The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[ForsakenRoe]

Honestly, personally, I think current state of healer is 'fine'. Not insanely great, but also not terrible. There are a few skills I literally dont see reasons for existing (Ruin II....) that could be removed with 0 loss, but just not enough to make space for 'real DPS rotation' everyone demands; and I can't imagine any of the excessively loud savage-grinding minority being happy if all those 5% mitigation math abilities are replaced with something more 'practical' on simpler levels of content either. And making healer complex at all stages of the game would just mean less people breaking through the skill floor, which means less fresh people willing to heal, all while old healers who want something that just wont fit will inevitably remain dissatisfied.

There's parts to this comment (the full one). On one hand I agree, healer mains are pulling in both directions of 'more dps skills' and 'more healing required'. That's just how it is with a divisive topic like this, we're all gonna have different ways we think 'the problem can/should be solved'. Personally I'm on the 'more DPS skills' side, because I do Savage in PF (yes even this tier), I see first hand how hard the bleeds ticked in week 1, and how much they're falling off as a threat since then, because of gear, people getting better at mitigation planning, etc. I also think DPS skills is the way to go, as it leaves the job of 'healers should heal' as it currently is, accessible to new players. Healing and keeping the party alive is the skill floor. By doing DPS at all as a healer, the player is starting to reach for the skill ceiling. So to expand that skill ceiling, we should add to the DPS side, not moving the whole building up by raising the skill floor too.

As an example of removing some healing CDs to make room for DPS stuff, let's say we merged Horoscope with Celestial Opposition, as I suggested in a couple other threads. Horoscope on it's own is kinda sucky, 200p healing unless you GCD heal to empower it. And if you DO spend a GCD to empower it? 400 potency. The heal that empowers it heals for more, at minimum, the same as the OGCD you're trying to power up! Does that really need to be a seperate button, instead of a bonus healing effect tied to another skill as a trait? While some people's DPS additions take a whole rework, others have suggested stuff that works within the confines of what we have now. We don't need DRG's 10button GCD loop here, I'd aim for more something closer to DNC, or RDM. DNC's basic kit is 1-2, with 3 and 4 as procs, and then the complexity is how it builds off of that, with feathers, esprit etc. At it's core, RDM is just 5 GCDs, Stone, Aero, Fire, Thunder, and Jolt for when RNG hates you. Then it builds on that core with a builder/spender system, OGCDs to weave, etc. With healers there's actually MORE room for this, as we can have the 'complexity it builds off into' be healing instead of more damage. We have 'healing feeds into your damage' with WHM lilies, or SGE building Toxicon via E.Diagnosis breaking (though that's a DPS loss that needs looking at, atm), why not look into ways to make 'damage feed into healing'? Again, a certain forum user (cough) made an idea for WHM where Glare, Dia, and a new 15sec CD Banish spell, would charge a gauge, and at 50 gauge the player could use a damage-neutral GCD AOE heal that's nearly Cure3 strong, but without that obscene MP cost.

Some of my ideas, for example (yeh I know self-plug how cringe) would need like, at maximum 4 buttons. For SCH, for example, it'd take 3 slots, to add back 2 extra dots (Miasma and Shadowflare) and a new gauge spender mechanic that interacts with Aetherflow heals. With LB, potion, Summon Eos (sorry Selene) and Repose on a seperate 'utility hotbar' that I click to activate (because they're so rarely used), I'm at 31 binds for SCH. Have Physick upgrade into Adlo, and Lustrate into Excog, that takes me to 29. Delete Aetherflow, make Energy Drain do '300p damage, 1min CD, grants 3 Aetherflow and 2000MP', that makes it 28. Now there's 3 spots to add the dots, gauge spender, one spare slot for LB or potion, and that makes a round 32, the amount of binds on 4 X-Hotbars for controller gamers. There's other ways to get the button count down too that aren't the ones I suggested here too, just these are the ones I'd do. For WHM I'd only need 2 new buttons for DPS, and my hotbars already have 5 spare slots! (with 2 more, I'd add shield options for WHM so it can also provide at least some mitigation, albeit not as strong as SCH/SGE)

