A summary of healer issues

[ty_taurus]

And yet here we are discussing why there aren't Healers doing Ultimates. So where is this "Great Many"? For someone so quick to call out everyone else for hyperbole, you seem very keen to do the same in your argument. For how limited the sample data from Ty's survey are, there seems to be an overwhelming number that support my claim on what is fun for a healer. They want more DPS actions, utility/support options that are NOT just another oGCD healing spell or any healing abilities at all for that matter. At least with other MMOs, Healers were given buffs to maintain or resources to manage but FFXIV can't be arsed to even give you that much to do.

Despite my enjoyment of doing Savage content, I stopped doing it because Healers are dogwater to play. I could go on my MNK and do those fights but I don't get that same level of enjoyment that I did when I was playing my healer back in the day. I'm sure other healers have similar reasons or have already cleared the fights and just have no interest in going back to them as a healer because the fun of learning the fight is gone. Hell, it could just be because we're in a content lull and everyone is just not logging in as often as they used to. Whatever the case may be, however, it's not going to really get any better if nothing is addressed but given Yoshi-P's response in the recent interviews, I am highly doubtful anything is going to change for the better.

Something else worth mentioning is that not all of the responses I receive on the healing end are scored low, and there are many examples of players scoring the healers higher, or at least in the 7/10 vicinity, that are still asking for more attack options. It's a little difficult to read through longer answers here, but if you check out the data tabs, you can also see what individual scorers are asking for more of or less of.

[ForsakenRoe]

Probably because a lot of healers, even ones who want 'healers should heal' style design, would be up for having Purgation from PVP in their kit for example. 'Big laser go ftwooom' is a cool feeling even for someone who 'doesn't want to do damage', like they could attach 'party wide regen' to it like it has in PVP and it'd be considered both a damage and healing tool. Does anyone who 'hates how healers are forced to do damage' have an issue with Pneuma's damage conditional?

[Deceptus]

Does anyone who 'hates how healers are forced to do damage' have an issue with Pneuma's damage conditional?

Or assize? Or Earthly Star / Macrocosmos? Oddly enough, SCH is the only healer role who doesn't have an offensive AoE damage ability outside of their main AoE Spell.

[Renathras]

And yet here we are discussing why there aren't Healers doing Ultimates. So where is this "Great Many"?

In simple terms?

Not playing Ultimate and/or not looking for groups for Ultimate.

Also "great many" isn't hyperbole. The majority of the playerbase are casuals doing casual content, where there's no great shortage of Healers. Tank is still AIN almost all the time outside of 24 mans (which only have 3 Tank slots to fill), where it's often DPS (DPS are also frequently AIN for Trials for whatever reason, but I've noticed Trial ques are almost instant no matter what role I que for them as...)

The long form Reddit survey had a lot of people saying they really wanted more healing requirements from the encounters, not more damage, they would just accept more damage as a band-aid fix, but it wasn't their first choice/desired outcome. Not sure about the majority on Ty's, though a lot said they want more support actions, not more DPS actions.

In fact, what I noticed the most from the long forum Reddit responses were people saying they DID want another DPS ability or two, but wanted them to be situational, not part of a standard rotation or used on CD situation.

The other part of the answer is this:

Hell, it could just be because we're in a content lull and everyone is just not logging in as often as they used to.

We're in a content lull. Most people that wanted to do the content (Ultimate, Savage, even Ex5) have already done it to death and are waiting for the next content drop. This isn't just Healers, this is also true of Tanks and DPSers.

Something else worth mentioning is that not all of the responses I receive on the healing end are scored low, and there are many examples of players scoring the healers higher, or at least in the 7/10 vicinity, that are still asking for more attack options. It's a little difficult to read through longer answers here, but if you check out the data tabs, you can also see what individual scorers are asking for more of or less of.

Probably because a lot of healers, even ones who want 'healers should heal' style design, would be up for having Purgation from PVP in their kit for example. 'Big laser go ftwooom' is a cool feeling even for someone who 'doesn't want to do damage', like they could attach 'party wide regen' to it like it has in PVP and it'd be considered both a damage and healing tool. Does anyone who 'hates how healers are forced to do damage' have an issue with Pneuma's damage conditional?

The most frequent request for WHM seems to be Aero 3. Purgation as an upgrade to Misery would be hilarious, though. I do love hitting Purgation in PvP. Much more than stupid Seraph Strike, anyway, which is just "I want Protect and Cure 3 and have to put up with this button not just being the thing I actually want". I think Seraph is the button I use the least in PvP and the first one I'd change. Honestly I'd tie it's effect to Misery. Get rid of the dumb gap closer - seriously, who thought "healer runs into melee" was a smart idea??

[Silver-Strider]

The long form Reddit survey had a lot of people saying they really wanted more healing requirements from the encounters, not more damage, they would just accept more damage as a band-aid fix, but it wasn't their first choice/desired outcome. Not sure about the majority on Ty's, though a lot said they want more support actions, not more DPS actions.

The long and biased one that you made you mean because those questions are loaded heavily to fit your narrative more than anything else.
In terms of Ty's survey, only AST got the majority of Support votes, whereas SCH, SGE and WHM are more in favor of DPS actions being added, with Support being 2nd. So let me explain metrics here, when 75% of the Healer classes are requesting more DPS actions over support actions, DPS actions are the MAJORITY, not the minority.

