A summary of healer issues

[Recon1o6]

Generally how quickly you get bored of healing in this game is directly correlated to the length of time till you either 1. get downed and notice the tank doesnt need you or 2. You notice you don't actually press your new healing buttons much.

[Rilifane]

I'm curious why ty's post is considered a wall of salt.
Just because a poster decided to delete their post with "meh"? You do realize that sometimes people are just sensitive and don't act in a mature way and someone else instantly back-paddling or maybe even taking it personal doesn't mean it was a personal insult. And statements like "I'm just dumb and don't understand it" is something that could be a pointer that someone already came in with insecurities.

Ty simply stated that it comes down to mastery, the better you get at healing, the less you panic and feel you need to heal. Which is true. There is no salt or insult in this, it's simply a fact. The first time you see HP bars dropping, you may panic and instantly heal everyone to full. Probably also after the 4th and 5th time but there comes a day when you saw the damage pattern, know it's not urgent and calmly go about your business.
It's not arrogant or salty to say that you have reached a certain level of gameplay where damage just isn't threatening.
And stating that it's important that a role is approachable for novice healers is the opposite of what you accuse them of and there is nothing salty or wrong about wanting to keep that while still giving people that reached higher levels of gameplay more room for improvement without forcing it on novice healers.

If someone feels like they got insulted, chased off or hit with a wall of salt by a pretty professional and neutral explaination why many vet healers are so bored with the role then that is not on the poster but on them. There wasn't a single insult, passive-aggressiveness, disingenuity, salt, accusation or anything that could be interpreted as putting someone down or wanting to ruin their experience.
Would you have really thought they got "chased off by a wall of salt" if it was someone else posting it than ty?

They said they don't understand the issue, ty tried to explain it. What were they supposed to say?
"Glad you're having fun, keep enjoying it! I'll not explain our issues to spare your feelings"?

[ty_taurus]

The original poster took down their post before I finished writing mine. It was already gone when I posted, so it wasn't even a reaction to what I wrote.

For the record, I have no problems deleting the quote from the poster if they ask. It seemed more like they decided it wasn't worth engaging in the discussion given the "meh" left over.

[Recon1o6]

From what I read of that poster, it seemed they wanted to say something related to healer jobs being rightfully seen as awful by long term healers but wasn't sure what point they were trying to make.
I've done it myself in a couple of renathras' spammed threads. Was about to make a point but decided it wasnt worth it and didn't bother posting for various reasons.

I disagree with Ty on a few things, but his reply here wasnt one of them. There's enough healers here to call him out for being a dick or be wrong if either were the case since he's one of the more mild mannered folk here and tends to provide evidence where required.

[ty_taurus]

From what I read of that poster, it seemed they wanted to say something related to healer jobs being rightfully seen as awful by long term healers but wasn't sure what point they were trying to make.
I've done it myself in a couple of renathras' spammed threads. Was about to make a point but decided it wasnt worth it and didn't bother posting for various reasons.

I disagree with Ty on a few things, but his reply here wasnt one of them. There's enough healers here to call him out for being a dick or be wrong if either were the case since he's one of the more mild mannered folk here and tends to provide evidence where required.

That could be a nice change of pace conversation to dive into. What parts do you disagree with?

[Recon1o6]

That could be a nice change of pace conversation to dive into. What parts do you disagree with?

Astrologian mainly. For example, in another thread you brought up Sage being very challenging sharlayan discipline and astro be on the simpler side due to cards.

In case you forgot, Astrologian too, is a challenging sharlayan discipline. The "easy" version of it is the one ishgard uses which is concerned only with the dragonstar.


Sage's challenge should be from managing eukrasia if we were to stick to lore. The other reason its tricky is just how tricky nouliths are to use. Meanwhile Astro's challenge in lore comes from its spells (time dilation for example) and the fact you need to be good at both physics and observing/interpretating natural phenomena. Especially now one of your primary reference points dropped on etheirys


reallyy though no healer has an excuse in lore to not have a high skill ceiling

[ty_taurus]

Astrologian mainly. For example, in another thread you brought up Sage being very challenging sharlayan discipline and astro be on the simpler side due to cards.

In case you forgot, Astrologian too, is a challenging sharlayan discipline. The "easy" version of it is the one ishgard uses which is concerned only with the dragonstar.


Sage's challenge should be from managing eukrasia if we were to stick to lore. The other reason its tricky is just how tricky nouliths are to use. Meanwhile Astro's challenge in lore comes from its spells (time dilation for example) and the fact you need to be good at both physics and observing/interpretating natural phenomena. Especially now one of your primary reference points dropped on etheirys


reallyy though no healer has an excuse in lore to not have a high skill ceiling

Oh, I don't necessarily believe AST should be simple per say, but rather designed to appeal to players who want a more support-focused playstyle by having their GCD rotation involve setting up and activating their buffs, and in order to both function in solo content (and be fun) and to stay competitive with the other healers, the act of setting up and detonating these buffs would generate a stacking resource. When you attack, one is consumed to deal Malefic potency damage, and you can also pass these stacks over to other players to detonate for you. In solo play, you'd have a rotation of setting up your own buffs, then quickly bursting down enemies with effectively double potency Malefics. I do believe every healer should have room for optimization.

