Thread: Troubling sign for 6.0

It is troubling. 6.0 is definitely being worked on right now and they still have no Healer Designer and a mentality that blind healbotting is the way to go. Chances are the 4th healer is already partly made and follows this design pattern.

Originally Posted by Gemina

In short, they do listen but would be hard pressed to go through countless pages of what can be boiled down to, "We want to damage more, and heal less."

That's complete nonsense. The majority of posts boil down to "we want something more engaging to do during our downtime". No one wants to heal less, we have barely anything to heal as it is, but even if you significantly increased damage intake we'd still have downtime, especially with better gear, and dealing damage is a good way to fill that. We'd prefer if the devs acknowledged this was a thing and made dealing damage a little more interesting.

The only issue I see with feedback is that so much of it is conflicting. Everyone has these crazy "full healer rework" ideas, most of which aren't viable at whatsoever, would feel horrible to play, or would involve restructuring the entire combat design and all old encounters along with the role itself. Then you have a wide range of opinions from "delete oGCD's", "I want to heal 100% of the time", "I want to spam debuffs all fight", "I want 1, 2, 3 combos and 10 DoTs", "nerf all healing so I have to spam Medica 10 times to heal a raidwide" and so on, sometimes ending in arguments among ourselves. Which isn't surprising that the devs just look at the mess, feel we have no idea what we want and just continue with the current model since healer participation is still fine.

Healers definitely need change but I feel we should be making realistic tweaks and reworks to what we have and fixing flaws, adding a few dps tools and making gameplay smoother and flow better, rather than letting our imaginations run wild.

Originally Posted by GrimGale

Is this bait? Most complains are from the side of "Please give me something more engaging to do than spamming one button for 80% of a fight."

The problem is, and has been ever since the reveal of 5.0, healing downtime and how to fill it.

If fights are designed to have such lengthy moments where healing is not required, then players will fill it up with Dps, just to do something more than standing idly by waiting for healh bars to get chipped only to cast a heal to fill them back up. (Which I would argue is increadibly boring too.)

It's not bait, but you need to understand where this comment is coming from. This is the same dev team who got the impression that AST mains only went for the Balance, so they made all the cards the Balance.

The devs would also likely tell players who say, "We want something more engaging to do during 80% of the fight, they will tell you to go into harder content where you can use your full kit, or you can go into alliance raids where healing requirements are more reactionary.

When the majority of what is talked about is how to make DPSing as healer more engaging, you are not leaving any sort of impression that you want to heal more. I have also basically laid out why the healing requirement will never be raised in casual content.

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Healers definitely need change but I feel we should be making realistic tweaks and reworks to what we have and fixing flaws, adding a few dps tools and making gameplay smoother and flow better, rather than letting our imaginations run wild.

Can the DPS tools not just be "more dots"?

DoTs with nothing else going really are no better than spamming Glare. You just have Glare 2 on a 30 second cooldown.

Originally Posted by Gemina

It's not bait, but you need to understand where this comment is coming from. This is the same dev team who got the impression that AST mains only went for the Balance, so they made all the cards the Balance.

The devs would also likely tell players who say, "We want something more engaging to do during 80% of the fight, they will tell you to go into harder content where you can use your full kit, or you can go into alliance raids where healing requirements are more reactionary.

When the majority of what is talked about is how to make DPSing as healer more engaging, you are not leaving any sort of impression that you want to heal more. I have also basically laid out why the healing requirement will never be raised in casual content.

One thing I've noticed is that, as much as AST card system has been reworked, AST players don't seem to complain about "spamming one button".

If AST serves as a reference to what a "busy and engaging healer" is, then why not extend this secondary buff system design to the other healers?

Utility management (As in self buffs, enemy debuffs and party buffs) can fill up a part of the downtime with something engaging.

Hell, we pretty much have inklings of such design already. With WHM's Temperance, Presence of Mind and Thin Air and SCH's Chain Stratagem ( and Virus/Eye for an Eye/Shadowflare) previously.

