A summary of healer issues

[AnotherPerson]

Alternatively, we could have something like High Materia, which you can only have ONE of per job, and you can only meld it on the weapon (they're unique to each job, unless you want to remeld your chest every time you want to omnitank). And these High Materia (make like 4 of them per job) have unique effects on your skills, ala traits. Nothing too crazy, just 'the heal from Sheltron is increased by 150 (total goes from 1000 to 1600)', or 'the Gauge cost of Cover is reduced to 0', or 'the base% mitigation of Intervention is increased from 10% to 15%', idk. I could probably come up with 3 or 4 of these for each job, and keep them to being 'not throughput focused' because if one of them is 'X move does more damage' then that one's the insta-locked one, no deviation allowed. With them all being small utility/defensive/etc stuff as above, then the choice becomes 'do you want these effects, or do you want 36 more crit', and some people probably would want the tiny crit boost, but a lot of people would go for a unique effect, because it might allow for better DPS gains than that crit boost. Like, maybe the ones for SGE can be 'Kardia heals are reduced from 170 to 100, but each Kardia proc triggered now applies a Haima layer for 100 potency (stacks up to 5)', 'Kardia's potency increased from 170 to 250', and 'Pneuma has 2 charges'.

Honestly, if they gave us variant build paths, that would be so much cooler and fun. It will also mean they have to put looser fight designs - which actually would not be so bad in terms of giving players unique ways to approach the fight with the way they want to play, but make a headache in design. ... Not that it's much of an issue at any rate with how stagnant job design has been as of late all having to fit into a 120 second mold and barely any variation to gameplay... Bozja and Eureka has actually shown stuff like deep essences can work, and materia can be a more simpler version of this.

I would not be against that if we can get some whacky combinations going and open up new possibilities. I figure if that's the route they want to take, effect materia slots can be more varied, but have to be weaker in comparison to not deviate too much from existing paths to make them all work. All materia will also be incompatible at lower levels, which can prove to be a bigger headache when doing lower level content synced down at some future expansion unless materia effects are also synced down as well.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'd imagine that if they were to do something like this, it'd be 'not necessary' in terms of balance. That is, it's possible to clear the fight without any of those effects active, they're just 'a nice little bonus'. Maybe Ultimate and Week 1 Savage would require 'one of them', but not 'a specific one tailored to the fight's design', you know? If one's 'necessary' from a balance perspective, then there's no choice to be made, and the point of the system falls apart. Of course, one or another will be 'the best' for a certain fight, that's just how maths goes. But as long as each of the effects has it's place, then there's potential. As an additional example, let's take those SGE examples from before. Now, we also have a WHM cohealer, who has the choices of 'Thin Air now affects the next 3 spells instead of 1', 'Each cast of Stone or Holy reduces the CD of Tetragrammaton by 1 second, and Misery reduces it by 5 seconds', and 'Lilybell's CD is reduced to 60s, and no longer suffers the potency penalty for early detonation, however it now only has 3 charges instead of 5'. (again, crap off the cuff examples)

So now you have options. If you're the SGE (and the WHM is actually communicating), you can coordinate stuff so you don't overlap. You as the SGE are probably better suited for Tank Babysitting because Kardia automatically handles that to an extent, and WHM would have to lose a GCD if they wanted to put up regen. Therefore, you coordinate that you, the SGE, would take 'Kardia also applies a layered shield', and then the WHM is free to focus more on raidwide healing with something like the Lilybell changeup. On the flipside, maybe the enrage is absolutely disgusting amounts of constant damage pulsing out, so you instead both come to the decision that the WHM will handle the tanks through the fight by doing big Glare Gaming, and taking advantage of the extra Tetra casts they can get from that, whereas you as the SGE will be taking the double Pneuma effectPepsis perk for the constant raidwide healing, since you'd be forced to spend almost every GCD on shields at that point anyway. And later, when you get more gear, you can work out that 'oh hey, we don't need as much healing/shielding for the enrage cos of gear, so the SGE can swap to AOE Kardia perk if they want (or they can stay on Pepsis perk for safety)'

You know, stuff like that. The tanks would get a similar thing to the healers, a communication between them on what each will take, to enhance their interplay with the other. Stuff like a DRK taking more mit they can throw to their WAR ally, and the WAR in turn boosting the selfhealing power of Nascent to help the DRK (who naturally has a little less selfhealing power comparatively). Or, better yet, ways for certain nonWAR tanks to reduce the CD on their invulns, so that WAR doesn't get to monopolise the 'I can invuln an extra TB and noone else can' thing, but it comes at a cost for the other tanks as they're giving up their 'High Materia' trait to be able to do what WAR naturally can. Meanwhile, the WAR can just laugh it off, and take something else that feeds their ego even more, like, idk 'Each time the WAR uses Storm's Path/Eye, Equilibrium's CD is reduced by 2 seconds'.

