The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Renathras]

Again, SE adds new skills in expansion,

And as I just replied to ASk, adding a skill is not the same as a complete Job rework. And the complete Job reworks they've done thus far have always made Jobs simplier (MCH, SMN come to mind), not more complex. Even new MNK is an edge case that had some of its complexity removed, and it wasn't an entire role even if you DO want to argue it became more complex, it was just one Job in a role.

unless they learn the new rotations. Which they do. This applies to everyone except healers,

How did PLD's rotation change from ShB to EW? "Oh, I press 1 button 4 times now instead of 1 (Confetti)." What about GNB? "I now press one other big hit button once every 1 minute in my burst window and a oGCD after another button I only use as a resource dump." What about RDM? "Now my finisher works in AOE and for single target, I press the last button of my combo a second time."

Which of these Jobs, "everyone except healers", had to learn a new rotation? With healers, you could say I learned a new rotation, too. WHM has Misery now being damage neutral and Lilies generate in 20 sec instead of 30 sec, so you press Misery more! Look at that, that's a change!

...that's not what you guys are proposing, though.

Pick pretty much any game from... ever. In the vast majority, if someone is not good enough to get past something,

Except they are good enough to do so now.

Imagine if in a Mario game, a player could beat Boswer. But then you "improved" the game where they could only beat Bowser if they did a very specific set of jumps that they never had to do before to beat Bowser. You've now made them "not good enough" at something they were entirely "good enough" to do before.

I saw people suggest that they should jack the healing required up so more constant healing is needed. That's how we fix healers, to make them more engaging, make them heal more!

Well, yes.

It also appeals more to people that play healers because they like healing, and to people who don't have a mindset of muscle memory damage rotations.

It's been shown to be "very controversial" because the raid community has gotten used to not using GCDs for healing as they chases parses.

it would also either necessitate reworking 10 years of old content that doesn't fit that model, or just leaving it to rot.

That's what they've done with everything so far. They didn't rework Alexander because healers have more oGCDs now than they did in HW.

Having it as 5 Expansions of old style healing,

Considering ARR and HW aren't the same style of healing as SB, which itself is distinct from ShB and EW, it's at most 2 expansions of "old healing". And they literally did this same thing going from SB to ShB. So it's not like this is a change in any way.

then going into eg: 8.0 story and BAM suddenly everyone's dying around them because 'we're in sustained healing time now, rev up those medicas',

As you're so fond of pointing out - the story and normal content wouldn't require it. Not to mention casting Medica isn't exactly hard for people to adapt to.

what's the point of what they learned in the old content?

The story.

What's the point now?

What did people learn from Prae runs from 3.0-6.0? What do people learn from Sasthasha runs? What are people learning from Sirensong Sea runs?

That AST point is super relevant.

Wait, what?

AST got easier in 5.0. o.O

Like...seriously, the chard effect was just "is it purple" or "is it teal", and the seals you can visibly see on the card. "try to get three" wasn't complicated or more challenging than what was before.

And if AST wants an extra GCD or two in your filler, more power to you. I'm literally arguing that they get that! \o/

EDIT:

It undermines your point pretty bad

(...except it doesn't at all...)

'yeh but they got this and it didn't require relearning' skills are all not-damage except Misery,

It undermines my point that making things simpler is the opposite of making things more complex?

Now look at another role, tanks. Blade combo on PLD forced people to unlearn the muscle memory of going for a Goring Blade after their Confiteor,

...by replacing remembering a 1-2-4 with pressing their 7 button 4 times instead of once. Is that what you're arguing for? "WHM now automatically casts Misery with the Glare button once you get 3 Lilies" would be the equivalent change. Is that what you want? Less complexity?

DoubleDown changed how GNB's build/spend ratio works out,

No it didn't. Played GNB in ShB, play GNB in EW. Instead of 1x Gnashing Fang + 2x Burst Strike, you Double Down + 1x Gnashing Fang, and in both cases you use Gnashing Fang on CD to prevent drift and every 2 mins get extra Burst Strike on the end due to Bloodfest. That's hardly a big change and doesn't change the flow or rotation. It's kind of just an extra busywork button that they could have simply made Sonic Break into and no one would have batted an eye. Also would have helped the Devs with their quest to get rid of DoTs.

I've heard there's about 3s of leeway with downtime before you fall behind and don't generate enough carts to keep the loop going.

