Healers in the new expansion

[Hatstand]

Astounding as it may be....I don't want a more complex DPS rotation. I can go play red mage or something for that. My healer has enough buttons as is.

And WHM has always been great for that. Heck, I used to play it fairly often, albeit not as often as SCH or AST. The healers should be different. Balanced, but different. And if I can only have one or the other I’ll take just different.

Plus, even if they did give all the healers good rotations, you could ignore them. Ultimately as long as people are staying alive you’re doing your job and anyone that gives you trouble for not doing something else is an a#&. But it would be nice if those tools were there for those of us who want them.

[Hunky]

It’s. Not. About. Potency.

As has been repeated over and over but apparently not heard. Spamming one button is boring. We want to achieve our dps through more interesting tools, regardless of potency. We’re not asking to be more powerful. We’re asking to be more fun. It astounds me that any player would oppose us in this.

This is it right here. Healers want a dps toolkit that is more complex and engaging than pressing the same two buttons again and again. As many have said before, healers have a lot of downtime to dps, and healers want to spend that time doing a more fun rotation rather than spamming the same buttons.

As someone who's been playing white mage since 2.0, I'm used to just pressing 3-4 buttons when I dps (presence of mind, thin air, aero dot and stone/holy spam). I remember things were pretty interesting when cleric stance swapped our mind stat with intelligence so we could dps back in the day. That's about as conplicated as it ever got for white mages, which is why I think white mages aren't as dissatisfied as astrologians and scholars are.

Now, to be perfectly honest, and to be somewhat of a devil's advocate, I can see why the developers and designers chose to homogenize and simplify all three healers' dps toolkits.

Giving healers a dps toolkit that is close to the complexity or depth of an actual dps job's toolkit would only add unnecessary layers of difficulty/stress.

Healers are already stressed enough with the responsibility to look after party members; giving them a dps toolkit that's more complex would make the job harder.

I think what the developers wanted to do was give each healer a dps toolkit that is simple and straightforward with no complicated mechanics. I think the idea is that healers are already dealing with enough that they shouldn't have to deal with complex mechanics/rotations for their dps output. Rather than feel pressured to optimize their dps rotations, I think they want healers to have reliable and simple dps tools to make playing easier.

Just to clarify, I don't necessarily agree with this. I just believe this is what the developers had in mind and therefore explain why things are the way they are with healers right now.

I definitely do agree that scholars and white mages should have a dps skill to use up their gauge resources (aetherflow and lilies).

[MadeOfMush]

I'd like class complexity focused on the more support side. SCH has a host of oGCDs along with the fairy and Aetherflow to manage. SCH works healing with precision and control, whereas WHM healing is more about raw healing potency. I find it legitimately fun, the problem is it only surfaces when parties are doing poorly or on big pulls in dungeons. AST has the card minigame which does need some polishing, but on its own can offer the complexity that sets it apart from other healers.

[Hatstand]

I'd like class complexity focused on the more support side. SCH has a host of oGCDs along with the fairy and Aetherflow to manage. SCH works healing with precision and control, whereas WHM healing is more about raw healing potency. I find it legitimately fun, the problem is it only surfaces when parties are doing poorly or on big pulls in dungeons. AST has the card minigame which does need some polishing, but on its own can offer the complexity that sets it apart from other healers.

Yup. The way I see it there are 4 requirements for whatever system they give us to fill our non-healing downtime:

1) Interesting. Ergo more than 3 buttons. I’d say no less than 7 (including things like cool downs, e.g. presence of mind) for an absolute minumum. (WHM has 7 now by my count). Also, requiring decisions of us, as well as risk/reward calculations.

2) Sustainable. A couple of buff abilities that are on 30 second cool downs won’t cut it because there’ll still be a lot of time left in between.

3) Allows for great constant improvement. Ultimately defence and healing can’t be improved after people stop dying. We need some offensive kit so we can keep pushing ourselves.

4) Lack or requiring us to do dumb stuff. Like overhead or waste Aetherflow stacks.

If they tick these boxes I don’t care if they give us dps, buffs, or a set of inspirational dances.

[Risvertasashi]

And WHM has always been great for that. Heck, I used to play it fairly often, albeit not as often as SCH or AST. The healers should be different. Balanced, but different. And if I can only have one or the other I’ll take just different.

Plus, even if they did give all the healers good rotations, you could ignore them. Ultimately as long as people are staying alive you’re doing your job and anyone that gives you trouble for not doing something else is an a#&. But it would be nice if those tools were there for those of us who want them.

I feel like if certain healers had a more complex DPS rotation but the DPS output was less, there would be a fair bit of salt over that.

[Billythepancake]

I feel like if certain healers had a more complex DPS rotation but the DPS output was less, there would be a fair bit of salt over that.

