A summary of healer issues

[Xelanar]

Problem is, if you're bad at spamming Malefic all that happens is that the party does less damage, maybe you see enrage, but also other players can make up for part of that lost damage by being good at their own class. If you're bad at spamming Benefic 2 and the content is actually demanding you're good at Benefic 2, then you cause a wipe. Because of this, SE is super hesitant to ever put actual healing requirements in things, and this tier when they actually did, people didn't react well to it, having gotten accustomed to the 'usual' damage profile of raids. Also doesn't help it was, once again, more focused on 'use more mit' instead of 'heal more'.

This is true. However it is true for every role.
I'm refering specifically to savage and ultimate content, where people are supposed to know what they are doing.

1. If tank is bad at mitigating or switching aggro, what is going to happen?
- Tank dies and the other one can be a safety net
- Both tanks die, boss starts hitting DPS -> Raid wipes

2. If DPS is bad at doing DPS?
- Other DPS can maybe compensate and be a safety net
- Raid wipes because of enrage

3. If Healer is bad at healing?
- Other healer can maybe compensate and be a safety net
- Raid wipes because of lack of healing


For some reason tanks and DPS are expected to do their job just fine. But Oh noes! If healers are not doing theirs, the world is going to end.

[Shurrikhan]

I think we talked about this a while ago, but basically they’re just 2 buttons that you can set to your hotbar that automatically change to one of your GCD attacks based on a priority system.

To clarify, I'm not asking for the one specific iteration you alone are looking for, but rather some idea as to how any such feature might fit into the larger game. Again, the question was anyone/everyone:

Assuming we had some sort of basic conditionals-assisted consolidation or autonomously rotating options available to healer, what would be the overarching system to contextualize that (so that it's not this oddity unique to healer --and therefore unintuitive for that unique- /one-off-ness), and what might it(s gameplay implications) look like?



Would it, for instance, be sort of a Gamut / Gambit system, as an improvement to macros (removing their purposely included self-sabotaging obstacles and making them capable of at least some mild conditionals), with a fair number of such options given automatically to the player as they acquire new skills, and where essentially everyone would use some manner of AI or consolidation... just with more or fewer options also being discrete / purposely left out of rotational cycles (Dia held separate for movement/snapshotting, Lillies held separate for movement/burst)?

Or might it be worth going so far as to have a true autonomous system where you basically start with a Trust AI rotation (though still improved, admittedly, as it'd at least have AoE) and players optimize atop that by varying the upcoming decisions and deploying bankable tools at optimal times?

[ForsakenRoe]

I assume it'd be a flowchart of simple yes/no checks to decide what is the next step to take. For example, lets take HW SCH, with it's extra DOTs and casted Shadowflare and what have you.



The problem with a system like Ty suggests is that there are certain decisions that must be made by the player, and cannot be interpreted by the auto-battle system. For example, if you were to add Chain Strat as a node on this flowchart so it automatically pops it, you lose the ability to make the decision to hold it for a few seconds, eg Pinax or Manifold Flames. That means that the autobattle system can never be 100% of the efficiency of a real player using their brain, and that's where certain people stop supporting it. Because it can't perform at the same level as actual brains.

[ty_taurus]

Actually, having something akin to a gambit system lite could be a good way to go about creating a system like this, as that gives players more freedom to use it how they like if at all. For example, maybe you just use it for MCH’s 1-2-3 combo or RDM’s melee combo to condense your hot bars. Or perhaps you try to put most of your rotation into it to simplify your gameplay. The system would just be much smoother than actual macros. And much like macros, there would be ways to use the system lightly which might not interfere with your ability to optimize, such as the former examples, or ways you can stress it to where it becomes less efficient, such as the later example.

I imagine this system only works with GCD actions and would still require input like how combos function in PvP. OGCDs would be difficult to blend into that in regards to smoothness. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

The thing is, not being able to get the system to automate your entire gameplay with 100% optimization of your job is not a problem because that isn’t the point of a system like this. It’s like the example I gave with fighting games. Providing a basic character-specific combo in a fighting game that you get when you mash the A button is there to make it so that any button-masher can have an easier time getting through, say, the story mode against the AI and feel cool while playing, rather than just watching your character rigidly try and jab the enemy to death and fail trying. It’s not there to get that same player to the top of a PvP tournament effortlessly.