GNB is super easy to me because you just lock in the rotation and go. Everything comes off CD at either 30 sec or 60 sec, which is the same it was in ShB. The rotation plays more or less the same, too. Also, there's technically an alternative if you need an extra stack with fewer GCDs just before your burst. AOE combo builds in 1-2 instead of 1-2-3. There are niche cases for this, but it's generally not worth bothering. The solution to that is you remove a Burst Strike when you have that case come up so you have an extra charge.

WAR keeps getting harder and harder to screw up and people are very vocal about it in other threads.

...and yet, it's the most played Tank in every region that isn't Japan. And the one people recommend for new Tanks, alt-Job Tanks (people that play other roles but want to branch out or be an omni filler), etc.

And no you can't go 'yeh but tanks are meant to do some damage to keep threat'.

Except they literally are. There's no way to maintain threat in the current game without pressing a damage ability.

Replace 'deals X potency damage' with 'generates emnity equal to an attack with X potency damage' and it'd still keep aggro just fine, but without doing damage.

Sure. Talk to the Devs and I'm sure they'll get right on making that change for you... /sarcasm
(except they might...)

[ForsakenRoe]

And as I just replied to ASk, adding a skill is not the same as a complete Job rework. And the complete Job reworks they've done thus far have always made Jobs simplier (MCH, SMN come to mind), not more complex. Even new MNK is an edge case that had some of its complexity removed, and it wasn't an entire role even if you DO want to argue it became more complex, it was just one Job in a role.

Yeh, I'm so glad that we can tell the SMNs 'dont worry, I know your class got lobotomized in complexity, but it's okay, because BLM still has complexity!', I'm sure they really appreciate it

How did PLD's rotation change from ShB to EW? "Oh, I press 1 button 4 times now instead of 1 (Confetti)." What about GNB? "I now press one other big hit button once every 1 minute in my burst window and a oGCD after another button I only use as a resource dump." What about RDM? "Now my finisher works in AOE and for single target, I press the last button of my combo a second time."

Which of these Jobs, "everyone except healers", had to learn a new rotation?

All of them? If you had to do something, anything, different compared to SHB, that's 'a different rotation'. Even if it's just 'press this button three extra times' in the case of PLD, how many times did people overwrite their Valor DOT? How many people forgot how many Holy Spirits they were spending and screwed themselves out of a Confiteor in SHB?

Except they are good enough to do so now.

Then they'd be able to learn how to press extra buttons. Or if their skill level is such that they clear in like week 12 because of gear difference, they can continue to ignore extra buttons and bruteforce with gear difference, just like now.

Imagine if in a Mario game, a player could beat Boswer. But then you "improved" the game where they could only beat Bowser if they did a very specific set of jumps that they never had to do before to beat Bowser. You've now made them "not good enough" at something they were entirely "good enough" to do before.

Imagine Super Mario Galaxy. Normal Mode is Mario, and Savage is Luigi mode, with his slippery inertia when slowing after releasing the controlstick, faster run speed and higher jump height (meaning potentially overshooting). So yeh, this kinda thing already happened in Mario. Someone who can beat Bowser on Mario Mode might not be able to as Luigi, because he's more unwieldly to control. I struggled on the ice levels as him a bit because of his slippy ground traction combo'd with 'no traction on ice'. So instead of complaining that the game should just give me the reward, I learned Luigi's differences and got good enough to complete his mode too.

It also appeals more to people that play healers because they like healing, and to people who don't have a mindset of muscle memory damage rotations.

How are people knowing when to refresh Dia now? By looking at the duration remaining on the debuff on the boss. So what's stopping them from looking at a second DOT timer, right next to the first one, in the same location on their screen? I don't like muscle memory damage rotations. Healer rotation in SB was not 'muscle memory damage rotation', I wasn't refreshing my DOTs because I could feel in my bones 'ah yes i have done 7 Broils, after this next one 20 seconds will have passed which means I must refresh my DOT', I refreshed them cos I saw the number under the icon said 1.

It's been shown to be "very controversial" because the raid community has gotten used to not using GCDs for healing as they chases parses.

It's been shown to be controversial because a lot of the raid community has gotten used to not using GCDs for healing because they haven't been needed for so long. Parses have nothing to do with this, competent healer players know when GCDs need to be used, and have no objections to using safety GCD healing in prog/going for a clear.

As you're so fond of pointing out - the story and normal content wouldn't require it. Not to mention casting Medica isn't exactly hard for people to adapt to.

