Healer Changes Straw Poll from Reddit

[Yulja]

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I can only agree here.
If some Healers don't want to DPS or can't DPS because they are new or w/e reason, but if other Healers want to DPS in the downtime and even in the FFXIV Lore of the Healers DPS is mentioned there, why should they deal damage without fun? Why should they suffer and get something boring? Even if it is designed for new Healers or for Healers who can not multitask that good, why punish the others who can?

And why do they even cut the Support style from AST if they already cut the DPS skills? How come job designers do such things to Healers but a DNC job comes which is pretty Hybrid? That makes no sense to me.

Also I am a bit confused about the Poll because I think OP you should have had mentioned the changes in this thread because it could be that some people vote "yes" without even knowing what is going on or w/e. Though the Poll shows that more people are unhappy and SE should consider this.
I hope SE is doing something and talking to the Healer playerbase atleast once. Maybe the designers with the ideas.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Honestly no they don't. As a PLD you can keep aggro doing nothing but flash if you wanted. Damage is completely optional.

And if they wanted to SE could jack up enmity rates or have abilities that dealt enmity instead of damage.

One of my alts is a paladin and I don't agree with you. Flash is a part of a paladin's rotation, not it's only tool.

The combo, Fast Blade/Savage Blade/Rage of Halone must be used continuously to hold threat.

Meanwhile, Flash and Shield Lob are used for the initial threat during a pull and for other situations, such as ranged mobs and melee mobs needing to keep their attention on the tank. There are also other abilities a paladin used for enmity which are off the global cooldown.

With the exception of Flash, all of these spells do damage and damage causes enmity. It's just that tank abilities tend to add additional threat in addition to the spell's damage.

Here's my issue with the healer changes... (not necessarily your statement, but I want to build off it)

The line I've bolded has literally never been the case for Final Fantasy XIV. The team has stated several times that healer DPS has never been and probably never will be taken into consideration. We live in a sytem where healer DPS is 100% optional. The reason healers can DPS in the first place is because all instances must have downtime between waves of damage received by the party. This isn't designed for Healers to go on the offensive, but to allow room for error. When a healer doesn't perform optimally, or gets overwhelmed for whatever reason (DPS not dodging AoEs, the Healer is new to the trial, etc.) they require moments to breathe and catch up. If we didn't have those break periods, raid content would be ruthlessly punishing on healers, threatening to end a raid at the smallest misstep.

Not every healer or group is going to fall behind though. Many skilled healers will be able to keep up with what's going on. This naturally turns those break periods into moments where you have nothing to do because you're all caught up. You don't have to DPS at this point, as the game certainly doesn't require that you do, but the fact is that you can if you want to. Again, it's been entirely optional.

Neutering Healer DPS doesn't actually make it easier for the healers that don't want to participate because that DPS has never been expected of them in the first place. All it does is punish those of us who do want to be able to participate in DPS, i.e. those of us who want to do more than what's expected of us--to do more than the bare minimum. It's not fair to dumb it down to a bland and boring button spam because it doesn't help anyone. For someone like you who doesn't want to DPS, not having DPS tools doesn't help you, and having DPS tools doesn't hurt you. What matters is how content is designed.

Healer DPS shouldn't be this brain-meltingly boring spamming of a single spell. It shouldn't be a full on DPS rotation either. It should be a small and simple, yet engaging system that rewards players who want to do everything they possibly can at any given moment. Stormblood Scholar's DPS set I think was a pretty good example: You manage a couple DoTs, Shadowflare, and Energy Drain along with your Broil casts, + Ruin II for weaving through abilities. It's not Mudras. It's not building up Greased Lighting. It's a simple handful of tools that have enough intricacy to make your break periods more engaging should you chose to DPS.

I did say mine was a minority view.

I feel the different philosophies about what a healer's role is will insure there will always be a group which is dissatisfied.

However, I do think S.E. will come up with something which will appeal to the majority of healers. ((Maybe a compromise between my opinion and yours. We aren't so different in our views. ))

After all, their company will lose money if most healers leave the game and players can't form parties to take on instances and raids. It happened to Blizzard with their Cataclysm expansion and S.E. is certainly aware of Blizzard's mistakes.

[Semirhage]

...That wasn't Deceptus' point. The point was that "healers shouldn't be doing much damage" is a concept that could easily apply equally to tanks given enough buffs to enmity modifiers. Except tanks get to do a bunch of damage, and healers shouldn't. Because reasons.