The hard part is the DPS. Like, we can't give them damage because then one of them is 'the right one' instantly. So wtf do we do for the role who's entire job is 'damage'? IDK if they'd be too thrilled if it was just random utility stuff, like a BRD choosing between buffs to Minne, Paean or Troubadour. But it could be cool to have something like, 'Peloton now works in combat, but it has a 120s CD', so you could theoretically get the sprint effect without a SCH, but the advantage is that the SCH has it natively and therefore doesn't need to 'waste a slot' to get it, y'know?

Edit: Im an actual muppet why didn't I think of this sooner, instead of the 'Kardia flat potency is increased' boring ass one from before for SGE, change it to 'Kardia affects all allies within 20y of the Kardia'd target, but now heals for only 75 potency instead of 170', a partywide gradual healing as you DPS, at the cost of the throughput of regular Kardia. With my gear (bis), Kardia heals me for about 4k, with the reduction to 75p, it'd be 1.8k ish on the party. If that's too much, well, adjust numbers as needed for 'balance' I guess

Edit2: Also scratch the 2 Pneuma charges idea cos that's boring as hell too, change it to my Pepsis Shakeup idea from a few days ago

[GrimGale]

So, when I think of "interactivity", I think of something different -- I think of Black Mage. In normal mode content, even as a casual, it's possible to end up in various recognizable "failure" states. For example:

• You greed in Astral Fire a bit too much, the timer drops to zero, and all of a sudden, you realize you're at zero MP and can't easily get into Umbral Ice.
• You transition from Umbral Ice to Astral Fire, only to notice that you forgot about Umbral Hearts.
• You got distracted by mechanics and let Enochian drop right before generating a Polyglot stack.

There's this definite feeling that it matters what buttons get pushed when and which order. Which is to say, there's some sort of interaction happening, even if it's not always literally "push this button to modify this other button."

In that same normal mode content, I can't say I feel the same for White Mage or Scholar. (I don't touch Sage or Astrologian, so I won't comment on them.) There are no real failure states that come to mind.* And beyond that...

I routinely forget that Fey Union exists, so it makes no difference to me that there are buttons that feed the fairy gauge. Dissipation just feels bad to me, which means I don't push it, so asking whether it interacts with my kit is like asking whether a tree falling in a forest with no around makes a sound. When (or if) I push Temperance and Plenery Indulgence generally feels irrelevant. There's nothing to make me feel bad about overcapping on lillies.

*True, when I push Swiftcast and Thin Air matters, but it's always before Raise, and this is so rote that it fails to register as a "real" interaction.

I'm interested in the interactivity within a job's kit because it seemed the players largely enjoyed the PvP healer rework. Many in this forum praised the PvP design for healers for its level of simplicity (Having fewer skills), and abundant interactivity with itself, which granted the jobs an distinct and engaging gameplay.

I'm not a PvP player but I was tempted to try the new skill sets back when they were new and they felt really cohesive and interesting. Ofc the mindset is different in PvP than it is in PvE. We have a different focus regarding our role and our skills were changed accordingly. We can no longer spam heal our allies, instead we were given limited healing or shielding resources so as to not make PvP fights drag forever-

Still, I wonder how much the proportion of skill interactivity has changed within the kits when compared to PVE skill sets.

[ty_taurus]

What I want is for the healing role to be treated with the same respects as the tank role. Tank players have modest DPS rotations, yes? And they have to multitask a lot. It's not just pressing mitigation tools, which isn't actually as simple as it sounds since, especially in harder cases, specific mitigation tools are important for specific situations just like with healer cooldowns, but tank players are also responsible for boss positioning (which has admittedly gotten easier with how much bosses teleport to the center of the room) and have entire mechanics that really only matters for them. P8S for example has the auto attack and Tyrant's Unholy Darkness. 95% of that mechanic is exclusively something that tanks engage with. Many DPS and healer players don't even know how to resolve those mechanics if they were in the tank's shoes. All the healer needs to do is heal the tank up after, which is probably the easiest healing requirement in the entire fight because there's nothing happening outside of those, as well as Flameviper mechanics in part 1.

What I mentally, literally cannot comprehend is why this is acceptable, but healers being treated the exact same way is "miserable" and "too much to focus on."

[Elucesta]

Personally I don't think Sage is that bad for someone to warrant a rework of it.

[Zeastria]

In my attempts to try and redirect the conversation on the other thread here since it's turning into the age-old argument about the healer coddling...



What I want is for the healing role to be treated with the same respects as the tank role. Tank players have modest DPS rotations, yes? And they have to multitask a lot. It's not just pressing mitigation tools, which isn't actually as simple as it sounds since, especially in harder cases, specific mitigation tools are important for specific situations just like with healer cooldowns, but tank players are also responsible for boss positioning (which has admittedly gotten easier with how much bosses teleport to the center of the room) and have entire mechanics that really only matters for them. P8S for example has the auto attack and Tyrant's Unholy Darkness. 95% of that mechanic is exclusively something that tanks engage with. Many DPS and healer players don't even know how to resolve those mechanics if they were in the tank's shoes. All the healer needs to do is heal the tank up after, which is probably the easiest healing requirement in the entire fight because there's nothing happening outside of those, as well as Flameviper mechanics in part 1.

