A summary of healer issues

[IDontPetLalas]

Yeah, i meant more that there could’ve been ‘between-expansion’ changes that at least make the issues a bit easier to deal with until they can do the bigger ones with expansions.

I get that it would be too weird for them to make change rotations or add a bunch of new skills etc, especially when people are still doing savage/ultimate where proper rotations and the like make a real difference.

But at the same time, one of the most common things I’ve seen people asking for is ‘return healers to Stormblood’. Naturally it would be a bit much to revert their entire kits, but things like giving back old DoTs could still help address those issues a bit, while also making it clearer they’re aware people have them. We’ve seen with Machinist’s Dismantle that it is possible for them to return pre-existing abilities. And even if they didn’t want to return the DoTs themselves, personally I think there’s a good amount of non-offensive options they could choose from as well. Like Scholar’s Eye for an Eye (whether or not it’s affected by Deployment), White Mage’s Stoneskin, or Astrologian’s Disable. Granted two of those were oGCD, but it would at least somewhat address the ‘we have too much powerful/direct healing relative to the content’ issue many healers have

That sounds like a very reasonable approach, as you say it would at least acknowledge the feedback, while not disrupting the content where even small job changes can potentially affect a group's ability to clear. I wish SE had this sensible approach.

[ForsakenRoe]

I wish SE had this sensible approach.

Best we can get is 'completely rework how cards work (again) and if it turns out to be bad/not fun/clunky/any negative descriptor, then we say 'sorry, we can't do major reworks outside of expansions you'll have to wait till next expansion'', take it or leave it, apparently

I would love to know where they got the idea that people wanted the current cards and over-focus on the 2min burst window

[Allegor]

I would love to know where they got the idea that people wanted the current cards and over-focus on the 2min burst window

Minmaxers, probably. Something something 'fishing for Balance isn't fun'... as if fishing for the proper seals was any better. If it wasn't because the seals are such a dumpster fire, I'd say the fishing issue got worse (and don't get me started on that obnoxious ranged/melee split, ugh)

*EDIT*

I apologize then, minmaxer wannabes would sound more accurate then? whoever they were, it's clear the devs listened to people who didn't want rng in a class whose entire identity is based on manipulating rng

[Shurrikhan]

Minmaxers, probably. Something something 'fishing for Balance isn't fun'... as if fishing for the proper seals was any better. If it wasn't because the seals are such a dumpster fire, I'd say the fishing issue got worse (and don't get me started on that obnoxious ranged/melee split, ugh)

Why would min-maxers care that Balance fishing "isn't fun"? Heck, for them of all people, those trickle-down of factors and weights to determine the best gamble for a given moment and ideal situations in which to spend Redraws probably was fun. It's those who didn't understand how to game that RNG who more likely disliked it.

The actual min-maxers were plenty aware that "Balance fishing" was an oversimplification, and already knew how to make the best of that situation. At most you could say that they maybe complained that while Spear, Arrow, Ewer, and Spire all played a role directly or indirectly, Bole never did because the mitigation requirements were just never high enough to need it.

Balance-fishing wasn't about just Balance. It simply had a best option each based on the availability of Spread, whether Expand was already up, time until next "raid burst", number of Redraws remaining (which had a best time in which to be used), and the difference between your highest (raw) DPS party member and your party average.

[Absurdity]

Why would min-maxers care that Balance fishing "isn't fun"? Heck, for them of all people, those trickle-down of factors and weights to determine the best gamble for a given moment and ideal situations in which to spend Redraws probably was fun. It's those who didn't understand how to game that RNG who more likely disliked it.

That's why I facepalm every time someone tries to blame all those oversimplifications on the people who optimize to min-max fights.
I can't speak for all of them but for me the fun came from having to deal with a jobs nuances and work around those minor inconveniences to squeeze some more performance out of it. I was never a 99th percentile player but it was still fun to strive for that.

So I highly doubt we were the people asking for all of these changes, what would be the fun in trying to reach for the peak when said peak is a slight bump in the flat plain you're already standing on?
Instead the oversimplification in the last two expansions completely killed my desire to min-max in the first place (and eventually my desire to do savage at all), especially when my performance is more reliant on crit RNG than it is on the decisions I make during the fight.

[Renathras]

If you change a bunch of abilities, a real rework than someone's old rotation and buttons don't work anymore. What is there not to get? Are you ok?

This is a continuing problem. People ask for changes that affect the whole Job, then insist it won't matter to "casuals" since they expect that "casuals" will just not press the buttons and be fine doing less healing/damage. While it's true some will, others won't, and may notice the difference. But we're told no one will and it will only affect the hardcore of the hardcore players and no one else.