Then we have the Abyssos problem: People would not be prepared for what is actually expected from them, because nothing up til that point has asked it of them. Then when it's suddenly demanded, they assume it's an outlier rather than the new expectation of them, because everything before that didn't ask that of them. In order for the 'more healing required' design to properly work, every piece of story content would need to force the player to heal, to get them used to that. Which would mean story dungeons being an actual threat, which is not necessarily disagreeable to me, but it would be to a lot of the Limsa AFK crew.

The story.
What's the point now?
What did people learn from Prae runs from 3.0-6.0? What do people learn from Sasthasha runs? What are people learning from Sirensong Sea runs?

Depends how big the tank pulls. But Sastasha is a terrible example, as a SCH can literally AFK it, the fairy handles everything at that level. What people learn in most story dungeons is how much damage mobs do, or don't do more accurately. If the change was implemented to force more healing throughput out of players, they'd learn that THAT is the amount of damage mobs do, and therefore how much healing is expected of them.

Wait, what?
AST got easier in 5.0. o.O
Like...seriously, the chard effect was just "is it purple" or "is it teal", and the seals you can visibly see on the card. "try to get three" wasn't complicated or more challenging than what was before.
And if AST wants an extra GCD or two in your filler, more power to you. I'm literally arguing that they get that! \o/

The question isn't if it was easier or harder, the question is 'did things have to be relearned'. And with AST, the whole Card system had to be. You remember old cards right? How they had pairs for their RR effects? Arrow was paired with Spear as 'Double duration'. Now Arrow is paired with Ewer. That new pairing would require relearning. And yeh, you could look at the job gauge to work out the card's effect/seal granted. But, for people like me, who learned to differentiate which card we got by seeing + The Balance in the 'Buffs received' flying text back in HW, 'look at the job gauge' would require... relearning.

And of all the healers to get filler GCDs, I'd actually argue for AST to be last in line for it. It'd still get complexity, but not on it's filler GCDs. The reason it had the more basic of rotations back in older expansions was because it had to, to give breathing room for the Card system. So I'd focus more on the card system to differentiate it. If we gave all of the healers a new filler GCD and a second DOT, they're all just gonna feel samey again. So make WHM bursty, SCH DOTy, AST even more buff gameplay, SGE an actual damage-to-healing healer.

...and yet, it's the most played Tank in every region that isn't Japan. And the one people recommend for new Tanks, alt-Job Tanks (people that play other roles but want to branch out or be an omni filler), etc.

Except they literally are. There's no way to maintain threat in the current game without pressing a damage ability.

Sure. Talk to the Devs and I'm sure they'll get right on making that change for you... /sarcasm
(except they might...)

Cut the rest because it's obvious you're missing the point. Whether on purpose or by sheer obliviousness, who knows. But this last bit, where you put /sarcasm. Did I really have to put /s to tell you that, no actually I don't want them to remove all damage from tanks? That it was just an example of a way they COULD make tanks functional, without them having to do damage, thereby allowing the Trinity fetishists to get their rocks off that 'only DPS need to do DPS!'

And yeh, people recommend WAR for new players. If it's hard to screw up, why would you not recommend that one to a new player? The problem isn't that it's hard to screw up, the problem is that even at high end optimization, it's hard to screw up. Having ways to screw up makes it feel rewarding when you don't screw up.

Except they literally are. There's no way to maintain threat in the current game without pressing a damage ability.

With the multiplier on tankstance, the flat threat bonus on Provoke, and Shirk, two tanks in an 8man trial might actually be able to keep threat on the boss by just doing the 'circleshirk'. Maybe I should try testing it tomorrow.

[Renathras]

Yeh, I'm so glad that we can tell the SMNs 'dont worry, I know your class got lobotomized in complexity, but it's okay, because BLM still has complexity!', I'm sure they really appreciate it

Suppose for the sake of argument they "lobotomized" all DPS Jobs but one in a given role. Except one. Vs a world where they lobotomized all Jobs period. Which would you play? And if there was a discussion where 99% of the people were advocating for the lobotomizing, would you not argue "Please just leave me ONE Job! Please!!" And if they told you you were "afraid of change" or "unwilling to adapt" and that you could no longer clear content unless you did, how would you feel? That is, if we reverse the situation from what we are each arguing now and reverse from "more complex" to going "more simple", what would your arguments be? Would you be all for the simplifying? Would you attack anyone advocating that some Jobs be left complex?