The part that does make me think though, is this: People who want 'more reason to use their GCD heals', wouldn't they HAVE more reason to use those GCD heals, if we removed some of the less interesting OGCD tools to make way for more DPS skills? Like, if we removed Horoscope and Celestial Opposition (yes both) to make room for DPS stuff on AST again, players would have to fill the gap in their healing rotation left by these skills disappearing. So doesn't it stand to reason that, if all the other tools are already minmaxed for the fight's timeline, and can't be moved around to cover these missing tools, the player would have to fill the gap with GCDs, like some players want? But these GCDs would be 'you have to use these, you have no choice' and so they're just 'enforced GCD heals'. Nothing would really change, it'd just be 'Ok, this is the raidwide we dont have anything for, so we GCD this one' and then back to business as usual. This is why I'd prefer to see DPS rotations be broadened, no matter how much they try to enforce 'heal more', once we get past the enforced 'heal more' sections we're back to where we are now, Glare Spam till the next 'enforced GCD heal'. And they can't make the ratio of 'enforced GCD heals' to 'free GCDs to DPS' too skewed towards healing, otherwise people wont be able to keep up, both in skill and in MP costs.

[Beddict]

What did he say again? Must have missed that particular one. As a healer main I'm intrigued. haha

There were two questions, transcript is on Reddit here. Question 1:

Q2: For this Savage, there seems to be a serious lack of healer participation going on. My question here to you is: Are you aware of the reason and is there something you will reflect on, and if any are there plans to address this issue (that is within the means and intention of the dev team), and if there is, may I know the plan to address the issue?

YoshiP: (Super long paused followed by a long "hmmm") Things to reflect on......things to reflect on? Well for one I did read something written on Matome (Summary) sites, something about "Green river"※......Hmmmm? (another long pause) ...n...nothing much I can say about that... But we also experience situations where there is a serious lack of tank participation and this seems to depend on the timing and situation...(another long pause) If I have to make a comment about it, I think the reason would be because it's a high difficulty content, and there are other factors which contributed to this issue....well, this is hard to answer...I mean there's also the request we got from players that asks us to create more situations that require healers to heal, and among other things that is asked of us...(another long pause) So in this case, due to certain circumstances and certain "wall" which caused deviations (biases?) to occur, and this is definitely a thing after operating this game for a long while, but as for the state of healers right now, I think it's just an extremely......I mean this simply is due to the healer population in general as well as the population of raiders participating in this tier...but if I have to say anything on this matter what I am able to say at this point is "please give healers a try", and that's what I want to convey, since this is a game where you are allowed to handle multiple roles, and when you try playing a completely different role you'll definitely find something interesting through that experience....hmmm...well we will need to observe the situation a little more...yeah.

※ - A meme referring to "Healer slots being so open and available in PF due to so little healers willing to join recruitment". There's also a DPS equivalent of such meme, called "Red River", where the excessive amount of DPS slots open for Ranged role (PFs usually are full of melees and casters, but not so much on ranged, which created the perception of ranged being undesirable). The "Red River" meme usually applies to PFs with practice parties as their objective.

Question 2:

Q7: This is a question regarding the fourth floor of Savage (P8S), the Savage content, which includes the DPS check required, is definitely a challenging content, the healing check for the second half of this battle was really tight and compared to Dragonsong Reprise (DSR), I feel that there are certain parts in the second half of the battle contains healing check that is required which is comparable to what Ultimate would require, personally I welcome the increase in healing intensity but it causes the parties to be lack of healers when it comes to PF recruitment (be it progging or weekly clears) so I wonder what is your thoughts and opinion on the matter?

YoshiP: Ok I mean this happened before, but if I give an answer to one question, it won't work on the other one (for some reason). Right, we are told that (healers) are free, which is why healers tend to focus on firepower instead, and we should give healers more situations where they need to heal, and we increased the healing work required... I mean for the entire expansion and we did it but as expected this happens....so what are we supposed to do now hahaha...oh god if any I should be the one trying to discuss with you guys here. Aaaaaaahhh I mean yeah I knew this will definitely happen (long sigh). I mean I thought we've achieved quite a good balance here....(long ponder), Well yeah I mean if I have to start decreasing the difficulty and I'll get comments saying it's too lax (laughs). Well I will need data...either way we did indeed increase the intensity for sure, although this was the balance that was asked of us......I mean this is personal disparity, yeah, there are healers who are completely fine with this tuning, and there are other healers who would go "this is too hard I can't do this".

