The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Shurrikhan]

Who is arguing to truncate? I'm arguing to expand 3 healers and leave one alone. Leaving a thing alone is not truncating it.

So, you've got 4 starving people...

The apparent general consensus so far: Let them eat as much as they need to reach healthy levels.

You: No! Keep one starved! It's not that I'm denying any of that one food, though; I'm just only feeding 3. After all, the last might want to be hungry but wouldn't be able to resist eating if there were food around!

Yes, frames of reference will matter. If most else would rather healer kits each feel fuller and more engaging, and the discourse is forming around that, but you alone specifically asking that one healer's kit not be thus improved (be left as is)... there is then no difference between "leaving (a bad state) as is" and "truncating" possible improvements. We were already discussing the improvements we'd like to see before you're "axe that; keep them the same." Nor is there any difference between saying that all but one job should have its damage-dealing left as is and truncating what's available for those other jobs.

[ty_taurus]

For the record, this is where my headspace has been for my own WHM ideas in terms of a rotation:

Stone/Glare: Your filler DPS

Aero/Dia: Your DoT. Upgrades to Aero III during HW and becomes AoE with falloff (other healers get to apply their DoT as AoE as well). Dia becomes AoE.

Water/Assize: OGCD DPS on a 40 second cooldown; restores a little MP. Assize is moved up to ShB as an upgrade, but during HW, Water III can be cast again while on cooldown to additionally heal the party. This transfers over to Assize where the initial cast is DPS and MP only, and the heal can be activated while Assize is on cooldown.

Arcane Ward: WHM Ley Lines. Is permanent, and can be repositioned once per 15 seconds. Every 5 casts of any spell while standing within Arcane Ward grants you 1 use of Tempest. (Also gains Arcane Warp which lets you teleport back to your Arcane Ward a la Between the Lines)

Tempest: GCD DPS, a little stronger than Stone/Glare. AoE with falloff. Combos into two other spells.

Soul Drain: Weak GCD DPS button (half Stone/Glare potency); restores MP and makes your next spell instant. Combos from Tempest, increasing it to DPS neutral potency.

Holy: Your AoE button. Same potency as Stone/Glare with falloff (would do this for every healer to rework AoE buttons to be usable in single target) but costs more MP. Combos from Tempest, generates 1 lily when used this way. Is your main way of generating lilies instead of automatically, but could also have a Rhizomata-type action as well that grants a lily for emergencies.)

Afflatus Misery: DPS Nuke reward from lily usage, as is currently. Can store a second blood lily, but has a 20 second cooldown now to prevent buff window dumping. Adds flexibility to when you use it.

Germinate: Channel ability that nourishes the blood lily once per 4 seconds over 12 seconds. Used for downtime so you're not obligated to burn lily heals frivolously. Cannot be weaved for a single charge as you must wait 4 seconds for the first nourish.

Presence of Mind/Temperance: Making Temperance an upgrade of Presence of Mind at level 70; retains the PoM effect and additionally provides an 8% Determination buff to the party which increases DPS and healing. (Old Temperance still exists as "Efflorescence" at level 80. I think the wings would be cooler to always see as a part of your rotation rather than a mitigation button, but this can also be swapped back to normal if people prefer it for the mitigation. It's just a matter of animation.)

Fleeting Familiar: New spell gained in the 90s during 7.0. GCD action on a 90 second cooldown (With the mindset of moving away from the 2 minute burst window). Grants 5 stacks of a familiar (spell effect around you, not a pet) that hits the nearest enemy for you each time you cast a spell with a very low potency (like 30 or so). Once all 5 stacks are consumed, nourishes the blood lily.

Again, just me randomly scribbling ideas down when I'm bored.

In addition to this, I'd like to give WHM a new form of utility in Float, which makes the party ignore puddle and ground effects for 15 seconds, such as the water in P2S. Would give a different type of mobility utility to your party. Perhaps up the frequency of ground effects in fights, even if less prominent than P2S, which allows WHM to allow for perhaps more easy positioning for certain mechanics.

