Healers need an overhaul

[Raven2014]

So what exactly do you want to see in the future for healers?

No more new oGCD heal for a couple expansion would be a good start. But frankly, I think the currently healers is in such a state then I don't believe a good solution can be reached by simply "removing or adding" a few things. It needs a full rework ala SMN style.

And that rework need to be done with a different mind set and expectation. We can argue the up and down of the current situation, but I believe the root cause of its own is SE seems to have a really low expectation regarding healer players for some reason, almost like it's designed for babies, both in term of mentality and skill set.

So much complexity Healers had was stripped out and has yet to be filled. What do you think we get when you have a job that has 0 complexity and very little engagement in gameplay?

See above. I will not pretend each of the thing I mentioned by itself will solve the issue. But there is a saying "take care of the pennies and the dollar will take care of itself". As the developers kept stripping these "pennies" over the years (as from some of the reply here, some of the players seem to have equally dismissing attitude), and everyone wonder why healers can't make a dollar?

[Shurrikhan]

That's not true. Unless you have tanks who willingly to keep the stance up all the times. Maybe I was unlucky but I did not see those tanks a lot back then, both PF and static.

Yes. It was. Your options were solely to:

1. Reduce your fight-length enmity reduction and MP recovery by holding your Sacred Shroud to cleanse your upcoming enmity (worthwhile only if adds were spawning and just as you're burst AoE healing), or
2. Use your CD on CD to maximize fight-length enmity reduction and MP recovery.

99% of the time, that was a non-choice. You just hit your (2-minute, at the time) CD as it came back up.

Also, are we just gonna repeat the same argument circle we had a month ago? I'll just give you a short summary of what I said back then:

- Did I say the system in 2.0 - 3.0 was perfect? No.
- What I said was elements back then should be enhanced, refined, and expanse.

As with a month ago, you're ignoring the parts that actually have changed and instead pointing at a perfect void and saying "it was darker back then". It wasn't. It hasn't changed. It's the void.

I don't know why people saying stuffs like "oh as long as your tank is good, your ninja know his thing, your BRD/MCH take care of MP .etc." then it's not difference for healer as if they're something taken for granted.

No one is. There was simply literally nothing more one did, nor could do, about it than there is now.

Your healers would not pull enmity off their tank unless already doing something that is still, today, considered basically griefing (Medica II spam on full HP allies with no upcoming damage) because the DPS otherwise so exceeded their enmity and many DPS at the time didn't even have access to enmity reduction. Enmity reduction was not a group effort. It did not remotely matter what the 2nd highest enmity was, only whether the highest non-tank enmity would overtake the MT.

The "layer of coordination" you're talking about was literally just bringing a Bard. That's it. It wasn't gameplay. It was PF-play. The Bard could then experience a bit of MP-centric gameplay by weaving Ballad until where its damage would be least impacted, until Ballad was replaced by Refresh, but the healer never touched that mechanic; there was nothing to its MP gameplay beyond hitting its personal Refresh skill on CD. Nor was there anything to its enmity management in 99% of fights beyond, again, hitting its personal Refresh on CD.

__________________

Would I care for Enmity management? Sure. But that has never existed for healers. Enmity would likely have to be fundamentally rehauled (say, from a mere table for AA and SA target selection to behavioral manipulation) for that to be a mechanic that can be played with/around for healers.

Would I care for MP management? Sure. But that's never been any more than an illusion and an auto-clicked button's worth of bloat. Healer kits would have to be rebalanced and MP would likely have to be fundamentally rehauled (say, from a starvation mechanic to an efficiency mechanic) for that to be a mechanic that can actually be played with/around.

[HyperiusUltima]

No more new oGCD heal for a couple expansion would be a good start. But frankly, I think the currently healers is in such a state then I don't believe a good solution can be reached by simply "removing or adding" a few things. It needs a full rework ala SMN style.

And that rework need to be done with a different mind set and expectation. We can argue the up and down of the current situation, but I believe the root cause of its own is SE seems to have a really low expectation regarding healer players for some reason, almost like it's designed for babies, both in term of mentality and skill set.