When proposing solutions, it's important to accurately portray the cost-benefit analysis. While you might think that the benefits outweigh the costs, whenever someone tells you there are NO costs to their proposal, they're pretty much always lying, since everything has trade-offs and costs. So then you have to look into what they're leaving out. The bigger problem then becomes, when this is explained to them, instead of admitting reality and presenting arguments for why it still works or compromises to address the concerns, they just continue to insist there are no costs even though everyone else can see them. This then diminishes the likelihood people who disagree will agree with them, because now they see not only their disagreements but that the other side is lying/not presenting ideas/arguments in good faith.

I don't know who all needs to hear it, but YES, making changes to Jobs affects everyone that plays the Job unless the changes are completely redundant or have no actual effects. E.g. converting a 1-2-3 into a 1-1-1 or a 1-1-1 into a 1-2-3 where the 1, 2, and 3 buttons all do the same exact damage as each other (for example, give WHM a Stone, Aero, Water "rotation", but all the spells do identical damage so someone casting Glare Glare Glare gets the exact same outcome) wouldn't affect anyone, but it also would be a pointless proposal. Making Dia 12 sec duration instead of 30 would affect every WHM player except those who outright don't use Dia at all ever. And I've been assured that 80+% uptime is the average, making non-Dia players exceedingly rare by corollary.

.

It's time to stop saying things that aren't true. These changes WOULD affect everyone. Saying they wouldn't doesn't make one's argument stronger, it makes it weaker by being associated with a lie.

Instead, arguments must be presented to either support the change as a "greater good" anyway, or compromise modifications to minimize the impact and effect.

[Connor]

snip

Isn’t this ignoring what me and BRVV discussed immediately after that post? That doesn’t seem fair

Of course it’s true that no change can literally have 0 effect on players, unless they change nothing. But at the same time smaller-scale changes that work to acknowledge the issue and assuage the concerns people have can be implemented in a way that doesn’t penalise players who are don’t want the added complexity. Like if White Mages got Stoneskin back. It’s a nice tool and it’s fun to use (for me anyway), it actively helps newer players by supporting them through mechanics they may otherwise not have survived, and most importantly the content can be completed regardless of whether you use Stoneskin, or let Regen heal them up, or shield with Divine Benison etc.

Similarly with returning things like Miasma / Aero III - given how healer dps is right now, if they added them back into the game and a player just focused on using Glare / Dia, they’d still come out with ‘acceptable’ dps amounts. It would just mean that if a player did want to play more optimally, they could put out slightly more damage. But since it’s also healer dps, it wouldn’t technically matter for completion of content, since outside of Savage content the only gain one really makes from higher healer dps is slightly quicker clear times.

Of course there’d be the misinformed people who watch like a hawk for healers to make mistakes, ‘why aren’t you using Aero III you Sylphie’, ‘you slipped Miasma at 4 instead of the moment it hits 0, you deserve the Tonberry Plague’ etc. But all they’d be doing is showing their own ignorance of the game’s mechanics, because outside of savage it wouldn’t penalise healers for not engaging with those aspects of the job

As for adding damage abilities purely for the sake of damage and not to actually give the job options, I feel a good compromise is to follow PvP and have healer’s offensive abilities provide supportive effects. Like Gravity inflicting Heavy (wouldn’t work in PvE of course lol), Biolysis reducing damage dealt, Holy’s PvE Stun effect. By having a healer’s offensive actions also work to support the party in some way, it means that even should healers get more damage abilities they serve more purpose than simply padding out the dps ‘rotations’, and those supportive effects can also work to relieve some of the healing pressure

[ForsakenRoe]

Why would min-maxers care that Balance fishing "isn't fun"? Heck, for them of all people, those trickle-down of factors and weights to determine the best gamble for a given moment and ideal situations in which to spend Redraws probably was fun. It's those who didn't understand how to game that RNG who more likely disliked it.

We still have RNG in the job, just that it's crit RNG now (which cannot be controlled/influenced unlike the cards). The minmaxers/hardcore/whatever should understand that no matter what you do, there's gonna be RNG of some sort that will screw you and your parse, and fighting around that to get a good parse is the whole point of optimization, that's where the fun in the act is. I would assume it's the dunning-kruger midcore, who think they're better than they are, who wanted an easy scapegoat for why they aren't actually parsing 99s (it's cos I got bad card draws and it made the killtime bad) that complained enough to get the cards dumbed down to this state. But I also blame SE for not putting any thought or care into the fix, instead just throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and the bath, and the sink for good measure. There's so many ways they could have 'tweaked' the old cards such that the 'unique effects per card' remain (for flavor/job identity), but also have them be easier to balance.

