The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

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...

I don't know why you're acting like it's one (kits well made enough to offer a lot without necessitating complete engagement) or the other (diversity), though. It's not. If anything, they're synergetic.

And again, my critique stems from how you've chosen to set up the diversity of your "archetypes". The diversity you propose (only one job with any DoTs, one with any buffs, one with any sort of offensive rotation) isn't additive in any way. It only sets itself apart my making all but one job out of the role worse in each category by which you want to raise up the survivor.

We should be looking to diversify jobs based on what they can accomplish from their sum of tools, not just based on which limb they get to keep.



If you want to "hop on WHM... turn your brain off and [just] Glare," you can do that even if WHM had access to far more.

The only conflict there is that you can't then have a job that does far less work end up with equal optimized value (since WHM will be tuned around using those other tools, too, just as AST's rDPS would be tuned around card usage). And frankly, that's for the best; for most players, a job doing as much for less effort/resource is of no difference from a job doing more with the same efforts/resource.

[Renathras]

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I didn't say there can't be overlap. For example, AST having a DoT to go with Card buff play wouldn't go amiss, and AST being "the buffer" doesn't mean SCH can't keep Chain, which is the buff it has for the party (technically debuffing the boss, but tomatoe tomahto). Those overlaps can exist in some cases while still having more diversity than we have today.

Just asking so I know we're on the same page: You'd agree with me that all the healers having an identical (more or less) DPS kit is bad design, yes?

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As to the "you can do that even if WHM had access to far more": No, you couldn't. That's the point. If WHM had, say, 3 DoTs and Glare, not keeping up the 3 DoTs would make it unviable for content. If it DIDN'T, then there'd be no point in keeping the DoTs. For it to have an impact, it has to be large enough of a difference that it matters. If the difference is small enough that it doesn't matter, that likely wouldn't satisfy you, and it would make it kind of pointless. Most people don't think doing 100 extra potency every 2 minutes is significant enough a change. If Dia right now had a total potency of 311 (vs Glare's 310) instead of its 660, there'd be no real loss to never pressing Dia, and people would ask why even bother having the separate button. Say we had Aero 1, Aero 2, and Dia and they all did 311 Potency. People would complain that they're doing more work but getting no more (real) reward. For it to matter, it has to be significant enough to matter. But if it is, then it's excluding people not doing it from content.

Also, there's zero reason a Job that "does far less work" can't have "equal optimized value". The only reason not to do that is for people that want to do "more work" AND be given more for doing so. That is, not people who "are bored" or "want to be engaged". They're people who want "to do more damage". That's a different argument entirely.

There's no reason we NEED all 4 healers to have 6 button DPS rotations. None. If one has 2 and one has 4 and one has 6 and one has 8, that's not a bad thing. People can play the ones they like. SCH has long been the gigabrain healer, yet people have long played it because they enjoyed it. SB SCH was kind of hard to wring all the power out of, and wasn't markedly higher damage than its peers in a realistic sense, yet people still played it because they loved the playstyle. The gameplay - not big damage numbers - should be the reward for having a more complex kit. SCH's kit is the most versatile of all the healers. That complexity pays for itself with flexibility and utility. WHM's kit is the most simple. It has far less ability to flex into different situations, but it pays for that by being easy to perform at an adequate level with. Those are the trade-offs, not one doing markedly more damage.

EDIT: Typoes

[Shurrikhan]

Just asking so I know we're on the same page: You'd agree with me that all the healers having an identical (more or less) DPS kit is bad design, yes?

Identical in exact form? Yes, that'd be bad. Just as it'd be bad for their capped and variable forms of contribution (healing, buffing, situational utility) to be the same, or even to share the same exact portions of their cognitive load, total contribution, etc.

Identical in degree/complexity? No, that'd be fine. I do not think it'd be a problem for their (r)DPS kits, especially, to have the same skill ceilings. There, higher is better; it just needs to not sacrifice the space between skill floor and skill ceiling (i.e., it's about equally important that it gets to a satisfying point quickly / is easy enough to pick up) or otherwise end up overly convoluted, incongruent, incohesive, athematic, etc.

Also, there's zero reason a Job that "does far less work" can't have "equal optimized value". The only reason not to do that is for people that want to do "more work" AND be given more for doing so. That is, not people who "are bored" or "want to be engaged". They're people who want "to do more damage". That's a different argument entirely.

If you don't want playing a more difficult job to simply be 'griefing" and thereby pushed out of even the most basic spaces it, especially, would need for learning, it at least needs some reason to be played beyond just personal taste.

