The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Rilifane]

Also why are all the DOTs 30s, making them have different durations to the other healers would help a lot, like if SGE's was 18s so we're pressing eukrasia more often maybe it'd feel at least slightly more interesting

That's something that SE seems stubborn on for some reason. Give us buttons but make us press these buttons only once every 30s or less.
It's not even about the amount of buttons but how often we press them and under which circumstances. A skill could be incredibly well designed and interesting but if you slap a 3min cooldown on it, it is still something you only use once every 3min tops.
Just with shorter dot duration our rotation would look different. Nevermind things like dots with different durations, lower cooldown on some skills or incorporating already existing skills like Toxikon into our regular rotation as well. The less impact a single button has, the less punishing it is to mess up the timing.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Also why are all the DOTs 30s, making them have different durations to the other healers would help a lot, like if SGE's was 18s so we're pressing eukrasia more often maybe it'd feel at least slightly more interesting

*cries in old Aero II 18s duration*

[Deceptus]

End of the day, there are different groups of people. So any solution is going to anger a lot of them. Some want to do more damage while others want to do more healing, some want to do more of both while others think the system is fine as it is today, some want to do less healing, some want to do less damage, some would rather cast buffs on party members. The conversation is also strongly weighted by Savage raiders and ignoring something like 70% of the playerbase that...doesn't.

Needless to say, you aren't going to please everyone.

And you don't have to please everyone, but you can try to and the FFXIV devs aren't trying in the healer design aspect. Here's the thing:

The people who don't want to DPS never will, adding more DPS options affects them in zero ways. They're happy where they're at.

Adding more DPS / Support actions for the people who want them will make them happier.

So you either

1) Stay where we are now and a sizeable portion of the healer base is unhappy with the current design

or

2) Improve the base healer gameplay to make it more engaging for the veteran players.

Might it be stressful for the non-dps healers? No, because they don't DPS anyway. And harassment is against the TOS so anyone complaining they're not DPSing is an easy report.

As for the people who'd feel like they got the 'short end of the stick' by getting more buttons to press, first of all, it's a weird stance to take

The legitimate complaint is having to press more buttons for the same output as other jobs.

Old school DRK and their Dark Arts Spam, or old DRG's/SMN and their 30 buttons to do middling dps, MCH/DNC/BRD in general.

[Renathras]

Deceptus - That's not really accurate. While there are some people that do 0 DPS, they're not common. Many people that don't do Savage still do things like Extremes, which are tuned around their DPS kits. So yes, it would affect a lot of people that don't want to do DPS but find two button DPS "rotations" acceptable. The argument it won't affect people isn't a good one because it's false.

If you try to please everyone, you'll end up alienating far more people. CURRENT healer design is from them trying to please everyone! And everyone (well, most people) hates it!

That's why I said we have 4 healers. If you gave one more DoTs, one a damage rotation, and one a buff rotation, and leaft one alone, this is what would please the most people, since everyone would have one they could hop on and enjoy playing. It would cause people to shift around a bit, but then everyone would be either happy (by playstyle) or happy (by aesthetic), which would be a choice for them to make.

What you're proposing would make far more people upset. And keep in mind, I say this as a veteran player. I've been playing since 2.3. Your two options are an either-or/false dichotomy fallacy. There are more than two options, and I'm proposing a perfectly viable third.

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Oh, and on DoTs having different timings - the irony to me is that in ARR, it was our HoTs that had the long timers. I think Medica 2's HoT was 30 seconds. You could hit that ability every half minute and just kind of forget about it (as long as your MP supported it, anyway). It was kinda strange we cut down the timers of HoTs just to increase the timers of DoTs and make those the fire and forget thing.

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And one other thing that's important:

The legitimate complaint is having to press more buttons for the same output as other jobs.

And this is why SCH's DPS kit no longer exists. Because people couldn't accept "being engaged and having fun" for what it was and felt they had to be "rewarded" for their effort. So SE removed their effort. If that complaint comes up again, then they'll just revert everything to EW a second time.

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As for the people who'd feel like they got the 'short end of the stick' by getting more buttons to press, first of all, it's a weird stance to take

Not really. Many people play healers because they don't like damage rotations. This would be like saying if PLD's were given an AOE Clemency (that they proceed to never use) it would be strange for them to complain about it. Would it? Their role isn't party healing, so they'd just have more button bloat that annoys them and doesn't give them value.

