Famitsu Interview: Tuning encounters for healing

[Liam_Harper]

E12s is a decent step up from E8s, but it ends there really. E9+10s are just as easy as last tier to heal and e11s involves pressing Medica II for a few Burnished and a mitigation check for Cycles. I like Cycles, but it's one mechanic that some groups already skip.
E12s is definitely a mitigation check more than a heal check in some spots, where raidwides simply require a shield or you die.

Normal is just as light on damage as ever. Still, it's something that they're testing the waters on higher damage intake, so we'll just have to hope they develop on that.

To me the fight designer are more to blame. It's specifically their job to design fight and be sure all 3 roles are invested.

One issue is there is no proper heal designer on the team that we know of. They simply don't have a designer dedicated to healers, so healers are designed by developers who don't main the class.

[Gemina]

One issue is there is no proper heal designer on the team that we know of. They simply don't have a designer dedicated to healers, so healers are designed by developers who don't main the class.

How many designers are on the team? Is there one to represent every job in the game, or even every role? While I am one to pardon the devs from a lot of player gripes, I am not thoroughly convinced that the lack of one of them being a healer main is the culprit to this issue. While they could broaden the perspective on how to keep healer utility relevant as players get stronger opposed to someone who does not main the role; a healer main on the team is going to have the same tools to work with, and the same constrictions to work around as any other member on that team.

I think of it as someone who is perfectly qualified for a job, but they don't have the support or tools they need to perform to the best of their ability. IOW, a healer main on the team =/= anything changing at all.

[Absurdity]

How many designers are on the team? Is there one to represent every job in the game, or even every role? While I am one to pardon the devs from a lot of player gripes, I am not thoroughly convinced that the lack of one of them being a healer main is the culprit to this issue. While they could broaden the perspective on how to keep healer utility relevant as players get stronger opposed to someone who does not main the role; a healer main on the team is going to have the same tools to work with, and the same constrictions to work around as any other member on that team.

I think of it as someone who is perfectly qualified for a job, but they don't have the support or tools they need to perform to the best of their ability. IOW, a healer main on the team =/= anything changing at all.

As far as we know they have 4 people designing every single job, and none of those play healer (not sure about tank).

[Gemina]

As far as we know they have 4 people designing every single job, and none of those play healer (not sure about tank).

This is my impression as well, which according to the recent information given to us, there are essentially five roles as depicted in our character menus. That isn't really anything new though, other than confirming that even if they did have one engineer to represent each role, they are one short. I don't think it's either here or there because of how PvE is structured. They could replace anyone on that team with a healer main, or someone there can take it up and we would still have the same result.

Problem as I see it is instead of addressing the ilv problem, they just keep moving the goalposts; which will validate healer utility again for what? Two, three weeks?. Also according to that information, they have ran out of field and I would say they ate up that field in massive chunks allowing the ilv to scale the way it does. I have just never been able to comprehend the reverse pyramid approach to content design these devs use, but I also don't see it changing. I think that instead of addressing the ilv scaling in 6.0, they've just reset the values, and are starting fresh, and will continue to move the goalposts again each patch. Just by much smaller margins this time.

[Dogempire]

It just shows that they don't read healer feedback closely when the best they can do is just buff savage to hit harder and do nothing about the other 99% of content in the game where healing is even more boring.

Making the hardest content hit harder does nothing for people complaining about loss of job identity and complexity.

[Rymi64]

It just shows that they don't read healer feedback closely when the best they can do is just buff savage to hit harder and do nothing about the other 99% of content in the game where healing is even more boring.

Because they have to appeal to the casual player. The casual player isnt likely to go into savage and such so they thats where they can actually cause things to hurt. Every normal fight has to clearable even for the casual player

[Sovasin]

E9S: I think this is fun to heal for a first floor compared to E5S and E1S. The time between raidwides is not as long as Ramuh which forces you to put more effort into topping up the party; for example, having to heal after Obscure Woods before the knockback and before the Phaser mechanics. The tiles phase is interesting because of the movement restrictions that make it hard to use aoe heals like Earthly Star effectively unless you're in a static and specifically time your star to go off when everyone is in the inner tiles. The damage up buff is a great idea. Statics with skilled healers can choose to let the clouds in; the damage up is significant but not enough to prevent a zero-GCD heal plan. Groups that can't deal with 4 stacks can let in 1-2 instead. It's a cool way to let good healers contribute indirectly to higher DPS on the boss. Of course this wasn't possible during the first few weeks but now that most players in BiS it is doable.

