A summary of healer issues

[Kabooa]

So, by itself, "anything that can be reduced should be reduced" is not a useful design principle.

I disagree.

I will point out reduce doesn't mean remove. Reducing button bloat doesn't mean we have to remove actions.

However, when adding actions, we shouldn't be adding them in a manner that increases button bloat. This way lies madness, because there is a hard limit to what is a reasonable expectation for individuals to be able to map and utilize. This is why keeping button count down but finding ways to increase action number and depth is important.

This is why if an action must take up a valuable button slot, it should be because it is a unique action that couldn't have been implemented in any other way - at least not yet.

It's why "anything that can be reduced should be reduced." is perfectly valid as a design principle. Weapon combos? Give the option for one button. Conditionals? Design a mechanic so that the conditional is as far reduced in key demand as possible.

Extraneous heal buttons? Sure, get rid of them. I'm hardly going to argue with any of the above, because the less bloat on our keybinds, the less likely we are to lose things moving forward, so maybe kit expansions get to feel like kit expansions instead of filling what was removed prior.

[AmiableApkallu]

I disagree.

I will point out reduce doesn't mean remove. Reducing button bloat doesn't mean we have to remove actions.

However, when adding actions, we shouldn't be adding them in a manner that increases button bloat. This way lies madness, because there is a hard limit to what is a reasonable expectation for individuals to be able to map and utilize. This is why keeping button count down but finding ways to increase action number and depth is important.

This is why if an action must take up a valuable button slot, it should be because it is a unique action that couldn't have been implemented in any other way - at least not yet.

That's all good and well, in theory, but in practice, a one-button DPS job satisfies everything you said just fine. After all, the only action a DPS job does is, "Deal damage."

What is the principle by which you let a DPS job get 20 buttons to "Deal damage", but somehow, a healer with 2 buttons to "Deal damage" has plenty?

[Kabooa]

Well I've been obnoxiously plastering theorycrafts in the Healer forums consistently over months and months and none of them have any sort of 123 filler combo. Just because other players have bad ideas doesn't mean that's what the bulk of us have been suggesting.

I don't see how what I said implies that.

That's all good and well, in theory, but in practice, a one-button DPS job satisfies everything you said just fine. After all, the only action a DPS job does is, "Deal damage."

What is the principle by which you let a DPS job get 20 buttons to "Deal damage", but somehow, a healer with 2 buttons to "Deal damage" has plenty?

None that I hold, personally.

I don't think Dragoon should have 9 gcds to have what is effectively two decision lines, nor do I think Gunbreaker should have stopped with the cartridge combo line, or that Warrior has some divine providence for Storm's Path to take 3 buttons, nor do I think Machinist is any richer for the Shot combo being 3 buttons. Monk would need to be more careful with how it does a consolidation, but that isn't because Monk abilities are special, it's because Monk progresses combos differently.

I've watched many potentially interesting abilities be removed over the years, yet these bog standard literal animation swapped skills get to be their own keys, and while some of them get trimmed, the fact is that none of them had to be removed to make room on the hot bar for the antiquated notion that Combos are special and need individual keys.

I don't think blasting zone is particularly interesting, and on a DPS it'd be one of the first actions up for removal, and I wouldn't care - On a DPS. On Gunbreaker, it routinely causes a conflict with what would be usual defensive timing. However, blasting zone isn't special - Quite literally any of the other offensive OGCDs exert the same pressure. Were it not for the rather iconic representation of a certain edgy boi's limit break, there'd be no reason for me to say it should stay. Continuation fulfills the same purpose, and you can expect that the level 92 skill for Gunbreaker is going to be Continuation for Fated Circle.

In practice, we create multiple damaging (RE: or of any type, really) actions in order to create what is effectively an in-game puzzle. We give them different cooldowns, different animation locks, different power, in order to create dynamic combat out of what is effectively just an auto-rolling turn based system. A caster will have long cast times for when it's safe to use them, fast cast times when looking for openings, and cool down instant casts in order to react to poor situations.

Healers are no different. They do deserve more damaging actions - And at the risk of being a meme, just "No, not like that."

I keep citing PVP because I think that's the best direction we should head in. We should minimize the bloat, we should ensure every button has a purpose, and for those who like hitting 6 different keys for their manual auto attacks, you give options that conserve key space for those who don't.

We stop taking things away in favor of systems that reduce the keybind pressure.

I don't think I'm being unfair in that perspective, nor do I think it's incompatible.

You want more damage buttons.

I want them to be meaningful.

[ty_taurus]

I don't see how what I said implies that.

