AST - Making an Easy Healer

[ty_taurus]

I just don't understand not enjoying the DPS aspects of the healer role, and also rejecting the premise of a healer that replaces that DPS with support at the same time. Like, there are plenty of ways the later could be designed in a way that one might not enjoy, but just as many ways to interpret that concept in a way one could.

[Renathras]

I just don't understand not enjoying the DPS aspects of the healer role, and also rejecting the premise of a healer that replaces that DPS with support at the same time. Like, there are plenty of ways the later could be designed in a way that one might not enjoy, but just as many ways to interpret that concept in a way one could.

I get that. I'm not really sure how to explain it to you, though.

Part of it IS not liking complexity, and there are few ways to make a buffer that is (maybe if we had a buffing healer like Vanilla WoW's Holy Paladin, I guess?), but part of it is that I like healing and shielding not weak feeling meh damage buffs that don't appear to do anything. +3% damage isn't something I can see or feel. A yellow shield bar as large as someone's health bar - THAT I can see.

It's the same reason I hate the "damage is mitigation" argument. No, it's not. In trash packs, sure. But in a boss fight? If the boss is winding up a Tankbuster, Casting 3 Glares is NOT going to kill the boss before the Tankbuster goes off (unless it's basically already dead anyway). Sure, In an overall long run sense, the fight ends sooner. But then you aren't mitigating - the fight is just over, everyone gets their loot and moves on. I don't include "non-fight time" as part of a fight.

On the other hand, using Adlo/Eukrasian Diagnosis/Divine Benison/Celestial Intersection (or Opposition, whichever it is) on a Tank? THAT I can visibly see blunting the attack and preventing the Tank's death. Then using a heal? THAT I can also see refilling a good chunk of the Tank's health bar.

Casting a Glare? I don't have the resolution on my monitor to even see the amount of the boss' health bar that drops from a single Glare cast.

I think that's why I don't care much for damage related things - they just...don't FEEL impactful to me. Raising people, filling health bars, providing shields that prevent anyone from taking damage/much damage? Those are things I can see and thus they FEEL like they have impact. The course of battle is changed depending on if a Tank dies or is saved from death. THAT MATTERS.

But 0.0001% of a boss's health bar? Sure, in theory that matters, but it doesn't FEEL like it does. That's why it's not fun to me.

And damage buffs are the same thing. "Oh, the SAM is doing 2% more damage? /squints Nope, still can't see it..." There's no feedback that says "This is doing something meaningful" from doing damage NOR from buffing other people's damage. Well, unless you run parsers/damage meters, which I do not. Maybe other people do and so they get that "Yeah, I'm making a difference!" feeling...but I don't, and so I don't get that.

.

EDIT: And as I incessantly point out - we have 4 Healers. 1 simple specializing in direct bulk heals, 1 complex focusing on party buffing, 1 complex focusing on oGCDs with direct spells being damage focused, and 1 other being some mix of the three. It's such a simple and elegant solution that's staring us in the face, so I will never understand the recalcitrance for it.

...but, that wasn't the point of this thread anyway.

[LysDusoir]

These changes would effectively kill any interest I have in AST, and maybe for the entire role/game. It would be better I think, to step away from notions of "easy/hard" and focus more on if something is intuitive or accessible; this can be done without removing depth or complexity. The common statement that WHM should be "easy" because it is the first healer is also hypocritical when compared to BLM and I firmly believe WHM should have far more depth as it currently stands.. This would do nothing to change how the vast majority of players use these jobs, it would only increase the enjoyment for those that dedicate themselves to this role in more challenging content. SGE is a great example of a job that is accessible while having some nuance, as long as one reads the tooltips.

What AST needs is another charge on Lightspeed and to maybe add "Double Cast" to horoscope, so when one uses horoscope and follows that with aspected helios/helios they could oGCD weave malefic; this is just like the PvP trait. As much as I like this job.. I am so very close to completely falling in love with it, but I have to put in a lot more effort(which I LIKE doing) only to often do less rDPS purely because I am so reliant upon having the right party. If one were to view any metrics on performance you can clearly see how skewed it is past a certain threshold, and in turn it basically requires ideal/unlikely conditions for it to only match the performance of the other healers.

[elioaiko]

The last thing AST needs is another rework that ultimately makes the job feel even more dull and disjointed.

AST has gotten it's kit over the years ripped and gutted. It lacks the same creativity it did back in HW/SB.

WHM is the problem because healers are balanced around WHM's power level which has been rather lacking until EW.

And I attribute that to making Misery DPS neutral, something it needed desperately. Now it can heal without being punished for it. And WHM's oGCD heals are sparse so this helped a lot.

Even with the changes, WHM leaves a lot to be desired.

So I'd rather they not even touch AST unless they're putting some actual good changes. I'm tired of AST being tuned to be on the same playing field as WHM. And the sad thing is, is that AST is still a better healer but the job feels like a chore to play.

The cards are one rework away from being deleted. They barely feel like a part of their kit and the job is just havimg to watch multiple timers which is where the difficulty of the job is at these days. I love AST but there's no connection between it's skills and mechanics. Nothing leads into the other intuitively.

[ty_taurus]

Part of it IS not liking complexity, and there are few ways to make a buffer that is (maybe if we had a buffing healer like Vanilla WoW's Holy Paladin, I guess?), but part of it is that I like healing and shielding not weak feeling meh damage buffs that don't appear to do anything. +3% damage isn't something I can see or feel. A yellow shield bar as large as someone's health bar - THAT I can see.

The GCD-based MMO combat system exists primarily to hide lag and create an environment that makes players equal in their performance. No one player can be inherently better for having faster internet. Beyond that, though, the system needs to appeal to its audience and feel fun to play, but there's an inherent flaw in this design: it's slow. If I were to get my mother to try FFXIV (She plays Assassin's Creed mainly) I can already hear her saying "Why do I have to wait to attack? This is stupid."

Obviously, it's not a combat system for everyone, but that criticism still creates a problem that designers need to resolve. How they do this is by creating choice and priority systems within a library of actions available to each class, along with creating OGCD buttons that are to be weaved between each cycle of the GCD. The reason why every job has upwards of 30 actions as opposed to only 5 is to draw attention and create engagement through decision-making. There is not much difficulty in achieving this in a vacuum, but when you mix that with fight design as well, you create a sense of challenge. This challenge isn't always hard to accomplish, but challenge is what inspires fun and engagement most of the time in games. That's not to say all forms of challenge are equal. Some challenges are frustrating, while others are engaging. See the issue with AST's weaving and single targeting as an example of challenge that many view as frustrating rather than engaging. But in general, challenge is what drives players to play. When there is no challenge, that slowness flaw of the GCD system becomes apparent and makes things boring for many people.

The problem that healers have is that FFXIV's content, by in large, does not encourage the bulk of these tools to be used consistently. So while every healer has around 30 actions, most of them gather dust in the face of most content. Now, this may not always be true for the novice healer and the intermediate healer, but by design, healing is a responsibility that decreases in use with skill rather than increases because in involves doing the opposite of damage. Having some tools that are situational can be a good thing, such as Interject on tanks, Second Wind on physical DPS, or Rescue on healers. These provide unique ways to engage with the game on a case-by-case basis and allow players to adapt to atypical scenarios (or in Interject's case, rare scenarios). But this is how the bulk of healer actions feel on the healers. Rather than having a small handful of situational tools and a larger library of consistent tools, healers have a small handful of consistent tools and a larger library of situational tools.

This is inherently antithetical to how classes are designed to combat the slowness of a GCD system. For players who have become comfortable with the content of this game, and are unafraid of the damage it deals, the reason why so many of us find the healers boring is because they suffer from the slowness of the GCD system, because the healers are robbed of that choice-based deicision-making experience that is meant to offset this. Not every player may feel that as mentioned prior based on skill and comfort with the game's combat stystem, and you specifically may be a rare case of someone unbothered by slowness entirely, but the proper space that every job should fill is creating a tool kit where the novice and intermediate player can succeed while the expert and master player can engage.

Fortunately, FFXIV actually has an environment very well catered to support this. The vast majority of content in this game is not difficult to succeed in. In nearly every aspect of FFXIV, damage does not matter because you have the liberty to take as much time as you need to defeat that boss. This is wonderful because it creates content that isn't very difficult to the novice and intermediate player and can be fun on its own. To the expert and master player who find it too easy, the prospect of optimizing your job's gameplay anyway, even when it doesn't actually matter, allows them to engage with the nuances of their job and create more challenge for them to overcome. But again, healers outright deny this, but that doesn't mean reworking healers to reverse this flaw has to make them complex either.

Not all jobs that have a larger selection of consistently viable actions are looked at as complex in the first place. DNC is a great example of this. Where SMN is seen as feeling incomplete with its simplicity, DNC is not seen has having this issue. I don't think anyone would describe it as complex, but it has something that is actually more important than complexity: rhythm. Now, going back to what I mentioned about having a varied selection of tools, one thing that also needed to be considered is how they flow together. Like I said with AST, a big issue it faces is its core gameplay feels clunky and frustrating. This is also why the removal of SAM's Kaiten was hit with so much criticism, because the majority of SAM players believe it was essential to the flow of the job even though it was only 1 button. Without it, there's a lack of proper buildup toward Tsubame-gaeshi, and the Kenki gauge no longer feels like an engaging resource because it's largely spent on a single action. DNC on the other hand has a very solid flow. Almost no one even talks about the job because there's very little to complain about.

Now, on a brief tangent, we can also recognize that not all games need to create challenge. There are entire genres of games designed to be relaxing, like visual novels, building games, management games. These include games like Animal Crossing, The Sims, Minecraft, Journey, Stardew Valley, etc. Some are also games that can be challenging but also offer modes without consequences like Tetris Effect which offers "chill mode" where you can't fail, or Mini-Metro which offers endless mode. I think it's really important that we have and recognize these genres because games don't exist for one singular purpose (beyond enjoyment). What people look for in a game can vary, but not every game is meant to appeal to every type of playstyle also. Animal Crossing doesn't need a hardcore mode for people looking for a challenge because if you want a challenging gameplay experience, you probably aren't going to play Animal Crossing.

The MMORPG genre, however, is not a genre that was ever designed to fall into the relaxing category by design. It's also not a genre meant to be on the opposite end of the spectrum as a high-difficulty a la Dark Souls, but rather, a genre meant to provide a range in order to appeal to a wider audience. Going back to the point I mentioned earlier, FFXIV accomplishes this by making the vast majority of content require a very low skill threshold to complete. You aren't punished for having a messy rotation, not using skills properly, or sitting on cooldowns. Even content that does set a higher bar to entry on skill does not require perfection. Literally this past Sunday, the DRG in my party was saying how he just learned he'd been doing his rotation entirely wrong this whole time, and we still have been clearing savage content regardless.

With all that in mind, the main point I'm very slowly trying to make is that every job should allow for players to engage with some kind of a rhythm, and no job should outright deny the player access to gameplay that engages with the majority of their tools. This does not mean every job needs to be complex, as having flow and rhythm in a wider selection of actions does not always equate to complexity or difficulty. And regardless, what allows nearly all of this game's content to feel easy and forgiving is the low expectations encounters have on the player to clear. If every job offered a wider array of tools that had rhythm, some still quite simple while others are more complex, content would still be just as clearable and enjoyable to the novice and intermediate player base while ensuring expert and master players can still enjoy any job offered by the game. And that is the ultimate objective of class design in the GCD system of MMORPGs.

[Renathras]

For those who didn't read the disclaimer:

There's been ongoing discussion about what to do with Healers as a role/whole. After a lot of talking and analysis, most everyone agrees that SCH and AST are in a bad spot. WHM and SGE are much more controversial, as they have fans in their present condition (where SGE and AST fans even think they need some changes)

Discussion has also been that Healing is an odd role where the better you get at your Job and the better your party/other players get at encounter mechanics and the more gear you all have, the less you need to do as a Healer in a given encounter. This has been framed as "The better you get at being a Healer, the less you have to actually heal, leaving you to spam your DPS 'rotation' which is mostly 2 buttons." oGCD healing, in particular, is so powerful and the CDs relatively short that almost all healing can be covered with no GCD healing, making our GCD heals vestigial and leading to DoT(Dia, Biolysis, Combust, Eukrasian Dosis) + Spamnuke (Glare, Broil, Malific, Dosis), with just a few minor deviations like Plegma or Afflatus spells.

One solution that has been proposed is to give all the Healers involved DPS rotations like Jobs like BLM have. But there are many people that play Healers because they DON'T like DPS rotations and do not find them an enjoyable reward for getting better at healing. Detractors say this would lead to an exodus of Healers who don't like damage dealing rotations, while proponents of the plan insist everyone would like more complex damage rotations on Healers, that FFXIV is more of an ARPG at this point anyway and everyone needs to accept that (despite FFXIV's history to the contrary), that the number of people leaving the role would probably be less than new people attracted to it, and that if you only do MSQ and never touch Extremes, Savages, Ultimates, Deep Dungeons, or basically any other non-MSQ content, you don't NEED to play at a high level so you could ignore those extra abilities if you just...don't clear any content. (They seem to think this is a good argument in favor for some reason...) They don't mind some Healer Jobs having a low skill floor, but they want them all to have a high skill ceiling, so no WAR or SMN equivalents that are both easy to learn and easy to master would exist under their system.


Another solution that has been proposed is to make Healing harder/more demanding, such that encounters match our healing tools. But this solution has detractors from people that don't EXACTLY like healing; they play Healers because they like playing a support caster role, which was epitomized by ARR/HW SCH which was very damage focused while supplying substantial support healing and mitigation between Lustrate - then a percentage heal unaffected by Cleric Stance - and Faerie abilities, and they enjoyed that playstyle and would like a return to it. The detractors point to a decline in Healers in 6.2/3 when P5-8S were released with harder healing, and state that reworking past encounters through the game to accommodate this (so that they aren't bored when doing old content) would require considerable Dev resources. Further, it would require the playerbase to shift their collective mindset away from doing damage being more important than anything else, and they note that the Devs have relatively little power to quickly shift overall player mindsets, and point to things like the removal of Energy Drain and P5S's early tier being met with criticism.

Still others find Healing fun and engaging as it is and enjoy it as it is, and want no changes made at all, or only very minor changes. Most of these people play the game and don't come to forums, though, so are not well represented, but everyone kind of accepts they exist, but think they'd simply be okay with whatever changes were made.

A fourth, compromise position has emerged, which suggests to change SOME of the Healer Jobs while leaving SOME the same. Namely, to restore SCH's SB era damage abilities, AST's SB era Card abilities (a novel suggestion is to do this as "Minor Arcana" for the utility Cards like defense boost or MP regen such that they aren't competing with The Balance), to give SGE a bit more of a DPS rotation akin to SMN or RDM's filler rotations, and to leave WHM largely as it is (giving it a shorter CD mitigation like adding a damage reduction to Plenary Indulgence and allow it's cast time GCD heals to also nourish the Blood Lily so they are actual choices and not DPS losses). In this way, all camps could be satisfied. Those wanting more downtime engagement have SCH and SGE depending on if they like a more managing things like DoTs and CDs (SCH) or more direct rotation (SGE) [one could think of this as how Ranged have BRD and MCH to appeal to the two player types], while those that prefer buffing their allies in interesting ways have AST, and those that prefer a straightforward healing model of strong and direct heals and simplistic downtime rotations have WHM. All of the different camps would have their needs met...well, other than they might feel limited to only one Job in the Role. But right now, several camps have NO Job in the role that satisfies them, so it would still probably be an improvement.

Proponents of this last model point to the other roles in the game and have each have a lot of Job diversity that appeal to different player types, such as WAR existing as an easy to learn and master Tank vs GNB as a more involved one or DRK as a busy during burst but simple during filler. Detractors of this compromise position dislike it because some of the Jobs wouldn't be tailored to their preferred style, and they think no one would want to play them anyway, and they believe if they find them boring, everyone would. Further, they tend to have a favorite Job, and insist that any Job "left the same" would either need to be a new Job (but not SGE, they insist, as it needs to be changed as well, despite having this playstyle for its entire existence in the game...) or some Job other than WHM (for those ones that love WHM and want IT to get the complex damage rotation treatment). The detractors genuinely believe that Healers as they are today are terribly unfun and that leaving any as they are would be a travesty and detrimental to players of that Job, and have tried convincing proponents of this idea that maybe they would just prefer a different Job other than WHM, for example, a Job that spent its downtime buffing instead of dealing damage.

...it was in that last vein that I wrote this thread, to see HOW AST would need to be changed to make it the desired class for such people instead of WHM and why that makes it not the logical choice for "leave it mostly alone" if this plan was implemented.

As such, this was NOT a proposal for how AST should be changed. Rather, this was showing how AST would have to be changed to make it the option rather than WHM.

Though as this led to confusion, I may attempt to use a different name to really consider the thought experiment more fully to its natural conclusion.

[IDontPetLalas]

Indeed, it is confusing tangle Renathras - you wrote this based upon your "compromise" approach (since that does look like the approach you have proposed) which wants one healer left alone -based upon the position you have been promoting, you then wrote it, this time selecting AST rather than WHM, as the healer that would be left alone.

However, it's really a "thought experiment" because you don't really expect any changes to be made, but this is how they could be made - as per your disclaimer.


So , quite unclear as whether it is some indulging in "what-if musings" or really a proposal for changes that you want to see.

[Renathras]

Indeed, it is confusing tangle Renathras - you wrote this based upon your "compromise" approach (since that does look like the approach you have proposed) which wants one healer left alone -based upon the position you have been promoting, you then wrote it, this time selecting AST rather than WHM, as the healer that would be left alone.

However, it's really a "thought experiment" because you don't really expect any changes to be made, but this is how they could be made - as per your disclaimer.

So , quite unclear as whether it is some indulging in "what-if musings" or really a proposal for changes that you want to see.

No, it's clear, you just don't want it to be for some weird reason. In super simple terms:

Ty has asked me if I'd more enjoy AST if we changed all the Healers but left AST's damage rotation (which is the simplest one even now) alone...but gave it a buffing rotation even more complex than today. That is, he misunderstands the point. He thinks I have an aversion to damage dealing when what I have the aversion to is damage dealing ROTATIONS, because I don't want a complex rotation when I'm healing.

So this thread was more an answer to him - insomuch as a direct one is possible - of how AST would first need to be made like WHM across the board (GCD and oGCD changes) before it would then meet that baseline.

The rest of you who just like bashing almost anything I say ignored the disclaimer and proceeded to do what you always do, because it's what you wanted to do instead.

[ty_taurus]

and that if you only do MSQ and never touch Extremes, Savages, Ultimates, Deep Dungeons, or basically any other non-MSQ content, you don't NEED to play at a high level so you could ignore those extra abilities if you just...don't clear any content. (They seem to think this is a good argument in favor for some reason...)

The only content that would really demand optimal performance would be Savage and Ultimate. Deep Dungeons absolutely do not ask for optimization from players, at least not on their tools. If you're solo-climbing the high floors, use of the environment and pomanders is what matters. AST can solo PoTD and have time to spare. It's a nightmare and time is genuinely a concern, but how you manage your time is what's important. Extremes do have enrages, but the actual demand on performance is quite relaxed. Not dying is the real bar to clear realistically. Content that does not demand damage of you beyond Savage and Ultimate:

The MSQ, Dungeons, Alliance Raids, Normal Raids, All your roulettes, Deep Dungeons, Blue Mage (not the blue challenge log, but that's a different ballgame anyway), Treasure Maps, Eureka, Bozja, Fates/Fate Grinding, Old Relic Weapon Grinding, The Gold Saucer, Island Sanctuary, Crafting and Gathering, Wonderous Tails, Tribal quests, Mount Farming, Hunts...

I'm probably forgetting things, but my point is, easily 90% of the game has absolutely no concern for how high you parse, especially as a healer. Extreme content is quite lax on its expectations, and Savage also gives room for imperfection. But regardless, Savage and Ultimate are specifically catered to people who are looking for intense challenge. It's okay if that one corner of the game asks a lot more of its playerbase, especially when there's so much else to engage with.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm probably forgetting things, but my point is, easily 90% of the game has absolutely no concern for how high you parse, especially as a healer. Extreme content is quite lax on its expectations, and Savage also gives room for imperfection. But regardless, Savage and Ultimate are specifically catered to people who are looking for intense challenge. It's okay if that one corner of the game asks a lot more of its playerbase, especially when there's so much else to engage with.

Yes but you forget, we're evil and nasty for suggesting that someone who can clear savage right now, should be unable to clear savage with our changes because they can't learn a new rotation. It's 'subtractive magic' or whatever, something about beards?