Ohhhhh no. We are not going down that road with a SMN-like rework. You saw how it turned out: Had the most complex rotations for the longest period of time, and then got reworked this expansion because said complex rotation was extremely punishing to their DPS. Got turned into a very simplistic job, though with a lot to be desired as many in the DPS Sub-forum have mentioned. The idea of "removing or adding" isn't without reason though - if you bother to take a look at action hotbars, you get the following if you were going in a high-end Raid Setting:

WHM: 28 Actions
AST: 30 Actions
SCH: 31 Actions(this includes Selene/Eos Summon)
SGE: 30 Actions

We've still got room on Hotbars for an additional action or two - especially in WHM's case since this includes all Role Actions(except Repose). Sadly, here's the percentage of those actions which are purely for mitigation or healing:

WHM: 64.2%
AST: 56.6%
SCH: 54.8%
SGE: 56.6%

And the funny thing is, unless we're in Savage or Extreme or are making mistakes, we don't always use our full kit! Meaning some of it is just button bloat ready to be pruned.

I will not pretend each of the thing I mentioned by itself will solve the issue. But there is a saying "take care of the pennies and the dollar will take care of itself". As the developers kept stripping these "pennies" over the years (as from some of the reply here, some of the players seem to have equally dismissing attitude), and everyone wonder why healers can't make a dollar?

You also got to break down the dollar considering we've been getting short-changed for how long? 4 Years. As for where they started stripping your 'pennies' from, rollback to Stormblood. They stripped a lot from WHM and made it Role Actions. Then, they got rid of Largesse in Shadowbringers and instead redid Role Actions to properly reflect what tools one should have. The problem with Shadowbringers was that they stripped Astrologian and Scholar to an extreme by cutting down their DPS abilities that made them stand out. The reason for it? Overtly complex rotations. Ever since Shadowbringers, the devs have cut back on complexity to the extreme for Healers without anything to fill the void. Oh wait, that void's filled with oGCD healing actions...

[Raven2014]

Ohhhhh no. We are not going down that road with a SMN-like rework.

Like I said in another thread, nobody (including myself) like the "currently" new SMN. That's not the point.

The point is you need something like that to re-imagine the class. The original design of 2.0 had lot of "WoW" carried over, and there were a reason why SMN was often reffered to as the WoW Warlock equivalent. And because it was originally designed like that, it's very hard to give it a new identity by just simply adding or removing things. The new SMN is simplified, yes, but now the class has a new identity that - at the very least - more thermic to its lore. It's very simple now, yes - but that means it has more room to grown from now on, and this time, on a more appropriate path.

Am I excited playing the current SMN? No. But I'm excited for the class future now more than I ever did since 2.0.

That's the point, even if they commit to a major redesign, I doubt they'll get healers to the perfect point in one expansion. Just like the current SMN's rework, it's not the whole step, but for any meaningful change to happens, that's a necessary first step.

Would I care for MP management? Sure. But that's never been any more than an illusion and an auto-clicked button's worth of bloat.

And ... this is exactly my point.

The people on your side of argument seem to habit of doing this. Just like whenever someone on my side mention "I would like to see more healing related game playing", I would have at least 3 other saying "OMG SPAMMING CURE II 100 TIMES IN A FIGHT IS NOT FUN" ... except we never really suggest that? (And we say that's just hyperbolic it's "OMG THAT"S NOT HYPERBOLIC YOU JUST FAIL AT COMPREHENSION".)


Can MP management be made as simple as "just remember hitting this one button on CD"? Yes. Can it be made to weave into a more interesting mechanism that work in concert with other game-play? Absolutely. So the question is HOW SE decide to implement it. And my point is just "removing" it because it's currently not meaningful is not the answer.

