Healer Changes Straw Poll from Reddit

[Truen]

Are you happy with the healer changes: https://www.strawpoll.me/18074634/r

[Alathon]

Boards of any sort are never necessarily representative of a player base, but that poll looks like a plausible representation. A slight majority unhappy with the homogenization/simplification/heal-focus, and a sizable minority either happy with the heal-focus or okay with whatever happens as long as they get new content.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Boards of any sort are never necessarily representative of a player base, but that poll looks like a plausible representation. A slight majority unhappy with the homogenization/simplification/heal-focus, and a sizable minority either happy with the heal-focus or okay with whatever happens as long as they get new content.

I expected that result. There are three opposing camps regarding a healer's role in a party.

Those who want to contribute to a group's overall damage by weaving offensive spells between their heals, those who feel a healer's role is only to heal, and a minority who wish to contribute by casting buffs/debuffs and healing with a minimum of personal dps.

My personal belief is the last one. Healer's should support the party.

A party already has their damage dealers and tanks. Tanks need to do damage along with their enmity spells to keep threat.

Damage dealers should focus on own dps and the party's while watching their own enmity.

Healer's are the glue and support of the party. They keep the whole effort working so it succeeds.

Instances should not be balanced around the maximum damage a healer can do along with the rest of a party. Healer's aren't a green damage dealer.

Let tanks and damage dealers have their own roles and let healers have their own. That's my opinion and I'm stepping off my soapbox.

So, how was your day? /chuckle

[Sebazy]

Agreed.

I'd love to see one of the healers pushed down the route of spending their spare GCDs augmenting and buffing. Whilst it'd be tough to balance (Which is likely why it's not been done), it'd at least give an option for those that don't want to be expected to sit there throwing rocks for the majority of an encounter.

Both Dancer and RDM were kind of a wasted opportunity on this front really =(

And @OP

Yeah the poll results make sense really. The healer changes aren't calamitously bad. It's more that they are highly underwhelming from the angle of high level play. For a casual player a lot of the stuff is actually pretty good. WHM will be a cakewalk to heal with and SCH should be more approachable as well. AST has a few deeper issues IMHO but if nothing else, it's card mechanics and cooldowns are a lot more streamlined now. The new Sleeve Draw is a massive improvement.

This isn't a repeat of AST in 3.0 or SCH in 4.0 thankfully. It's just.... Meeeh =(

[Alathon]

Agreed.

I'd love to see one of the healers pushed down the route of spending their spare GCDs augmenting and buffing. Whilst it'd be tough to balance (Which is likely why it's not been done), it'd at least give an option for those that don't want to be expected to sit there throwing rocks for the majority of an encounter.

Both Dancer and RDM were kind of a wasted opportunity on this front really =(

And @OP

Yeah the poll results make sense really. The healer changes aren't calamitously bad. It's more that they are highly underwhelming from the angle of high level play. For a casual player a lot of the stuff is actually pretty good. WHM will be a cakewalk to heal with and SCH should be more approachable as well. AST has a few deeper issues IMHO but if nothing else, it's card mechanics and cooldowns are a lot more streamlined now. The new Sleeve Draw is a massive improvement.

This isn't a repeat of AST in 3.0 or SCH in 4.0 thankfully. It's just.... Meeeh =(

As a new player, it was the combination of combat and healing that attracted me to the healer classes, the fact that they were not just whack-a-mole healbots, but combatants who had to balance their time between healing and damage-dealing. I started WHM but AST and SCH really grew on me. It seems like, in return for a vocal minority of players getting more of what they want, the style of play that I want is being back-burnered, perhaps even slated for removal. And that style of play is one that a whole lot of current healers have said (here and on reddit) they want to keep.

Setting us aside in favor of pleasing a minority of "pure healer" afficionados, and speculation that extremely simplistic class design will attract new players (when they do the opposite on DPS...........) sucks.

[ForteNightshade]

Agreed.

I'd love to see one of the healers pushed down the route of spending their spare GCDs augmenting and buffing. Whilst it'd be tough to balance (Which is likely why it's not been done), it'd at least give an option for those that don't want to be expected to sit there throwing rocks for the majority of an encounter.

Both Dancer and RDM were kind of a wasted opportunity on this front really =(

And @OP

Yeah the poll results make sense really. The healer changes aren't calamitously bad. It's more that they are highly underwhelming from the angle of high level play. For a casual player a lot of the stuff is actually pretty good. WHM will be a cakewalk to heal with and SCH should be more approachable as well. AST has a few deeper issues IMHO but if nothing else, it's card mechanics and cooldowns are a lot more streamlined now. The new Sleeve Draw is a massive improvement.

This isn't a repeat of AST in 3.0 or SCH in 4.0 thankfully. It's just.... Meeeh =(

I do wonder though if the law of diminishing returns will apply. If damage doesn't end up scaling up enough to require said healing, I foresee it being a much louder talking point this time around because of how much emphasise they kept putting on supposedly healing. We needs only look at the initial excitement people had when they thought the DPS might die. While you'll see have those stubborn people who refuse to DPS no matter what, I really think we'll reach a point where Healer in Need becomes the de facto for roulettes.

[Deceptus]

Tanks need to do damage along with their enmity spells to keep threat.

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 emnity rates or have abilities that dealt enmity instead of damage.

Are you happy with the healer changes: https://www.strawpoll.me/18074634

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.

[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.

[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.