There'd be salt, sure, but a LOT less of it. We did not need more healing tools, the ones we had were fine, giving us more doesnt help, especially since healing requirements havent changed. That's the biggest problem, sure we have some interesting healing tools (I genuinely love recitation it is the only good thing scholar got out of this expansion if you ask me) but how often are you actually healing? In the worst case, when you dont know a fight at all, you're looking at maybe 50% of the time. Most of the time though you're averaging 10-20% of the time. that means 80 percent of what you're doing is spamming 1 button.

If other people like spamming 1 button for their dps as a healer that's fine, let them do that, but the rest of us shouldnt be forced to have that same play style. We want more to do, because when we do go into content and we figure out how to optimize the heals, we want to be rewarded for it. That reward WAS being able to dps, but there is nothing rewarding about just spamming 1 button.

[_forgotten]

Uhh, SCH didn't really lose much in the way of healing when it came uniqueness. We kept the fairy, and all of our healing skills. We really only lost our DPS, which didn't really make us unique.

Not being able to execute fairy actions while casting does remove the class uniqueness. Now we're just whm with ogcds for fairy spells.

[tikiwiki]

Not being able to execute fairy actions while casting does remove the class uniqueness. Now we're just whm with ogcds for fairy spells.

dont forget it also made those ogcds a lot clunkier since they need to wait on embrace gcd and cant be executed back to back and immediatly

[Gaethan_Tessula]

It is when *he specifically said he wanted DPS/CC* which this expansion has given generously.[

Pray tell, what Crowd Control has this expansion given healers? Giving away more of WHM's toys to SCH and AST in repose? Making Fluid Aura ranged while taking away the arguably more useful knockback, leaving FA a laughable 6s bind? Meanwhile we lost Heavy in Break, which is one of the more commonly used CC ailments in harder content.

The best thing ShB did for CC was let CC work on trash again for first time since 2.55, and until CC'ing adds becomes frequent in harder content frankly that benefits BLM more than any healer because their Sleep is AoE and might actually prevent a wipe if a tank dies on a huge pull (something I've done).

Does WHM do really high DPS now? Yeah. Is it interesting to do (the actual, important part)? It's a start (I'll get to Afflatus skills). A START, not an ending point. And the other healers don't have that at ALL. They, overall, lost engagement during healing downtime.

And a timing mechanic to optimize healing and DPS is not interesting to you? because it is to me and has added another layer to the job that does indeed make it more fun.

I like the Afflatus skills. Having a time-gated resource that allows for double weaving, movement, and recouping DPS while healing is great. That this system bases itself in HEALING on WHM, the foremost healer lorewise, is excellent implementation of class fantasy. It's reasonably complex optimization wise because ideally you want to be using it when you need to heal, need to move, and need to double-weave. That's something to work towards, or realizing when you need to settle for 2/3 of those things depending on the fight (or knowing if/when to blow them should the boss jump).

So yeah, I like it. But it's not enough on its own. Not when the time we spend on utilizing this system plus other healing is still outnumbered GCD-wise in most content with "Dia, Glare xn." It's the beginning of a system that will allow WHM to grow now that (imo) it's GCD healing kit is full and further healing oGCD's would dilute WHM's design as a GCD based healer/using the Afflatus skills.

For an example idea, I like the idea of a several step lily system. Something like Healing Lily -> Afflatus Solace/Rapture -> Grants DPS Lily -> Enables an oGCD that upgrades next Stone/Aero/Fluid Aura -> Feed the Blood Lily -> Misery. This expands the optimization nuances the healing Afflatus skills give further, as the lily gauge grows slowly enough that you can sit on lilies until they're needed. It adds only a single button. It makes Fluid Aura potentially do something useful, and brings back upkeep of multiple DoT's with different timers (Dia and the upgraded Aero/Dia should stack).

Obviously there are other options. Further skills that use lilies (if WHM can't have offense raid buffs, defensive/resource management ones or an AoE Esuna would be fine options) are another easy idea. Some benefit, perhaps to future healing actions, gained upon finishing the lily cycle with Misery works too. WHM is supposed to mirror BLM, so give us a similar "flow" that isn't just getting a pseudo-foul maybe once per 90 seconds.

If we need to take potency nerfs for this, fine. If not, I'd expect every other job in the game to get something more as well to compensate, esp. the other healers. And ideally those changes too would be unique options, support, or just something engaging in general. Not "unga bunga, have some potency."

It's not about opposing people in it. It's about not expecting things to be absolutely perfect and taking joy in what you get and you'll be a lot happier with what you got.

I don't believe in acting excited in receiving something sub-par. The game as a whole is great, but the job design and balance, especially for healers, has been suspect for a long time. I don't expect things to be perfect, but I do expect them to be fun. Stormblood had my main job, WHM, boring me in anything short of solo-healing an EX PUG just sloppy enough for me to carry it. Now WHM sits just barely above boring while the other two healers have plunged deep into the ocean of tedium. I'll not settle for "eh, this is fine I guess." I want to be feel like, whether I'm queuing in Savage or Expert Roulette, that I'm going to have room to improve, grow, engage, and thereby have fun on this run.