Also I'd wanna rework Plenary Indulgence into a party wide buff that increases max HP by 10% for 20 seconds, as an answer to WHM's need for more mitigation, as this is effectively a refillable barrier.

[ForsakenRoe]

Now I've slept I was gonna ask Ren if they'd be ok with WHM getting the changes I suggested back in my 'I hate the pure/barrier split' thread, that is, Dia becomes 12s duration, and Banish is added as a 15s standalone GCD. It'd be just one extra DPS action, but then it all came flooding back, I already have asked them that, ages ago. They still said that is bad changes for the class, and that they would hate it. I don't think they're planning on changing their mind even slightly, which is unfortunate. The idea that they're some kind of 'mediator' advocating for a 'compromise' is laughable though. The idea that we should leave one class out of four in the sorry state it's currently in, as 'compromise'. I'll tell you what is 'compromise', the designs I've made for WHM or SGE that allow casual players to have a VERY reliable fallback, if they start to feel overwhelmed. For example, my SGE design has Diagnosis/Prognosis be zero MP cost, so if the player misplays, they can fall back on spamming Prognosis to stabilize. Leaving one healer in a sorry state is NOT compromise. Leaving the healer skill floor as accessible as it currently is, is a very acceptable compromise, and one that I don't think any of us advocating for more complexity would argue against. We all want casual players to be able to enjoy the healers at a baseline level, because some may not ever progress past that point. But it remains baffling to me that 'WHM has to stay 1 Nuke 1 DOT forever' is a stance someone would not only take, but try to advocate is a 'position of compromise'.

I still can't fathom the answer to the contradiction though. If Ren 'doesn't care about parses one whit', how does the presence of an extra GCD to do damage with on WHM, tuned in such a way that you could fairly safely ignore it if you're not pushing bleeding edge content, negatively affect their gameplay?

In my suggested WHM idea, ignoring Banish entirely resulted in, thanks to my genius potency balancing, the current 'refresh Dia when it falls off, spam Glare' rotation being 98ish% the effectiveness of actually using Banish as part of the rotation. Players would still be able to clear EX with 'current rotation', heck you could probably get a week 1 'Final Fight of tier: Savage' clear with it, 98% is within crit variance I'm pretty sure. But it's something for optimization-heads to optimize, and if 100p Energy Drain is enough for them to argue to keep as part of SCH's gameplay, the idea that 'its not enough of a gain, people will complain it's just button bloat' is not true at all. But as others have said, the majority of players want to see cool VFX, and the actual numbers behind it don't really matter to them. If WHM got Purgation in PVE as a 2min CD, but AST also got a flat potency buff at the same time that meant it was still ahead in damage, most players on reddit or in NN would not be complaining WHM is ahead, they'd complain AST didn't get a cool animation too.

I disagree with some people going nuclear in here though, suggesting 'quit the game'. It's not the solution. However, if someone wants to experience the story and casual content by just pressing Glare, that's fine, they added Easy and Very Easy modes to help people through the story. They're adding Duty Support to help players through dungeons. And also, if you're gonna say 'quit the game' anyway, probably not a good idea to say 'play WOW instead', considering it's moved to pushing for healers to DPS when safe to even more than FF does. They have 'speedrun the dungeon' as a gamemode after all. I made that comparison image with the list of Holy Priest talents that affect RDPS in some way, I could make one for all of the healer specs but that'd take effort I can't be bothered to spend right now. Could say 'play MOP private server' though I guess.

I don't want to go nuclear, I don't want to tell players who don't want to interact with extra complexity on healers 'go play something else'. I will, however, say to them 'if you don't want to try to maximize your output on a class, don't do content that expects you to do so', and 'If you don't want to try to maximize your output, you are not even going to notice the changes I'm advocating, you can safely ignore them'. And also 'if you're in content that does NOT expect you to try to maximize your output, you can press whatever buttons you like, in whatever order you like, I really don't care'. I sign up for EX roulettes assuming they're going to take 25+min because of a Freestyle SAM, or a single-pulling tank, or a healer that stands there waiting for the tank to drop below 90% health (its a WAR and they have Bloodwhetting active).

