A summary of healer issues

[ty_taurus]

What makes you think I took it as an attack? I never said I took it as one (a certain SOMEONE'S insistence to the contrary). I'm not even sure why you thought I took it as an attack. I said "Ugh, HOWEVER, so we can ruin this otherwise feel good moment..." not "There you go again, attacking me". I wasn't accusing you of making an attack. I just was enjoying your SGE proposal and then saw you say that and was curious why you were going that line of argument instead.

I never said it was an attack nor that I felt it was an attack (because I didn't think or feel either), I only said it was just ruining an otherwise feel good moment

I mean, saying that you feel I was ruining a feel good moment doesn't exactly make it seem like you saw that post as something pleasant or cordial, nor did expressing doubt that I had made the "what do you want to see more of" question mandatory in an attempt to make the question seem less bias against someone who wants little-to-no adjustments. Quite literally, my thought process was "if I don't make it mandatory, then it's not going to calculate how many people explicitly don't want xyz, because it's going to calculate the percentages based on who voted at least something, not of everyone who hits submit on the whole survey." Like, if I take a look at the white mage survey right now, it lists that 81% of the 116 votes want to see more attacking actions. If I had not made the question mandatory, and a chunk of players who don't want any particular changes didn't vote at all, then that number might read as something like 90% or whatever, which is misleading.

I don't want to include an option for "nothing" because that isn't realistic for a new expansion on a live service game. New attack actions, or the option for mobility actions even, may not be the most likely, especially depending on to what degree, but they are not unrealistic requests. I stand by that the wording of the question right now is not misleading or trying to weight responses toward a specific answer, as the bottom question to fill out what you want to see specifically allows you to specify to what extent you want to see new actions, and you have the option of "other" where you can fill in something like "new spell effects" or "upgrades for existing actions." Having said that, though, the next time I do these surveys, as I mentioned earlier, I will add a checkbox for "upgrades for existing actions" as that will help communicate that information far better than the "other" option. I didn't realize when I made the surveys how unhelpful the "other" option is in terms of collecting information since I haven't used google forms like this before. The information could be clearer, but it's not inherently bias toward any specific response.

The irony to me is that if their goal is to make things totally accessible, they've gone completely the wrong way about it.

While I do agree Cleric was a cancer and some of the DPS kits were probably a bit more than they should be, the most confusing thing for new healers that I've noticed is that they don't know the difference between GCDs and oGCDs, as the game doesn't explain it at all. The convoluted way some actions work with other actions or not ("healing actions" vs "healing magic" boosting effects, for example), is another one.

It's weird they leave those things in that are unintuitive, that the game doesn't explain, and that make a MASSIVE difference in the output of the player - if you follow ABC and weave oGCDs instead of casting them stand alone as if they were separate abilities, you already will easily get a Blue or better in general content like 4 mans or 24 mans where you're being compared against the whole player base; not to mention DoTs, which are something that new/average players often let fall off and forget to refresh, or worse, spam multiple times - while supposedly trying to make things more accommodating and accessible.

Something that MrHappy has talked about many times to my knowledge is wanting a "Hall of the Intermediate" that could better teach players the nuances of combat like the difference between GCDs and OGCDs, and I agree with that. I think that would be a very positive change. Take a page out of more modern gaming tutorials like Hi-Fi Rush, and have the player control an NPC like how we do during certain MSQ instances that are either a tank, healer, melee, ranged, or caster depending on what is selected by the player, and not only would the game teach you things like the difference between GCD and OGCD actions and weaving, but you can get into more nuance things like on healers how your standard heals are great for emergencies, but cooldowns you get throughout the course of the game will improve your ability to heal while conserving MP and freeing up your GCD for other purposes. Melee would teach you how to read an enemy's hitbox for positionals--how you can see on their hitbox if positionals matter and where to identify what the flank is and the rear (also what the word "flank" means because not everyone seems to actually know). Tanks learn about cleaves and the importance of facing players away as well as interject. Ranged also learn about interject, and Caster teaches you that slidecasting is a thing. The game gives you a set of tools on this NPC character and has you use them in a specific way to see how things flow and then has you try it out on you in your job synched up to level 50, and points to specific actions it wants you to use.

Then, in order to encourage people to do the hall of the novice and hall of the intermediate, I think they could attach a mount to completing the hall of the intermediate on all roles, and also, whenever mogtome events roll around, you're rewarded for redoing 1 role in the hall of the intermediate with a large sum of mogtomes, like 30-50 tomes to get you started on the event, depending on how long the hall of the intermediate ends up taking. This encourages players to also refresh their memory and polish their understanding of gameplay nuance without forcing them to do it.