All DPS clears highlight a problem with encounter design in ShB

[QooEr]

I might be playing a different game then , cause i puging savages and there are many times my partner healer cant heal ending up to ppls death. Im main healer since realm reborn and yeah some fights are easier than some other in healing department. But the idea of im using 3 heals and nothing else to do is false. Cause either your fellow healer is carrying u so u can focus on pressing 1 button or ur lying

you really must be, because e5-7s can be done with neither healer gcd healing.

youre not "carrying" your cohealer when you spam medica 2 after an aoe hits.

[Deceptus]

It's funny because when I essentially cross posted this to general, there was a ton of negative attitudes attempting to justify why it was OK for relatively current content to be able to be completed without a healer.

Non-Healers just don't get it.

[ItMe]

justify why it was OK for relatively current content to be able to be completed without a healer.

Non-Healers just don't get it.

The problem is SMN is so overtuned that (in special conditions and with lots of planning) 5 of them can stand in for healers.

[MirronTulaxia]

The problem is SMN is so overtuned that (in special conditions and with lots of planning) 5 of them can stand in for healers.

Eh, while that’s a specific issue that needs to be fixed the more general one of healers not being important for healing is still true.

[Rilifane]

I might be playing a different game then , cause i puging savages and there are many times my partner healer cant heal ending up to ppls death. Im main healer since realm reborn and yeah some fights are easier than some other in healing department. But the idea of im using 3 heals and nothing else to do is false. Cause either your fellow healer is carrying u so u can focus on pressing 1 button or ur lying

Neither.
I'll do some number crunching (and I hope I didn't miscalculate anywhere, feel free to check my calculations, fellow number crunchers) for you to highlight why it makes sense for an Ast to hardcast rather than the WhM since this is the comp your kills usually had without it being considered "carrying".

Asp. Benefic and Regen both have 1200 potency in total, Asp. Helios and Medica II both 700 and Bene II and Cure II 700. The only difference is that Asp. Benefic has a small upfront heal but shorter duration than Regen.

Ast ST target hardcast have a total potency of
2120 for Asp. Benefic through Neutral & Synastry
1120 for Bene II through Neutral & Synastry

WhM ST hardcasts total for:
1440 for Regen with Temperance
840 for Cure II with Temperance

That means Ast heals for an additional 680 potency through Asp. Benefic over Regen and 280 through Bene II over Cure II.

Ast AoE hardcast heal totals for:
1540 with 400 of it being on demand for the next 30sec through Neutral & Horoscope

WhM AoE hardcast totals for:
1040 from Temperance & PI

Meaning Ast heals an additional 500 potency.

Ast heals for 30%-47% more with one hardcast. Unless they already have trouble with their MP, there is no good reason for a WhM to hardcast with both tools up over an Ast hardcasting with both tools up, escpecially since WhM loses 50 more potency for that GCD heal over Ast.

Immediately healing every AoE with Med II or Asp. Helios is not carrying. It's wasting MP while snipping the other healer's regens and that is poor gameplay.
PUGs cannot be expected to be well-coordinated though I generally had a good experience with communcating which AoEs and busters I can cover without help, cutting down additional healing to a minimum. But if I see my co healer being really aggressive about healing and immediately casting AoE heals, I will naturally cut back on my own healing, even on oGCDs. This isn't a HpS dick fight. In those cases I'd rather save my tools for times when my co healer panics, messes up, is out of MP, died, the raid as a whole messed up etc.

e5-e7 can be cleared without a single hardcast aside from transitions, although I wouldn't expect that to happen in PUGs or more chaotic statics, because properly spread mitigation and oGCD heals is the exception rather than the rule and I will not risk a wipe because "I shouldn't have to hardcast here!" - I don't like it, I know it can be avoided but I'm definitely not above it if it gets us the kill.
Unless my WhM/ Sch co healer is a heal bot, I will cover the neccessary hardcasts out of my own violation as much as possible because I know it costs them more for less gain than me.
And since I'm not running a low Piety set in PUGs, I can manage my MP even with the additional hardcasts. I'm not carrying anyone doing this.
And in a decently coordinated group I can absolutely get away with not using a single hardcast. I have this happen regulary on Ramuh and Ifruda (not counting transition hardcasts ofc); only on e7s I tend to hardcast during uptime here and there because it depends on kill speed what I have up for Blasphemy waves, 2nd portals need some decent mitigation and people still tend to spread out too much for colors + waves during birdnado to cover all of them with Star & CU.

[ItMe]

Interesting information. Rilifane, thanks for doing the work to bring us numbers.
So... why do healers even have hardcasts then?
Do you feel like hardcasts are something we could / should move away from design wise?

[Absurdity]

Interesting information. Rilifane, thanks for doing the work to bring us numbers.
So... why do healers even have hardcasts then?
Do you feel like hardcasts are something we could / should move away from design wise?

I'd argue they exist for healers that aren't playing at the highest skill level, groups that don't have the best coordination, pugs and for the time during prog where you haven't optimised a fight yet. GCD heals are basically for "when something went wrong and you don't have oGCDs to deal with it" or simply during phases where you don't lose anything by hardcasting because you can't deal damage anyway.



They certainly have their place in general gameplay.

[Morningstar1337]

While I'm not against Helaer DPS, one can't help but wonder if all these problems could had been avoided (or at least changed into something else) if SE was a little less...lazy with quest and overworld design. As it stands the reason healers even have attack spells to begin with was so they can clear the myriad quests that needed them to kill several mobs, which really killed the "pure healer" angle they would eventually try to gun for before the Bahamut clears.

I bring this up because there is a precedent for objectives that required healing, (mostly in the healer quests, natch), and also because there is a precedent for quest objectives changing depending on the class in both the Qitari questlines and to a greater extent, the Namazu questlines.

[ItMe]

As it stands the reason healers even have attack spells to begin with was so they can clear the myriad quests that needed them to kill several mobs, which really killed the "pure healer" angle they would eventually try to gun for before the Bahamut clears.

They must have seen that not every job could solo in FF11 (though most can now) and wanted to change that.
Makes me wonder what's baked into FF14 they're not happy with that will inform the design of their next MMO.

[Rilifane]

Interesting information. Rilifane, thanks for doing the work to bring us numbers.
So... why do healers even have hardcasts then?
Do you feel like hardcasts are something we could / should move away from design wise?

I think of GCD heals as crutches once you're past a certain level, escpecially for max level. That goes for casual content aswell as endgame content.
They have their place in a healer's toolkit and they should continue to be there but come at a price so using them is discouraged and (more or less) clearly marked as suboptimal. You can fall back on them if something went wrong, you're still working on mapping out the fight or your party is simply not mitigation enough, positioning themselves properly or (in very rare cases) if incoming damage is simply too high for oGCDs alone.
But they're not bread & butter, just skills that are there so you're never completely out of options.