[Deceptus]

...That wasn't Deceptus' point. The point was that "healers shouldn't be doing much damage" is a concept that could easily apply equally to tanks given enough buffs to enmity modifiers. Except tanks get to do a bunch of damage, and healers shouldn't. Because reasons.

This person gets it.

[Truen]

This person gets it.

Indeed he does. Sure wish the dev team did and they weren't forcing this <censored> onto us.

[Kacho_Nacho]

...That wasn't Deceptus' point. The point was that "healers shouldn't be doing much damage" is a concept that could easily apply equally to tanks given enough buffs to enmity modifiers. Except tanks get to do a bunch of damage, and healers shouldn't. Because reasons.

Ah. I agree.

Sorry Deceptus. I misunderstood.

[ty_taurus]

I did say mine was a minority view.

I feel the different philosophies about what a healer's role is will insure there will always be a group which is dissatisfied.

However, I do think S.E. will come up with something which will appeal to the majority of healers. ((Maybe a compromise between my opinion and yours. We aren't so different in our views. ))

After all, their company will lose money if most healers leave the game and players can't form parties to take on instances and raids. It happened to Blizzard with their Cataclysm expansion and S.E. is certainly aware of Blizzard's mistakes.

I think the major aspect to the compromise between Healers who DPS and Healers who don't already exists: Healer DPS is 100% optional.

Not DPSing shouldn't be seen as hurting your team's chances of clearing content, because if your team needs you to DPS as a healer to clear, there's something wrong with your DPS players.

Choosing to DPS should be looked at as a bonus--something the strong healers can do to speed up a fight and hopefully mitigate the chance of failure.

We could totally have a slightly more sophisticated DPS 'rotation' in the setup we have and all it would do would be make healing more fun for the Healers who want to DPS while at least making solo leveling more fun for the Healers that don't.

And about the groups being dissatisfied thing... I don't really understand why the no-DPS healers feel like they have any reason to be dissatisfied to begin with. Like I said, the game isn't designed so that you have to. You don't want to DPS? Don't! It's as simple as that.

Is someone giving you a hard time? Well, screw them and find a new party who isn't going to kick and scream about how you're playing the game. Unless you perform at 100% at every waking moment, you will always find someone who feels the need to tell you that you're not doing enough. Most of us aren't 100% all the time players. This game isn't designed for that rigid challenge level, even in Savage content.

[Warkupo]

The important takeaway is that with 900+ participants, the poll is more than enough to have statistical validity. Of course a bit of background would help determine the standard deviation but it clearly shows a majority of players aren't happy with the healer changes as proposed.

SE should take that feedback to heart.

It's not really representative though; The vast majority of the playerbase does not frequent the forums or reddit. Furthermore the people who are upset at the healer changes are a lot more likely to seek council from people who share their opinions, meaning that any poll you put out is going to have a natural bias to it to begin with. Very rarely is a poll unbiased, and you should always consider bias factors when analyzing data.

[Kurando]

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Pretty much this. Unless it's an official poll were every single player gets involved then you really should take polls you find through 3rd party mediums (Reddit, Discord etc) with a grain of salt as it does not show a true representation, with bias playing a big role. Content/happy players have less reason to complain and even then it would get drowned out by those on the other side of the spectrum so SE will be cautious when trying to establish which group is actually the "majority".

[Deceptus]

It's not really representative though; The vast majority of the playerbase does not frequent the forums or reddit. Furthermore the people who are upset at the healer changes are a lot more likely to seek council from people who share their opinions, meaning that any poll you put out is going to have a natural bias to it to begin with. Very rarely is a poll unbiased, and you should always consider bias factors when analyzing data.

Pretty much this. Unless it's an official poll were every single player gets involved then you really should take polls you find through 3rd party mediums (Reddit, Discord etc) with a grain of salt as it does not show a true representation, with bias playing a big role. Content/happy players have less reason to complain and even then it would get drowned out by those on the other side of the spectrum so SE will be cautious when trying to establish which group is actually the "majority".

That's not how polls work. You try to avoid selection bias by trying to get as many people as you can from a wide variety of sources. You take the data that people give you. You can't just say, I don't agree with the result, lets discredit those who participated.

That's why I said with the number hitting 900+ respondents (now 1000+), it was statistically valid. At 1026, it would have 95% confidence interval at +-3 % deviation which any pollster would LOVE to have.