the future. The ACN relics we had before were an obstacle for the long term future and I'll gladly take the changes (except Energy Drain, it needs to come back in some form) if it means there's a chance we get meaningful choices in the future.

Content is interesting, not the number of buttons. You could have 100 interesting buttons, but Sastasha will still be a chore. So will each and every dungeon.
And eventually, so will Savage. 2 buttons or 100 buttons, once you know the content so well that you mapped your GCDs for the entire fight, you are on auto-pilot. Content is designed to keep you entertained for a while - your 100th auto-pilot clear will continue to be a chore so long as content continues to lack randomized elements that actually make a difference. To give an example: what if the tethers in Titania would randomly pair any two players regardless of job?

[TonberiScholar]

SHB SCH is in a much cleaner state if your goal is to balance the healer jobs and expand upon them in the future. The ACN relics we had before were an obstacle for the long term future and I'll gladly take the changes (except Energy Drain, it needs to come back in some form) if it means there's a chance we get meaningful choices in the future.

It feels like they left the job half-finished, with no indication of them even seeing that leaving it half-finished is a problem.

This is the same Job design team that's held up GCD cast-time heals with almost no interactions with the rest of the Job kits as the gold standard for what they expect the "majority" of Healer gameplay to consist of for the past six years.


Best examples:

All of SCH's pet control buttons are useless now but still on their bars (this hits Summoner to a lesser degree but they at least got new animations for stuff).

We have one entire Role skill (Repose) that's there just for one Role Quest.

SCH's "new" AoE is literally just a recycled PvP animation.

Fluid Aura still exists (a WHM thing, but still).

Content is interesting, not the number of buttons.

Engaging Job gameplay is a type of "content" too, and it's one Healer players have been more and more removed from with each expansion.

Their solution to adding new things for Healers is simply to throw more redundant Green Sledgehammer buttons at us while taking away DPS options to make room for them.

They don't "get" how to make engaging Healer jobs because their vision of them is basically a glorified Trust system that exists to make the Jobs they actually put effort and resources into have better queue times.

That doesn't leave me hopeful for the "future".

But, to others who quote replied me, because I feel this way, I'll likely never feel DPS is a part of a healers identity, so I won't really hold a debate with people that do, I just don't see the kits as vital as you do, I dunno.

Okay, so.

Do you view Healers as an "adventurer" or as someone who follows real adventurers around?

Because if the only thing you can do is heal, you'd be far better off staying in one fixed, safe location and allowing people who need healing to come to you.

Going out into the world with nothing more than a stick and a sunny disposition is a quick way to get killed, and that's all "Healers" are without at least some form of self-defense/offensive magic.

Given that they need to have the ability to defend themselves (and presumably, the people they're helping), why shouldn't their damaging/offensive abilities be distinguishing features?

Ignoring the fact that, in a mechanical sense, Healers both occasionally have to solo and the raid-level group reward for more efficient healing is "more overall DPS", an increase that's baked into the Healers themselves to avoid dropping a Healer for a DPS Job.

[LariaKirin]

Engaging Job gameplay is a type of "content" too, and it's one Healer players have been more and more removed from with each expansion.

Their solution to adding new things for Healers is simply to throw more redundant Green Sledgehammer buttons at us while taking away DPS options to make room for them.

They don't "get" how to make engaging Healer jobs because their vision of them is basically a glorified Trust system that exists to make the Jobs they actually put effort and resources into have better queue times.

That doesn't leave me hopeful for the "future".

Technically, everything is "content". So that's a nice and easy way to completely sidestep my point. Go clear Ghimlyt 40 times with any engaging job of your choosing, then tell me it's not a chore - the DPS players are not having fun in that content either.

I find it silly when you (and other people here) say developers don't "get" how to make engaging Healer jobs, as if you do. It's simply the case of you not liking the changes - they know what they're doing and they're doing it deliberately.