I get that a lot of people don't get it because FFXIV's fight design has healers casting so many damage spells and also that some people see skill expression in optimizing their damage output, but many people genuinely don't like damage rotations or doing damage outside of "filler". Meanwhile, they play healers, so in their mind, getting new healing spells makes sense.

It's kinda like how SMNs don't want another Physic, they want more Summons, or SAMs don't want a Medica, they want Kaiten.

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The important thing to remember is that healers in FFXIV (or any game) aren't a single block and mindset of person. That's why I feel so strongly the solution is to flex 4 healers in 4 directions so that everyone has one close to their preferred playstyle.

If we go from all 4 healers being the same (2 button rotation) to all healers being the same (5 button rotation), nothing's changed. We're just going from one type of homogenization that leaves 80% of players dissatisfied to another type of homogenization that leaves 80% of players dissatisfied. It's just a different 80%.

That's why the best solution is to have each of the healers follow a different archetype. That way, while each individual healer may only be liked by 20% of the playerbase, each will likely be a different 20%, so instead of 80% being upset, you have 80% being happy. I'd consider that an improvement.

[Shurrikhan]

That's why the best solution is to have each of the healers follow a different archetype. That way, while each individual healer may only be liked by 20% of the playerbase, each will likely be a different 20%, so instead of 80% being upset, you have 80% being happy. I'd consider that an improvement.

It's a nice theory, but when only one "archetype" is viable for 80% of content because of the ways you've chosen to split those archetypes up, you don't get any fewer people upset. Moreover, that ignores degree.

No, taking the obvious solutions here is not some fundamentally crippling form of compromise. And Deceptus is entirely correct in that, just as players will prefer different sorts and degrees of engagement, a well designed kit leaves plenty to do without so punishing incomplete engagement with that kit and thereby allows a good medium for both those who wish to do relatively little and those who want a lot to juggle.

Nor is any of that mutually exclusive to giving each healer more palpably different playflows and playfeel.

This would be like saying if PLD's were given an AOE Clemency (that they proceed to never use) it would be strange for them to complain about it. Would it? Their role isn't party healing, so they'd just have more button bloat that annoys them and doesn't give them value.

False equivalence between support tools and one's primary use of uptime (which, even for healers, is damage-dealing) aside... people like utility when it has a purpose (and is strong enough to perform it) and they're not seemingly "taxed" for merely having it (which ends up the case for anything "free," such that the free potency of Assize essentially just siphons from WHM's filler damage, etc.).

Clemency, for instance, was a damn good skill to have when it (A) had far higher potency relative to healer GCDs and (B) had circumstances that advantaged it (say, one or both healers being jailed by mechanics as heavy tank damage is coming out on the MT).

It's kinda like how SMNs don't want another Physic, they want more Summons, or SAMs don't want a Medica, they want Kaiten.

They don't want another Physick, specifically, because that particular iteration doesn't do squat because it's coded specifically to do nothing for SMN after the INT-MND split at level 40. Give them a summon that can be used as a timeable emergency healing tool (unlike Phoenix's HoT) in its place and they be fine with having a support tool.

The fact that it isn't one more button among 15+ others to fill the same function is not a problem. It's just that SMN Physick is tuned terribly because it was coded terribly (purposely squished to nothing).

Not really. Many people play healers because they don't like damage rotations.

Except there's no avoiding damage rotations. Even if you had additional GCD buffs to cast, there's only so much else to do; everything but damage has capped room for action. There is no value in overhealing. There is no value in replacing durations early (especially in XIV, where we lack even a rudimentary roll-over mechanic).

Ultimately, then, it's not a difference between liking or disliking a damage rotation; it's a difference between wanting a playflow for the majority of one's uptime, or a single button. And no, I highly doubt most people chose healer specifically so they could spend most of their time just hitting a single button.

[Renathras]

Shurrikhan - Thing is, we always have this at any given time anyway. SCH/AST has been meta since SB, if not late HW. SCH/SGE has had a little light in EW, but it's still pretty much SCH/AST. Yet ironically, WHM is the most played healer and AST the least.

