A summary of healer issues

[WaxSw]

Lmao what even are those radius buffs

To be fair with the increase of the hitbox of bosses, bigger arenas and mechanics that may randomly ask people to go pick flowers in Narnia, there were already some fights where the difficulty wasn't the mechanic or the healing but reaching people and it was clear that was not the dev intention so its not a negative change.

Did they overdo it? Very likely but we have to see the mechanics of Savage

There were more ellegant solutions? Absolutely but a blunt solution is better than none imo.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

To be fair with the increase of the hitbox of bosses, bigger arenas and mechanics that may randomly ask people to go pick flowers in Narnia, there were already some fights where the difficulty wasn't the mechanic or the healing but reaching people and it was clear that was not the dev intention so its not a negative change.

Did they overdo it? Very likely but we have to see the mechanics of Savage

There were more ellegant solutions? Absolutely but a blunt solution is better than none imo.

After running the latest NRs, I can definitely see why they think have to give the radius buff.

But just like many previous 'fixes' they made, this is one of those times where I feel like they've overfixed. I'd like to be proven wrong when I have a taste of their savage floors, but I'm not keeping high hopes.

[WaxSw]

I feel like they've overfixed. I'd like to be proven wrong when I have a taste of their savage floors, but I'm not keeping high hopes.

Oh don't get me wrong, I feel they overfixed too and they may be stepping too much into SCH's niche of remote healing, but at the same time certain phases of ultimates and savage have started to show the necessity of a small aoe increase if they are going to maintain their design philosophy.

[Absurdity]

To be fair with the increase of the hitbox of bosses, bigger arenas and mechanics that may randomly ask people to go pick flowers in Narnia, there were already some fights where the difficulty wasn't the mechanic or the healing but reaching people and it was clear that was not the dev intention so its not a negative change.

I would simply consider "limited range" to be part of the difficulty and it certainly didn't need to be removed.

Curtain Call in P4S for example would've been an utter joke if it weren't for that limited range, limited range on melee attacks was something we previously had to consider as well, it's what made optimizing fights fun.
If everything can be done from any position in the arena it turns into a target dummy fight.

[WaxSw]

I would simply consider "limited range" to be part of the difficulty and it certainly didn't need to be removed.

Curtain Call in P4S for example would've been an utter joke if it weren't for that limited range, limited range on melee attacks was something we previously had to consider as well, it's what made optimizing fights fun.
If everything can be done from any position in the arena it turns into a target dummy fight.

The problem is that the "limited range" isn't always part of the intended difficulty and it started to create problems. Fights like P4S have Curtain call where the limited range is part of the intended difficulty as it gives consistent time lapses where players can play around buff application and using mitigation to reach everyone, which is nice because during uptime the 2m meta and mechanics wait for no one, but in other recent fights, like TOP, that is not the case and have some phases that may ask players to randomly go away without them having much agency to play around that limitation. These changes are made to solve that problem which was pretty clear an unintended difficulty.

There is also the whole issue of the hitbox of the bosses which may cause tanks to miss dps buffs or mit if there is any mechanic that force the players to not enter the hitbox and the boss is big enough

[Absurdity]

The problem is that the "limited range" isn't always part of the intended difficulty and it started to create problems. Fights like P4S have Curtain call where the limited range is part of the intended difficulty as it gives consistent time lapses where players can play around buff application and using mitigation to reach everyone, which is nice because during uptime the 2m meta and mechanics wait for no one, but in other recent fights, like TOP, that is not the case and have some phases that may ask players to randomly go away without them having much agency to play around that limitation. These changes are made to solve that problem which was pretty clear an unintended difficulty.

There is also the whole issue of the hitbox of the bosses which may cause tanks to miss dps buffs or mit if there is any mechanic that force the players to not enter the hitbox and the boss is big enough

Those are problems entirely of SE's own making. They made the mechanics for TOP, they made gigantic hitboxes and they made the 2 minute meta, I don't need to be sold a solution to a problem they themselves created.