Yeah I apologize but please allow us to continue ponder on this matter and find out what is best and this is what we can do for now.

[Shurrikhan]

From what I saw there are two things demanded: more buttons and more reasons to push existing buttons. Main issue there, is that the two solutions are not compatible, and adding one will only anger the other crowd.

I... don't think that's true at all. Heck, most appear to be asking unambiguously for both.

By way of example, I'd like a few more non-healing GCDs. That doesn't mean I need the game to retain nearly zero reason to use healing GCDs just to support that. You can have greater use for the existing buttons and have a few more buttons atop that, or repurpose a few of the excessive-to-point-of-bloat healing buttons even while adding value to the remainder both in relative and absolute terms.

[GrimGale]

Keeping your party alive is the skill floor.

Keeping your party alive while doing good damage is the skill ceiling.

Adding more skills to make the secondary role of healers more complicated, doesn't raise the skill floor, it raises the skill ceiling and that is a good thing.

[Deceptus]

There were two questions, transcript is on Reddit here. Question 1:



Question 2:

What's crazy about both of those quotes is that he's reacting like it's the first time he's actually had to answer those questions or that they've even been posed to him.

Just another example in the massive amounts of the lead designer not having a single clue about healers, healer balance, or healer feedback.

[ForsakenRoe]

What's crazy about both of those quotes is that he's reacting like it's the first time he's actually had to answer those questions or that they've even been posed to him.

Just another example in the massive amounts of the lead designer not having a single clue about healers, healer balance, or healer feedback.

It's probably because so many 'I want to heal, not do damage' healers kept shouting about how the solution for healer engagement is to 'have more to heal', then when they added more to heal this tier and it not only didn't help the situation, it made it WORSE, his reaction is 'wait what, we gave them what they asked for, this doesn't make sense'

[SaberMaxwell]

How to make the DPS part more engaging with 3 dps buttons: By World of Warcraft's Restoration Shaman.

You get 1 DoT: Flame Shock
You get 1 Quick basic damaging spell: Lightning Bolt
You get 1 very slow cast but very hard hitting Nuke: Lava Burst

Flame Shock has a chance, everytime it deals damage over time, to cause your Next Lava Burst to become instant cast.

Lava Burst will crit if it hits a target affect with Flame Shock

Now, replace Flame Shock with Dia, Lightning Bolt with Glare and Lava Burst with, I dunno, some new very flashy spell that is very satisfying visually.

The funniest thing is thats basically lv50 BLM.

[Beddict]

What's crazy about both of those quotes is that he's reacting like it's the first time he's actually had to answer those questions or that they've even been posed to him.

Just another example in the massive amounts of the lead designer not having a single clue about healers, healer balance, or healer feedback.

Yeah, he looked pretty frustrated. My money is that the final tier will return to Asphodelos style healing and Yoshi-P will continue to ignore or twist complaints about healer downtime being a massive problem. In the Endwalker Media Tour he said he doesn't want new players to feel pressured by DPS buttons which I can understand for players new to the Role, but he wants that mentality to continue all the way into fucking endgame for some Godforsaken reason. Then either someone fucked up the translation or he deliberately twisted what Recon asked to try and dismiss Healers with his "try Ultimate" bullshit after launch. Will be neat to see what happens once Abyssos finishes.

[Allegor]

Honestly, a concern and I guess hot take I kinda have is that it's not all about how the role performs in savage tier only either. I'm a casual, but casual doesn't mean lazy - Just because I don't want/can't play the highest difficulty the game has to offer doesn't means I'm comfortable with only pressing ~5 of my 30 ish buttons (3 of which have a considerable cooldown) in all other forms of content.

I play a healer because I want to, not because the system arbitrarily says someone needs to.

[Deusteele]

Reduce the availability of oGCD's and weaken the power of GCD heals. Increase the rate and potency of Raid-Wide damage from bosses. Make players use their full healing kit regularly.

Remove the focused healing role completely and turn it into a support role based around Haste/Brave/Faith/Shell/Protect/Regen. Provide a full dps rotation to be used while buffs are ticking on players.

Neither option is going to be happy with the decision, but Yoshida put himself on the spot when he catered to Savage players and the spreadsheet playstyle.