Again as I said above: What we have now IS the compromise position. It's the compromise between "healers only heal" and "healers are full on Green DPS". Acting like this isn't the compromise doesn't change the fact it is the compromise.

Hence why my proposal is a better compromise, as it means the people that want to be busy have access to being more busy and the people that don't want that have access to a healing Job that doesn't do that. What you're saying is all four healer Jobs must be the same in having a high skill ceiling and medium skill floor, but there's no reason they do. Just as other roles have different Jobs that are different - Tanks have WAR as "the easy one with a low skill ceiling" for people that want that while having three flavors of "something more complex" and players pick the one they want.

I don't see why healers can't work this same way. I've seen a lot of people say they don't want it to or that's not a solution, but not really a why it's not other than it would upset some people - as if making all the healers more complex wouldn't? NOTHING is not going to upset SOME people.

Me personally, I would welcome the diversity. Hop on AST and throw buffs left and right. Hop on SGE for some RDM-lite action. Hop on SCH if I want to play with DoTs and interactions. Hop on WHM if I want to turn my brain off and Glare. I think diversity is the solution, not replacing one form of homogenization with another...

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EDIT: Oh, you say there's no avoiding damage rotations - but there is right now. No healer has a damage rotation. All four are hitting one button over and over again, rarely hitting something else. That's not really a "rotation" in any realistic sense of the term "rotation" (only in the most broad definition and not in a sense people think of in video games). It's gameplay offered by the game right now satisfying the people who find that appealing. So it exists right now!

And you mention Clemency or a healing summon as support and that people like support when it makes sense and works - that's the thing, healer DAMAGE is not support. So that would the false equivalency. No one's really complaining if a healer gets another mitigation or buff (support) ability.

[ForsakenRoe]

The legitimate complaint is having to press more buttons for the same output as other jobs.

Old school DRK and their Dark Arts Spam, or old DRG's/SMN and their 30 buttons to do middling dps, MCH/DNC/BRD in general.

There's a delicate balance between 'too much effort for same output as alternatives in the role' and 'not engaging enough'. If we took, for example, MCH's hypercharge windows, remove them, redistribute the potency into stuff like Air Anchor or Drill, it'd do the same damage, but it'd feel so much emptier, because it no longer has that frantic 1.5s weave-mash section of it's rotation. The same could be said of DRK, not so much anymore cos of all the extra OGCDs they've crammed onto it, but when the rework first hit, it went from busy, hectic, constant 'try to have mana for trick, but dont overcap' management, with a 10% haste effect on BW to make it even more frantic, to WAR speed. And WAR's slow, very slow, FC hits hard, sure, but Upheaval and Onslaught don't exactly make it 'fast paced', especially back in SHB when the CD on IR was 90s.

Some people like to play the fast stuff, for whatever reason. I wish we had a 'fast healer' option, for those that want it. SGE could be it, with some tweaks to OGCD effects, but SE seems content to have SCH 2.

Not really. Many people play healers because they don't like damage rotations. This would be like saying if PLD's were given an AOE Clemency (that they proceed to never use) it would be strange for them to complain about it. Would it? Their role isn't party healing, so they'd just have more button bloat that annoys them and doesn't give them value.

Bit of a false equivalence there. And Clemency's a bad choice cos it's a GCD and we hate those. If they were given 'AOE Clemency, costs Oath Gauge and is OGCD', people would absolutely use it. Your example would be closer if it were more like saying 'Tanks were given selfhealing tools that are so strong they can do EX roulettes without a healer. But they shouldn't use those tools, because healing is not their role'. Whether you like it or not, there's overlap between the three points of the trinity. DPS have some selfhealing (in the case of SMN and DNC, party healing too) and self-mitigation to stay alive, like Radiant Shield and Shade Shift. Tanks have more and more DPS tools added, like Blades combo, Primal Rend, Shadowbringer and DoubleDepression (it didn't crit), alongside crazy amounts of selfhealing added this expansion (Holy Spirit/Confiteor/Blades now all selfheal, Bloodwhetting is Bloodwhetting but Nascent in SHB was already out of control, Heart of Corundum's Excog effect and 2 Auroras, only DRK is kinda left out of the party, presumably due to TBN's 'effective healing'). Healers, likewise, have some ways to mitigate damage like Exaltation or Aquaveil, mostly used on Tanks but can be used on others for, eg, soaking a tower, and yes, they do damage. The issue is, the way they do damage keeps getting reduced, because people complain they 'picked healer to heal'.