Case in point: I do not like the current implementation of Astrodyne. If you ask me if I prefer the current AST and the version at the end of 5.xx, I would pick the latter. But, at the sametime, I would never advocate for Astrodyne to be remove. Rather, I would like to see it further refined and improved. In fact, I even think most healer should have a little mini-game management built into their kit like that.


There are other games made healers an engaging and interesting job by neither focus on spaming heal or spaming 1 button damage, there is no reason why FF14 can't if the dev are willing to change the mindset regarding the role (aka: healers are designed for babies to play). What I do wonder about is why do this community, or at least the most vocal in this thread seem to have this extreme binary take of the problem that you either heal or DPS. Healers gameplay can be so much more than just those 2.


I know there is not many people here with the same opinion but I had seen someone else said it. To echo it: this community seem to be split between people thinking spamming heal is fun and people who see maintaining 2-3 dots as engaging game-play. And I'm always like ... why?

[Shurrikhan]

<snip>

Let's recap:

You point to something that never did X. At all. And you say "Hey, it was far from perfect, but at least it gave X a shot." But it didn't. It didn't even make the attempt. It was just bloated pretense.

As such, when you point to it and say "That's what we should look to [instead]" especially in the context of suggestions that would almost certainly be lower cost and more comprehensively effective, it sounds a whole lot like you'd rather have bloated pretense.

You clearly don't consider those past attempts as just bloated pretense, but you have yet to (A) generalize what you're looking for to the point that the examples (e.g., MP management or Enmity management) you're choosing would ever have been attempted, or (B) point out what you actually want, gameplay-wise, that could inform anyone else to how you possibly look at those past examples and see something attempted that would be worth revitalizing, let why you'd frame all that in the way you have (because that shit sure wasn't management and yet you keep talking about "management").

If you want "meaningful MP management," then no example from this game --which has never had it-- is going to help you with that. So come up with it on your own. Describe. Define. Detail.

If you want anyone to see anything lucrative in that vision, especially when you keep treating it as mutually exclusive to solutions typically held as both more practical and broadly applicable, then elaborate.

[Raven2014]

Let's recap:

You point to something that never did X. At all. And you say "Hey, it was far from perfect, but at least it gave X a shot." But it didn't. It didn't even make the attempt. It was just bloated pretense.

And that's why we don't agree. I never said we had a dollar, but at least we have pennies. You can argue as much on this point as you like about "how little they all meant so it doesn't matter". The point isn't about how little we had, the point is it was still more than what we have now. And had SE decided to keep them, you would have more diverse beyond the current binary.

Even if they were all just bloat, having some bloating diversity would still be preferable to having a bunch of thing that do the exact samething.

you'd rather have bloated pretense.

Wrong.

You clearly don't consider those past attempts as just bloated pretense, but you have yet to (A) generalize what you're looking for to the point that the examples (e.g., MP management or Enmity management) you're choosing would ever have been attempted,

Except I did? I even cited specific gameplay encounter within specific fight within specific mechanic where aggro management and coordination matter a month go. Go back and look for it if you want.

If you want "meaningful MP management," then no example from this game --which has never had it-- is going to help you with that. So come up with it on your own. Describe. Define. Detail.

If you want anyone to see anything lucrative in that vision, especially when you keep treating it as mutually exclusive to solutions typically held as both more practical and broadly applicable, then elaborate.

Beside the false pretense that I did provide examples, I did elaborate, maybe you just never see them because you were simply being dismissive toward them. Like ... seriously, did you just miss the example I cited about Astrodyne? And that's not even the first or 2nd example I had provided.


But, at the end of the day I'm NOT a game developers. I will not pretend that I know the perfect solution that if SE just take what I said and implement it will 100% magically fix all problems. You're pressing me to provide the level of detail as if I'm getting paid by SE to design their game. As a gamer, I have desire and vision of the game I played, and I had expressed it in great detail. As someone who had played plenty other MMO, my experience tell me healers can be far more interesting and involved beyond the current 2 binary tracks that everyone seem to get their head stuck in.

If you or any want more than that, then you gonna have to pay me to sit down at the draft table.