[ty_taurus]

I disagree with some people going nuclear in here though, suggesting 'quit the game'. It's not the solution. However, if someone wants to experience the story and casual content by just pressing Glare, that's fine, they added Easy and Very Easy modes to help people through the story. They're adding Duty Support to help players through dungeons. And also, if you're gonna say 'quit the game' anyway, probably not a good idea to say 'play WOW instead', considering it's moved to pushing for healers to DPS when safe to even more than FF does. They have 'speedrun the dungeon' as a gamemode after all. I made that comparison image with the list of Holy Priest talents that affect RDPS in some way, I could make one for all of the healer specs but that'd take effort I can't be bothered to spend right now. Could say 'play MOP private server' though I guess.

Here's the thing... I'm not telling anyone to quit the game or to gatekeep the game when I say things like "if you want WoW healing, then play WoW." (Or if it's more applicable, perhaps Ragnarok or another MMO that better supports triage-focused healing), my point is simply, if you're really frustrated with the idea of healers having DPS rotations, the lack of damage taken in most if not all forms of content, how healing has been moved toward OGCD weaving between DPS spells mostly with very little requirement to use GCD heals, then FFXIV is not satisfying you or providing the experience you're looking for.

If what you want is to play as a healer who doesn't attack and focuses the vast majority of their attention on healing, then would you not be happier playing a game that supports that? That's not saying you can't come to FFXIV to play through the new story, do new sidequests, chat with your friends, do other forms of content like the upcoming deep dungeon, treasure map hunting, etc. But if you're raiding in FFXIV, and this game's combat medic formula is not fun for you, then maybe you should raid in a game that offers healer gameplay that would better satisfy you. This may not apply to everyone, but I'm just trying to point out the FFXIV is not the only MMO, and if the gameplay is in one way or another putting you off, and there aren't any other jobs that are fun for you, then looking at other games is an option for you and may be the solution.

I like fighting games, and I really like the characters and style of King of Fighters, but I hate how King of Fighters relies so heavily on quarter-turn and half-turn input for combos. So While I might play King of Fighters very lightly and faff around, I much prefer the gameplay of Tekken even if I'm not as big of a fan of its cast. I can still find characters I enjoy, and the combo system feels so much more comfortable, and that's what I play with one of my friends when we get competitive with one another. That's what I'm talking about.

That said, I've said many MANY times before that I would love to have a healer reworked in a way where their DPS contributions are largely filtered through your teammates to create the illusion of a support-oriented healer in an attempt to give players that want heal-focused healing something that at least treads a line they may better enjoy than having to directly cast offensive spells for 80% to 100% of their GCD and still can compliment the encounter design of this game. I am all about trying to create different playstyles that can appeal to different types of players, but I don't know if FFXIV's design team will ever be willing to do that despite how beneficial it would be. I do think they will eventually hit a wall where healer design where they can't just keep adding healing buttons and will be forced to respond to the increasingly prominent criticism of healers that has started to bubble onto major content creator discussions. I can't speak to how ambitious they will be with how they respond, but the ship has leaks, and they can't keep ignoring them forever.

[glamazon]

The problem is this will never change until someone with power takes an interest.

For example:
If Yoshi p mained a healer job we would not be in this situation.

[ASkellington]

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.

I'm going to counter argue with this:

Having 1 nuke and dot as opposed to several different abilities isn't a gameplay style or identity. WAR has its Fell Cleves on top of the 1-2-3 combo that all tanks share btw (not too different to all healers having a general nuke and dot). GNB who still has a 1-2-3 has cartridges (Gnashing Fang). DRK has knock off Fell Cleve and PLD has its own rotation. Once more for emphasis on top of the same 1-2-3 combo and ~5-7 mitigation options. If tanks can have that so can healers: a basic nuke and dot ON TOP OF something extra.

Your argument of keeping 1 healer without anything has 0 merit.

Edit: I'd also like to add, no one is going to truly care if a healer doesn't use their extra dps abilities outside of content that matters. Does it matter in MSQ dungeons? NO. Does it matter in EX and Savage? Yes. And in those instances, yes you should be doing your job to the best of your abilities. You signed up for that content. That is expected of you, period.

