A summary of healer issues

[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.

[Semirhage]

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.

One man's fixed problem is another's further McDonaldization. I see it as another March further down the road to zero skill expression, dumbing jobs down to make Japanese party finder ever more consistent, etc. Buff range isn't a hill I'd die on, because I died several mountain ranges back. It's more evidence that Square continues the march forward on their horrible job design philosophy, and nothing we warn about here has any impact. Sylphies are the target audience.

[kcj]

As a new player (about a month in)...I'm finding my main headache is trying to heal while having to dodge the near continuous stream of AOE attacks by bosses. If I don't die at least once, then it's a good run.

[Silver-Strider]

One man's fixed problem is another's further McDonaldization. I see it as another March further down the road to zero skill expression, dumbing jobs down to make Japanese party finder ever more consistent, etc. Buff range isn't a hill I'd die on, because I died several mountain ranges back. It's more evidence that Square continues the march forward on their horrible job design philosophy, and nothing we warn about here has any impact. Sylphies are the target audience.

Do you think it will be 7.0 or 8.0 when SE decides to remove the cast time and costs from GCD Heals because that honestly feels like a possibility now.

[ForsakenRoe]

Do you think it will be 7.0 or 8.0 when SE decides to remove the cast time and costs from GCD Heals because that honestly feels like a possibility now.

If that's the price to pay for 'actually interesting gameplay during downtime where there's nothing to heal' I'll absolutely make that trade. The issue is that SE would do the first half of the trade (instantcast, free heal GCDs) and not the second half in compensation (the additional gameplay). See Kaiten, and how some expected it to be replaced by something else that requires braincells. Instead it was replaced with... nothing. So the kenki got dumped onto Shinten instead, very fun.

And if the change did happen in such a way that eg Medica is now an OGCD with a 2 sec CD, what would the new rationalization from the 'healers should heal' squad be, it's not like the 'casuals' would be stressed if they could weave healing OGCD at literally any moment, akin to weaving tank mitigations

[Semirhage]

If that's the price to pay for 'actually interesting gameplay during downtime where there's nothing to heal' I'll absolutely make that trade. The issue is that SE would do the first half of the trade (instantcast, free heal GCDs) and not the second half in compensation (the additional gameplay). See Kaiten, and how some expected it to be replaced by something else that requires braincells. Instead it was replaced with... nothing. So the kenki got dumped onto Shinten instead, very fun.

And if the change did happen in such a way that eg Medica is now an OGCD with a 2 sec CD, what would the new rationalization from the 'healers should heal' squad be, it's not like the 'casuals' would be stressed if they could weave healing OGCD at literally any moment, akin to weaving tank mitigations

I for one eagerly await the new justification for HeALeRs ShOULd bE HeALiNG crowd once it becomes even easier than it is now. I've already had my mind broken with "Glare is fun and comfy", so screw it. Bring it on. Let the madness strip naked and jiggle around on the FFXIV healing stage, I'm already DPSing anyway.

[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.

[BRVV]

As a new player (about a month in)...I'm finding my main headache is trying to heal while having to dodge the near continuous stream of AOE attacks by bosses. If I don't die at least once, then it's a good run.

How do you do on dps?