You posted a lengthy rework above and it's a clear example of you not "getting" it either, by your own standard. I understand it's not something you've thought about for weeks, but none of your suggestions fix anything or change anything fundamentally. Downtime will still exist in the same way as it does now. This:

Then make Savage require more of your oGCD pool than you "have", at base.

[...]

Then, for Extreme/Savage/Ultimate, bump up the amount of needed oGCD heals beyond what you can cover with your "standard" allotment, so you have to use your Job mechanics/GCD-cast things to recharge them quicker.

Can be done with what we have now. Your "standard" allotment has no clear definition and can't be a thing - because the amount of healing you need is variable depending on your party.

The content is designed to be fun for a few clears - it is simply not designed to be fun in your 100th run. Once you've learned the entire encounter, it's a chore. No job design will change this.

[TonberiScholar]

Technically, everything is "content". So that's a nice and easy way to completely sidestep my point. Go clear Ghimlyt 40 times with any engaging job of your choosing, then tell me it's not a chore - the DPS players are not having fun in that content either.

The content is designed to be fun for a few clears - it is simply not designed to be fun in your 100th run. Once you've learned the entire encounter, it's a chore. No job design will change this.

Wasn't intending to sidestep the point, though I think we're focusing on two different bits.

Engaging Job gameplay gets people to level other Jobs or do stuff like Experts that technically aren't "challenging" but serve a progression/reward purpose when otherwise they'd just see the content once and then log til the catch-up patch.

It's still not going to make anyone want to do Ghimlyt 40 times (I don't think anything would, honestly), but it may be the difference between them leveling and gearing one Job or two or five or whatever.

I know it has been for me (especially in ARR) and anecdotally for others (a lot of "I'm coming back" threads have info like this buried in them). I'd wager I'm probably not crazy-enough to be the only person that's felt like that (though as always, I may be wrong).

I find it silly when you (and other people here) say developers don't "get" how to make engaging Healer jobs, as if you do. It's simply the case of you not liking the changes - they know what they're doing and they're doing it deliberately.

I'm not a game designer, and despite my enthusiasm for it, I don't think I actually have any talent at it. Even before we get into stuff like "training" or "qualifications".

But I've been playing since ARR, and I've developed a feel for what I like and dislike about this game (and other MMOs, in a compare-and-constrast sense) and I spend probably way more time than is healthy reading other people's opinions on what they like/dislike (on here, places like reddit/discord and in-game in stuff like Linkshells/Novice Network).

Anecdotally (and that's not data, but it's also not completely irrelevant), the only groups that seem broadly happy with the ShB Healer changes are: White Mage mains and people who picked up healing this expansion. There are exceptions, but the ones who don't like it are both louder (which is normal) and more numerous (which isn't as normal). A lot of people take forum contrarianism as somewhere between a hobby and a religion, and even they are being drowned out by the salt.

Even in-game (let alone on forums), the AST/SCH players I know personally and see talking don't like the changes.

It's also possible that Aether's just uniquely salty or that I'm reading all the wrong topics.

There are three other points though:

• Healer Queues: Last time we had a new Tank, the standard of "Tank in need" returned far sooner to most of the roulettes. Though that may be complicated by tanking being easier now somewhat as well.
• Recent Interview with Yoshida: The situation he described "Scholar just shielding and then only doing DPS while the White Mage does all the healing" bears no relation to how Healers are actually played either at low levels (they'd just let the Fairy handle it or wouldn't bother to DPS) or high levels (the two healers would be rotating cooldowns to both have higher-DPS phases). Healer gameplay like he describes hasn't been around since ARR.
• We've had the same complaints since ARR, now we have more: People have been complaining that there "wasn't enough healing" and that "people shouldn't expect Healers to DPS" since ARR. We've not only not gotten rid of those problems, but now we also have the people who use their entire kits complaining that downtime is more boring than it was. No other Job issues have persisted in the same form since ARR

Any other Job role that was fundamentally broken in one regard and managed to end up being broken in a different way without the original problem being fixed would be a good indicator of the devs not "getting" how to design that Job.

