A summary of healer issues

[Sebazy]

What was so impossibly complex and cluttery about DPS actions on healers that they had to be removed when the Healing downtime became even more prevalent?

My best guess is that Yoshida routinely commented in the past that he wanted to reduce the gap between top and bottom tier players. In this regard, the removal of Cleric stance was a resounding success and Stormblood watering down SCH was also fairly effective even if part of it had to be walked back. ShB was just a repeat of 4.0's initial SCH murder, but across the board and this time they stuck to their guns.

[ty_taurus]

My best guess is that Yoshida routinely commented in the past that he wanted to reduce the gap between top and bottom tier players. In this regard, the removal of Cleric stance was a resounding success and Stormblood watering down SCH was also fairly effective even if part of it had to be walked back. ShB was just a repeat of 4.0's initial SCH murder, but across the board and this time they stuck to their guns.

This scene from Sword in the Stone is how I perceive the changes from HW to SB to ShB to EW.

In this clip, the design team is the sugar tin, and the sugar itself is the simplifying of job mechanics. What we needed was what Arthur gets, a couple scoops of sugar, and SB was more like getting a 3rd scoop... a little too sweet, but not overpowering. What we got is Merlin's cup. We hit an acceptable level of sweetness years ago, but they continue to pour spoonful after spoonful of sugar, only we're screaming "when!" and they aren't stopping adding sugar to the cup. They seem to be on a crusade trying to eliminate anything that even sounds like it threatens the idea of accessibility, but I firmly believe if we instead tried to find that 2-3 spoonfuls of sugar 'goldilocks zone of simplicity' the game would still be extremely accessible, but without continuously alienating more and more veteran players/expert players who find that there tea has become undrinkable. Maybe it'd be a little sweeter than some might like, but it wouldn't be downright unpalatable.

[Renathras]

...

You know what? Just no, madam.

The point stands - I would defend you if people were brigading you, not revel in it. And if you were wrong about something, but had an argument you were right on some point, I would hear you out. This does happen in here from time to time where there are cases I catch people being wrong about something, but they do make a good argument for how they're not completely wrong, and I'm willing to accept that. There are also cases where opposing people are both partly right at the same time.

Indeed, I've admitted to being wrong in cases that I am on the points that I am. I try to research points well in general if I'm going to stake a firm position to them, however, so that it doesn't often occur. There are things that are arguments of scale - as that argument was - but I'm not going to continue arguing the point, which I said so the last time. The only reason it's even been mentioned here is because someone who lied about me got caught in their lie and was desperate for a smokescreen. But suffice to say, in that other thread, I DID admit that I was wrong, and I even made a total of 4 edits to get the wrongness SUFFICIENTLY PRECISE to satisfy other people, something I wouldn't have bothered with at all if I was unwilling to do so.

It would be one thing if I had said "No! You're wrong! ForbiddenFruitLogosOnlineGaugeSite says it's this party comp so it is!", that would have been refusing to admit being wrong. I straight up said I saw what you meant and that you were (at the time) being very reasonable and fair about it, and made the initial edit pointing out I was wrong and giving a ballpark estimate of how much.

It was only after that - oddly, AFTER my admission of being wrong - that you and others really pounced.

...and you wonder why people are unwilling to admit they're wrong; when they do in good faith, they're pilloried after having done so. Again, something I DO NOT DO to people because I don't want people to be afraid of admitting they were wrong about some detail or thing, or that they were partially wrong about it.

Several people are just wanting something to use as a cudgel in lieu of an argument, something I myself do not do when the situation is reversed.

Again, if you wish to support that, that's your decision. Not only would I not, I do not in the situations this has come up where I wasn't on the receiving end of it.

In any case, did we ever get an actual reason for the great action prunning of ShB? Didn't Yoshi-P insist somewhere that they didn't want to take away things that the jobs could do, when asked about nerfing PLD Hallowed Ground?

What was so impossibly complex and cluttery about DPS actions on healers that they had to be removed when the Healing downtime became even more prevalent?