[Shurrikhan]

I never said we had a dollar, but at least we have pennies. You can argue as much on this point as you like about "how little they all meant so it doesn't matter", but what you cannot argue as regardless how little we had, it was still more than what we had now. And had SE decided to keep them, you would have more diverse beyond the current binary.

Never said you did, hence the "at least gave X a shot". But no, a small chance, already in just one trial/raid in in 100, that your tank was out of position for add spawn and you waited until then to burst heal and you had sufficiently accidentally desynced your Sacred Shroud (SCH didn't even have access to an enmity purge at the time), is not even a penny. Nor did it remotely affect "the current binary" (whatever that may be).

The only thing that affected any sort of relevant binary --say, between spam and more varied action or between curative/defensive and non-curative/defensive actions-- was the higher relative healing requirements and a lower portion of healer kits being devoted specifically to healing.

the example I cited about Astrodyne?

Your example is worse than vague gesticulation, so I was waiting to reply in hopes it would be edited into something that'd actually function as elaboration.

In what way do you want to see Astrodyne "further refined and improved"? You've applied absolutely no details save that "<there was thing about it I liked Astrodyne (or, something that is metaphorically Astrodyne) more in Shadowbringers <when Astrodyne didn't exist> that might perhaps center some mechanics or considerations that I think would be preferable to how the Astrodyne (and/or its the parts of its function, its triggers, or its metaphorical implications) now functions>." How is anyone supposed to parse anything from that, let alone to do with MP management?

The only part of AST changed by the inclusion of Astrodyne was Divination and its ability to be underclocked by, and thereby underperform due to, poor Seal management, which had nothing to do with "MP management".

As someone who had played plenty other MMO, my experience tell me healers can be far more interesting and involved beyond the current 2 binary tracks that everyone seem to get their head stuck in.

It's pretty much just you, and maybe Semirrhage, who seem to believe that deliberation around healing can only ever follow that kind of binary.

Most here appear to be looking at/for just three things:

1. How far can we push the dev team to allow us to push the boundaries on relative healing requirements?
   (Tentative answer: Not very far at all.)
   
   
2. When do we start getting diminishing returns on means of offensive, curative/defensive, and utility skills?
   (Tentative answer: Sooner than what button counts we invest into healing right now, but probably [slightly] faster still for offense and, especially, utility.)
   
   
3. How do we make those tools, within each (offensive, curative/defensive, and utility) category and across categories, feel more synergistic (rather than overly codependent/bundled on one end or redundant on the other)?
   (Tentative answer still pending, as the discussion keeps getting sidetracked by those insisting that it's a monolithic camp against them.)

If you or any want more than that, then you gonna have to pay me to sit down at the draft table.

Mate, you're the one spending some dozens of posts here trying to get people to second your vision all while trying to outdo cryptic mystic tropes for vacuity in your details. If it's not worth elaborating on to the point you could actually convey your thoughts to others instead of simply trying to score points by attempting to position everyone else as nonsensical/narrowed extremists... why bother?

I'm more than happy to hammer out what would comprise meaningful MP management or utility involvement, etc. and look at how it might be introduced to the game, but for any discussion to develop you need examples that actually do the things you say they exemplify (i.e., that create actions/considerations/optimizations that would not otherwise exist and actually have the space, context, and weight to affect how one plays), or to create a mockup of them yourself. You don't have to hammer out precisely the how, but we will at least need to know, to some at least roughly actionable/gameplay-affecting degree, to what effect. And, more importantly, it will have to modelled around what constraints are utterly unlikely and/or insufficiently lucrative to change.

Discussion of what precedents within recent dev decisions or, more importantly, what can be gained from those changes will therefore be relevant, too, but we may as well first attempt a model that could engage players even within the present low relative healing requirements and an expectation that content will not be rehauled just to make our model work.

:: In the meantime, I'll search a month (or, between some 10 and 60 days) back for your example on healer enmity management within a particular fight, but if it's what I'm thinking of...