Tank is still AIN almost all the time outside of 24 mans

Using AIN as a metric for any argument about the current state of the game is laughable. That has been tailored towards Tanks regards of what role is actually in need but whether or not they actually get an instant queue nowadays is much more hit or miss now more than ever.Hell, I'm online right now, with Tank AIN on Expert Roulette and I queued as my PLD and didn't get in for 5 minutes. I switched to my Healer and that popped instantly. It means nothing.

[Semirhage]

This just in: whether your job interacts with the content you do in any meaningful way is fun or not is all down to "interpretation". This is what we call "sophistry". We're playing this thing called a "game". Which is a thing that has interacting with it as one of its properties. We get it. Skill ceilings bad. Interaction bad. Managing anything bad. Medica spam good. Glare spam good. Best design ever.

There's this other thing called a "movie", which doesn't require interaction.

[ty_taurus]

On a small tangent, I've been working on a different Sage rework concept lately that I'm feeling really happy with if anyone wants to take a look at this document. I'm trying to add as much information as possible to what's different and what the logic is behind certain things with highlighting and footnotes, so I hope it's nice and readable. May turn sharing off in the future if I go back and play with things some more, but I think there's a lot of promise in something like this.

[Nizzi]

We're in a content lull. Most people that wanted to do the content (Ultimate, Savage, even Ex5) have already done it to death and are waiting for the next content drop. This isn't just Healers, this is also true of Tanks and DPSers.

Huh? TOP is still on content, it came out this patch. It does not qualify as dead content. If people are having trouble recruiting healers for it, it is for other reasons, not because people have 'done it to death'. Most people attempting TOP still have not cleared.

[Renathras]

The long and biased one that you made you mean because those questions are loaded heavily to fit your narrative more than anything else.

Uh...the first three questions were made by Ty. The only change I made was adding the 4th question so we could see how far people would go in adding more damage rotation, and making the first questions less biased (his original ones were biased) by allowing both answers. Instead of "Do you dislike healers? If you don't hate them, please justify why you don't hate them" with "Do you like/dislike healers? Can you explain your perspective there?", which was me removing bias, not adding bias.

This means if you think they were biased, you must think Ty's survey is biased, while you're using it for your data point. The initial iteration (though he may have changed it) REQUIRED you to answer something under "What would you add?", so people who don't really want anything added had to pick something, and a lot picked the top option (add DPS abilities). So it's funny you cite a more biased survey to try and discount a less biased one, and when the core questions of the less biased one were written by the same guy. XD

This is why ad hominem (attack on the person instead of the argument) fallacies are bad...

I should also further note Ty was the one who pointed out - to which I agreed - in the Healer survey thread, no less, that the results of any survey we put here or on Reddit would be against Healers as they are and in favor of more damage abilities since that's what players dissatisfied with the current state of Healers (who are the more likely to frequent message boards to talk/complain about what they dislike) would say. So we already acknowledged from the jump that the results were going to be biased towards "Healers right now are bad/need changing/need more DPS buttons".

Using AIN as a metric for any argument about the current state of the game is laughable.

Ah, right.

So in the same post you accuse me of having a biased survey despite the questions originating from Ty (I only made them neutral by allowing both like/dislike), you attack me for using the only semi-available metric we have to determine whether there are actually shortages or not, with your source that it's wrong being..."Trust me, bro"?

This just in: whether your job interacts with the content you do in any meaningful way is fun or not is all down to "interpretation".

This will literally always be true, yes. Moreover, "interacts with the content you do in any meaningful way"? Define that EXPLICITLY. Because that's probably also down to interpretation based on what the player finds meaningful. It's not "sophistry" (ad hominem fallacy again) to point out that fun is subjective.

Seriously, I'll ask you this question:

Do you think fun is NOT subjective?

If I say something that is fun TO ME, you think that it WILL be fun TO EVERYONE ELSE because to suggest it wouldn't be is "sophistry"?

Annnd the rest of your post is the usual hysterical hyperbolic lying about what I even have suggested is good, so I won't bother responding to any of that. I absolutely love (/sarcasm) how you get so many upvotes for demonstrably lying. I didn't realize so many people like lies.

I guess as long as they're lies that agree with them/attack someone they disagree with. I can definitely believe THAT is true. While I do wish people would stop upvoting posts that amount to "personal attack with added outright lies", if that's really the kind of people you want to be, by all means, go for it. It doesn't exactly increase your credibility, though. But hey, you do you.

Seriously, I bet if I made another account, posted that Healers suck and need more DPS abilities, and then outright lied about my positions (attacking the Renathras account), even with COMPLETE lies, you guys would upvote those comments, lol

Huh? TOP is still on content, it came out this patch. It does not qualify as dead content. If people are having trouble recruiting healers for it, it is for other reasons, not because people have 'done it to death'. Most people attempting TOP still have not cleared.

I meant Savage and older Ultimates.

For TOP specifically, you have the issue that people still progging it already have people they're working on it with, so they aren't in the pool of people to recruit much. That is, they're "already taken". And TOP is a few months old. It's current patch, but the people who really REALLY wanted to clear it likely either have already or have a group they've been working with to do so for a few months already (again, not in the recruit pool).

[ty_taurus]

The initial iteration (though he may have changed it) REQUIRED you to answer something under "What would you add?"

Can you cite a job that did not receive any new actions of any kind at the release of one of the past expansions?

EDIT: Also, the reason why I wanted to require answers was specifically so that percentages took into consideration those who did not want xyz. If you could skip that question, then it would seem like the requests for more attack buttons would be even higher. I did it specifically for your benefit actually, so that the desire to see more attack options wasn't being exaggerated by a lack of votes. You voting "other" and not hitting "more attack options" reduces the total percentage of players choosing that option.