The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Magikazam]

Turn out Healer ain't that good when other class can rez and most mechanic one shot DPS. Plus tanks get sustain. The problem is deeper than healer being weirdly designed.

[Renathras]

Okay...one more:

Here is the simple problem with your idea. If 1 nuke 1 dot is a problem on all four healers leaving one with that same simple rotation leaves it still as a problem.

Disagree. The problem as I see it isn't 1 nuke 1 DoT being a problem - some people enjoy that gameplay - it's that there's no alternative for people that don't like that gameplay. Changing it to 1 instead of 4 is the solution, as it allows people who enjoy that gameplay to keep enjoying it while allowing people who do not enjoy it a shot at having gameplay they do enjoy with one of the other 3 healers. If every tank played like WAR, that would be a problem. Not because WAR is simple or boring, but because while some people obviously enjoy it (many people play WAR, we have to assume at least some like it), other people who don't wouldn't have another option. But if every tank played like GNB, that would be no better. Now you'd just have different people being happy and different people being upset, but the same problem - people who didn't like it wouldn't have the option to play a different Job in the same role.

Swapping all 4 healers isn't a solution, because it just substitutes the problem - now people who DO like 1 Nuke/1 DoT rotations have nothing to play - as opposed to solving the problem - ensuring all players have something they at least can moderately enjoy playing within a given role.

Here's the reality of the general reception of the healers in this game: most players that actually play healers are unbothered by the state of them, but would respond positively to more offensive spells or other forms of consistent actions that can be used regardless of whether healing is required or not.

Can you cite evidence proving or strongly supporting this? I think it IS true many players are unbothered by the current state of healers. I'm not sure how many would respond positively to more offensive spells. Especially if they had no opt out other than "you now can't clear content or have to be carried".

The only players...

...is a really bad way to start a statement. "the only", as if there are only two options, people who love it and people who are unhappy for the exact reason you state and no other possible reason. Is that a fair assessment? No, it is not.

...who could possibly be unhappy with this are those that would be unhappy that maintaining 1 button spam no longer would mean you'd parse high,

I would be unhappy with the change.

As I already pointed out to you, I don't care about parses.

Your position that only players who care about easy parses would be unhappy has now been proven false.

Only people who want a free ride or like that they can stealth their way into savage while doing a fraction of the work every other role has to put in to get the clear would genuinely be upset.

So you go from one insult to a worse insult.

I neither want a free ride nor stealth into savage doing a fraction of the work of other roles.

I've now proven you wrong TWICE.

(To clarify this: I've also cleared Savage fights on tanks and Extremes as all roles. Clearly I'm not looking for carries or easy runs.)

Stop biting your tongue and enduring a game you do not enjoy if this is not the type of healer you want to play. Or jump in for the story and go to WoW for the raiding once you're caught up. Stop punishing yourself.

What if - just pretend for a minute - they actually ENJOY FFXIV's story, aesthetic, and gameplay and CAN play it the way they like and enjoy it, despite you insisting to them that they cannot? What if quitting FFXIV would be them punishing themselves? What if playing WoW would be them punishing themselves? What if you're wrong?

.

I think this is the reason that you guys don't see more dissenting views here.

You either lie about them, misrepresent them, or insult them until they fall silent.

...then you claim your positions are the majority with likes and not being contested by many dissenting voices. When you ran those dissenting voices off or you lie about what those dissenting voices are saying.

I honestly don't get it, but I'm trying to be rational and reasonable and fair, so... /shrug

[ty_taurus]

Can you cite evidence proving or strongly supporting this? I think it IS true many players are unbothered by the current state of healers. I'm not sure how many would respond positively to more offensive spells. Especially if they had no opt out other than "you now can't clear content or have to be carried".