Would it truly be such a 180 degree turn to give WHM skills that make parallels with Black Mage? Enochian to maintain for Lillies, some form of Astral Fire buff stance (But light based) That would allow for Light spells to be cast, which rewards good use of healing and damage with a big blast of magic.

Would SCH not benefit from a sense of build up like the rest of the healers? Dots and debuffs that expose enemy weaknesses with a flashy finish.

You've got a point.
It's kinda why I moved from SCH to AST.
(That and that you can stuff an oGCD in after each GCD is real neat.)

Originally Posted by GrimGale

One thing I've noticed is that, as much as AST card system has been reworked, AST players don't seem to complain about "spamming one button".

If AST serves as a reference to what a "busy and engaging healer" is, then why not extend this secondary buff system design to the other healers?

Agreed. Especially in the case of SCH who has the worst job gauge of the three. While I don't agree with the direction some healer mains want their jobs to go, I fully acknowledge the fundamental flaws that strip the enjoyment out of this role. One of the major ones is how redundant the kits become the further the healer and other party member out-gear the content. All jobs suffer from this to some extent, but none more so than healers where literally well over 50% of their kits are filled with skills they don't need.

I feel that the way to make healing interesting is through interactive job gauges like what AST has, and return/loaded damage like what WHM has. However, each of these mechanics are missing something the other has (AST's Divination doesn't hit the enemy for big damage, and WHM's lilies are entirely passive). If they could combine these two concepts in a job gauge for each healer, I think we would have something all or most healers would enjoy. If this was the case, then they wouldn't have to contend with upset healers from either faction of the community.

Utility management (As in self buffs, enemy debuffs and party buffs) can fill up a part of the downtime with something engaging.

Unfortunately, if you give healers skills of this type, their kits still become redundant as they out-gear content as enemies will die too quickly for them to be of much use. I don't think the devs will ever go this direction with healers. I believe they learned that giving healers too much utility causes leap frogging as was the case in HW and SB.

Would it truly be such a 180 degree turn to give WHM skills that make parallels with Black Mage? Enochian to maintain for Lillies, some form of Astral Fire buff stance (But light based) That would allow for Light spells to be cast, which rewards good use of healing and damage with a big blast of magic.

Yes xD

I have mentioned WHM having to sustain their PoM buff as an additional/improvement to the lily mechanic while brainstorming on how to convert the passive lily system to an interactive one where the WHM has to earn their lilies. It's basically greased lightning though, and even though the devs would intend for it to be a buff they accrue throughout a battle, they know that the gripes will come from everywhere because now the WHM would be losing DPS when it is forced to drop.

But in the case where a big blast of magic is gated behind a resource the healer has to build, then this is a direction I think the devs can and might be willing to go. The question would be how they build the resource so it can still be used in all content at or above the level the skill is learned, and also design it in way that doesn't discourage healing.

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

That's complete nonsense. The majority of posts boil down to "we want something more engaging to do during our downtime". No one wants to heal less, we have barely anything to heal as it is, but even if you significantly increased damage intake we'd still have downtime, especially with better gear, and dealing damage is a good way to fill that. We'd prefer if the devs acknowledged this was a thing and made dealing damage a little more interesting.

How so? This statement is basically what gives that impression. When processing thoughts on how to fill downtime, you immediately default to causing damage. Of course, the argument of content design being the reason for this will be the rebuttal towards that, but this is a deadend. It does not solve the puzzle on how to make healing enjoyable for everyone. And when this dev team consistently comes out with content that takes us by surprise such as G-warrior back in 5.3, and new mechanics each patch that give players something to think about for a few days until the knowledge becomes widespread, I know they can do better. They just have to give healers the time and resources they deserve.

Increasing the healing requirement is also not the answer, and I've covered that. Each of these possible solutions only serve to loop the problem. The dev team is going to have to come up with something different to circumvent a perpetual and very difficult issue.

Originally Posted by Gemina

Unfortunately, if you give healers skills of this type, their kits still become redundant as they out-gear content as enemies will die too quickly for them to be of much use. I don't think the devs will ever go this direction with healers. I believe they learned that giving healers too much utility causes leap frogging as was the case in HW and SB.

