Healers need an overhaul

[kyyninen_kirahvi]

I Firstly I must say that I like to play the healer roles. But then again I wish there were something to make them more stand out.

I think WHM is mostly fine. The elemental theme has been lost a bit but I think that would be an easy fix. Have a couple more of elemental themed damage spells.

SCH feel empty to me. Like there's something missing. Might just be that I need to play it more but I feel like I'm late all the time when I play the job. Why do we still have two fairies?

AST is fun but what is the point of the cards if they all do the same thing? 6/8 isn't that big of a number. Give me a reason to care what card I draw.

I don't understand Sage. I mean, what is the point of damage healer if they don't have a proper damage kit? I honestly thought the job would have shields as a level up abilities and at the same time build a proper damage kit to heal. I admit balancing would be hard but it would be fun.

My thoughts havent really changed.

WHM is ~okay~, SCH gets better as it's leveled, but I like(d) the DoTs and I still need a reason for 2 fairies, AST still needs to have more variety in it's card system

I'll say that after playing sage, the job confuses me even more. Why doesn't it have better combat kit? There is a real reson for the job to have one. There is no reason to keep up the four same flavours of healer damage.

[Raven2014]

My dude, I have almost 300 kills of Asphodelos spread across five different jobs. The overwhelming majority of them in PF. I'm far from in a "static bubble." You really need to stop making sweeping assumptions of people.

It was a response to this:

The irony here is you bring up FFlogs, which yes, have influenced the community on the whole. It's also the only reason Savage retains any relevancy outside of Ultimate gearing. Without that website, Savage would be entirely dead content within 2-3 months. If not sooner.

That doesn't sound like a sweeping assumption if not categorical and factually incorrect to you?

To be in a position to tell people to stop doing something, you kinda need to be not doing it in yourself the first place, don't you think?

[ForteNightshade]

And making statement "savage content will be death in 2-3 months if not sooner" is not only a sweeping assumption if not categorical and factually incorrect?

It cannot be factually incorrect because we never had a tier without FFlogs since Heavensward. Your entire argument is based on assumption. Conversely, we can look at content with lackluster rewards or without some form of built in longevity and see a marked decline in participation as the months drag on. We can also infer SE wouldn't tolerant a third party program and website they've opened said they dislike for 6+ years if it wasn't beneficial to them in some manner. You can argue whether Savage would die off that quickly but you're kidding yourself if you don't think FFlogs has a massive influence on the raid community.

There are other factors that would lead to this result such as it being extremely difficult to vet players for content like Ultimate causing it to become far more exclusive but at this point, we're getting way off topic. To bring it back around to healers. Defending an objectively imbalanced design on the basis it wouldn't matter what your DPS is because you can't see it anymore is a laughably bad take. It's the same argument as telling the Prange players to stop complaining their entire role exists because of an arbitrary 1% buff forcing parties to take them. Just "shut up and accept your damage is crap" or to borrow your phasing. "It's just a self-created problem you feel bad your doing almost a 1,000 less damage than the Melee for no reason."

[Raven2014]

Your entire argument is based on assumption.

And yours isn't?

It cannot be factually incorrect because we never had a tier without FFlogs since Heavensward.

Raiding in MMO has existed way before FFLog came to be my dude.

Conversely, we can look at content with lackluster rewards or without some form of built in longevity and see a marked decline in participation as the months drag on. We can also infer SE wouldn't tolerant a third party program and website they've opened said they dislike for 6+ years if it wasn't beneficial to them in some manner.

Basically a bunch of conjectured base on circumstances ... aka assumption?

I mean ... look, I have no problem with people using assumption, that wasn't the point. The point was I think it was just a bit rich you accusing me of making "sweeping assumption" then making even a sweeper assumption in the same breath.

You can argue whether Savage would die off that quickly but you're kidding yourself if you don't think FFlogs has a massive influence on the raid community.

I wasn't kidding myself because I never said that, you're putting word in my mouth just to disagree lol. Ironically my opinion is actually the opposite, I think FFlog has an outsized influence on the community, and I hate it. But going from "have influence on the community to death within 2-3 weeks" is what called a stretch, massive stretch even.

