A summary of healer issues

[Shurrikhan]

They refused to go back on it for an entire expansion, same thing with "main tank/off tank" in ShB. Yes, that is "heels dug on".

"favoring the lowest denominator" isn't what "heels dug in" is defined as.

See the difference between "reduce the floor, no matter the cost to ceiling" and that, though? One lasted only one expansion; they took a step, and then stepped off. The other's "solution" has only ever been to dig further.

Seen them go back on designs favoring the lowest denominator at almost any expense any time lately?

[Renathras]

Seen them go back on designs favoring the lowest denominator at almost any expense any time lately?

That would mostly depend on how you define that. For example, unifying the buffs does not favor the lowest denominator, since it favors groups that coordinate their buffs since them being ABLE to be aligned means doing so generates a huge boost in performance over those who do not. That very much does not favor "the lowest denominator".

Melee have been able to do more damage than Ranged for at least 3 expansions now, and it was debatably intended in HW, they just mucked up the tuning on a lot of Jobs. The explicit reasoning for this is "Melee are harder" (even though that's highly debatable these days). The design intent there is to give advantage to the harder thing over the easier thing. That also is not favoring "the lowest denominator", as if the intent was to favor "the lowest denominator", it would be the Ranged allowed to do more damage. And they've stuck with that one for 3 expansions and counting, despite it being entirely ridiculous to do so in this expansion due to the massive hitboxes and reduced positionals in Meleewalker.

BLM is also consistently kept as higher damage output over RDM and SMN because it's harder. It was kept over SMN in ShB (despite SMN being on par with its difficulty) to keep that going. While this one is a two part thing (it's the difficulty argument + the Raise argument), part of that IS the difficulty part, and thus not favoring "the lowest denominator".

They consistently lock really cool rewards (gear, glam, mounts, and minions - all things that are highly desired) behind high end content. This is also not favoring "the lowest denominator" and has been their practice for 5 expansions now.

So clearly, they often stick with things that do not favor "the lowest denominator". What they do and don't stick with seems decided by a blindfolded person throwing at a dartboard, not a preference for "the lowest denominator".

[Aravell]

For example, unifying the buffs does not favor the lowest denominator, since it favors groups that coordinate their buffs since them being ABLE to be aligned means doing so generates a huge boost in performance over those who do not. That very much does not favor "the lowest denominator".

This part isn't true at all. Groups that were capable of aligning buffs were already aligning it, with or without the change, they gain no net benefit from this change at all. Unifying timers just forces the regular players to align naturally by simply pressing on cooldown.

[ForsakenRoe]

This part isn't true at all. Groups that were capable of aligning buffs were already aligning it, with or without the change, they gain no net benefit from this change at all. Unifying timers just forces the regular players to align naturally by simply pressing on cooldown.

Yep, and by making them all 2min, the potential choice of 'ok blow 90's and 2mins here, hold 3's we won't have another use of them so keep them till the pot window' is gone. In it's place, we have two options, everyone holds, or everyone blows em on CD. And the best part is, people still can't keep stuff aligned, because fight design gets in the way. Even with 30y range, the final fight has people spread so far apart for one of the 2min windows you can't hit everyone, which means a SCH or NIN can put their debuff on the boss just fine, but the DRG and BRD can't get their stuff out till a couple seconds later when the mechanic is out of the way.

So ofc, the SE solution is likely going to be 'Brotherhood range increased to 50y'

[Absurdity]

Yep, and by making them all 2min, the potential choice of 'ok blow 90's and 2mins here, hold 3's we won't have another use of them so keep them till the pot window' is gone. In it's place, we have two options, everyone holds, or everyone blows em on CD. And the best part is, people still can't keep stuff aligned, because fight design gets in the way. Even with 30y range, the final fight has people spread so far apart for one of the 2min windows you can't hit everyone, which means a SCH or NIN can put their debuff on the boss just fine, but the DRG and BRD can't get their stuff out till a couple seconds later when the mechanic is out of the way.

So ofc, the SE solution is likely going to be 'Brotherhood range increased to 50y'

This. Good groups were already aligning their raid buffs, so all these changes did, at least in theory, was take most of the planning out of it by simply making all buffs have the same cooldown.