Well, the initial post I was responding to, you mentioned what you like about 1 button DPS nuke + 1 DoT was that it didn't waste buttons. Whether or not this is how you perceive the situation or were trying to imply, it essentially comes across as "the good thing about what we have now is that we aren't wasting buttons on DPS." This implies that adding DPS is a waste of buttons, which I contested. That may very well not be how you feel, it's just how I took that statement.

After that, you mentioned in response to Semirhage that someone earlier was using tank 123 filler rotations as a comparison. My point is ultimately that this is irrelevant. Whether or not someone else is bringing up 123 filler as the "solution" doesn't meant that's what most of us are asking for when we talk about expanding on DPS actions. If you aren't writing off other discussions about DPS buttons as nothing but 123 filler, then why not clarify where the misunderstanding occurs?

I keep citing PVP because I think that's the best direction we should head in. We should minimize the bloat, we should ensure every button has a purpose, and for those who like hitting 6 different keys for their manual auto attacks, you give options that conserve key space for those who don't.

We stop taking things away in favor of systems that reduce the keybind pressure.

I don't think I'm being unfair in that perspective, nor do I think it's incompatible.

You want more damage buttons.

I want them to be meaningful.

I agree on some level, hence what I was saying earlier. Buttons need to be meaningful. That said, I would just add for clarification that PVP and PVE are not the same, and PVP toolkits can be a lot more shallow because they're built around regular, quick engages with unpredictable opponents whereas PVE encounters are very long, and involve consistent and predictable opponents. There is some overlap where we logic from one translates to logic of the other, but there is a reason why PVE toolkits have a lot more buttons.

To be fair, though, I do feel that a lot of jobs have a lot of unnecessary bloat. I really dislike the complete departmentalization of AoE buttons and having entire AoE rotations in a game that offers almost no AoE scenarios outside of FATEs and dungeon trash, for example, and would rather AoE rotations be built into your single target ones---i.e. having buttons like Afflatus Misery that just happen to be AoE but are still useful for single target, or providing a value in single target to AoE spells for healers, where the AoE spells are spammable for trash, but offer some type of utility or self-buffing for single target so they are still a part of the rotation.

[Kabooa]

That may very well not be how you feel, it's just how I took that statement.

If you aren't writing off other discussions about DPS buttons as nothing but 123 filler, then why not clarify where the misunderstanding occurs?

Right here.

The short answer is I don't think the fault lies at my feet, so it's not my responsibility to clear it up for you.

PVP toolkits can be a lot more shallow because they're built around regular, quick engages with unpredictable opponents whereas PVE encounters are very long, and involve consistent and predictable opponents

The only thing that has to be considered between PVE and PVP is whether or not the numerical scaling has to change.

Guild Wars 1 not only had extremely robust PVE kits consisting of 8 actions, nearly all of these actions were present in PVP, and only a relative handful of them required numerical adjustments.

Sleep obviously shouldn't last 30 seconds, Double Down shouldn't DCrit for 100% of a DPS's health, etc. Very little about FF14's PVE kits or PVP kits would be unable to be translated to the the other game mode and not work.

Calling the pvp kits shallow is inaccurate. I think it's more appropriate to call them condensed, because they aren't taking 20 buttons to do what 8 can.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think it's more appropriate to call them condensed, because they aren't taking 20 buttons to do what 8 can.

They dont fulfil the same jobs, because the objective is completely different in PVP. I can't keep my whole team alive in PVP as a WHM because that'd make it impossible to fight against any team with a healer, so my healing is limited to 2 casts of Cure 2, and a Cure 3 after Seraph Strike. Conversely, it's a PVP mode where 'do damage to beat the enemy players' is the goal, so we have more damage kit, Misery is a 15sec CD instead of needing to bother with lilies, I can polymorph people to lock them down, we have BIG LASER every 1 min to pressure or secure kills. You're right that if we moved the PVP kit into PVE it wouldnt work, but that is because the PVP kit isn't designed for PVE, it's designed for PVP. We did see once what PVE kits in PVP looked like, in HW. AST was actually an issue back then, as Noct shields meant it could move and shield itself. I survived against 3 DPS whacking me for far too long to be considered 'balanced' back then, when the Garo event first came out.

So yeh, I'd give credit to PVP kits for showing you can make the classes feel very distinct with few buttons. But we can't just transplant them wholesale, there does need to be some adjustments to make them work in PVE too. I can't imagine trying to do UCOB with PVP SGE for example, since it needs an enemy target to hit to apply it's shields, and the boss loves to leave for each trio in that fight.

[Kabooa]

So yeh, I'd give credit to PVP kits for showing you can make the classes feel very distinct with few buttons. But we can't just transplant them wholesale, there does need to be some adjustments to make them work in PVE too. I can't imagine trying to do UCOB with PVP SGE for example, since it needs an enemy target to hit to apply it's shields, and the boss loves to leave for each trio in that fight.