If anyone harasses someone in a duty finder MSQ/Normal Dungeon they can report it to the GMs and move on with their life. Is it the wrong way to do nothing but heal? Technically, yes. But you're still keeping everyone alive, it isn't a reportable offense. If the other party members want to kick you, that's their right to do so.

[ty_taurus]

I'm going to counter argue with this:

Having 1 nuke and dot as opposed to several different abilities isn't a gameplay style or identity. WAR has its Fell Cleves on top of the 1-2-3 combo that all tanks share btw (not too different to all healers having a general nuke and dot). GNB who still has a 1-2-3 has cartridges (Gnashing Fang). DRK has knock off Fell Cleve and PLD has its own rotation. Once more for emphasis on top of the same 1-2-3 combo and ~5-7 mitigation options. If tanks can have that so can healers: a basic nuke and dot ON TOP OF something extra.

Your argument of keeping 1 healer without anything has 0 merit.

Edit: I'd also like to add, no one is going to truly care if a healer doesn't use their extra dps abilities outside of content that matters. Does it matter in MSQ dungeons? NO. Does it matter in EX and Savage? Yes. And in those instances, yes you should be doing your job to the best of your abilities. You signed up for that content. That is expected of you, period.

If anyone harasses someone in a duty finder MSQ/Normal Dungeon they can report it to the GMs and move on with their life. Is it the wrong way to do nothing but heal? Technically, yes. But you're still keeping everyone alive, it isn't a reportable offense. If the other party members want to kick you, that's their right to do so.

It's not like other roles don't ignore some of their own tools in casual content--even harder content at times. How many DPS don't use Feint/Addle, Bloodbath, Second Wind, Magick Barrier, Radiant Aegis, Improvisation, etc.? How many times is the raidwide paralysis going to go off in a run of Puppets Bunker because not a single tank or ranged physical uses Interject? Healers too... How many people are going to die to the doom in Fell Court because the healer didn't Esuna? What's a few extra DPS buttons going to change, really?

Don't like em? Don't use em. You'll get the same response to all the above: nothing. And that's fine. It's not a requirement. Honestly, make the run harder for me. Messy runs are more fun for me anyway. Not sarcasm.

No joke, I kinda love when the healer dies early in a dungeon boss and I get to see if the rest of us can avoid getting hit and survive off things like my Curing Waltz. It's fun and invigorating. I guess it sucks for the healer who has to sit their and watch, but I mean, how different is that from healer gameplay anyway?

[Magikazam]

What's a few extra DPS buttons going to change, really?

Most of healer uptime considering in average 85% of what you press in a fight is the same single button for dps.

No joke, I kinda love when the healer dies early in a dungeon boss and I get to see if the rest of us can avoid getting hit and survive off things like my Curing Waltz. It's fun and invigorating. I guess it sucks for the healer who has to sit their and watch, but I mean, how different is that from healer gameplay anyway?

I love the fact how healer are so useless they can die and it not a problem, but if the tank die it a guaranteed wipe unless he get rez Asap.

If what you want is to play as a healer who doesn't attack and focuses the vast majority of their attention on healing, then would you not be happier playing a game that supports that?

my point is simply, if you're really frustrated with the idea of healers having DPS rotations, the lack of damage taken in most if not all forms of content,

Well you see that the issues, Healer gameplay ain't made to be just a heal bot and it doesn't even have a DPS rotation. We get kit made focused to be for full healing yet you probably will over heal just by spamming your normal healing skill. Yet we're expected to be doing dps with most of our uptime, just to throw some heal when tank get hit hard or someone fail mechanic or if there a healer check.

It really feel to me that the class design team and the encounter design team just don't talk to eachother

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree with some people going nuclear in here though, suggesting 'quit the game'. It's not the solution. However, if someone wants to experience the story and casual content by just pressing Glare, that's fine, they added Easy and Very Easy modes to help people through the story. They're adding Duty Support to help players through dungeons.