We already know they can design engaging DPS Jobs, and we already know they listen to feedback on Tanks and adjust.

So why are Healers the outlier if it's not a case of them "not getting it"?

People "not liking their deliberate decisions" has, again, been a thing since 2.0 launch. They've just managed to, in the intervening time, also make the opposing camp just as mad without fixing the problems the first camp was up in arms about.

TL;DR: I'm in no way a pro but it doesn't take a pro to see that the Healer situation this expansion is clearly a bit awry.

"Customer is always right" is a terrible tyranny imposed on people who have to deal with customers. But occasionally, a group of your customers yelling about the same thing for a really long time and not stopping when an entirely different group of customers starts yelling alongside them for a different reason after you make changes might be cause for a little bit of self-reflection.

Maybe.

You posted a lengthy rework above and it's a clear example of you not "getting" it either, by your own standard. I understand it's not something you've thought about for weeks, but none of your suggestions fix anything or change anything fundamentally. Downtime will still exist in the same way as it does now. This can be done with what we have now.

They do though, because of two things:

Separating Uptime and Downtime Resources:

This is the big one, and arguably the more important goal. They need to break the ability to turn Healing GCDs into DPS GCDs at a 1:1 conversion rate. So long as that exists, the "DPS Healer meta" will always exist.

They operate on entirely different cost scales. Healing GCDs that keep the party alive are priceless, while healing GCDs that are overhealing are completely worthless. Meanwhile, party DPS is the Universal MMO Currency and it will always spend.

My solution isn't the only way to do it (obviously?), but it's my preferred one (also obviously).

You could also do oGCD Healer DPS tools and GCD Heals, but that's harder for most players without gaining much over what I suggested.

Or you could make Healing or DPS contingent on a split between MP and the Job Gauge, but that's even more complex and ends up having the same potential problems that they removed TP for.

Making the stuff you are recruited for/"have to" do the easier and the optional stuff reward optimization seems more extensible.

Conceptually, this "make the boring stuff boring but reliable and the interesting/optional stuff different" is the same sort of thing they did to Tanks this expansion (defensive cooldowns and threat mostly standardized, damage rotations are entirely different and interact with Job Gauges), and that's where I got the idea from.

But that also fuels my "they don't get it" suspicions because they already fixed this problem with Tanks, yet didn't (or, to be fair,couldn't) stretch to do the same for Healers. "Didn't" and "couldn't" sting pretty hard though, considering we didn't get a new Healer because they were supposed to be "balancing" them.

Planning Job Mechanics around Downtime:

This isn't as important, but it's more a "two birds with one Stone" situation.

If they split the resources for (most) Healing and DPS (both in time and in depletable resources), that means you can't cut down healing to gain damage. But due to encounter design, you're still going to have a lot of downtime.

Instead of just having people use a boring DPS rotation for their downtime GCDs (which people like me are complaining about) or making ridiculously complex Healer DPS rotations (which some people are afraid of), do both but on a Job-dependent basis and split the difference.

"Has an involved DPS rotation for a Healer" should be as much a Healer Job Mechanic as "has a very simple Healer DPS Job rotation but has 'extra' healing that fuels a catch-up nuke" and "mainly buffs party members with a side-effect of party DPS increase".

All of which would be doable now that you basically have the Job Gauges and all their GCDs/GCD abilities open to play with.

The more important bit of the "splitting resources" requirement though is that you're splitting on time as well as your traditionally-understood "resources" (MP, Job Gauge, cooldowns, whatever).

Necessary Healing and optional stuff should be on entirely different timescales and you shouldn't be able to trade one for the other.

Your "standard" allotment has no clear definition and can't be a thing - because the amount of healing you need is variable depending on your party.

It does, but this is going to sound like a tautology. Bear with me.