I have mentioned WHM having to sustain their PoM buff as an additional/improvement to the lily mechanic while brainstorming on how to convert the passive lily system to an interactive one where the WHM has to earn their lilies. It's basically greased lightning though, and even though the devs would intend for it to be a buff they accrue throughout a battle, they know that the gripes will come from everywhere because now the WHM would be losing DPS when it is forced to drop.

Having 1/3 of the kit being party utility doesn't change the fact that healers as a class become redundant anyway. At least you have 2/3 of the class kit that still remains useful, as opposed to 1/2.

It's all in the details I suppose. I also see it as an avenue for differentiating the healers, giving each one their own little thing to do that separates them from the rest.

BLM solved the "Forced to drop" problem with "Umbral Soul". I can't see why WHM would have it any different. If self Dps buffs are also maintained by healing, it might even encourage WHM to do so even more.

Originally Posted by GrimGale

Having 1/3 of the kit being party utility doesn't change the fact that healers as a class become redundant anyway. At least you have 2/3 of the class kit that still remains useful, as opposed to 1/2.

It's all in the details I suppose. I also see it as an avenue for differentiating the healers, giving each one their own little thing to do that separates them from the rest.

BLM solved the "Forced to drop" problem with "Umbral Soul". I can't see why WHM would have it any different. If self Dps buffs are also maintained by healing, it might even encourage WHM to do so even more.

Be that as it may, I think it is a flawed design philosophy to develop job actions with a 'minimize losses' approach. But perhaps it is unavoidable with healing.

As for the forced to drop, we would have to assume that based on how SE designs healers, they would not possess an ability that sustains their uptime buff when the boss goes bye-bye, or between engaging with enemies. That is why I mentioned that.

Originally Posted by Gemina

In short, they do listen but would be hard pressed to go through countless pages of what can be boiled down to, "We want to damage more, and heal less." By doubling down on the pure healer, what they are saying without actually saying it is, "Well go play a DPS job then." The devs can just as easily say that the playerbase doesn't care to listen to them, and they would be equally erroneous in doing so.

Nah, people want something to do in downtime because healing is quite binary at times. As a healer improves, the healer requires less time on figuring out when they need to heal and when they don't. This is also true for people getting better at an encounter or when the party starts outgearing the duty. When everyone is at full HP, a healer no longer needs to heal anymore, or else they would be wasting MP and healing skills. There will be moments where everyone will be healed to full and healers don't have anything to do besides attacking or standing around and do nothing besides waiting. In both situations, this will cause the healer downtime to feel very monotonous because the mentality would be pressing their attack skill (Malefic/Glare/Broil) for a long time, or stand there and do nothing at all.

In that case, people would advocate for more varied DPS options because that's the simplest way to make healer downtime more enjoyable without complicating things too much. It'll make it more fun to level up healers and reward them for being able to contribute more to a party when they are playing well.

The alternative is to make incoming damage on the party more intensive through more frequent bursts of unavoidable damage to create less downtime, but that causes two problems. It raises the difficulty bar for all players - making it more difficult for a poorly performing healer to complete the run since they are more likely to run out of resources due to a lack of proper skill management or a poorly performing party to finish the duty because there will be less downtime & MP for raises/healing avoidable damage while the healer is busy healing the unavoidable incoming damage. This change would exclude casual and poorly preforming players unless they get more healing abilities or improve their technical skills in managing MP and healing overall.

There would also lead to an imbalance for healers if healers will start defaulting to GCD heal to keep the party alive - WHM and AST being fine with their high GCD healing potencies but SCH taking a huge hit as their raw GCD healing is much weaker in comparison to the other two while still matching White Mage in the significant MP cost. Simply put, Scholars can't handle being forced to GCD heal often since majority of their healing power is entirely based on oGCD abilities, and this change can pretty much break Scholars depending on how much more unavoidable damage they have to heal in addition to player mistakes.