FFXIV Job Design Feedback

[Renathras]

Again, I wasn't the one who said it:

Something you've brought up before which is true is that there are many more players who have little issues with healers, or any job really, out playing the game, and getting their input is something that would be difficult to collect since they are part of the largest group of players that are basically "go-with-the-flow" type players who tend to be fairly content with most things as long as they don't find changes to be a chore or frustrating to deal with.

WHM is arguably in the best shape it has been in terms of lily usage, but taking away stuff from WHM consistently has already reduced its gameplay over the years. If it was at one point a 4 and then it dropped to a 2, just because it's in its best state as a 5, doesn't mean it's still good when the bar is up to a 10.

A fair point, but what I'm getting at is that the negative bias is likely rating them lower HERE than the community as a whole (if we were able to poll the entire playerbase) would. Meaning it wasn't 4 -> 2 -> 5. It was probably 7/6 -> 5/4 -> 7/8

Solace/Rapture (particularly Rapture) is part of your GCD rotation and healing plan. Where other Healers would use oGCDs, WHM uses Lilies (particularly Rapture, occasionally Solace) for. Even when using some oGCDs (like Plenary Indulgence), Rapture is the go-to AOE heal to proc its additional effect. Lilies are GCD heals that are part of your mapped out healing plan for encounters. Further, Misery is a damage gain over Glare if used in burst windows, even if there's no healing, using Solace/Rapture is a DPS gain (if you put the resulting Misery in a buff window) or DPS neutral (if you do not), meaning AT WORST, Solace/Rapture can be used as part of your GCD rotation for movement even if the entire party is at 100% health (which is almost never true anyway; at the least, the main Tank will almost always be at least some amount below 100% health)

If you're engaging in high end optimization, then the GCD rotation is rewarding and engaging because it's actually part of your healing strategy/plan. That is, if you're playing it right. If you're not optimizing, then it doesn't matter either way. So there's almost no time that the healing IS completely wasted, and it's always a damage gain if played correctly, and not a damage loss in either case.

Contrast AST, which has a 2 button DPS GCD rotation (Combust and Malific), or SCH which has a 3 button DPS GCD rotation, which is effectively two buttons, Biolysis and Broil, since Ruin 2's use is almost nonexistent now that Broil has a 1.5 sec cast time making it highly useful for movement and weaving. See this thread - https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...s-then-and-now - where I laid out the case for why Broil IV's cast time reduction really took a hammer to SCH's "rotation".

SGE has one Plegma per 40 sec (that can stack to 2 charges), and damage neutral Toxicon (3 at the start of a fight, can gain more but it's a DPS loss unless the shields are put up during downtime) and Pneuma (also DPS neutral GCD heal but on a 2 min CD so not really part of anything resembling a rotation). This provides more direct damage options, but with a slower cadence.

That is, WHM casts fewer Glares than SGE does Dosis, and AST and SCH are actually the ones that cast their basic nuke the most. WHM's Glarespam is broken up by Afflatus abilities, 4 per minute (consider you have 24 GCDs per minute, and that makes up 1/6th of them), and SGE's Plegma breaks up its Dosisspam ~1.5 times per minute (3 per 2 minutes). SCH and AST do not have any GCD damage ability that breaks up their nukespam unless you count Macrocosmos, which is a once per 3 min CD so not part of the standard rotation.

I'm not saying it's god tier, but WHM has the most GCDs devoted to damage (either directly or through Misery) of any Healer, and because of the way Misery works, its Afflatus GCD heals can be part of its healing plan, something no other Healer allows for (all the others use exclusively oGCDs for their healing plan outside of the rare SCH ultrashield type shenanegans)

In that thread, I compared WHM to SB WHM. I did this with all the healers, but WHM was the only one that came out of the changes better off than it was before in terms of "breaking up the nukespam":

In practice, SB WHM cast Aero 2 3.333... times per minute and Aero 3 2.5 times per minute. This is a total of 5.833... GCD casts per minute that weren't Stone IV.

In practice, EW WHM casts Dia 2 times per minute, 3 Afflatus (Solace/Rapture) per minute, and 1 Afflatus Misery per minute. This is a total of 6 GCD casts per minute that aren't Glare III.

On balance, EW WHM is casting non-Glare damage (or damage-adjacent Solace/Rapture) spells on roughly the same average frequency as SB era WHM did.

The real difference, honestly, is on the HEALING side, where a proliferation of oGCD heals (even on WHM) and the healing done by Afflatus heals can largely push non-Afflatus GCD heals off of average use, resulting in more Glare casts. Afflatus spells are, of course, being cast, but as noted, these can be thought of as part of the DPS rotation equivalent to the lost Aero 2 and 3 casts, so the foregone casts are Medica, Medica 2, Cure 2, Cure 3, and Regens, resulting in more "dead" GCDs that are filled with Glare.

As for SCH:

That's highly subjective. If you look at the long form answers to the Healer survey posted to Reddit both linked here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-Healer-Survey

Main page: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...healer_survey/

Discussion page: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...healer_survey/

...the number one COMPLAINT about SCH was Energy Drain. It seems a large portion of the community doesn't find it engaging, they find it punitive. SCH has some interesting (at least to a lot of people) Aetherflow spenders. Excogitation and Sacred Soil are both abilities many players like to use. But they feel their hands are tied because of Energy Drain. One of the most cited requests was removing Energy Drain or making it not spend Aetherflow, and SGE was routinely praised by the respondents for NOT having that handicap.