"Standard" amounts of healing are "however much healing throughput is required by SE's internal metrics to judge the content as 'clearable' for the intended item level".

...I'm not screwing with you, I promise. But in addition to not being a game designer, I don't have those numbers. I can extrapolate and guess a bit, though.

Healing requirements vary due to party gear and RNG (which both can be fudged a bit with a bit of slack) and how many avoidable mechanics people eat.

An allowance for the first one is already made in the game, which is why no content has been completely unclearable when released (though A3S was close for different reasons).

An allowance for the second also exists, in the form of the DPS check. If people eat too many avoidable mechanics and die because of it, sometimes the debuffs/lack of people attacking means you fail the DPS check.

So just because I don't have them doesn't mean they don't exist.

But that's not really helpful, so if I had to explain my reasoning on this, here goes. This is, by nature, very clumsy.

• Make an Extreme or Savage mode fight
• Plan out how long the fight lasts before Enrage (so bare minimum DPS requirements)
• For that timeframe, for each phase:
• Take every Tankbuster's average damage when mitigated at bare minimum survival levels for intended iLvl
• Take every unavoidable AoE's average damage on the party at bare minimum survival levels for intended iLvl
• Take the average damage of half the instances of avoidable mechanic damage at bare minimum survival levels for intended iLvl

Add a 10% to 20% variance to each of those, individually. Then add 'em all together.

This is, broadly speaking, your combined "healing burden" for the fight, assuming people use bare minimum cooldowns, are in bare minimum gear and screw up half the screw-uppable mechanics.

Count, for each phase, how many single-target instances of damage that is and how many AoE instances of damage that is.

Take each Healer you can run for the fight. Strip them down to just their oGCDs in bare minimum iLvl gear, and calculate, if they do nothing but spam cooldowns/charges when available in a somewhat efficient manner (just "single target for single-target damage, AoE for AoEs), how much healing throughput they can do for the duration, on a phase by phase basis.

Make it so they have been 25% and 50% more oGCD single-target tools for the single-target hits than the bare minimum they "need" and about 25% more AoE than they "need".

Tweak the potencies so they heal for between 25% and 50% more than what the required total throughput is (again based on phase/damage instance).

This is "more" than they need in 8-person content (because two Healers), but adding a second Healer isn't always necessarily a net benefit and there may be a lot of wasted healing.

Repeat for all the planned fights for the expansion.

The average of that becomes your start-of-expansion "standard Healing requirements" and you tweak from there. Kinda like they do now.

TL;DR: SE has to have metrics for this sort of thing as part of the way they design content normally. They establish a baseline HPS/DPS threshold, then add in slack to account for less than perfect play and such.

A tweak to that could account for oGCD-based instead of GCD-based healing (you'd need to give slack on the amount of charges/cooldowns instead of GCD perfection, but it's doable).

We can kludge something together based on number of damage instances and combined necessary throughput and then add slack as necessary, but we're not the ones that'd be making it.

Or, the shorter version:

"How many Cure IIs do you need to cast in a fight to get through it?" "Make you able to cover that with Tetra charges instead based on a certain number of charges/recharge time".

Repeat for other Jobs and for AoE.

The advantage of this is that anything you build into the Job Mechanics that either replenishes/recharges oGCD heals or acts as a GCD heal is "extra", and most of your skill differentiation gets based on what people spend their GCDs doing, not their oGCDs.

oGCD healing with some level of competence gets you in the door. GCD competence lets you have some breathing room for oGCDs. GCD perfection clears the fight faster.

This makes it easier for new Healers to start Healing while not "requiring" them to drop healing GCDs for damaging GCDs (because their jobs aren't designed around healing GCDs in the first place).

It's a kludge that (sorta) fits both camps' complaints. With the big assumption that they then turn around and making Healer Job Gauges/mechanics both interesting and distinct (since they're technically 'extra' but also an avenue for differentiation).