Most people's personal taste, after all, will include not being saddled with a job that has a harder time doing the same thing... for no possible advantage.

There's no reason we NEED all 4 healers to have 6 button DPS rotations. None.

Okay, let's break this down.

You have a limited amount of sustain that can be useful brought. There is no limit, on the other hand, to damage that can be brought, because every fight in this game is ended by damage. (It is the only long-term form of contribution.)

Now, you can split either in any of various ways.

You can offer sustain through suppressing an enemy, fortifying an ally, applying a buff that will reverse damage taken, applying movement speed enough to avoid otherwise unavoidable damage... or even simply healing.

You can offer damage through making an enemy more vulnerable, bolstering an ally, dealing damage (instantly, over time, whatever it may be)... or even --so long as there's a sort of rate of exchange between your damage and sustain, which requires also having those more direct damage tools-- through limited opportunities by which a timely sustain ability can allow for an ally to "cheese" by making their damage higher than the opportunity cost to support that extra uptime.

Now, why can that last bit --timely sustain abilities as a form of indirect damage-contribution-- so rarely work anymore? Because we've sapped so many of the dangers away and fettered so much of healers' HPS to timers that are also easily executed upon (oGCD) and therefore have no competing dynamics (unlike when, say, nearing the time to refresh our DoTs would affect the opportunity cost of healing in that given GCD). Alas, who knew? It's only been often mentioned since Stormblood-onward.

You need enough sustain (or, capped / short-term) tools that they complement --rather than overwhelm or disconnect from-- each other. But you also need enough damage (or, uncapped / long-term contribution) tools that the sustain tools have further real trade-off vs. the party's larger economy of throughputs and for downtime not to feel unengaging.

The latter becomes the far more important, though, when a game refuses to push its players (thus forcing our relative healing requirements absurdly low and our uptime almost entirely towards long-term tasks).

How many each among direct damage GCDs vs. buff GCDs vs. debuff GCDs, etc., though? It does not matter. There's plenty of variation possible while still meeting reasonable minimums for skill-interaction.

Each job having a satisfying number of damage-contributing actions would not force them into homogeneity. They're so homogenous right now in part because their sustain kits are so bloated and all else so stripped bare that there's scarcely any room for diversity.

We can't avoid having a basic filler attack, for instance, and the smaller the kit is, the larger a portion of that kit will then have to be identical.

[Renathras]

Shurrikhan - I guess we may just...disagree then. You say identical in complexity is fine, I disagree. Ever MMO I've every played had "easy" and "hard" classes. Even in FFXIV, other than healers and arguably ranged physical, the other roles/subroles have a gradient, even if some wish to claim it's small. I don't know what they're going to do with PLD as of this writing, but WAR is very clearly easier. Lower skill floor and skill ceiling. GNB is clearly more complex than WAR (even if I personally find it easier because it being rigid also means easy to keep track of). DRK has periods of complexity followed by periods of ease. PLD is kind of all over the place. Likewise, some melee are easier (SAM, RPR) than others (NIN) and some kind of "depending on who you ask" (MNK, DRG). Casters, likewise, have a gradient between BLM (widely considered one of the hardest Jobs in the game despite what should be mechanical non-complexity on paper) and SMN (widely considered the absolute easiest Job in the game), with RDM somewhere in between.

It seems counterintuitive that healers, despite having 4 Jobs, need them all to be of approximately equal complexity.

Regardless, that isn't really a reason to do it.

If you don't want playing a more difficult job to simply be 'griefing" and thereby pushed out of even the most basic spaces it, especially, would need for learning, it at least needs some reason to be played beyond just personal taste.

If it does the same damage, it wouldn't be 'griefing".

In this thread, you guys are arguing that personal taste WANTS a Job that has a harder time doing the same thing ... for no possible advantage. Which is it? I thought the argument here was that you guys were bored with current healer rotations and wanted something more complex so you didn't fall asleep at your keyboard. Not that you want to do more damage than other people. Those are two different arguments. Which is it we're having?

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Okay, this is confusing me:

Each job having a satisfying number of damage-contributing actions would not force them into homogeneity.

You went into an in depth and reasonable discussion for healers to have a damage ability.

...I've not argued against healers having a damage ability.

None of that says that they need to have many damage buttons or complex rotations and interactions.

...moreover, I haven't argued against that directly, either; on the contrary, my very argument is to make SCH, SGE, and probably AST all more rotationally complex.