What I mentally, literally cannot comprehend is why this is acceptable, but healers being treated the exact same way is "miserable" and "too much to focus on."

Can you please remove my Quote.... I get it- veteran players finds the game dumbed down and easy.. i too would felt the same if i had those yrs of experience..
but alas i have only played for 4 months..

Solution that would work for both parts: They could rework some of the jobs into more advanced/complex to please those who seek more advaced job..
but they need to keep some easy for us new players.. as we actually have to learn eveyrthing from zero...(not just the job itself)

[ty_taurus]

Can you please remove my Quote.... I get it- veteran players finds the game dumbed down and easy.. i too would felt the same if i had those yrs of experience..
but alas i have only played for 4 months..

Solution that would work for both parts: They could rework some of the jobs into more advanced/complex to please those who seek more advaced job..
but they need to keep some easy for us new players.. as we actually have to learn eveyrthing from zero...(not just the job itself)

I actually will argue that a healer rework that addresses many of the concerns veteran players have with healer design would actually make it easier for players like you to learn and get better, not harder. For example, many of your standard healing spells that you learn early tend to be the fall-back solutions when things get messy in a battle, but they're also your worst healing tools that drop your offensive momentum and chew through your MP despite being "safety nets" that can always be cast. I would want to see basic heals cost no MP at all, have stronger conditional attributes, and have shortened cast times. Additionally, I don't understand why there's this perception that if healers get more attacks, the novice to intermediate healer population will some how become incapable of clearing content when 95% of content in this game can be cleared without healers DPSing at all.

[Zeastria]

I actually will argue that a healer rework that addresses many of the concerns veteran players have with healer design would actually make it easier for players like you to learn and get better, not harder. For example, many of your standard healing spells that you learn early tend to be the fall-back solutions when things get messy in a battle, but they're also your worst healing tools that drop your offensive momentum and chew through your MP despite being "safety nets" that can always be cast. I would want to see basic heals cost no MP at all, have stronger conditional attributes, and have shortened cast times. Additionally, I don't understand why there's this perception that if healers get more attacks, the novice to intermediate healer population will some how become incapable of clearing content when 95% of content in this game can be cleared without healers DPSing at all.

My biggest issue with more advaced dps rotations is the fact that there is so many buttons and it's impossible to keybind all ..let alone get good feel when using said keybinds.
(Makeing the dps skills change after use can be an solution..as it would not req more space...)..

I pref 3-4 buttons as healer..mostly bc i hate jobs/classes in mmos that has many skills ( more skills does not = more fun,harder--it's just a bother)..
In ffxiv we do have 3-4 buttons BUT they have limited use;
- Like you can only use aoe when there is 3+mobs..
- The dot ability... becomes useless if targets dies quick(would be more useful if aoe-dot)..
That's why you're left with only 1 ability to spam..
More DPS button to press wouldnt solve that core issue..it wil only force you to press more meaningless buttons..

[ty_taurus]

My biggest issue with more advaced dps rotations is the fact that there is so many buttons and it's impossible to keybind all ..let alone get good feel when using said keybinds.
(Makeing the dps skills change after use can be an solution..as it would not req more space...)..

I pref 3-4 buttons as healer..mostly bc i hate jobs/classes in mmos that has many skills ( more skills does not = more fun,harder--it's just a bother)..
In ffxiv we do have 3-4 buttons BUT they have limited use;
- Like you can only use aoe when there is 3+mobs..
- The dot ability... becomes useless if targets dies quick(would be more useful if aoe-dot)..
That's why you're left with only 1 ability to spam..
More DPS button to press wouldnt solve that core issue..it wil only force you to press more meaningless buttons..

Can you define for me what a "meaningless" button is? If you don't know what a new button even does, how can you describe it as "meaningless?"

Also, if you find the need to use different skills as bothersome, that sounds more like you just aren't a fan of MMO gameplay? Would every job be better, in your opinion, if it was just 1 button like a hack-and-slash game?

Also, a rework to the healing role doesn't necessarily means adding buttons and not compiling existing ones.

[Zeastria]

Can you define for me what a "meaningless" button is? If you don't know what a new button even does, how can you describe it as "meaningless?"

Also, if you find the need to use different skills as bothersome, that sounds more like you just aren't a fan of MMO gameplay? Would every job be better, in your opinion, if it was just 1 button like a hack-and-slash game?

Also, a rework to the healing role doesn't necessarily means adding buttons and not compiling existing ones.

Meaningless buttons are:
-Exist only to create more buttons to press( but doesnt have further use or impact beyond that)
-Botton that are very similar to one another... Why have 3 abilites that is roughly the same.. but with diff dmg/cd?
-Situational based buttons: the type of skills you will forget you have, bc of how rare you use them..

Differnt abilites is not itself bothersome..
but it does become an issue when they become to many..
and often time many skills = many of the same skill.