Defending an objectively imbalanced design on the basis it wouldn't matter what your DPS is because you can't see it anymore is a laughably bad take.

That's because you laugh at the wrong thing.

- First off: raiding had existed way before any kind of metric addon exists.

- Secondly: DPS meter had also exist before. 10+ years ago I raid in WoW, hardcore, both in term of quality and quantity. But back then it was a personality and local thing. Like if you're not beating enrage, the leader check to see who's the under-peformer is to weed them out. Sure, there are some friendly competition to see who top the raid DPS but the mentality is "the highest priority is you do what need to get the clear, push if necessary but there is generally no need to risk mistake by being greedy".


Remember I said my conclusion is not due to just the content of this thread, but from other aspect of the community? FFlog would have been a fantastic tool if it's not for the existent of its ranking system, that things tinkle people ego. I've been raiding for probably 20 years now across many MMO, and I've never the level of greed that started appearing in the FFlog era. The complain about WHM isn't an issue about MP, in-efficient or w/e. I don't argue the fact it is less efficient, I argue the notion that the reason it's blew up to such a large issue because the WHM who refuse to use the MP-efficient heal will have a few percentage higher than a WHM who do.


Maybe that is an assumption, maybe it's not, but my thought process is not really that different than yours with you claim really, so at least you can drop the whole the pot trying to call the kettle black. To borrow your wordign style: "you're kidding yourself if you don't think FFlogs has a massive influence on the ego of the raid community." See what I just did here?

[Maltothoris]

They won't add back the whole mp management or anything like because of something we learned in Mizzteq's interview during the Endwalker Media Tour.

If we make it too intense, the number of people who can clear the content will be very limited. We don’t want to have a situation where somebody is just healing the whole time or have to have to manage MP constantly,” s

It goes against the accessibility they're pushing for and you can see that with all the changes. Aggro too hard? Just get rid of the damage penalty and have tanks in tank stance. Also no need for Diversion anymore since that was appartently too hard for dps to press even though it lasted 30 seconds and had a huge effect. This also reduced the burden on tanks to make sure they manage their provke+shirk. MP too hard to manage? Lower cost of all the spells, add new ways to gain mp back and reduce Lucid's cd from 2 minites to 1.

[ASkellington]

They won't add back the whole mp management or anything like because of something we learned in Mizzteq's interview during the Endwalker Media Tour.



It goes against the accessibility they're pushing for and you can see that with all the changes. Aggro too hard? Just get rid of the damage penalty and have tanks in tank stance. Also no need for Diversion anymore since that was appartently too hard for dps to press even though it lasted 30 seconds and had a huge effect. This also reduced the burden on tanks to make sure they manage their provke+shirk. MP too hard to manage? Lower cost of all the spells, add new ways to gain mp back and reduce Lucid's cd from 2 minites to 1.

Which I think is stupid on their part. The MP management anyway. We have tools in game to assist in mana management. Also, if you won't add back mp management, WTF is piety for then?!

[Raven2014]

Which I think is stupid on their part. The MP management anyway. We have tools in game to assist in mana management. Also, if you won't add back mp management, WTF is piety for then?!

Meme. But seriously, like I said one can clearly see a major disconnect in the ethos and the implementation of the role when the supposed #2 stat is a potato no one want. Not only people don't meld it, healers actively "avoid" picking up gear piece with it.

And remember, both Piety and Battledance had already gone through a revision to make them more useful. (not)

[Shurrikhan]

They won't add back the whole mp management or anything like because of something we learned in Mizzteq's interview during the Endwalker Media Tour.

It goes against the accessibility they're pushing for and you can see that with all the changes. Aggro too hard? Just get rid of the damage penalty and have tanks in tank stance.

I'm actually mostly fine with both those changes / reductions, unless they'd be willing to actually make something interesting out of them.