And I've said several times, if I had to put my finger on the one main reason the old system couldn't be balanced, it was not The Balance (the card), it was the Expand effect of Royal Road. Because the AOE modifier changed the card comparisons from 'this one is 10% damage, this one is 0% damage (bole for example)', to 'this one is 5% damage for everyone (40% total), this one is still 0% (bole again)'. Keeping the cards single target and adding Divination in SHB as the 'big AOE burst window' would have 'fixed' the card balance most of the way, after that it'd just be small number tweaks, and adding damage to the cards that didn't provide damage to make them competitive. Like, we hear about how people used to go 'oh no Bole sucks it's just mit and you can't even predict when you'll have it', okay just throw an extra effect on it so that whoever has Bole reflects damage when they're hit, with competent balance (asking for miracles I know) it's equal to Balance in terms of damage and the Mit is a nice bonus on top that rewards the AST for using it on a relevant role (eg Tank)

Though I shouldn't be saying anything since I've turned to complete garbage at the job in the few months since Asphodelos. I blame playing WHM. Seriously, the longer I play WHM it feels like I get worse at the game, not better

But since it’s also healer dps, it wouldn’t technically matter for completion of content, since outside of Savage content the only gain one really makes from higher healer dps is slightly quicker clear times.

Didn't you know, if the healer chooses to use the 320p Glare instead of the 350p Water, then the party won't have enough damage and will hit enrage, because the WHM lost 120p per minute /s

[Recon1o6]

tbh it seems the people who hate rng the most are SE rather than elitists. I'm not going to be surprised if they remove crits or dhits.

-despite acknowledging people wanting randomness we never get any fights that have actual randomness. At most its "mechanic A, mechanic B/C, mechanic D, Mechanic B/C" or alternatively "markers on dps, different markers on non dps" nor do we get fights where the enemies have their own cooldowns on attacks like twintania and alex primes cleave
-crit damage from enemies was remove outside deep dungeon
-they removed kaiten for "variance"
-they introduced rng mitigation to ast cards
-more abilities are now auto crit and they would have done more were it not for the backlash
-2 minute fight design

With regards to changes mid expansion, they should absolutely do changes more often and with actual consistency. Why did it take till EW for whm to get actual weaving on their basic attack for example when Astro got theirs changed mid expansion in SB

[IDontPetLalas]

Isn’t this ignoring what me and BRVV discussed immediately after that post? That doesn’t seem fair

Of course it’s true that no change can literally have 0 effect on players, unless they change nothing. But at the same time smaller-scale changes that work to acknowledge the issue and assuage the concerns people have can be implemented in a way that doesn’t penalise players who are don’t want the added complexity. Like if White Mages got Stoneskin back. It’s a nice tool and it’s fun to use (for me anyway), it actively helps newer players by supporting them through mechanics they may otherwise not have survived, and most importantly the content can be completed regardless of whether you use Stoneskin, or let Regen heal them up, or shield with Divine Benison etc.

Similarly with returning things like Miasma / Aero III - given how healer dps is right now, if they added them back into the game and a player just focused on using Glare / Dia, they’d still come out with ‘acceptable’ dps amounts. It would just mean that if a player did want to play more optimally, they could put out slightly more damage. But since it’s also healer dps, it wouldn’t technically matter for completion of content, since outside of Savage content the only gain one really makes from higher healer dps is slightly quicker clear times.

Of course there’d be the misinformed people who watch like a hawk for healers to make mistakes, ‘why aren’t you using Aero III you Sylphie’, ‘you slipped Miasma at 4 instead of the moment it hits 0, you deserve the Tonberry Plague’ etc. But all they’d be doing is showing their own ignorance of the game’s mechanics, because outside of savage it wouldn’t penalise healers for not engaging with those aspects of the job

As for adding damage abilities purely for the sake of damage and not to actually give the job options, I feel a good compromise is to follow PvP and have healer’s offensive abilities provide supportive effects. Like Gravity inflicting Heavy (wouldn’t work in PvE of course lol), Biolysis reducing damage dealt, Holy’s PvE Stun effect. By having a healer’s offensive actions also work to support the party in some way, it means that even should healers get more damage abilities they serve more purpose than simply padding out the dps ‘rotations’, and those supportive effects can also work to relieve some of the healing pressure

To add to the above (change and its effects) , I would also say that change does not affect everyone equally. I doubt that those players who are in Savage and Ultimate content would be as interested or as affected in general as those who do normal (< Extreme) content. For example- a certain percentage of those doing casual content may not use changes that they don't like , or may not even apply them because they're not aware of them - whereas that's not really not likely to happen at other levels.