The same goes for the melee changes. Yes melees still deal more damage than ranged dps but a big part of the difficulty when playing melee came from keeping uptime with the relatively limited melee range while dealing with mechanics.
The changes to boss hitboxes eliminated that aspect of playing a melee dps entirely, so who was this change made for? Clearly not the people at the skill ceiling that were already capable of keeping uptime as much as possible.

The fact that melee dps still perform significantly better than ranged dps however is a case of them digging their heels in for no justifiable reason.

[tearagion]

The fact that melee dps still perform significantly better than ranged dps however is a case of them digging their heels in for no justifiable reason.

The justifiable reason is that range is still an advantage, even with huge EW hitboxes. Melee is the most populous dps role, with the most individual jobs. If physranged were equal to melee in damage there would be no reason not to run 2 of them in every fight. So melee dps being ahead of anything with range and mobility is healthier for pf and (theoretically) for job playrate distribution. Are there other solutions? Obviously, but the difference isn't completely nonsensical.

[Shurrikhan]

That would mostly depend on how you define that. For example, unifying the buffs does not favor the lowest denominator, since it favors groups that coordinate their buffs since them being ABLE to be aligned means doing so generates a huge boost in performance over those who do not. That very much does not favor "the lowest denominator".

Previously, you'd hold CDs variably and coordinate compositions. Now, if you open even just not-too-stupidly, your CDs are synced to raid buffs automatically, because everything shares the same timers.

That's... objectively simplified.

The design intent there is to give advantage to the harder thing over the easier thing. That also is not favoring "the lowest denominator", as if the intent was to favor "the lowest denominator", it would be the Ranged allowed to do more damage.

Not at all. If people were enjoyed added difficulty, itself (at least as importantly, including whatever extra they may saddle their party with in their shortfalls while learning) there would be no need to incentivize the jobs that are harder to learn with greater on-paper damage so that they have parity for the average player while content is still relevant.

Rewarding what's harder allows you to have even significantly easier jobs --for better or worse-- without reducing the breadth of job choice available to even less-skilled players (who would otherwise feel pushed only towards whatever's easiest -- say, MCH/BRD/EW SMN).

[Renathras]

This part isn't true at all. Groups that were capable of aligning buffs were already aligning it, with or without the change, they gain no net benefit from this change at all. Unifying timers just forces the regular players to align naturally by simply pressing on cooldown.

I didn't say the change was "for the highest common denominator", I said it wasn't for the lowest; even now, many players can't align party buffs. Run a 24 man and watch how many times players miss their 2 min buffs.

Something like 'they left NIN DRG BRD MCH as the absolutely best comp for way too long' in end of HW/part of SB, now that's something more like 'heels dug in'. They could have changed MNK to piercing type, to give at least a choice between a DRG and MNK for one of the slots, but nope

Fair enough. Though I was thinking they continued talking it up even during ShB where some Tanks seemed more inclined to one or the other (I think it was PLD that was supposedly a good wingman OT?, don't recall, though). But yeah, the point was, when they dig in their heels, it's not always "to make things easier for casuals". Sometimes it's pretty random stuff, or stuff that isn't really "for" anyone; they just decided on something they were going to do come hell or high water even if it made no sense and didn't help anyone and no one asked for it.

The changes to boss hitboxes eliminated that aspect of playing a melee dps entirely, so who was this change made for?

Honest answer?

I think the encounter design teams. They want to make more fights where players have to move all over and spread and such, and they want to keep the DPS checks relatively tight, which means they can't have Melee/Tanks stuck in Narnia spamming their ranged attacks for long periods of time. Same reason they made Healer effects bigger. It's not to help Healers, it's to allow the mass arena combat encounter designs to work.

The fact that melee dps still perform significantly better than ranged dps however is a case of them digging their heels in for no justifiable reason.

Agreed. Hell, they JUST managed to realize that MCH being a "selfish DPS" in a subrole that suffers a DPS penalty doesn't work. It only took a massive blacklisting for an entire tier to wake them up to this years-long truth enough for them to get a few minor buffs and RETURN TO THEM a utility button they used to have.