[Recon1o6]

snip

Hard agree on the room for optimising. I won't dispute that, even as someone who thinks parses etc are dumb. (I see skill expression more of executing mechanics consistently and adjusting your rotation accordingly to maintain uptime rather than chasing perfect numbers through greed and overgearing)

As someone who likes support though, I don't think GCD cards is a good idea from a fun or rotational standpoints.

Fun wise, there's a flat number of gcds per minute. By turning the cards gcd, this limits what options you have for spells which is the issue with all healers- lack of damage spells. Astrologian would still end up having a very dull rotation of Draw-Navigate to target-Play card-malefic-malefic etc since all your stacks will be detonated by malefic as you said.
Or if they are detonated by other players...your still spamming malefic when not using cards since someone's nicked your stacks


On rotation- This would also have the problem on controller of extreme APM scrolling through the party list depending on what card you draw no matter if its teh current invisible cards, or the previous fun cards. Not everyone will have the idea or hotbar space for a macro to every player. Assuming your rotation involves more cards than before that is to set up the various buffs.
Too few cards and you're stuck casting malefic, too many and you easily get a repeat of 5.0-5.3 Ast issues.

[ForsakenRoe]

I wonder if the issue with GCD cards is how often (or not, as it is) we actually play them. Like, imagine for a second, if there was a system that used the deck of sixty. Every, say, 15s, you Draw a card from that minor deck (OGCD), and Play (GCD) it as a replacement for that particular Malefic. Would it feel 'less bad' if that GCD was more often, or would it be worse?

I did see a post a long time ago, of someone having an idea for something like this. Might even be you Taurus, since it involved 'star that is equal to Malefic potency' in a way. But it was a GCD that applied 5 stacks to an ally, that empower the next 5 Weaponskills or Spells with (potency value) extra damage, scaling off of the AST's stats instead of the target. With the example given, it was like, Malefic is 250, and these 5 stacks are 60 each, so totalling 300, making it a gain to use them over Malefic. Malefic would keep a place, as 'the thing you use when you can't apply more stacks' (4man content or solo for example). But is it 'more interesting' to change from 'cast Malefic on the boss' to 'rotate buff skill across 5 players', it'd be almost the same, just you have to keep retargetting who you're aiming at. Then again, it's undeniably a 'buff focused playstyle' so surely it'd appeal to those players who want to 'support' but without directly doing damage. And there'd presumably be ways to add extra 'stars' via other actions as a way to make them damage neutral

I'm not sure if you're aiming for 'AST blows buffs on self during downtime to prep more stars for when boss comes back after High Concept', I assume the CDs on things would discourage that kind of behavior

[ty_taurus]

I wonder if the issue with GCD cards is how often (or not, as it is) we actually play them. Like, imagine for a second, if there was a system that used the deck of sixty. Every, say, 15s, you Draw a card from that minor deck (OGCD), and Play (GCD) it as a replacement for that particular Malefic. Would it feel 'less bad' if that GCD was more often, or would it be worse?

I did see a post a long time ago, of someone having an idea for something like this. Might even be you Taurus, since it involved 'star that is equal to Malefic potency' in a way. But it was a GCD that applied 5 stacks to an ally, that empower the next 5 Weaponskills or Spells with (potency value) extra damage, scaling off of the AST's stats instead of the target. With the example given, it was like, Malefic is 250, and these 5 stacks are 60 each, so totalling 300, making it a gain to use them over Malefic. Malefic would keep a place, as 'the thing you use when you can't apply more stacks' (4man content or solo for example). But is it 'more interesting' to change from 'cast Malefic on the boss' to 'rotate buff skill across 5 players', it'd be almost the same, just you have to keep retargetting who you're aiming at. Then again, it's undeniably a 'buff focused playstyle' so surely it'd appeal to those players who want to 'support' but without directly doing damage. And there'd presumably be ways to add extra 'stars' via other actions as a way to make them damage neutral

I'm not sure if you're aiming for 'AST blows buffs on self during downtime to prep more stars for when boss comes back after High Concept', I assume the CDs on things would discourage that kind of behavior

Sounds like something someone else may have bounced off the idea. I think I remember someone doing that before. But I agree, the thing that keeps circling around in my mind on how to make it work is ensuring that you're using the cards often. You touched on the concept not so long ago when I brought up each card can only be used once per "hand" so you can just balance balance balance, and you'd have effects like:

Balance is a 5% damage buff
Spear is a 5% crit buff
Arrow is a 5% DH buff
Spire is a 5% Det buff

but if Bole and Ewer are supportive, those are only needed as much as the fight demands, which creates an issue even if the design enforces each card to be used once per rotation. I really want to move away from them all being a flat DPS buff, and even if they're different variations of damage, there's at least some nuance to that and certain jobs benefit more from certain types of buffs. There are definitely ways to make it work, but it's just really tricky to find the goldilocks answer. If I really dedicated a day to beating out the ideas, I'm sure I could figure something out, but at the end of the day, it's really just about communicating the general ideas.