All of them? If you had to do something, anything, different compared to SHB, that's 'a different rotation'.

Honestly, that's super broad, but okay. Let's say that when you get three Lilies, your Glare turns into Misery and you cast that. That would be a "change" to your rotation (you would no longer be trying to fit Misery into your burst windows). Would that change satisfy you?

Even if it's just 'press this button three extra times' in the case of PLD, how many times did people overwrite their Valor DOT? How many people forgot how many Holy Spirits they were spending and screwed themselves out of a Confiteor in SHB?

Been playing RDM as one of my DPS since EW hit. I have yet to not press Resolution once.

Then they'd be able to learn how to press extra buttons.

That isn't your argument. Your argument is they would be unchanged from now or wouldn't be losing anything/have to adapt to keep what they already have. Now is your argument they WOULD be losing something? That there would be people suffering under your change?
...because that would be accurate.

Imagine Super Mario Galaxy. Normal Mode is Mario, and Savage is Luigi mode, with his slippery inertia when slowing after releasing the controlstick, faster run speed and higher jump height (meaning potentially overshooting). So yeh, this kinda thing already happened in Mario.

So they made a patch that removed Mario from the game and made Luigi the only play mode in the game?

Oh, wait, no, they didn't do that. They didn't remove the existing game mode at all, did they?

Or are you arguing that initially, Savage mode was Mario also, and then they patched the game to remove Mario as an option for Savage and make it only Luigi now?

...because that didn't happen, either...

How are people knowing when to refresh Dia now?

Dia already sucks. DoTs in general suck. I've said before DoTs are my most un-fun type of gameplay in all of MMOs. The only time they're remotely fun is when they have interactions, like that HoT Druids in WoW have that stacks to three which you keep on the tank and refresh before it falls off or things like Fester that do more damage based on DoTs or PvP Deployment Tactics where the DoT decreases enemy damage, etc.

...in other words, anything that isn't a simple DoT.

Having a second simple DoT that doesn't in any other way interact with your kit is worse than having a single one, which is bad enough.

I don't like muscle memory damage rotations.

Good, that makes two of us. I don't like damage rotations in general. I just do them when there's nothing else to do or if I'm explicitly playing a DPS Job. You know, the red ones. I grudgingly do the blue ones when there aren't enough blue people around and friends need it. When I play a red Job, I try to play the ones that don't have a set rotation, like RDM, or are just braindead simple (and also technically don't have a set rotation) like RDM. When I tank, I like GNB's set rotation because...I don't have to think and can just focus on mechanics and other things going on.

(Honestly, I know this makes me weird, but GNB is the easiest Tank to me - WAR I find myself constantly forgetting Storm's Eye because I don't see that microscopic little debuff fall off. At least with NIN I can see the Job Gauge with the number and it's very visible so easy to see when it's about to run out. Funny how I find GNB and NIN easier than WAR just because of WAR's self-buff not having a good UI representation.)

Healer rotation in SB was not 'muscle memory damage rotation', I wasn't refreshing my DOTs because I could feel in my bones 'ah yes i have done 7 Broils, after this next one 20 seconds will have passed which means I must refresh my DOT', I refreshed them cos I saw the number under the icon said 1.

Good, I'm literally advocating for SB SCH to come back. So what's the problem here?

It's been shown to be controversial because a lot of the raid community has gotten used to not using GCDs for healing because they haven't been needed for so long.

...looks like people are unwilling or unable to adapt, doesn't it? What would happen, I wonder, if we had an expansion where we forced them all to or they'd have to quit...

Parses have nothing to do with this,

If that was so, people wouldn't demand that if we had a simple healer, their more complex ones should be "rewarded" with more damage.

Then we have the Abyssos problem: People would not be prepared for what is actually expected from them,

We've had that problem for literally FFXIV's entire history.

ARR: Pre-Second Coil Savage, healers didn't have to DPS or even have Cleric on their bars (arguably they didn't have to in Coils, but for the sake of argument...)
HW: Healers often didn't DPS in dungeons or use Cleric at all.
SB: Cleric was REMOVED because of the gap between people using it and not using it.

ShB - you know, when they made healers more simple? - was the first expansion where the "training" content actually gave players at all a close to end-game experience, and it didn't even do it then. And EW doesn't, either.

You're arguing for something that has never existed as a reason for not doing a thing.

In order for the 'more healing required' design to properly work, every piece of story content would need to force the player to heal, to get them used to that.