I think at the time it had to do with a healer shortage and concerns over disparate DPS outcomes. The thinking from the Devs was something like players were leaving the Healing role because they feared not being able to deal enough damage while also healing, and that the Devs were concerned about the DPS gaps between the Healer Jobs. So they figured if they could slim them down to basically nothing, it would make the DPS part stress free (in theory attracting healxiety sufferers to the role) and make the Jobs easier to balance.

Or something to that effect.

Whether it worked or not is debatable, but that was the objective.

Point is that...

Yes yes yes: Which is why I gave specific examples and asked if those things would be "new" to you or not.

If Misery became Purgation - same damage scaled as 4 Glares but now with more Stun and a party HoT - or if casting 4 Glares gave you a super-charged Holy to cast; those were specific examples of me saying if those things were what we got in an expansion, would YOU consider them "new"?

We're not talking about WoW's Warrior and Executes. I gave you two concrete examples of things WHM could get in FFXIV and asked you if you, personally, would classify them as "new DPS buttons" or "more DPS buttons" or not. The former case would be a new ability, but would take the spot of an existing one and not alter the rotation, the latter would have no new abilities at all, but a new stacking self-buff that led to an actual change in the rotation. Would YOU, personally, consider either of those cases as a new DPS action/ability or not?

This isn't some convoluted gotcha. I'm trying to determine what you would and would not consider "new". Glare IV would obviously be new, but as you note, if it was just higher potency and a new graphic, it wouldn't change the rotation. Well, Purgation might be that, but the Stun and HoT MIGHT make you consider it as different, but might not. Hence I have to ask you and see what your answer is, as I typically do not read minds. And likewise, the empowered Holy thing WOULD change the rotation and break up the Glarespam, but would add no new buttons or abilities (in the spellbook) at all. Hence again I have to ask you to see what your answer is. As I did ask you. To see what, in your own words, your answer would be.

And it wasn't an attack. If you thought it was, that says more about you than it does me, I think

Ah, yes, when you call someone making a good faith argument "hilariously disingenuous"...oh, wait, yeah, that's kind of an attack. And it's an attack on the person, not their argument. Not only that, this is yet another desperate attempt - what is it with you guys today? - to sell the narrative "Ren accuses everyone of attacking him!!". Which is amusing because I don't accuse a lot of people of attacking me, and I make arguments even in the cases I do level such accusations, so I'm not using them in lieu of argument or to deflect from not having one.

Maybe don't call people names and they won't say you're attacking them?

This scene from Sword in the Stone is how I perceive the changes from HW to SB to ShB to EW.

In this clip, the design team is the sugar tin, and the sugar itself is the simplifying of job mechanics. What we needed was what Arthur gets, a couple scoops of sugar, and SB was more like getting a 3rd scoop... a little too sweet, but not overpowering. What we got is Merlin's cup. We hit an acceptable level of sweetness years ago, but they continue to pour spoonful after spoonful of sugar, only we're screaming "when!" and they aren't stopping adding sugar to the cup. They seem to be on a crusade trying to eliminate anything that even sounds like it threatens the idea of accessibility, but I firmly believe if we instead tried to find that 2-3 spoonfuls of sugar 'goldilocks zone of simplicity' the game would still be extremely accessible, but without continuously alienating more and more veteran players/expert players who find that there tea has become undrinkable. Maybe it'd be a little sweeter than some might like, but it wouldn't be downright unpalatable.

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.

Also, since this is apparently a point of thing now:

I don't know why you chose to take this as an attack. It really wasn't.

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.

[Sebazy]

It was only after that - oddly, AFTER my admission of being wrong - that you and others really pounced.

Again, to make it clear. I pounced because you fudged the numbers. I clearly gave exact numbers in my initial response. If you had have updated your post at least somewhat in line with them, I'd have had nothing more to say on the matter. Rather it was the manner in which you tried to downplay the difference that invited the response especially given how frequently you swing around your subjective/objective bat etc.

Fun fact, when I first saw the post I actually initially expected it to be correct. My head cannon was that T+3DPS wouldn't be at that much of an advantage in Dead Ends due to a lack of gear inflation likely putting more pressure on the Warrior's cooldowns and HP. It was the one dungeon I couldn't merrily tank on WHM due to Peacekeeper eventually one shotting me. The other dungeons that made me realise that something was wrong with your numbers though. Alzadaal's legacy is an absolute face roll for example. Healer or no healer, there's absolutely no need to hold back there with BiS gear as the trash melts and the bosses barely tickle.