E10S: This fight is boring because like Ramuh the damage is spaced very far apart. Earthly star and random regens can take care of the vast majority of damage in this fight, there is very little reason to plan heals for this. The triple stack damage was interesting especially when undergeared. At BiS, Shadow Warrior became another way for skilled healers to contribute indirectly as overmitigating it allows the group to handle the orbs standing in the middle without having to run to the edge. I think future raids should definitely include mechanics like this and E9S clouds, but I suspect this was not intended by SE.

[Sovasin]

snip

E11S: Fun to heal. Lots of outgoing damage with some opportunities to delay Earthly Star. Damage is frequent and Elemental Break forces a quick top-up between the protean and the stack/spread damage that could be dealt with using delayed heals like Horoscope, a quick rapture/indom or by mitigating beforehand. At BiS just being topped up before the mechanic is usually enough though. Burnished Glory being a mini-Almagest is nice and was challenging to heal when undergeared. Some annoying RNG like the thunder tether applying a heavy DoT (good if a melee is targeted because of bloodbath and second wind, bad if caster) to a single target which made healing feel inconsistent. Lightning Elemental Break is also harder to heal than Fire and Light; getting Lightning first during Cycles can sometimes end a run.

E12S P1: Very well designed. Frequent Maleficiums make it difficult to rely solely on regens between each phase, forcing quick top-ups through Indomitability, Earthly Star etc. Damage happens back to back with primal release mechanics, double tankbusters etc keeping healers constantly on their toes and forcing GCD heals when undergeared. Incoming damage is very high during Diamond Dust and Titan, however the knockback during Diamond Dust is much easier to deal with with an AST due to Horoscope not having a range limit; Celestial Opposition is also very strong here for a few ticks of regen before and after the knockback or after the initial cast. WHM/SCH teams suffered when undergeared as each healer could only heal their side of the arena after the knockback and mitigation was limited to just Galvanise and Seraph + Temperance. Neutral Sect + Lightspeed allowed teams to overmitigate the knockback itself, especially with a SCH. Even with gear incoming damage is high and party mitigation must be coordinated. It is near impossible to 0 GCD heal this, as far as I know most groups are still using neutral sect during diamond dust.

Titan phase does heavy damage that can be partially avoided by groups that know not to stand under the bombs when they drop, and the Maleficium afterwards forces a quick top-up. The damage comes in a steady stream compared to DD which was a lot more burstier so personal heals such as Bloodbath and Second Wind can be coordinated to ease the burden on healers.

The stacks during Giants deal heavy damage and so do the beams + the knockback after, forcing top-ups while the healers are handling their own beam mechanics.

[Raminax]

Speaking from a pugging perspective here.

Haven't gotten into Eternity very much yet (dipped my toes, got to the burly man statues), but my issue is mostly that healing checks feel more like mitigation checks than anything. I mean, I guess you could make a more than reasonable argument that a filthy monkeyman White Mage shouldn't be allowed to get away with bruteforcing damage intake through Medica spam, but co-ordinating mitigation plans usually starts with "ok ill try" (bless their hearts), works fine for two-three pulls, give it yet another three pulls and suddenly the Plunging Ice and Icicle Pierce combo on Junction Shiva is hitting the entire raid for almost 200k damage.

Otherwise, in general, with a co-healer that isn't completely chadding me, I haven't really felt the need to hardcast non-Afflatus heals outside of exceptional messups. Afflatus heals and oGCDs, with very sparse Regen/Medica II, have been enough to cover up the healing requirements, outside of stuff like Cycles of Faith and what little I've seen of Eternity so far (but I'll chalk that up to not having gotten a good feel for the fight yet). But I guess it is more than capping lilies the first two minutes of Iconoclasm.

(While on the topic of mitigation, people that use everything and the kitchen sink on the first Optimized Ultima instead of the orbs when doing Emerald Ex have a special place in hell waiting for them.)

[Recon1o6]

I have not, but this gives me a glimmer of hope tempered with caution. It confirms that they have received the feedback at long last about healers having little to do. Their first act has been to improve the savage healing and another thing by yoshida in the same interview said that sage and sch at least "On the other hand, Sage’s specialised weapon Nouliths, aren’t pets so their game experience will completely differ from Scholars when it comes to their offensive and defensive behaviour."

I haven't been into savage this tier on account of irl things, but a general boost to healing requirements over all duties not just savage would be welcomed.

perhaps we could get some more downtime buttons in 6.0? best to staytuned for now

https://www.akhmorning.com/news/fami...ng-the-new-job <the interview translated by the folks over on reddit and akhmorning