Party buffs (for rDPS) competing with personal DPS through filler spam is a much more fair comparison than personal DPS through filler spam competing with healing.

[tikiwiki]

Instead of just having people use a boring DPS rotation for their downtime GCDs (which people like me are complaining about) or making ridiculously complex Healer DPS rotations (which some people are afraid of), do both but on a Job-dependent basis and split the difference.

"Has an involved DPS rotation for a Healer" should be as much a Healer Job Mechanic as "has a very simple Healer DPS Job rotation but has 'extra' healing that fuels a catch-up nuke" and "mainly buffs party members with a side-effect of party DPS increase".

and thats exactly what i want its why i want all the dps skills sch had in hw back theres no reason one healer cant have a lot of damage actions specially when it used to

[Mikhaill]

The problem is us not having damns thing to do on downtimes. That's the problem.
While I personally (On SCH side at least) am not upset about losing all the DPS, I can understand why other SCHs are, and hell, even WHM's.
Everyone is topped off, so you expect us to sit there and some of us, chill out because there's literally nothing else to do.
If you're gonna remove crap, you gotta give us something to compensate it.

[Rilifane]

I'd love to see some branched combos on healers.
Things like dps spell 1-> dps spell 2 -> choice between heal finisher and dps finisher.
If you use the heal finisher, you get some small, short-time buff to your dps. Not strong enough you want to keep it up at all times but a nice little bonus for ending a dps combo with a heal finisher. The dps finisher on the other could give you a small bonus for heal.
Or something like an aoe dot you can consume for instant heal. Targeted, so you can target someone and every mob gets the dot removed and the target is healed. Okayish baseline healing but the bonus for each consumed dot makes it strong. It would be a fairly strong single target heal but it's not something you'd do everytime as you lose 1 gcd for reapplying the aoe dot.
Trade-offs. I love trade-offs, it makes a class much more interesting to play.
And risks.
Cleric stance was overly clunky but I did like the risk it involved. If you didn't pay attention to damage patterns, you risked getting the non-existent heals at a really bad time. The 5% buff they changed it into was just another mindless button and I'm glad it's gone.

Healers can contribute so much dps in this game compared to games like Tera or even early WoW, why not own it and make dpsing and healing synergise with each other? It doesn't even has to be taken to the extreme in form of a leech healer, just something that makes dpsing feels more like a meaningful choice and part of your kit instead of it feeling like a filler - a filler you spent most of your time on.
Something that makes you focus more on which dps buttons you push and gives you the ability to sacrifice dps for heal if you are in a pinch or shit hits the fan.
I enjoy having plenty of heal buttons but many of them are just way to close to one another and it feels more like same skill, different name instead of different skill, different choice.

[Acesfool]

I've played a few different MMO's and healers never have a lot of dps options. Unless it's a healer who heals through dps, which I only remember one game with that, Rift. As soon as FFXIV began filling with former WoW players I was expecting this to happen. The meters (which I never use or look at) are all anyone cares about. Dungeon groups want to pull wall to wall and expect you to heal through it. Even if you do heal through it they'll complain that you didn't do enough dps. I play a healer or tank to heal or tank. I don't want to be a fake dps when playing those roles.

[Hatstand]

I've played a few different MMO's and healers never have a lot of dps options. Unless it's a healer who heals through dps, which I only remember one game with that, Rift. As soon as FFXIV began filling with former WoW players I was expecting this to happen. The meters (which I never use or look at) are all anyone cares about. Dungeon groups want to pull wall to wall and expect you to heal through it. Even if you do heal through it they'll complain that you didn't do enough dps. I play a healer or tank to heal or tank. I don't want to be a fake dps when playing those roles.

Then you could have played as the old WHM. They had very simple dps options. And yes, maybe they needed a buff. I would have supported that. But variety is the spice of life. There’s no reason for all the healers to have no complexity to their dps.

As for people who give healers trouble... isn’t it kinda nuts to punish healers because other people are a**holes?