See also the "But Verraise" thread in the DPS section. RDM is being thrown to the wolves for utility Square has done its level best to make as irrelevant as possible, while also creating movement profiles that hate hardcasts with a passion. Monk has similar utility to RDM, and yet it gets to do way more damage. Because lolMeleewalker, all fight design absurdly caters to melee and Square gifts them huge damage bonuses they keep buffing more and more with each patch, for difficulty they keep stripping out more and more each patch.

Agreed with both of these posts (this one and the one above). SMN maybe debatable, but RDM does far too little damage, and it's patch 6.4 and BLM is JUST NOW getting buffed to be around where it should have been 4 patches ago.

Rewarding what's harder allows you to have even significantly easier jobs --for better or worse-- without reducing the breadth of job choice available to even less-skilled players (who would otherwise feel pushed only towards whatever's easiest -- say, MCH/BRD/EW SMN).

In a game design space where DPS >>>> all, you CANNOT have Jobs overly distinguished (within a role) by damage, otherwise one will always be brought over the others. ShB SMN was a good example, as it was arguably harder than BLM, but did slightly less damage. The reason this worked out is that it also brought utility in the form of a Raise and a party buff. It didn't just do more damage, otherwise BLM would have been irrelevant.

The ideal is to have Jobs doing similar damage and people play harder ones because they like the gameplay of them. If people don't like the gameplay, then it's a bad Job design, and trying to lure people to it with the promise of bigger numbers is just trying to paper over it being a bad Job design. On the other hand, if it's a good design, people will want to play it, no matter the damage. Many times we see people playing Jobs that do less damage and are harder because they simply enjoy them. They're being punished for doing a thing they enjoy, which is bad design.

It isn't nonsensical, even discounting the lack of an uptime struggle, there's still half of the dps jobs being melee,

This is irrelevant, and I say so just about every time I see this argument.

Imagine if they didn't add RPR and SAM. There'd be less Melee than Ranged Jobs. But suppose there were more Melee PLAYERS than Ranged players. Should there still be more dedicated Melee slots or less?

The number of Jobs in a role isn't relevant. It should be more based on the amount of players, paying attention to the fact that the "standard party" already has likely impacted that number from what it naturally would have been. Back when 2 Casters or 2 Ranged was considered more viable, this argument didn't hold any water, either.

There are 4 DPS slots. Not 2 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 Caster. They're all DPS. You want one of each for the % bonus, then one wildcard slot. That slot shouldn't be reserved for Melees.

What's next, there are only 4 Tanks and there are 6 Melees, so the 8 man party composition should be reduced to 1 Tank to make another Melee slot? It's just not a good argument.

[Aravell]

I didn't say the change was "for the highest common denominator", I said it wasn't for the lowest; even now, many players can't align party buffs. Run a 24 man and watch how many times players miss their 2 min buffs.

You said "it favours groups that coordinate their buffs", I'm saying that groups that coordinate their buffs already do so without the changes, so how does it favour them? What net benefit do they gain? If you're talking about people in alliance raids, those are on the lower end of the level, so your argument that it's not for the lowest isn't exactly correct either.

[tearagion]

This is irrelevant, and I say so just about every time I see this argument.

Imagine if they didn't add RPR and SAM. There'd be less Melee than Ranged Jobs. But suppose there were more Melee PLAYERS than Ranged players. Should there still be more dedicated Melee slots or less?

The number of Jobs in a role isn't relevant. It should be more based on the amount of players, paying attention to the fact that the "standard party" already has likely impacted that number from what it naturally would have been. Back when 2 Casters or 2 Ranged was considered more viable, this argument didn't hold any water, either.

There are 4 DPS slots. Not 2 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 Caster. They're all DPS. You want one of each for the % bonus, then one wildcard slot. That slot shouldn't be reserved for Melees.

What's next, there are only 4 Tanks and there are 6 Melees, so the 8 man party composition should be reduced to 1 Tank to make another Melee slot? It's just not a good argument.

I didn't say it was a good argument, I am merely stipulating a sensible line of logic for a balance team to consider when balancing for an individual patch. Can you imagine the groaning if parties start demanding SMN and RDM consistently, because they've been buffed to do the same damage as melees? I can, and I imagine someone in charge of balancing the game would want to avoid it. I don't like how the game is presently balanced please stop trying to argue with me, I don't want to.