The only thing interesting about MP management was the damage penalty attached to Ballad / Promoted Bishop (lost AoE damage / Rook uptime). It was purely a physical ranged mechanic. At no point did MP existing make Cure I / Benefic / Physick interesting or worthwhile.

Similarly, enmity and enmity combos, due to how straightforward and permanent Enmity works in this game, were never nuanced or interesting. You stacked multipliers, achieving a giant enmity lead early in the fight, dropped stance, and then left it off for the rest of the fight. Enmity combos were even worse, in that they consumed up to 4 keys just for alternatives that you used only under the similarly underutilized tank stance state, to the point that we'd spend 5 buttons on a 20-second stretch of hitting 456 instead of 123. It was bloat.

A context for actual MP management, on the other hand, would probably look something like...

• Hefty MP costs attached to most abilities. %MP restoration removed from abilities outside of Lucid Dreaming (as attaching MPR to abilities only makes it even more costly not to just blow them mindlessly on cooldown). [SIZE="1"]Pure damage abilities would have only negligible cost, as their addition to average ppgcd was just siphoned out of Glare/Broil/Mal/Dos spam anyways, so they need only be balanced around the portion of damage they can still produce during intensive healing, due to being moved to oGCD means of output, relative to other jobs.
  
  
• Compensatory flat MP reduction on all other spells (disproportionately benefiting the likes of Cure and offensive spells and hurting the likes of costly AoEs). [SIZE="1"]This adjusts the MP economy such that using the burst of healing provided by abilities
  
  
• Slightly curtail the power of AoE heals, such as by splitting a portion of their potency among all wounded allies within their area of effect. [SIZE="1"]This means that fewer spot-healing requirements can be addressed at equal or lower cost by just blandly AoE spamming.
  
  
• An undermechanic that mostly prevents outright MP starvation, perhaps sacrificing potency for more than proportionately enhanced MP rate as MP increasingly falls below 50%. For instance, up to 6% more MP but 1% less throughput for each %MP missing, starting from 50%. [300% MPR but 50% potency at 0% MP.] This way we can have a mechanic for which failure is obvious and palpable without literally locking people out of gameplay upon failure.
  
  
• Finite means of receiving MP from outside sources that are not simply primarily bottlenecked by their cooldowns (no Stormblood Refresh, etc.).
  
  
• Ideally, remove Lucid Dreaming and just add its average effect to base MPR (unless the chance that someone might forget to hit it per minute, its negligible weave cost, and the risk of being PKed immediately after casting it and therefore being screwed for the next minute despite being rezzed are somehow worth its bloat).

Similarly, for enmity to be of any interest, adds would have to be able to spawn relatively frequently with some default, targeted enmity, and/or there'd have to be enmity resets, and/or mob manipulation based on enmity. Ultimately, though, if we were to have alternate combos, I'd still rather see them used for anything other than enmity (such as stagger, active suppression/mitigation, part-break, etc), or for a bit of bonus enmity to just be one of multiple bonuses by which those combos would compete with higher-damage or higher-resource-generation combos.

Why Esuna is so under-utilize? Why is it whenever we have a DOT mechanic, it's simply a matter of overpowering it with healing? Why do Ultimate Impulse + Hell Sting or Dominion + Aigonina or Quietus + Pulsar not become a more standard healing mechanic rather than soft enrage mechanic?

Esuna, as it's currently implemented, is more one-note than any other way of addressing a given debuff, so I'm honestly glad it's rarely used in its current form. Heal check? Nah, just use that special button that's otherwise wasted bloat.

The only thing I particularly like it for is timed on-debuff-cleanse explosions. In any other case, Esuna's being usable just makes the debuff more dull.

Because it at least has that, though, I'd rather see Esuna expanded in its functionality (just not on what it can be used for without actually changing how it can be used).

[Shurrikhan]

FFlog would have been a fantastic tool if it's not for the existent of its ranking system, that things tinkle [tickles?] people ego. I've been raiding for probably 20 years now across many MMO, and I've never [seen?] the level of greed that started appearing in the FFlog era.

Those Top-10/100/etc. rankings are a huge part of the reasons content stays relevant past gear acquisition.