During the 6.1 trailer, Crystalline Conflict was revealed, and there was a clip of WHM using Afflatus Purgation, a giant laser attack. My FC includes quite a few healers, including many who are perfectly content with WHM right now. ALL of them drooling over that and wishing they could have it in PVE. Anecdotal? Maybe, but I'm also just going off the logic of gamers in general. Most gamers are not hardcore numbers gamers. Most games are casual gamers, and you need to really make a game unplayable for casual gamers from within that market to be upset. Just look at Pokemon for example. The newest games are held together by silly string and are some of the ugliest games on the Switch, but most people don't care, because it's not broken enough to disrupt the experience. Inversely, so long as a game isn't intentionally challenging or frustrating to play, casual players are pretty happy with improvements as well. Look at Super Smash Bros for example. Did Nintendo ever need to release a single patch ever? No. Did any casual players complain about a character getting stronger? I've never seen it. The only ones that commented were the hardcore players.

This is just how gamers are, and it's something you come to understand the more you expose yourself to gaming audiences.

I neither want a free ride nor stealth into savage doing a fraction of the work of other roles.

I've now proven you wrong TWICE

First and foremost, how have you "proven" anything if my statement wasn't considered "proof" and required evidence to support it? Isn't that hypocritical?

Regardless, if you don't care about getting a free ride then just don't use whatever new offensive spells get added. No one is going to force you to use your healer rotation if all you want to do is spam your filler spell. If you don't care about stealthing your way into savage and are content proving your skill, then what's the issue? People who seek savage level difficulty are looking for challenges and ways to prove their skill. You should be elated at the idea of having a higher skill ceiling that allows you to further support your party by playing better. If you aren't looking for challenges, then you aren't playing savage, then that's all the more reason to just spam 1 button if you want to. Behind the extremely generous enrages of EX, there's no other enrage mechanics in content below savage, so there's no pressure for you to optimize your gameplay.

If you're not looking for a free ride, nor are trying to stealth your way into savage, then you have no reason to be bothered by optimized gameplay expecting more from you than thoughtless button mashing, because you'd either rise to the challenge, or continue playing the way that satisfies you. It could only upset you if you're appalled by the idea that the lack of gameplay that's currently expected for top performing healers is now the skill floor and no longer the skill ceiling, which means you would be upset with either not performing as well playing the way you want to play, or that you'd be forced to try harder to perform at the current level you're performing at, which equates to wanting a free ride or wanting to stealth your way into savage.

But as you said, this isn't you, so logically, you'd be content either continuing to play with 1 button DPS or simply rising to the higher expectations of the skill ceiling. The talk of free riders is not referencing you in this case. If you're in the camp of not wanting offensive healer gameplay, then it begs the question of why you're playing FFXIV where you're objectively expected to be attacking with 80%-100% of your GCD casts in all forms of content instead of a game where you can just focus on the healing like WoW. Regardless of whether you have 1 button, 20 buttons, or 100 buttons to DPS with, the frequency that you spend attacking is the same because we don't take damage every few seconds in this game.

What if - just pretend for a minute - they actually ENJOY FFXIV's story, aesthetic, and gameplay and CAN play it the way they like and enjoy it, despite you insisting to them that they cannot? What if quitting FFXIV would be them punishing themselves? What if playing WoW would be them punishing themselves? What if you're wrong?

Healer gameplay is a lack of gameplay. You are objectively not engaging with the systems of FFXIV for the majority of your gameplay. Players who aren't seeking to optimize can be far more content with the game because they can overheal like crazy, not use their OGCD heals and focus on their GCD heals instead, and break up that offensive monotony through suboptimal gameplay choices, which ultimately don't matter in the content they play in because there are no enrage timers. So if you're not looking to optimize, then go ahead and just use the tools you want to use. No one is going to care. I certainly won't, but at least the apex of each job's gameplay can offer something to the players that want engagement. If you're seeking optimal play and enjoy what we have its because there is no gameplay and thus there are no expectations other than just use your cooldowns, which is half the work every other job in this game has to put into raiding if not less.

You can't "like" a lack of gameplay. You can be unbothered by it if you are a reward-focused player who just likes getting your dailies complete, or seeing what you get from treasure maps, but if you're that type of player, then you won't care what's added to the healers as long as it doesn't make them mechanically difficult to play, like ASTs constant single target focused buffs. Having to constantly swap targets in a game that doesn't support that very well is why most players don't like AST. Everyone LOVES the aesthetic but can't bring themselves to play the job because it's not fun to constantly be swapping between party members for cards. Giving AST a subtle rotation is not mechanically difficult. You can ONLY be upset if you're focused on performance and the expectation, because if you're not focused on either of those aspects, then you'd have no issues, or your issues are things that aren't resolved with the current healer design either.