I brought up this concept as a bargaining chip for the unreasonable “nothing is allowed to change!” argument that continues to plague the forums since it means that player can toss all their attacks onto this auto battle button and perform well enough that any lost optimization shouldn’t matter. It’s not the healthiest response to that behavior, but I’m also thinking from SE’s perspective of healers being so cartoonishly delicate that the “healer who heals by attacking” couldn’t possibly manage more than 3 core attack buttons.

[ForsakenRoe]

SE’s perspective of healers being so cartoonishly delicate that the “healer who heals by attacking” couldn’t possibly manage more than 3 core attack buttons.

"My Medica! I can't heal without my Medica-like skill!"

[Shurrikhan]

I assume it'd be a flowchart of simple yes/no checks to decide what is the next step to take. For example, lets take HW SCH, with it's extra DOTs and casted Shadowflare and what have you.

The problem with a system like Ty suggests is that there are certain decisions that must be made by the player, and cannot be interpreted by the auto-battle system. For example, if you were to add Chain Strat as a node on this flowchart so it automatically pops it, you lose the ability to make the decision to hold it for a few seconds, eg Pinax or Manifold Flames. That means that the autobattle system can never be 100% of the efficiency of a real player using their brain, and that's where certain people stop supporting it. Because it can't perform at the same level as actual brains.

I think that's fine. If anything, it just means that many people would opt out of certain inclusions (Miasma, if you won't be able to finish the cast but Bio is available to be refreshed anyways; Bio, if you're free to cast Broil this GCD but will be limited to just Bio anyways next GCD due to forced movement; Shadowflare, especially if it's on a CD, since you might want to hold for adds; etc.), leaving control increasingly in their own hands outside of filler.

I guess my bigger points though are just that...

1. if we're putting that 'token' down, it probably shouldn't just be this weird one-off thing for healers, but instead a smoothly integrated gamewide feature, and
   
   
2. it should consider whatever other ways may exist of improving apparent access despite increased offensive kit depth (even if that's just something targeting perception, like "Glare spam isn't really that big a loss, anyways, actually...") and the actual percentage gaps between performance by other means, too (e.g., game-wide under-mechanics like partial DoT duration roll-over so that the occasional early or slightly late refresh isn't such a bad thing).

[ty_taurus]

I think that's fine. If anything, it just means that many people would opt out of certain inclusions (Miasma, if you won't be able to finish the cast but Bio is available to be refreshed anyways; Bio, if you're free to cast Broil this GCD but will be limited to just Bio anyways next GCD due to forced movement; Shadowflare, especially if it's on a CD, since you might want to hold for adds; etc.), leaving control increasingly in their own hands outside of filler.

I guess my bigger points though are just that...

1. if we're putting that 'token' down, it probably shouldn't just be this weird one-off thing for healers, but instead a smoothly integrated gamewide feature, and
   
   
2. it should consider whatever other ways may exist of improving apparent access despite increased offensive kit depth (even if that's just something targeting perception, like "Glare spam isn't really that big a loss, anyways, actually...") and the actual percentage gaps between performance by other means, too (e.g., game-wide under-mechanics like partial DoT duration roll-over so that the occasional early or slightly late refresh isn't such a bad thing).

Another huge positive that this system could have if implemented would be the ability to share your gambits publicly or with friends, perhaps uploading them to a new menu where you can "download" upvoted gambits. Skilled players could upload "perfect" rotations to use on Stone, Sky, Sea which could be used as a training device where someone can use it to practice performing that rotation manually. As we've said, nuance certainly makes manual play better suited to adjust to various situations in real combat, but sometimes the hardest part of picking up a new job is learning where to start and figuring out what value your different actions have for your rotation.

[Shurrikhan]

Another huge positive that this system could have if implemented would be the ability to share your gambits publicly or with friends, perhaps uploading them to a new menu where you can "download" upvoted gambits. Skilled players could upload "perfect" rotations to use on Stone, Sky, Sea which could be used as a training device where someone can use it to practice performing that rotation manually. As we've said, nuance certainly makes manual play better suited to adjust to various situations in real combat, but sometimes the hardest part of picking up a new job is learning where to start and figuring out what value your different actions have for your rotation.