Edit: Well, that was a waste of time. I've combed through your every post in this thread that use any among the words "mana", "MP", "threat", "enmity", or "management". Still at zero for actual examples. Lots of just "it existed!" though?

[HyperiusUltima]

Like I said in another thread, nobody (including myself) like the "currently" new SMN. That's not the point.

The point is you need something like that to re-imagine the class. The original design of 2.0 had lot of "WoW" carried over, and there were a reason why SMN was often reffered to as the WoW Warlock equivalent. And because it was originally designed like that, it's very hard to give it a new identity by just simply adding or removing things. The new SMN is simplified, yes, but now the class has a new identity that - at the very least - more thermic to its lore. It's very simple now, yes - but that means it has more room to grown from now on, and this time, on a more appropriate path.

Am I excited playing the current SMN? No. But I'm excited for the class future now more than I ever did since 2.0.

That's the point, even if they commit to a major redesign, I doubt they'll get healers to the perfect point in one expansion. Just like the current SMN's rework, it's not the whole step, but for any meaningful change to happens, that's a necessary first step.

Re-imagine an entire role? You might as well throw out Healers as a concept then and redo the game from scratch, throwing out the holy trinity and everything that it's built around! SMN was a special case where it was getting to a boiling point that the job itself was far, FAR too punishing. Dying had extreme losses that a SMN wouldn't be able to recover from that easily - losing all those stacks? Yeah, you lose one stack back then you were toast for practically the entire fight since Demi-Bahamut was a big thing to summon back then. It was reasonable to give SMN the massive overhaul so that it wouldn't have that factor compared to RDM and BLM.



It's obvious they won't get healers perfect, but that's where player feedback literally comes in. We provide the feedback, they're supposed to fine tune the outliers and issues. Right now, there are no outliers or issues with the Healing Role in terms of function - it is entirely on engagement. Every role except healers has some sort of engagement that drives the gameplay loop and provides a good feeling, mainly with how the job's gameplay loop is. For Tanks, that's running through your combo rotation, keeping aggro and swapping off for Tank Busters, Tanking heavy hits, the works while doing decent damage. Ranged has their utilities as support that drive their gameplay loop, if not their intricate mechanics(except MCH; they don't have utility other than a 10% DR and Hypercharge). Melee have their fast-paced gameplay and big damage output they like a lot - I haven't had one time where a burst phase on that role had NOT felt impactful in a rotation, regardless of whether it was good or not. For Casters, you've got the spellplay and the intricacies of movement on top of either being a big damage turret(BLM), being a support Caster(RDM), or summoning allies to do your bidding for big damage and flashy animations(SMN).

Whereas with Healers, the gameplay loop doesn't follow anything. It doesn't have any bells or whistles that all other roles have to drive their engagement. The only gameplay loop that apparently matters is sitting there doing nothing but healing your party, if not "throwing rocks" to quote somebody who kept mentioning rocks. The problem is, if you can't solve the issue with the gameplay loop, people just aren't going to keep playing it. They'll get bored quickly if all they're doing there is sitting there waiting for something to heal. Or even, sitting there just pressing the same damn button 12 times in a row before being able to do anything else. The only think keeping Healers BARELY interested are Extreme, Savage, and Ultimate difficulties that have intricate healing checks they have to do, otherwise it wipes the party.

This is what we've been trying to say all this time: Add more damage buttons. It helps people "stay alive" rather than fall asleep mid-pull because the gameplay loop's as boring as watching paint dry. Besides, we've got more than enough healing to deal with anything at the moment in terms of difficulty - and how healers handle that in Extreme/Savage/Ultimate is up to them to decide, GCD healing be damned. They obviously won't do anything about it this expansion since we're reaching the halfway point, but the last straw for healers is going to be 7.0. If nothing happens then, there will be a reckoning.