[Renathras]

During the 6.1 trailer...

Okay, I'm only going to reply with this and not reply to you any more:

I can't have a discussion with someone who is arguing in bad faith.

Imagine if every time you asked for a more interesting damage rotation on healers, someone retorted with "You just want to play a DPS but have better ques! Go play a DPS!". You might respond the first or second or even third time with a gentle explanation that you DO want to play a healer, but why you're asking for what you are. Why people other than "just want to play a DPS but have better ques" would want more damage buttons. Point out that the game's history allows for this. Point out that MMOs allow for this. Point out that many players probably want this...only for that person to say "You just want to play a DPS but have better ques! Go play a DPS!" again with different words.

That's what you've done.

Repeatedly I've told you other reasons why people might want healers - or at least _A_ healer - to remain as they are. Yet you can't help but deride and insult. And worse, you put words in my mouth, insisting you know my motivations and mind better than I do, even when I'm outright telling you my motivations and mind, and you basically say "Nuh uh, I know you and what you are thinking better than you know you and what you are thinking."

That's bad faith, and I'm done indulging in it.

If you seek a good faith argument, come back. Until then, if you seek to be willfully obtuse and act in bad faith, that's on you.

[ForsakenRoe]

Oh, shoot, we had totally different definitions of the word then. Does what I described sound more attractive, at least?

Triage healing works in other places because the game engine can actually keep up with the quick-reaction demand that 'triage' is at it's core. If you see the tank get clapped by a TB down to 20%, and a melee DPS happened to get clonked by it, and both are bleeding out to the attached DOT, FFXIV wouldn't allow for the quick decision making of 'I'll let the DPS suffer for the one GCD of cast time I'll use to keep the tank up, then Tetra them' or 'I'll Tetra the DPS now, and then cast time Cure2 the tank, and hope the tank has enough sustain/mit left to keep themselves up till my cast finishes', because every action in this game's crusty engine doesn't actually register on time, 'Bene lag' is the prime example. It'd be cool to have actual 'triage' situations, but the reason it works better in, say, WOW, is that AOE healing is not plentiful. It's either kinda weak but spammable, or has some internal CD like WildGrowth, Circle of Healing, Dream Breath, Spiritbloom, PowerWord:Radiance, etc. In order to have a similar environment here, Medica and it's equivalents would need to have a 10s CD at minimum.

Maybe they could do it with a hacky workaround though, some kind of debuff that means 'only single target healing affects this player for X seconds', then have it applied to, idk, 2 DPS while they get clapped by adds. At the same time, have both of the tanks be getting slapped around by hard autos from the boss. Now each healer has to handle one tank and one DPS, with single target healing. How long can they leave the tank alone to selfsustain? Is their 120s like Vengeance up soon to help mitigate? Is the DPS actually going to bother using Bloodbath? etc. All of this is kinda pie in the sky thinking though, as a key part of triage is that you can't save everyone, every time. Sometimes you have to choose to let the DPS die, to keep the tank, and therefore the pull, going for a little longer. And I feel like 'the healer purposely let X die', regardless of reason, is just gonna generate animosity, especially in a game that's used to healers being HPS demigods who can, in some cases, keep party alive without even intending to, because of incidental healing like Assize or EarthlyStar going off

As for HPS pump requirement phases, personally I think the 'more HPS requirement' of this tier was fun in a way. Keyword, WAS. For starters, it was mainly 'you need more mit on raidwides' which was a little bit /shrug, especially if you're the Pure Healer, not much changes. I've said in the past, imagine if P7S had the front/back fist slams do proximity damage, but the bleed is removed from Spark of Life. Less damage on Sparks, but way more frequent raidwides. Enough that the OGCD kit might not actually cover every single one. Also thanks to the passage of time, I'm BIS, everyone's BIS, we're back to outgearing the fights. The tale as old as time. And no matter how many times the tale is told, the ending is always the same. Can we take a leaf from the Minstrel's book, and try a DSR-esque timeline change, to a future where we didn't lose our damage skills in the jump to SHB. A future where WHM has Glare 4, Dia 3, Dia 2, Banish, Misery and the fixed lilies, Assize, maybe a way to proc an empowered Holy that does 300% damage, so it's a gain to Holy in single target, etc. Or SCH has like 7 DOTs like that one time in ARR. Or SGE is the Disc Priest equivalent a fair number of people had hoped it'd be.