[ty_taurus]

Again, to make it clear. I pounced because you fudged the numbers. I clearly gave exact numbers in my initial response. If you had have updated your post at least somewhat in line with them, I'd have had nothing more to say on the matter. Rather it was the manner in which you tried to downplay the difference that invited the response especially given how frequently you swing around your subjective/objective bat etc.

Fun fact, when I first saw the post I actually initially expected it to be correct. My head cannon was that T+3DPS wouldn't be at that much of an advantage in Dead Ends due to a lack of gear inflation likely putting more pressure on the Warrior's cooldowns and HP. It was the one dungeon I couldn't merrily tank on WHM due to Peacekeeper eventually one shotting me. The other dungeons that made me realise that something was wrong with your numbers though. Alzadaal's legacy is an absolute face roll for example. Healer or no healer, there's absolutely no need to hold back there with BiS gear as the trash melts and the bosses barely tickle.

I recall Xenosys Vex doing a blind run of Alzadaal's without a healer (Vulgar language warning). This was when 6.1 came out of course, but what's wild is the party cleared with no wipes and in 13 minutes without a healer. The fact that you can skip the second spinning around phase is huge because that's 30 seconds where you can't do anything at all skipped if you drop the healer for a DPS. Honestly, even if the clear time wasn't much different other than that one mechanic, the fact that you don't have to do that very long and annoying mechanic a second time is a major plus in my mind. Had to farm that dungeon way too long for the triple triad card well into 6.3, and I couldn't find anyone to farm it with me so had to just rely on the DF or go in as a healer myself to try and speed the runs up as fast as possible.

[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.

[AmiableApkallu]

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.

(Emphasis mine.)

This "Hall of the Intermediate" would work great for DPS and Tanks. Their reward for this knowledge is more damage, more cool animations from hitting buttons more often, that sort of thing.

For healers, their reward for this knowledge is that good heal work that Yoshi-P mentioned once and... more time to spend mashing 11111?

[Sebazy]

This scene from Sword in the Stone is how I perceive the changes from HW to SB to ShB to EW.

Agreed, I like the analogy.

In a way, ShB's rip-roaring success that was a number of different factors all hitting at a perfect time is something that's going to come back to haunt them in the long term. It's a odd but all too common trend for large JP corporations to get weirdly arrogant and complacent almost to the point of treating customers, competitors and partners all with equal levels of contempt. Shimano's road cycling division are a great example of this in recent years but Honda also spring to mind as well.

In recent years it genuinely feels like Yoshida's team are falling into that trap also. FFXIV 1.0 forced Yoshida's team to take a humble and earnest approach, they were a lot more transparent with their plans and they weren't afraid to back down on bad decisions. Early ARR Warrior was a great example of them realising that they were wrong and promptly taking steps to correct things. Now it feels like they aren't interested in what the community has to think. They have their plan and they are sticking to it come hell or high water. Yoshida seems to look more and more miserable these days when he gets collared with a tough question over his teams design choices.

And honestly, it's not so much that I have a strong sense of good game design, I was an optimisation and performance guru first and world builder second rather than systems designer in my time in the industry. Rather I quickly learned that the bean counters in finance were the true development leads, not any of us on the top floor.

[ForsakenRoe]

Rather I quickly learned that the bean counters in finance were the true development leads, not any of us on the top floor.

Just had the brainworm of 'what if Bean Counter was a job in FFXIV'. You'd have a bunch of skills with properties (like BLU), elements, additional effects, etc. You have two phases, one where you press a button to cast a simple GCD to restore your MP to full. The other is the main meat of the job though, you press the button to start the phase, and the job gauge gives you your orders: do this element, or this status effect, or both, etc. So you have to 'mix' a combo of attacks, like a NIN mudra of sorts, that fulfills the conditions. The more conditions met, the more damage that attack does. But every Bean Counter knows, you can't go over budget, so your total can go as close to 10000mp cost as you like, but if you go over, the project is considered a failure due to financial mismanagement (and the higher ups are angry)

maybe next April Fools eh