[Midareyukki]

Also, back then SMN just kept having mechanics on top of mechanics, each overriding the next. DoTs got downplayed. Aetherflow got downplayed. The pet lost agency. Then DWT got downplayed. Suddenly you rushed Bahamut to get to Phoenix... It was just so much stuff making an incredibly punishing, strict and ridiculously busy job. I went from feeling comfortable with it at the end of Stormblood to it just being an annoying button mash without a logical sequence to it.

That isn't an issue with the healing role. Some skills are just repeated skills with a slapped-on effect to make it "distinct" (but we all know it's Cure 2 in disguise), while the only thing the role has to do when it's not required to heal is a straightforward and often unrewarding spam. At its best, that spam is interrupted by punctual skills. Huzzah for entertaining.

On SMN I felt rushed, with mechanics cramped together and too many job identities at once. On healers I feel like I'm snoozing. Healers don't need incredibly elaborate whack-a-mole rotations to do damage. Nor even more skills to heal when odds are the kit of the previous expansion worked just fine. But at least have a kit that's engaging and creative.

[Raven2014]

so I was waiting to reply in hopes it would be edited into something that'd actually function as elaboration.

Ok, I'll bite, in good faith.


A - Turn "play" into a GCD instead of an oGCD.
Reasons: One, reduce the excessive weaving that AST has to do comparing to other healers. Two, make play easier for people who on controller or don't play with macro (targets switching). Three, allow draw to be weaved with play instead of over 2 GCD or risk double weaving (QoA for high ping).


B - Each time a card is played, give AST 1 stack of buff that makes the next Melafic hit for twice potency. Cap this stack at certain # so AST has to manage it instead of just stack it infinitely for buff window.
Reasons: one, reduce the #of Melafic spam with an equivalent number of card play while has no DPS loss. AST can strategically manage their stack for optimization. This is somewhat similar to WHM Lily.


C - Astrodyne will give a timed and stack-able buff up to 3 stacks. A 3 seal astrodyne will increase the stack value (up to three). 2 Seal astrodyne will simply extend the timer of the current stack but not increase its value, otherwise the stack will decrease by 1 each time the counter reach zero. (Think about the old MNK Gease Lighting, but with a twitch). Adjust timing of cards so that AST has to pace out Astrodyne, save and pump out 2 Astrodyne back to back will risk not have enough seal to refresh the stack in time.
Reason: reward good effort without being too punishing on bad RNG. Allow AST to has their own mini-window without clutch play.


D - Astrodyne stack can give 1 of these 2 buffs: a haste buff that allow more cast, or a % damage buff to melafic but also increase its MP cost. The math should be worked out that while it improve output, it can not be sustained with a zero piety build.
Reason: One: I had said it before, when the role ignore its supposed main 2nd stat (piety) in favor of a non-relevant stat (DH) then there is something really wrong on a fundamental level of the design, that has to be fixed. Two: provide an alternative option that make DET/PIE a viable competitor to the CRT build- similar to how the SpS vs Crit option on BLM. For example: a CRT build would favor to maintain a 2 stack Adstrodyne while a DET/PIE built would prefer a full 3 stack up time. Or, high level of play can have AST juggle the stacks throughout the fight to find the ideal sweat spot between output and MP regen ratio ala ram up for buff window, drop down to conserve MP. (This is my idea of active MP management, not just pressing some buttons).



Now, before anyone gonna jump and pick apart the above proposals, save the effort. What I have just said is nothing more but an illustration of the kind of rework that I would like to see. I do not claim these will solve the issue, or if they are even good fixes. I simply want to show (per request) why I don't believe the fix to be simply adding one or two more DPS button. I had worked on a few total conversion mod in the Total War series, that's why even though I'm not a dev, I'm not naive enough to think a complex problem can be solved by just throwing around some on the spot suggestions, be it mine or yours.


For me, engagement start from the planning, to approach, and deliberation, not just merely how many button to press. I also want it to remain accessible to new healers, but provide enough depth for the veteran to optimize (not unlike Yoshi's vision for BLM). The last point is more about my own personal issue that I had raised a month ago about the role identity. You can not have a "proper" healer with a flaw design at the very first and basic step.