A future, where the job design team sat down and never had to say 'hang on, we give tanks new DPS skills every expansion, we should do that for healers too', because it was understood to be a given, a 'blatantly obvious', that the two non-DPS roles should have equal amounts of DPS skills added with each expansion. That it was an inherently understood tenet of design, that if tanks get Primal Rend, or Inner Chaos, or Confiteor, or Blade of Blade, or Double Down, or Shadowbringer, despite being 'not a DPS', then it only makes sense that WHM would get Purgation, or SCH would get Meltdown, or AST would get Comet, or SGE would get... whatever they'd get (idk greek medical terms). A future, that, if it were possible to experience, as we do the alternate events of DSR, I think a great majority of players, from all skill levels, would say 'actually this slaps can we have this instead'.

Maybe they should do a PTR with some changes to try out, for people to give feedback on. Changes are hard to give feedback on without having it in your hands to mess around with, certain things like 'is this fluid' or 'is this clunky' can't really be interpreted from patch notes. So if they had a PTR of sorts, with a change like, idk, Taurus's AST changes, for people to try, and give feedback on, I wonder how many people who originally insisted 'I don't want healers to change at all from current' would think 'actually this isn't half bad, I quite like the gameplay for this class being super buff-heavy, I really feel like I'm empowering my team!'

If you seek a good faith argument, come back. Until then, if you seek to be willfully obtuse and act in bad faith, that's on you.

Bye, hf with the 24man and stuff

[Renathras]

Bye, hf with the 24man and stuff

O...kay?

That was to Ty not you (my reply to you was far more cordial as while I do think you're blindered to arguments, I don't think you're arguing in bad faith), though. So not quite sure why you replied to that quote and not my actual response to you, but whatever I suppose...

Oh, triage healing works in FFXIV - has in the past - it just requires healer kits to not be bloated with powerful oGCDs and for encounter designs to have different damage profiles than they've come to have. More like ARR and HW, less like SB/ShB/EW.

And there will never be a case of healers having as many DPS abilities as tanks. Tank's MAIN role (maintaing threat) requires they to do at least token damage outside of having abilities like Flash, which no longer exists. Moreover, Tanks don't have to juggle party needs on top of their damage. If a party member screws up a mechanic, it either wipes the group or its the healer's job to fix it, not the Tank's, generally. Their utility also works differently. They're all oGCDs - which you could argue healers' could be as well - but they also aren't designed to be spamable as a backup. If a party member repeatedly screws up mechanics, tanks don't chain cast Heart of Corundum or Nascent on them. They don't work as GCDs in that way, other than PLD Clemency, which you get yelled at if you use.

Healers, on the other hand, are STILL designed with that paradigm, even if it's not used in practice in scripted encounters where everyone executes mechanics perfectly. You'd have to give healers some oGCDs like Tetra that have no CD and can be used over and over again without a hard lockout in place for you to even begin to talk about healers in the same design space as tanks, and as yet, I've seen none of you present such a system.

A WHM can chain cast Cure 2 on a screwing up party member quite a few times - just tested this on a striking dummy and the number is 11 with a tick making it 12 (more Piety would make it absolutely 12, but let's go with that) Cure 2s with no use of Lucid, Thin Air, or pausing to use the Lily that was generated in that time.

So we'd need to have Tetra with 12 charges before we could safely remove Cure 2 and give healers a tank-level damage rotation.

12. Charges.

And that recharge quickly (within a minute), so you'd be generating charges of Tetra every ~6 seconds or so.