If you've been playing since 2.3, you'll know that since 2.3 Healers have been trying to push damage more and more. This isn't some new trend, and it's not unique to FFXIV either. Most games where there's a Healer or Support role, the Healer or Support is actively helping in whatever way they can, and 'do damage' is ALWAYS a viable choice on what to do next. Harass the enemy laner in League or DOTA, help shoot and down enemies in FPS games like Apex, help damage enemies(when your team's not going to die cos you stopped healing them) in Overwatch, do damage to mobs to clear the M+ dungeon faster in WOW. If people 'play healer because they don't want to do damage rotations', they'd better play a game that hasn't been forcing (via enrage timers) healers to do damage for the better part of 9 years, eh? Though, with how, as previously described, most games expect healers to do something beyond 'sit there with their fingers up their backside waiting for damage to heal', they might be looking for a while

[Renathras]

Foresakenroe - I'm not sure it's a false equivalence (you're talking about giving healers more GCD damage abilities, not oGCD ones, right?), but I take it you get the point even if you disliked the example? That players TEND to want abilities that further what they see as their role and play into that. So while a player might not be against "new buttons" entirely, they want their new buttons to be buttons that do the thing they consider their role. While many who play healers consider their role to be a DPS, many do not. Hence again why I think the answer is to split up the healers to where both sides are getting something that they want.

I didn't say I liked it or not. So what I like is irrelevant. For the sake of argument/so we're on the same page, you DO realize that there are many healers that don't want more damage buttons, right? I'm not using this as a dig. Just trying to reinforce my point that the healer community in FFXIV is diverse and don't all want the same things. I guess I think before any discussion makes sense, we all must agree on the basic axioms of the problem/basic facts. I think one of those basic facts is that we all must understand there are many healer players that want what we want, but there are many that might want something else. I'm sure you'd agree and acknowledge that, yes?

When "do damage" doesn't interrupt from healing, yes. One of the greatest changes WoW made to healers was in Cata or Mists (I forget which) when they made the spam nuke MP neutral. Like Druid Wrath cost 0 mana and I think Shaman's Lightning Bolt refunded mana (though I don't remember the specific mechanism). This meant that (in a game where mana management was important for healers), you could dps freely when your casts (GCD equivalent) weren't needed for heals. But the focus wasn't pushing damage. The focus was healing, and damage was just "that thing you do when no one needs healing".

HW was really where healers started pushing damage. Some high end groups did it in ARR, but 0 damage healers were actually a thing in ARR and, at the time, seen as normal since a lot of people had come over from 11 or 1.X. HW it was because - let's be honest - the raids were tuned too high. Though most of the community didn't raid and so didn't care about healer damage. It's one of the reasons Cleric was changed to Presence of Mindish in SB and then removed later, because of how much conflict there was in the community over where healers should (or should NOT) do damage, people berating people (on both sides) for "playing wrong", and so on. But it was something driven by the raider community, not the wider playerbase or the Devs. The Devs eventually embraced it in encounter tuning for very high end content because people were just...doing it.

...and they made it as simple as possible to do as a result of that, which is why we have the stripped down healer kits we have today.



Also note there's a difference between "forcing healers to do damage" and "forcing healers to have a damage rotation". Healers are forced to do damage right now, but because damage is mostly 1 button, healers that "don't want to do damage" find it acceptable, much like Wrath spaming Resto Druids in WoW did. But they won't find it acceptable if it becomes much more involved than that.

Note the exception here is if doesn't become more involved FOR ALL HEALERS, there's an out. As I said before, SCH's damage kit can be complex SB again and WHM's 2 button EW and both do around the same damage and it works because people can play the one they want. Some WHM's will complain they're bored and be pointed over to SCH, and some SCH's will complain they have to do "more work", but the answer will be "You can play WHM if you don't want to...unless you want the EW rotation again...?", because that's the alternative.