[WaxSw]

Those are problems entirely of SE's own making. They made the mechanics for TOP, they made gigantic hitboxes and they made the 2 minute meta, I don't need to be sold a solution to a problem they themselves created.

All the problems in the end are SE's own making. The thing is, these are problems that are happening at the hardest fights and can't be solved without massive reworks that are not realistically happening this late into the expansion, so I'd rather have a blunt solution that letting the problem fester and ignore it.

Let alone how out of all the things healers have lost over the years dying on the hill of range limitation is a weird one.

[Shurrikhan]

Those are problems entirely of SE's own making. They made the mechanics for TOP, they made gigantic hitboxes and they made the 2 minute meta, I don't need to be sold a solution to a problem they themselves created.

This... mostly.

I wouldn't mind if the "solutions" were something that helped players for whom such "clicks" less to then more easily engage with complexity. And often that can even be something relatively subtle.

Let's take the recent raid buff range increases. It's a solution to a problem of "It's annoying when randoms won't get in range of buffs," but it's not the only solution. An alternative, for instance, would be a raid buff display, with noticeable timers for when those raid buffs are coming up. At the most extreme, maybe even a visually-integrated macro-warning and/or ping system (similar to how the countdown is a visual indicator of something otherwise found only in chat). It still eases up players getting into range, but in a way that eases engagement with that point of engagement, rather than simply removing it outright.

Similarly, let's take frequent positionals, as per Monk. Cutting its positionals down to a third of what they were an expansion ago is a solution to "Having chosen the iconically positional-heavy class, I'm getting overwhelmed by positionals, especially since I feel tuned around getting 100% positional accuracy, but due to fight design I must often rely on a Role Action gimmick to even do that." But, again, it's not the only such solution. We could have instead, for instance, just revised positionals and their interactions with bosses suddenly turning or affixing themselves to the edge of the arena where positionals would be impossible regardless of what the tank does. We could, for instance, have positionals re-check for positional success a half-second later, such that so long as the positional was correct either before or having predicted the boss spin, the attack still succeeds. And rather than making certain fights rely on True North, we could also just have the boss temporarily become successfully attackable from any/all sides, or convert the front into a 'rear' (e.g., as per original Demon Wall), when they affix themselves to the edge. Etc., etc.

Either way, though, we'd need to roll back the more recent "solutions" already given, and change that route to reduced annoyance from reduction to, instead, polish and facilitated engagement.



:: To be clear, though, I don't think the "2-minute meta" is a problem, or at least certainly not a new one. It just does what we were obliged to do previously in HW and StB anyways: to stack a single CD template. It merely removes that chance of playing basically without raid buffs when we're somehow allowed into the Savage party despite being the odd one out (and not even being a BLM/SkS-SAM). I'll agree that having no competing reasons to hold CDs, etc., beyond boss jumps or phase-shift cutscenes makes things more dull, but that's more an issue with fight design (e.g., lack of short-term checks) and, just as importantly, how quickly we could out-gear competing challenges anyways.

[Deceptus]

There is also the whole issue of the hitbox of the bosses which may cause tanks to miss dps buffs or mit if there is any mechanic that force the players to not enter the hitbox and the boss is big enough

And in typical CBU3 fashion, instead of simply reducing the boss hitbox they made it more convoluted by increasing every single job aoe to 30y Except Asylum and Sacred Soil for some stupid reason. . .

[WaxSw]

And in typical CBU3 fashion, instead of simply reducing the boss hitbox they made it more convoluted by increasing every single job aoe to 30y Except Asylum and Sacred Soil for some stupid reason. . .

You do realize that reducing the hitbox of already existing content is not as simple as moving a slider, right? For example in some of the content this fix is aimed for, like TOP, it would affect melee uptime and dps checks would have to be reevaluated, as well as mechanics and aoe ranges, to make up for that change in every single phase of the fight. DSR would have to be reevaluated too and even some savage fights with tight dps checks at min ilv would have to go through a process of reevaluation, it's not trivial stuff.