...though that does sound oddly amusing now that I write it out. Heh, that might be an interesting thing to do. Give WHM basically Solace and Rapture as oGCDs that stack to 10 and recharge ever 6 seconds. It would make healing ridiculously trivial, but if we did that (and, of course, had party mitigation like Temperance and maybe a lesser mitigation on a 60 sec CD), then we could start thinking about having a rotation on par with WAR or MCH. That might be fair.

...I'd wager none of you are proposing THAT.

EDIT:

So your position is that the forums comprise too small a user base... so let's instead look to...

Large collections of the playerbase that are a more representative sample of the player base than here? That sounds pretty smart, actually.

What you don't realize is every "neutral" is someone not agreeing with you. The bulk of your initial searches were that. Reinforcing the position that the bulk do not agree with your position. As the saying goes "Those who enjoy the game aren't on internet forums complaining about it". Neutral means "Enjoy it/like it/have no major complaints with it." It DOESN'T mean they might not like something else even better - let's get that clear - but it DOES mean they disagree with you of it being people "starving" and the like.

Also, note I said the COMMENTS, not the CREATORS. Chair also said the same thing I have - to change three healers and leave one braindead. I think that may have been his exact wording, with "probably White Mage". So again, this seems like the logical and best solution.

Specifically here at this timestamp in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbWubxOTUWU&t=376s

...I'm guessing that's the video you're talking about. And I'd also note I basically agree with him overall. A bit less dripping sarcasm and I don't find 1-2-3 NEARLY as exciting as he does, but overall I agree with him. And to this day, I don't see why nAST needed to be removed. Because...there's no reason it needed to be removed. It's not like having ShB d/nAST would break the current game in any way at all. And I say this as a person that really dislikes AST!

Also what he says at 11:48:

"If someone complains that they need to be rewarded with more DPS for their complicated Job, simply tell them that their reward is being able to HAVE FUN and not being BORED out of their ------- minds! Shut the ---- up about a whole 2% dps variance!"

Also rules to live by. Basically, I'm fine with everything he said in that video and agree with the overall position entirely. I'd say it's my own, but it's a bit different - with the return of nAST, that would be FOUR healers with you guys' preferred playstyle to 1 without.

[Shurrikhan]

Oh, triage healing works in FFXIV - has in the past - it just requires healer kits to not be bloated with powerful oGCDs and for encounter designs to have different damage profiles than they've come to have. More like ARR and HW, less like SB/ShB/EW.

And there will never be a case of healers having as many DPS abilities as tanks.

She didn't ask for them to have the same total count of DPS abilities. She asked for them to have the same addition to one's offensive abilities per expansion (which the prior paragraph had just exemplified as not needing to each be on a discrete button, so long as they're still interactive [not just a potency bump trait])-- i.e., if DRK's getting Shadowbringer, maybe WHM should get Afflatus Purgation, or some way for Misery to briefly buff Glare/Holy.

Now, I'm not necessarily sold on their needing to be one-to-one or the like, but for a guy calling foul so often, I would think you'd be more attentive to the difference between a single adder and its sum.

Large collections of the playerbase that are a more representative sample of the player base than here? That sounds pretty smart, actually.

Our couple dozen or less consistent XIV streamers/content creators alone are not a larger sample than the whole of these forums.

[ty_taurus]

Okay, I'm only going to reply with this and not reply to you any more:

I can't have a discussion with someone who is arguing in bad faith.

It's really not in bad faith. Not everyone that disagrees with you is inherently arguing in bad faith. I legitimately cannot comprehend liking the healers as they are for anything other than not having to engage with the system of this game for over half of a fight. It's no exaggeration surreal to think about, like the lyrics in I am the Walrus.

If you're not a raider, then why does it matter when you can just keep playing the way you want to play since it doesn't matter. Many melee players don't use feint, bloodbath, or second wind. Many physical ranged and tanks don't use interject. No one will care if you don't use DPS buttons B, C, and D and just spam A. If you are a raider, than the idea of lifting the skill ceiling should be appealing to you because it allows you to go above what is expected of your role to make the fight easier for the rest of your team. Having a low skill ceiling often means you cannot tighten the gap in your team's performance by skill and can only contribute as much as the floor will allow, which makes fights actually harder, not easier.