I think my one BIG problem with these discussions is people seeing their solution of "more DPS buttons" as the compromise.

No, the compromise is what we have NOW. The "healers should only heal" side's position is to either do no damage or have 1 button spam. What we have now is the compromise position between the two camps.

But my idea is something that gives both sides what they want. /shrug

[Renathras]

ForsakenRoe - Oh, it wasn't an extreme case as a "this is what they would do". It's proof by example: If the gap ISN'T significant, then people would complain that it's meaningless. For the gap to matter...it has to actually be significant enough to matter. But at that point, it will start being the difference between some groups clearing and wiping, at which case it now can't be said that it won't affect people.

My point is just that it WILL affect people unless it's small enough to be irrelevant, and if it is that small, then people will be mad anyway.

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Again, in your example, people will complain if the difference isn't significant. How do I know this? Look at how often people say the complex rotation needs to do more damage otherwise it wouldn't be fair because they're doing more work. Do you really believe people will be satisfied for doing the extra work if the damage difference is small enough to be trivial?

And the goal isn't to "make it look silly". What I'm doing is looking at two cases (1) where the gap is big enough to be noticeable/relevant vs (2) where the difference is small enough not to be. The reason is to compare the two and project the likely reaction of the playerbase to it - which isn't hard because we've had this in the past and seen the reaction to it then.

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"Good thing you brought up Druids though" - in Cataclysm.

...maybe you missed the in Cataclysm part. Druids in current, to my knowledge, have two flavors, Feral for Mythic and Balance for Raids (I haven't played WoW since Legion, but I try to read up on it in Icy Veins from time to time), with the later seeming to play a lot like FFXIV WHM with an added DoT (that may be AOE, I think Sunfire is AOE now...?)

Note that I did NOT praise THAT design. I praised the Cata/Mists design.

And I've already given you a proposal for a solution. Why is it not acceptable to you? That is, can you give me a reason all four healers NEED to be the deep end of the pool? You mention that all four being 0.6m deep is a problem - and I agree with this - it's the very reason I suggested not leaving things as they are. What I don't understand is the compelling reason that ALL the healers need to be 2m deep. Some of us are only 1.5m tall. Some people are only 0.6m tall. What about those people?

[IDontPetLalas]

ForsakenRoe - Oh, it wasn't an extreme case as a "this is what they would do". It's proof by example: If the gap ISN'T significant, then people would complain that it's meaningless. For the gap to matter...it has to actually be significant enough to matter. But at that point, it will start being the difference between some groups clearing and wiping, at which case it now can't be said that it won't affect people.My point is just that it WILL affect people unless it's small enough to be irrelevant, and if it is that small, then people will be mad anyway.
Again, in your example, people will complain if the difference isn't significant. How do I know this? Look at how often people say the complex rotation needs to do more damage otherwise it wouldn't be fair because they're doing more work. Do you really believe people will be satisfied for doing the extra work if the damage difference is small enough to be trivial?And the goal isn't to "make it look silly". What I'm doing is looking at two cases (1) where the gap is big enough to be noticeable/relevant vs (2) where the difference is small enough not to be. The reason is to compare the two and project the likely reaction of the playerbase to it - which isn't hard because we've had this in the past and seen the reaction to it then.
*snip*

And I've already given you a proposal for a solution. Why is it not acceptable to you? That is, can you give me a reason all four healers NEED to be the deep end of the pool? You mention that all four being 0.6m deep is a problem - and I agree with this - it's the very reason I suggested not leaving things as they are. What I don't understand is the compelling reason that ALL the healers need to be 2m deep. Some of us are only 1.5m tall. Some people are only 0.6m tall. What about those people?

If someone is still only 3 feet tall (1 meter) at maturity, it's unfortunate, but they will not have a career in the NBA. They can however take a ball out to their neighbourhood court or their driveway and shoot some hoops, given that they have legs and arms.

If a healer just wants to heal use a single dot and their aoe DPS skill at 90, if no one is dying they'll likely be fine in normal content. However that doesn't mean that all of the healer roles should be limited to that for the sake of those people who want simple roles that will not even permit for the possibility of multi-tasking /more complex decision making. We aren't proposing that it is mandated, we are allowing for growth in the jobs.