Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[ThivraK]

why are people so damn adamant to not want to give healers more DPS options?

[Thoosa]

The thing is, I don’t want a healing experience where I’m desperately mashing ogcd and gcd heals constantly, running out of MP and being able to do nothing but watch the group die - wow can be like this - depending on the healer played and the group you’re with and it’s maximum stress for little reward.

I would like a middling experience where healing is somewhat challenging (and therefore rewarding), plus some dps to do.

SE basically seem to have one extreme of super easy to massive wall hard and no in between.

[Deceptus]

I would simply like an explanation as to why the devs feel having a more robust dps rotation on healers would be a bad thing. Expecting the game's content to be made harder is unrealistic given the game caters to a wide audience. That said, having the option to press more than one button to do damage would be nice for those of use who have copious downtime in most forms of content.

In their own words (paraphrasing because it's been a while and I don't 100% know the quote):

"We don't want healers to feel anxious about having to do damage"

Despite that exact stance not applying to tanks as well. It's a blatant double standard.

The thing is, I don’t want a healing experience where I’m desperately mashing ogcd and gcd heals constantly, running out of MP and being able to do nothing but watch the group die - wow can be like this - depending on the healer played and the group you’re with and it’s maximum stress for little reward.

What's funny is this literally happened to Monks with high skill speed before TP was removed.

And then it happened again with Red Mages at the start of Shadowbringers because the MP costs of their spells outpaced their combined natural regen and Lucid Regen. Playing your job at a basic level resulted in a negative MP rate and in a long enough fight, you'd literally hit zero.

Just saying it’s possible to progress MSQ without any offensive tools. Not that I wish healers to be that way.

Except it wouldn't be. How would you get from level 1 to level 2 without offense? Book / Cane smacks alone? Now multiply that by 90 levels. See the problem?

There's more to the MSQ than just dungeons and trials. There's a ton in between. You didn't say this, but its absolutely unacceptable for anyone to remotely think that the answer might be "Do the MSQ on anything other than healer and only use healer to heal, no offensive capability." Again you didn't say that, but that is exactly what a decent amount of the playerbase is actually advocating for when they want offense removed from Healers.

I resort to E.Diag spam only when necessary when I have a paper tank. But I don’t touch it outside of downtime otherwise. There’s no point in breaking my Dosis/Dyskrasia spam to farm for an ability that results in me losing damage. Especially if the shields aren’t even needed. The irony of being a shield healer is that I use my barriers quite infrequently.

1) Yep, E. Diag spam is an absolute last resort when you've used the 13 different ogcd's Sage has to enhance shields / defensive buff up, regen, instant heals, etc etc etc

2) 100% agree, the "Barrier" healers are severely lacking in actual barriers. They each have 2, ST and AoE barriers (which the aoe version is ridiculously weak) unless you count Haima or Seraph. Meanwhile the "Regen" healers have just as many barriers and are sometimes stronger (AST in Neutral Sect)

[Axxion]

didnt this topic had like 83+ pages?

[linayar]

How often does a boss go invuln?

Irrelevant. Am I doing something with my rotation? Yes? Then Always Be Casting. You people act like it's going to be a long rotation and you won't be back to dealing damage soon enough.

Which is an entirely arbitrary addition because the actual healing component would be pointless otherwise. Put simply, instead of fitting a circle through a round hole, you're desperately curving edges off a square to make it round. Designing a convoluted system that doesn't create meaningful or engaging gameplay is purposeless.

How is it convoluted? It's a simple builder-spender rotation.

If damage requirements were ever that high where it would have necessitated it, then perhaps it would have been good design, but that means they would have to rework 4 expansions worth of encounter design content + ARR. That's honestly not feasible, nor does it make the game more accessible. Nor less boring when you're doing a solo instance and all that healing becomes excess overhealing.

Why would they need to rework older content? It's well known that older content has gotten much easier with all the buffs to jobs. If they're going to rework old contents, they already have reasons to do so and this won't change that.

In this game, it is a far more likely possibility that the healing would be useless due to the nature of encounters and just how little healing is actually required.

The healing may or may not be useless depending on how strong your heals are (it probably could be weaker and have more consistent incoming damage), but the spell itself would not be because you're doing something with that spell.

Also, the nature of encounters can change moving forward.

[HyoMinPark]

Also, the nature of encounters can change moving forward.

I really do not know of any other way to tell you that the developers have explicitly stated that they will not be increasing the amount of incoming damage in fight encounters. Ergo, the nature of encounters is highly unlikely to change in terms of healing requirements. This is not something I am making up—it is something that Yoshida himself has expressly stated.

Your system is not functional in this game for healers. Please just accept that.

[linayar]

I really do not know of any other way to tell you that the developers have explicitly stated that they will not be increasing the amount of incoming damage in fight encounters. Ergo, the nature of encounters is highly unlikely to change in terms of healing requirements. This is not something I am making up—it is something that Yoshida himself has expressly stated.

Your system is not functional in this game for healers. Please just accept that.

Even if they don't change the encounter, you haven't shown that my system is not functional.

For it to be not functional, it would have to be unable to handle the requirements of both healing and/or DPS. And since you're talking about overhealing, it seems it would handle healing requirements. DPS requirements, on the other hand, is a matter of balance and tuning adjustments.

So explain to me how it is not functional.

[HyoMinPark]

Even if they don't change the encounter, you haven't shown that my system is not functional.

For it to be not functional, it would have to be unable to handle the requirements of both healing and/or DPS. And since you're talking about overhealing, it seems it would handle healing requirements. DPS requirements, on the other hand, is a matter of balance and tuning adjustments.