I can’t speak for Gaethan_Tessula, but I would read his post as saying we should have more dps abilities, not bigger dps numbers. Especially considering that in the post you quoted he was responding to someone talking about how the only move WHM lost was Aero 3, and that SCH and WHM had relatively lost more.

Also, I miss the timing mechanic that allowed us to optimise healing and dps. Ffxiv has never been the same since we lost OG cleric stance. Although I realise that you mean the old “how much can I dps before my team dies” game. It’s fine. It’s why I haven’t stopped playing healer all together. But it’s less fun than what we had before.

As for being happy with what we get? How bad do you think the game would get if no one ever spoke out when something wasn’t working? We complain because we love what this game has given us in the past, and we hope that SE will hear us (if we make enough noise) and make some much needed changes. This expansion made healing less fun (WHM excepted). If we don’t let them know that this is the case, never mind fixing things, they might continue on the same trajectory and make things worse. As they have been doing ever since the aforementioned loss of OG cleric stance. If we do speak up, maybe the game gets better for everyone.

I don’t expect things to be perfect. I just expect them to be no worse than they were before. If they can’t make something better they should leave it alone. I heard one SE employee saying in an interview that they hadn’t messed much with RDM’s old kit, because they wanted to add new options, not take them away. I want that philosophy to apply to us, too.

Pretty much summarizes my thoughts. Expansion after expansion, healers have lost downtime options. WHM even has parts of its healing kit ripped out and given to other healers or resold to us as something "new" 40 levels later. Meanwhile encounter design hasn't stressed healing kits to their max if a group is competent since ARR.

--------------------------------------

This is what I mean about not being proud about being king/queen of the molehill: not being like Dynia and coming into every thread to mock SCH's/AST's. She talks out both sides of her mouth about how WHM needs its hella DPS while telling SCH/AST that healers should heal, and she's hardly the only vindictive WHM main I've seen do that.

We're not that far above the others. We're still one-button hero'ing except maybe 8/36 GCD's in 90 seconds (4x Dia, 3x Solace/Rapture, 1x Misery). Pray that some of the other 28 are required healing GCD's the Afflatus skills didn't cover. One bad set of nerfs and we'll be back at the bottom of the pile, with the healer role overall worse than it used to be.

----------------------------------------

Now, to be perfectly honest, and to be somewhat of a devil's advocate, I can see why the developers and designers chose to homogenize and simplify all three healers' dps toolkits.

Giving healers a dps toolkit that is close to the complexity or depth of an actual dps job's toolkit would only add unnecessary layers of difficulty/stress.

Healers are already stressed enough with the responsibility to look after party members; giving them a dps toolkit that's more complex would make the job harder.

I think what the developers wanted to do was give each healer a dps toolkit that is simple and straightforward with no complicated mechanics. I think the idea is that healers are already dealing with enough that they shouldn't have to deal with complex mechanics/rotations for their dps output. Rather than feel pressured to optimize their dps rotations, I think they want healers to have reliable and simple dps tools to make playing easier.

Just to clarify, I don't necessarily agree with this. I just believe this is what the developers had in mind and therefore explain why things are the way they are with healers right now.

I'm inclined to agree. The dev team has, several times, expressed dissatisfaction with how the community tends to pressure casual players to play like hardcore ones.

I think their solution is deeply flawed. Presently, a lot of DPS players slack through easy content, because there's little penalty besides time for it. I don't see why an expanded healer DPS/buff kit going unused by players who barely have a handle on healing a given instance should be any different.

That said, this reason is DEFINITELY why crowd control is so little utilized in this game. CC is very "pass/fail" and is nigh useless if it isn't required or highly recommended for an encounter, so in choosing between having a potential accessibility hurdle or just not implementing CC the devs choose the latter.

As for myself, I LIKE having responsibility. I like having varied responsibility. FF11 Red Mage and the Enhancer/Healer/Magic Control Shot-Caster I played in SMT IMAGINE are my two favorite jobs/builds I've ever played in an MMO (I liked Runescape more when Spellbook Swap could reliably be used in combat too). Given that SMT IMAGINE was an aggressively mediocre Pay-to-Win MMO besides a few cool factors (like everyone being a pet-user and putting a LOT of weight on keeping buffs/debuffs up), that says a lot.

[Seoulstar]

I'd like class complexity focused on the more support side. SCH has a host of oGCDs along with the fairy and Aetherflow to manage. SCH works healing with precision and control, whereas WHM healing is more about raw healing potency. I find it legitimately fun, the problem is it only surfaces when parties are doing poorly or on big pulls in dungeons. AST has the card minigame which does need some polishing, but on its own can offer the complexity that sets it apart from other healers.

I wouldn't really say it's all that complex. At least not as much as the old cards. You could use the old cards for different situations. The new cards basically is figuring out what seal to use to get the max aoe balance. Which truly isn't all that fun. Honestly, it doesn't need polishing, it needs to be changed. Revert it back or at least not make it to the point that AST is a balance bot.