Blue Mage may likewise be irrelevant to you, on the basis that you don't enjoy that way of interacting with the game, but that doesn't make it any less a means of getting enjoyable hours out of the game for those who do enjoy it. The difference is simply that the in-game content (Blue Mage, in this case) has opportunity cost for its bringing that addition to the game (as time spent developing it means less development elsewhere), while the meta-content (fflogs/rankings) does not.

Reflexively greedy positioning, moreover, as to push the boundaries of what is safe in a mechanic for more dps, isn't just an fflogs thing. It's... the habit by which you tend to develop as soon as possible the muscle memory with which you'll actually complete any challenging fight, rather than learning the mechanics and concretely how to deal with them separately (thereby having to relearn muscle memory and one's finer sense of timing many times over). Unless the content is tuned very leniently, it also frequently tends to get a team's first clear faster and with less aggravation, not just with a better parse.

Should fflogs probably feature in a more central position performance scores based on relative potency per minute (less affected by primary stat differences) or divided by item level? Sure. Should it further Context-for-Dummies the difference in jobs -- noting, for instance, that even if one swaps out the highest rDPS-performing job for the lowest, one would still clear only some 6 seconds later out of 8 minutes? Yeah, that'd probably be good. Should it probably default to an anonymous contribution to logs? Also, yeah, probably, so that the one-guy auto-logging drunken banter clears isn't flooding his party's history with low parses.

But fflogs is not pulling habits out of nowhere, nor are all parse-minded habits necessarily for the worse.

The complain about WHM isn't an issue about MP, in-efficient or w/e. I don't argue the fact it is less efficient, I argue the notion that the reason it's blew up to such a large issue because the WHM who refuse to use the MP-efficient heal will have a few percentage higher than a WHM who do.

But, again... that wasn't the main issue. The primary issue taken with pre-buffs Misery was the slap-to-the-face of a core/iconic skill's functionality having been obviously neglected, and thereby worsened with the changing context, just because the devs couldn't be bothered to remember what skills WHM has and how they interact.

[Shurrikhan]

Frankly, my problem is not really about healing itself, but more about role indentity. Right now there are so much conflation between roles that it both make it a balancing nightmare and a messy ball of unclear purpose. The Green DPS issue is merely the poster child of the issue, but hardly the only issue. My solution, in full, is actually very radical:

- Take away all party wide buff from DPS. Make them all selfish DPS. They're in charge of their own optimization and no one else. Also, remove stuff like fient and addle.

- Tank should only be in charge of personal defensive cool down, and maybe debuff the boss. They should not be double up duty to party wide mitigation.

- Support classes (p.range) should have the exclusive job as buffing the party, they should be the only one with party wide buffs.

- Remove majority if not all but the most basic self healing (i.e second wind) from all classes.

- Healers should be exclusive in charge of healing and raid wide mitigation.


I feel this way you can amp up the complexity and difficulty for each "role" that is unique to them. Instead of this melting pots "everyone does everything just some better than the others with DPS the only true go to".

This I also don't get. Never has removing tools from most, in the long run, made the few who still get to hold onto their forms of those tools feel any more complex, nuanced, or fun due to their removal elsewhere.

Remove enmity management from all but tanks and you don't get tanks that do more with enmity management. You instead get a game that simply has no enmity management, where tanks act like DPS but have Enmity bundled atop it. Rather than tanking, you just end up with tanks, which are then narrowed down skillsets that stand in place of actually interacting with that gameplay.

Remove survival tools from DPS and you don't get greater healing intensity or value. You just get toned down healing mechanics, checks, and raid damage because when a two people get hit by the same AoE and only one can be sufficiently healed before the next raidwide, either the damage must be AoE healable and/or an oGCD able to be left on the backburner for mistakes, or one of those two die, completely outside of the healers' control, where the one not getting healed could previously have popped a defensive and then become the one prioritized next time (as their defensive would be on CD). Removing those defensives wouldn't just strip complexity from others, but also detract from the quality of life and/or complexity of healing.

Etc., etc.