The only logical reason that my brain can comprehend to objecting to this is someone who wants to raid, but doesn't want to try harder and likes that their job gets to clear content with half the effort of everyone else. This is not hyperbole. I'm not trying to be insulting. I'm trying to communicate what I understand as logic in this world. This game is inherently structured to ask healing mechanics from you for one short period once per 30-60+ seconds, even in savage where heal requirements are slightly more frequent, healers still will cast Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis more than every other action on their hotbar combined. There is no universe in which this is good design. It cannot make sense any more than using your banana phone to order moose juice from a flying sealion named Ginger.

So for that reason I cannot in good conscience believe you because your statement doesn't work logically. As I said before, I can entirely sympathize with not liking the offensive healer design of FFXIV and how much time is dedicated to offensive, but without reworking literally every fight, we can't change that. This is how this game is structured, and it can only stray so far from that formula without breaking. I would love to reduce OGCD heals, put more emphasis on GCD heals, but that will only make a negligible dent in DPS uptime for healers. I think we can totally have a healer who's DPS contributions are disguised as support and create the experience of having a buff-oriented rotation, but that still means having a rotation where you have an order of operations casting on your teammates rather than enemies. And that's doable if handled correctly. But job design that is defined by inactivity is antithetical to FFXIV's combat system in its entirety and has no place in this game and ruins the healer role as it actively fights against the way every encounter is designed.

[Renathras]

It's really not in bad faith. Not everyone that disagrees with you is inherently arguing in bad faith.

You're arguing in bad faith while replying saying you're not arguing in bad faith!

WHERE, friend, did I say "everyone that disagrees with me is arguing in bad faith"?

I outright said Roe is NOT arguing in bad faith, and I've not said that Shurrikhan is. You alone I've said that to.

You're arguing in bad faith while trying to rebut the accusation you're arguing in bad faith. XD

.

I will say this to you, though, pretending for a moment you're trying to argue in good faith here:

I legitimately cannot comprehend...

And that is your problem.

You can't comprehend why people who disagree with you are disagreeing with you. Even when they're outright telling you why. So you're making up a reason that is easy for you to defeat - bad faith/a strawman - instead of just...listening.

I get you don't get it. That's the problem. Get it? I've been trying to help you get it, but instead of listening so you might get it, you insist that your wrong position - which is from you not getting it - is the right position. Get it?

...why do I sound like Kakashi...

[ty_taurus]

You're arguing in bad faith while replying saying you're not arguing in bad faith!

WHERE, friend, did I say "everyone that disagrees with me is arguing in bad faith"?

I outright said Roe is NOT arguing in bad faith, and I've not said that Shurrikhan is. You alone I've said that to.

You're arguing in bad faith while trying to rebut the accusation you're arguing in bad faith. XD

.

I will say this to you, though, pretending for a moment you're trying to argue in good faith here:



And that is your problem.

You can't comprehend why people who disagree with you are disagreeing with you. Even when they're outright telling you why. So you're making up a reason that is easy for you to defeat - bad faith/a strawman - instead of just...listening.

I get you don't get it. That's the problem. Get it? I've been trying to help you get it, but instead of listening so you might get it, you insist that your wrong position - which is from you not getting it - is the right position. Get it?

...why do I sound like Kakashi...

It's not in bad faith! I'm trying to communicate genuine feelings to you and you are dismissing them as an attack on your character when this is not the case. Maybe your logic just isn't as sound as you think it is.

The problem is, we don't agree on what "sorry state" is. Many players think the current healing is in a fantastic state.

Can you cite evidence proving or strongly supporting this?

I get you don't get it. That's the problem. Get it? I've been trying to help you get it, but instead of listening so you might get it, you insist that your wrong position - which is from you not getting it - is the right position. Get it?

Would it kill you to at least have an ounce of humility rather than responding to everything with "I get that you don't understand why your WRONG opinion can't compare to the radiance that is my RIGHT opinion." THAT is what actual bad faith argument looks like.