Precisely. And just the fact that the emphasis is on the variations, more so than the ABC (fixed combos / always be casting), may tend to nudge/facilitate consideration more towards, oddly enough, higher level optimizations much earlier than would occur otherwise.

[ForsakenRoe]

While the system may work, I'd rather just aim to mimic similar results via potency balancing, I think. It'd be faster to implement than a whole new system. For example, let's take SCH's DOT kit from HW, when it had the most. So we have (in single target) Bio, Miasma, 100%uptime Shadowflare as a GCD, and Broil as filler. Instead of what we have now, where Biolysis is 700p total and Broil is 295 (so the DOT is over 2x the potency-per-GCD of the spam nuke), Why not have something like:

Broil 5: 310p
Bio: Instant cast, 80p per tick, 12s duration (320 total)
Miasma: cast time, 50p on cast, 50p per tick, 18s duration (350 total)
Shadowflare: instantcast but GCD, 35p per tick, lasts 30s on the floor but since it's GCD it can easily be repositioned (350 total)

So if someone wants to ignore ALL of the DOTs entirely for...whatever reason, they don't lose all that much damage. By my maths, swapping every DOT refresh to another Broil would add up to a total potency loss of 790 over three minutes. The effective loss of damage from a Hyosho that didn't crit and DHit vs one that does both crit and DHit is bigger than that, and potentially happens once a minute. By contrast, currently ignoring the DOT entirely and just using an extra Broil in it's place would add up to a potency loss of 2430 per 3 minutes. Also with bringing back Shadowflare like this, I just thought: We can steal Salt and Darkness and convert Energy Drain into a skill that works like 'Shadowflare ruptures for X damage to all enemies within it' which would feel cooler than the piddly needle VFX it has now

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the idea of 'autobattle' if that's the compromise that needs to be made. I just feel like since it's an entire new system, SE would never bother with making it. So making the 'difference in potency output between full optimal and one button bob' be slimmer via potency tweaking would yield similar results (one button users would deal good damage regardless, filthy optimizers can still optimize), without the devtime of the new system. And we've seen from Energy Drain and it's existence (and complaints when it's existence is threatened) that it doesn't matter how little a gain something is for optimization, people like to have it as an option. Like, you 'can' dump Lilies by overhealing and put Misery in raidbuffs. But how many players, out of the entire playerbase, actually do that? Even in Savages and such, I reckon it's not actually a majority. Even I don't bother sometimes, I don't like the idea of wasting healing specific resources like that

Again, looking at the graphs of 'what GCDs are used per minute' I made here. You can see our current rotation on the top graph, and my pitched rotation on the bottom one. But that bottom one is the 'fully optimal, putting both Misery AND the Quake/Flood/Tornado empowerments into the raidbuffs'. If there's no damage for an entire minute or longer (completely possible in the current state of the game, lets be real), it's not actually necessary to prep and fire a Misery, or use my hypothetical new heal and get Quake etc. from it. You could just use more Glares. So how many people are going to bother with all the extra optimization of doing that even when healing isn't actually needed? I doubt some massive amount of players are going to specifically hold the new healing tool, just so they can get one extra Glare worth of damage (all three empowerments add up to only one Glare worth of damage) while ALSO dumping Lilies on healing in such a way they can get Misery into the raidbuffs as well. It's there as 'potential', as 'maybe the epic gamers could pull this off' but I expect that over 90% of players would just use the heal as, well, a heal, and the refund damage is just that, a refund, the thought of 'oh if I do XYZ I can move this inside the raidbuff window' wouldn't even enter most player's brains. Look how many people in Savage, across the whole raiding playerbase, actually do the Dissipation/6 ED dump opener on SCH.

[Semirhage]

Lol I see they're keeping the giga hitboxes and just buffing healer AOEs to hit everyone in Meracydia instead. Let's make everything even more simplistic, skill expression be damned. :rock on: