The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[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.