Here's the thing... I'm not telling anyone to quit the game or to gatekeep the game when I say things like "if you want WoW healing, then play WoW." (Or if it's more applicable, perhaps Ragnarok or another MMO that better supports triage-focused healing)

But, we've had more triage-based healing. Not for a long while now and not terribly often, but... there wasn't anything exclusive between having more of a rush and sense of gamble from the healing itself AND having far more damage skills. We did have both. The devs gave up caring about it in the face of "just give them more skills(' bloat) as an expansion selling point" before they'd come anywhere close to leveraging it terribly well, but it was there.

if you're frustrated with... how healing has been moved toward OGCD weaving between DPS spells mostly with very little requirement to use GCD heals, then FFXIV is not satisfying you or providing the experience you're looking for.

Okay, but, who all actually thinks the near-entirety of our healing coming from fixed-timer oGCDs or mechanics devolving into "See A, slap button A," is... an improvement over what we had prior?

On the rest, mostly agreed, but... wanting more of our dopamine to come from the healing itself, wanting to feel like we're making more vital decisions in our healing, etc., isn't a preference that leads to "Well just go play WoW" anymore than just "Well, just go play (older) FFXIV." It's not so much that XIV isn't for that sort of player as... not for that sort of player anymore.

And given that I'm pretty sure those wanting more from healers, or even just the kind of "more" that we already had, outnumber those happy with their current state, that should mark a problem, not just a difference in preferences.

[ty_taurus]

But, we've had more triage-based healing. Not for a long while now and not terribly often, but... there wasn't anything exclusive between having more of a rush and sense of gamble from the healing itself AND having far more damage skills. We did have both. The devs gave up caring about it in the face of "just give them more skills(' bloat) as an expansion selling point" before they'd come anywhere close to leveraging it terribly well, but it was there.


Okay, but, who all actually thinks the near-entirety of our healing coming from fixed-timer oGCDs or mechanics devolving into "See A, slap button A," is... an improvement over what we had prior?

On the rest, mostly agreed, but... wanting more of our dopamine to come from the healing itself, wanting to feel like we're making more vital decisions in our healing, etc., isn't a preference that leads to "Well just go play WoW" anymore than just "Well, just go play (older) FFXIV." It's not so much that XIV isn't for that sort of player as... not for that sort of player anymore.

And given that I'm pretty sure those wanting more from healers, or even just the kind of "more" that we already had, outnumber those happy with their current state, that should mark a problem, not just a difference in preferences.

There are two examples I can think of where heavy healing mechanics were required:

1. Turn 2 cheese strat: The coils were wonky, and in Coil 2, you were pitted against a small labyrinth of rooms with minibosses. You'd have to make your way through at least 3, but there were more, and which ones you took down would disable certain effects from the final boss, but that final boss had a nasty mechanic known as Allagan Rot where you'd basically be playing hot potato with your team for the whole fight and holding it too long or giving it back to someone who had it recently would explode and kill everyone. The strat? Wait until there were I think it was 10 minutes remaining on the raid timer, where the boss would "enrage" by just spamming high damage AoEs. You'd completely bypass all of the boss's mechanics and just burn it down while the healers spammed Medica/Medica II/Succor. This was not the intended strat.

2. Mini-burn phases like in Brute Justice: At the end of the fight with Brute Justice in A8N and A8S, he spins around and just does constant raidwide damage for the last small chunk of his HP, with the raidwides growing in intensity. These mechanics are exceedingly rare--rarer than Esuna mechanics--and only make up a small fraction of the total fight.

Beyond this, sure sometimes there are small windows where burst healing is needed, but these are few and far between, and once that phase ends, you've got another 30-60 seconds where no one is taking damage but the tank, and generally the tank has no issues managing that themselves.

Those burst moments can be fun and feel great, but the gaping holes inbetween those phases should be fun too, especially since that gaping hole is sometimes the size of the entire fight in most of this game's content. This contrasts against some other MMO examples where raidwide damage occurs every few seconds. FFXIV has never designed a fight to function this way. The closest you get are examples of damage spam mechanics as with Brute Justice.