So explain to me how it is not functional.

Yes I have. You just aren’t reading what I’m saying. I’ve explained how your system isn’t functional within the confines of this game, its fight designs, and the way healers function in this game in each of my responses to you.

A healer that isn’t actively contributing to the party is dead weight. Overhealing is not actively contributing to anything except an overheal percentage. You cannot heal party members beyond 100%, so when you are spending GCDs on healing people at full health, your GCDs and your healing are doing nothing. You don’t seem to understand this concept. Healers don’t want to do nothing—they want to contribute. So your system is already contrary to what we want.

This healing certainly won’t be contributing to incoming damage as much as you seem to think it would be because healing requirements are already extremely low, and are unlikely to increase in the future per Yoshida’s own words. Since you want to force healers into healing phases by making all their damage abilities have high MP costs, they won’t have a choice when they can enter their “healing phase” because MP is a limited resource—and if this “healing phase” doesn’t align with incoming damage from the boss, then they are pressing GCDs that are doing nothing for their party. GCDs that would be far more meaningful if they were contributing to damage. Damage has become king in this game, so it will always be the central focus. There’s also the other caveat of their “healing phase” never aligning with actual incoming damage, which then calls into question: will we have to just stand around and wait for the damage? Again: healers want to actively contribute. Standing around waiting for damage because you need to time a healing phase isn’t actively contributing.

And inb4 we bring up “mana regen”—your mana regen system is arbitrary. You are using it purely to justify the healing phase, but there already exists mana regen in this game that is far more meaningful and far less convoluted. And it doesn’t force a healer to stop contributing to damage because they need more MP. There is no reason to shoehorn MP regeneration onto a healing combo when you can just keep Lucid Dreaming.



Your system exists purely to force healers into healing because they’re called “healers”. It does not improve the quality of healer gameplay, which is what healers in this game—in this very thread and every other thread on this forum—are asking for. It doesn’t even fall in line with how healers are actually played in FFXIV: we don’t spend repeated GCDs on healing for one—GCD healing is the first thing minimized in favor of our stronger oGCD heals. And while we have asked for higher incoming damage to actually make use of all the shiny new healing toys the developers keep giving us, they aren’t going to give us that. So we have turned to asking for a more engaging healer DPS rotation—which your system doesn’t provide. If anything, it has even higher costs on dealing damage because you want to tack on high mana costs to damage abilities to force healers into a healing phase that does not actively help their party.

The only thing I foresee your system doing is 1. Causing a lot of healer mains to abandon the role (they’re already fed up enough as it is, and your system is unengaging, not fun, and has periods of time where we wouldn’t be contributing to anything to help our party), and 2. Causing groups to drop the second healer and bring a fifth DPS. Healing is already needed so little that all high-end fights in this game have been solo healed while relevant. Some have even been done without a healer at all (e.g., the level 83 EX trial was cleared with no healers before Pandaemonium even released—so within a month of release). There would be no reason to take two healers when both are arbitrarily forced into periods of healing versus contributing to damage when the group could just take a fifth DPS instead.

[ForteNightshade]

How is it convoluted? It's a simple builder-spender rotation.

Because it's attempting to do multiple things that are wholly unnecessary, have little to no synergy and don't provide any meaningful gameplay improvements. Why have a system that requires pointless overhealing simply to regain MP when cutting out the heal entirely and simply having an oGCD MP regen (i.e. Lucid Dreaming) accomplishes the same thing? In other words, you're advocating for a system that takes three steps to achieve what the present one does in one. That's why it's convoluted.

[linayar]

Because it's attempting to do multiple things that are wholly unnecessary, have little to no synergy and don't provide any meaningful gameplay improvements. Why have a system that requires pointless overhealing simply to regain MP when cutting out the heal entirely and simply having an oGCD MP regen (i.e. Lucid Dreaming) accomplishes the same thing? In other words, you're advocating for a system that takes three steps to achieve what the present one does in one. That's why it's convoluted.

I'm pretty sure that's the thinking behind the healer DPS rotation. Why make additional buttons when the current ones are already effective for DPS purpose?

And remember, that's the reason behind my idea in the first place. SE doesn't seem to want to give DPS rotation. People want rotation. This is one idea for that. Is it the only or best solution? Probably not, but you all are just attacking it based on "current design philosophy" when that seems to be tangential to the point.

Yes I have. You just aren’t reading what I’m saying. I’ve explained how your system isn’t functional within the confines of this game, its fight designs, and the way healers function in this game in each of my responses to you.

You say this, and yet the next thing you say is:

A healer that isn’t actively contributing to the party is dead weight.

Do you really think that actually shows how something is nonfunctional or is that a perception issue?

Let's dive into that further.

What do you mean by not actively contributing to the party? Are you saying that the healer does not do DPS at all? Because I never said that. Do you mean per GCD damage contribution? Does that matter in the overall scheme? When fights are scripted, can't the job be designed to be able to output within a certain range of damage over a specified time?

And again, they are not doing nothing. Replenishing MP for the purpose of doing damage is not doing nothing. If it is, again, that's a perception issue, not a functionality issue.

You also missed the part of my idea where GCD healings cost no MP.

Regarding GCD vs oGCD heals, yes that is the case now, but that's because of how they work currently. Is there a reason why they cannot work differently?

Ah, now, that last part about a fifth DPS might be something to consider, but if it does happen, it won't be because healers are not contributing damage, because they still will over the specified time necessary, just not on every GCD.