Fair points.

Certainly easier said than done.

[ASkellington]

Calling the pvp kits shallow is inaccurate. I think it's more appropriate to call them condensed, because they aren't taking 20 buttons to do what 8 can.

I would still call them shallow. There isn't enough in the PvP kits to make good PvE classes. You're still going to have to add more buttons.

Just because GW2 can do it doesn't mean FFXIV feasibly can. GW2 was built upon the idea of having ~5 buttons (times that by 4 for Elementalist) because on top of that, they also have weapons that do different skills AND a weapon swap (with added customization from the other 5 or so skills that you gain from your class/race). ESO was pretty much the same.

FFXIV was NOT built on that design. Its design is closer to WoW and Rift. There is no way you're gonna condense a kit all the way to ~8 buttons. Realistically, you're looking at a minimum of 15-20.

Further, not everyone wants condensed skills. In 6.0 GNB's Continuation got condensed to 1 button. Kudos to those who wanted it that way, but I sure as all seven hells did not. And there is no way for me to change it back. (Thank you SE btw for screwing up my muscle memory!).

[ForsakenRoe]

In 6.0 GNB's Continuation got condensed to 1 button. Kudos to those who wanted it that way, but I sure as all seven hells did not. And there is no way for me to change it back. (Thank you SE btw for screwing up my muscle memory!).

I ended up just putting a duplicate button of Burst Strike where the 3rd hit of the combo used to be, and Double Down where the second hit used to be =( Also on the subject, I've heard people complained about how Hypervelocity makes it really annoying to weave mitigations, and also made it hard to move the boss using Burst Strike as a filler (which is now slightly fixed by the Continuation range change), and I thought to myself 'How can we make this fixed', and it seemed so simple:

-Move Double Down to 86
-Move Hypervelocity to 90
-Make Hypervelocity chain off of Double Down, change potency to 600 (since you only get one per minute now, this is to make up for the multiple burst strikes per minute, i estimated 3, adjust as needed)
alternatively make it lower and add a dot component to make it total the same
-Change Double Down to two hits of 600 potency, instead of one of 1200, to reduce crit variance (it'd now have two chances to crit)

How does SE keep making weird designs and then going 'wow i cant believe this design is kinda janky i wish someone could have told us', and why do they keep adding so many big hits with four digit potency values? We know crit variance is a big issue so why do we need 1200 potency this, 1000 potency that, back in my day we saw Carve and Spit was 450 and we thought 'what the heck that's so much' now 450 is 'tickles the enemy's feet a bit' weak

[ty_taurus]

I would still call them shallow. There isn't enough in the PvP kits to make good PvE classes. You're still going to have to add more buttons.

Just because GW2 can do it doesn't mean FFXIV feasibly can. GW2 was built upon the idea of having ~5 buttons (times that by 4 for Elementalist) because on top of that, they also have weapons that do different skills AND a weapon swap (with added customization from the other 5 or so skills that you gain from your class/race). ESO was pretty much the same.

FFXIV was NOT built on that design. Its design is closer to WoW and Rift. There is no way you're gonna condense a kit all the way to ~8 buttons. Realistically, you're looking at a minimum of 15-20.

Further, not everyone wants condensed skills. In 6.0 GNB's Continuation got condensed to 1 button. Kudos to those who wanted it that way, but I sure as all seven hells did not. And there is no way for me to change it back. (Thank you SE btw for screwing up my muscle memory!).

I think SGE's PVP kit is a ton of fun, but that's also because engages tend to end by the time I run out of non-Dosis based resources: Pneuma, Eukrasia, Toxikon charges, and Phlegmas. There really isn't much there, but because PVP is all about jumping into fast-paced engagements that end quite quickly, all or most of my charges are back up by the time I reengage. This isn't how PVE flows, and while Pneuma and Toxikon feels so much more fun to use in PVP and could realistically translate far better into PVE than something like WHM's Force of Nature or most other PVP job mechanics, I don't think that would really be enough to make PVE content fun enough. It would still need a bit more, because you spend much longer in a consistent state of combat. So PVE kits definitely need more actions to work with overall, but that doesn't mean a good PVE kit needs to be bloated either. We could reasonably have really engaging and exciting PVE kits in less actions than we currently use if they're better, thought that doesn't meant we should necessarily be afraid of having more actions either.

That said, healers have a big problem as well with having toolkits that have no real interactivity that allows for better button optimization or depth. WHM is not a bloated job in terms of numbers in comparison to other jobs, but... Cure, Cure II, Cure III, Medica, Medica II, Regen, Afflatus Solace, and Afflatus Rapture... There's a lot of unnecessary fluff in that pile and it could easily be consolidated to create something slimmer but also more cohesive, especially when building more tools into it.