What are you arguing against here?

You didn't answer my question:

Why do we NEED all 4 healers to have 6 (or whatever) button DPS rotations?

Saying "they need damage buttons" doesn't answer that, because even 1 is having a damage button.

You said "a satisfying number", but what is that? Would you believe many people are satisfied with 1 button? Some want way more. What is the objective definition of "satisfying" in a number? Is it 3? 5? 8? What's that specific number? Why is that number NOT 1 or 2?

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Keep in mind my argument is for SCH to have around 8, SGE to have around 5, AST to have around 4, and WHM to have 3 (which is what it has now if we don't count Assize, at which point it has 4). Why do they all need 6 or 8 or whatever instead of one being left with 3/4 as it has now?

I'm not seeing an answer to that question. To the why it must change for all healers.

I'm seeing answers to why we should change it for some healers, but that's the very thing I'm proposing. Why must it change for all healers? That's the question I'm not seeing an answer to.

[ForsakenRoe]

If Dia right now had a total potency of 311 (vs Glare's 310) instead of its 660, there'd be no real loss to never pressing Dia, and people would ask why even bother having the separate button. Say we had Aero 1, Aero 2, and Dia and they all did 311 Potency. People would complain that they're doing more work but getting no more (real) reward. For it to matter, it has to be significant enough to matter. But if it is, then it's excluding people not doing it from content.

Why the extreme of 'just one potency difference'? As with many things, there's a balance to be struck with this kind of stuff. As I said before:

Biolysis could be 30s, 40 per tick, for a total of 400p. Miasma could be 24s, 45 per tick, for a total of 360p. Shadowflare could be 15s ground AOE, 75 per tick, total of 375.

So your hypothetical 'I dont like complexity or DPS rotations' healer could choose to ignore the DOTs entirely and use Broil (295p) in their place. This would be, per 2min (lowest common denominator), 4 Biolysis refreshes, for a total of 420p, 5 Miasma refreshes, for 325p, and 8 Shadowflares (assuming they're not on a CD like in HW or SB), for 600p. All in all, the total potency they lose over two whole minutes in this situation, would be 1345p, roughly four and a half Broils. But for players who like to have more than just one button, three whole DOTs to manage timers of. Please stop with the 'take it to absurd extremes for sake of trying to make idea look silly' because it's not going to work. If Hypothetical Healer is doing EX roulette and doesn't want to use DOTs, nobody's going to chew them out. Heck I could go through EX roulette now if I wanted and just not use my DOT, nobody would even notice. The idea that they would 'have to' use the extra skills is, in casual content, flat out wrong, and in higher end content, potentially wrong (depends on enrage timers).

But even then, if someone is in a fight where that kind of 'perfect DOT juggling optimization skill' is required (so, week 1 or 2, final fight of tier on savage), they're competent enough to also be able to actually spin the plates. There's no healer that's simultaneously good enough to do such high end content where that level of skill is necessary, and at the same time, is too incompetent to actually interface with a more complex kit like I/others ask for. It'd be a paradox, or a very painfully obvious clear-buyer.

Good thing you brought up Druids though, cos I'm playing one atm in DF. You mention Wrath spam as the way to do damage, but I'm sure you weren't planning on forgetting about how you can also cat-weave, putting up Moonfire, Sunfire, and both Rip and Rake from Catform? Or how in Shadowlands due to Convoke the Spirits, Resto Druids started taking up the concept of Owlweaving (or Boomboxing as some called it for some reason), since Convoke had a chance to throw out the very powerful Full Moon? So yeh, exactly what I'm, and others, are asking for ironically: Casual healers can just heal/spam Wrath, healers starting to get into the groove of knowing when to damage can start juggling the 2 DOTs from caster form, and epic hardcore M+25 running gamers can start juggling 4 different DOTs with staggered timers, from two different forms (which are on the GCD). As much complexity as the player wants to dive into, or not. Some people want to stay in the shallow end of the proverbial swimming pool? That's fine. But I'm 2m tall, I got long legs, and the shallow end is too shallow for me, I need some... depth. I wouldn't want to drag everyone else into my deep end where they'll drown, but I'm also asking that they don't fill in the deep end so I can't swim. And that's where we are now, all four healers are 0.6m deep and I keep bashing my legs on the bottom of the pool, because of the lack of depth. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only tall person in the world, just like I'm not the only healer main who's disappointed, helplessly watching as the depth of the role gets filled in more and more, levelling out the whole proverbial pool until it's all just as deep as a puddle