Why?

"every piece of story content" now doesn't require healers to DPS or even use oGCDs.

Depends how big the tank pulls. But Sastasha is a terrible example,

It's the perfect example because...it proves my point. Which is the reason I'd give an example - to prove my point.

What people learn in most story dungeons is how much damage mobs do, or don't do more accurately.

You...are kidding, right? This isn't a serious argument? You're doing that thing again where you're being sarcastic but not putting a /s ?

If you play through Brayflox right now, what does that teach you about how much damage P5S Carbi does or doesn't do?

How does it teach you that when you're killing that add chasing the Goblin around? Is that a mechanic that shows up in Savage raids a lot?

The question isn't if it was easier or harder, the question is 'did things have to be relearned'. And with AST, the whole Card system had to be.

I will agree with you that PART of the question is if things had to be relearned. The other part is was it easy or hard to relearn them.

You aren't asking for healers to be changed to make them easier, so that second question is relevant. It's only not relevant if you're asking for changes to healers...that make them easier/simpler. If you were advocating for healers to be made easier (something I would probably actually argue against), then this would be a valid point.

And of all the healers to get filler GCDs, I'd actually argue for AST to be last in line for it.

Honestly, I kind of agree with this. Thing is, AST is the healer that would most find DoTs useful. If it had, say, 3 DoTs and its damage was designed where they did 75% of it (vs Malific) over a given 30 sec window, this would be better for AST in a way since during their heavy weaves, they'd be penalized less for missing a damage GCD (Malific) since their damage would still be ticking if a majority of it was from their DoTs. Honestly, they should just make Cards GCDs at this point. Make it like Saboteur debuffs in FF13 where they do damage (to the bad guys) when you use them (maybe a pulse around the AST or something that would be damage neutral vs Malific), but something that would ease up on the oGCD octopus keyboarding they have to do now.

...then again, some AST players like that, I suppose...

If we gave all of the healers a new filler GCD and a second DOT, they're all just gonna feel samey again.

I agree. You do realize I've been actively advocating against that, right?

So make WHM bursty, SCH DOTy, AST even more buff gameplay, SGE an actual damage-to-healing healer.

You realize this is ALMOST what I've been advocating for this entire time, right?

Cut the rest because it's obvious you're missing the point.

No, I'm not. And this is the kind of thing you guys are all doing that's so frustrating. You hit an argument you don't like or don't get and you just brush it off.

It's not "missing the point" to note that in a game with Jobs of variable complexity, lots of players gravitate to the simple ones. Some gravitate to the complex ones, too, which is what makes it logical to have some of both in the game to appeal to more people overall. That is literally what my argument is. That's not "missing the point", that's "making a valid argument".

Did I really have to put /s to tell you that, no actually I don't want them to remove all damage from tanks? That it was just an example of a way they COULD make tanks functional, without them having to do damage,

Yes, but the point is that isn't how Tanks work and literally no one is proposing they work that way. It makes no sense to bring up a position that no one is arguing for and that isn't the status quo to argue that it somehow makes your argument stronger. If Tanks DID work that way, you might have an argument, but the obvious counter would be that's how the game is designed and how players are playing and enjoying the Jobs, so there'd be no reason to change it. Thing is, it isn't that way, so that makes it a completely pointless "example". You need an example of how something actually currently is (or was) and was changed instead, I'd think.

Not to mention, unlike the "healers heal" argument, there aren't any MMOs in history where Tanks did zero damage and generated agro that I'm aware of. Can you think of any? Can you think of ONE?

The only game I can think of that did anything at all close to that is I think MAYBE Final Fantasy 13's Sentinel, but even it had Vendetta/Entrench. I can't think of a single MMO or game in history that was designed this way you can use as precedent. Whereas, as we've discussed in this thread, there are many many precedents in both MMOs and single player/small multiplayer games for healers that spent the bulk or all of their time healing. White Mage in FFX-2 doesn't even HAVE an attack spell! (I think Holy is only from using a specific grid card and going through the gates)

In short, there's no parity argument here for you to rely on.

And yeh, people recommend WAR for new players.

Because it's fun and easy and not complex. And many people stick with it as their main.

Sounds like exactly the thing you want to rob healers of.

two tanks in an 8man trial might actually be able to keep threat on the boss by just doing the 'circleshirk'. Maybe I should try testing it tomorrow.

You can try it, but I think the CD would prevent it. Would be an interesting experiment to run, though.