Even in this survey, it was a common complaint:

"...and Energy Drain using Aetherflow stacks needs to be reworked to be more like SGE where you aren't penalized for using them for healing."

"Energy drain should give aether stacks and disspation dump them if you have an excess ( ideally it should have a situational reward for it ), make the CD for getting aetherflow shorter for compensate the lack of old dissipation."

"Attacking actions, I hate Energy Drain. It need to be removed or have the Aetherflow cost removed"

"I love using Aetherflow abilities, but Energy Drain means I can't use them without being a bad player, and that just sucks. I hate that feeling so much."

"Delete Energy Drain" (like, that was someone's whole comment on it, lol)

"Change Energy Drain from costing Aetherflow to just being an oGCD attack"

"Detach healing ogcds from energy drain. "

"Energy drain is a unique idea, using extra aetherflow not used for mit to boost your damage, but unfortunately it results in the average wanna-be rank 1 spamming all their aetherflow on ED and letting the party die. Remove it and use lustrate to burn excess gauge, like how sage does or rework energy drain. More DoTs would be cool."

...clearly, there's no consensus, but the idea that Energy Drain is good or that people overall like it is dubious. Indeed, the most requested thing for SCH was adding more (GCD, presumably) DoTs, not making more of its kit work like Energy Drain, where there were a lot of requests to change it or outright remove it.

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When people talk about Healers being boring, one thing often cited IS the GCD nukespam. Pointing out that WHM has the LEAST OF IT is valid.

WHM's bigger problem is that it has so much redundancy in its healing kit. It's the worst example, but WHM effectively has 3 versions of Cure 2. Cure 2, Tetra, and Solace all do essentially the same thing. The other main complaint is that healing (encounter design problem) is needed so little, that the toolkit seems overly healing bloated/powerful for the actual tasks it is required to do.

The thing about the Healing Jobs is they are well designed to have specialties, but then the game's encounter design no longer uses them - it once did, mind you, in SB, HW, and ARR. SCH was designed to work really well as an oGCD based Job that spent most of its GCD time upkeeping DoTs. WHM was designed originally as a GCD healer which spent much of its time upkeeping HoTs and spot healing (once upon a time, Freecure made sense as that was how the Job was actually played when MP was an issue and the focus was on spot healing). AST was based on having a Pure and Barrier stance, so it having all these mitigations on top of its powerful (clone of WHM) healing toolkit made sense, and it also had an entire side-game of something like 12 Arcana related abilities (between Draw, Play, Stock, Royal Road, and the various undraw/redraw mechanics that several of those had), so it having a super slim DPS kit made sense as the engagement was from the expansive oGCD toolkit, both for healing but moreso for managing its buff stack.

The problem is, encounter design changed, so that even the Healer that got better (WHM) is seen as worse despite objectively working better than it did then.

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That is:

From a design perspective, WHM is better now than it was in ShB or in SB, and depending on how you view Cleric (a lot of people hated it), better than HW or ARR.

This is what I mean by looking at Job/class design as separate from encounter design. Designs can absolutely not match encounters. That doesn't make them bad design. Especially when the encounter design used to more fit them.

That said:

SCH and AST were objectively better off in SB.

So take that as you will.

Key point here, it's the best it's been in terms of balance. Balance and engagement are two very different things.

No, it's ALSO the best it's been in terms of balance. I've played WHM since ARR, the engagement is the same as it was. I've even shown you that before... The only issue there is, as I said above, needing fewer GCDs for healing. On average, you cast an Afflatus ability more or less as often as you would have cast an Aero 1 (HW) or Aero 3 (SB), so it has parity in that sense, and unlike ShB, doing so is always damage neutral (or a damage gain if Misery is used during burst windows).

SCH? AST? Oh yes, they DEFINITELY were different back then. WHM? Not so much other than you don't have to deal with Cleric like HW, but that was also true in SB.

BarbEX has roughly the same HPS requirements as Emerald WeaponEX. A trial from last expansion. Go think about that for a second.

Mhm. Again, encounter design. I'm not sure what the Devs are thinking at this point.

Secondly. Hand waving away anyone who so much dares as to claim that FFXIV's healers are poorly designed as subjective is comical.

Good thing I'm not doing that, then. I'm noting someone stating as undisputable fact FFXIV's healers are THE WORST DESIGNED is subjective and not likely true.

Did you ever touch healing in Swotor?

I did, but didn't enjoy it and didn't play it much. I kinda liked what the Agent/Smuggler looked like they might do (sustain healing using Combo Points like if a WoW Rogue had a healing skill tree) something interesting, but I never could get into that game for some reason.

Did you ever touch healing in Warhammer online?

Nope. And that game seemed so much a failure that...well, it's not around anymore, is it?

Both MMOs had healers who's kits had serious depth, broad utility and massively diverse styles of play with a ton of inter-kit interactions.

...because both games had combat systems that were not as rigid as FFXIV's, agreed? Nor is WoW's. Nor was RIFT's (a game I did play some of). The issue here comes less down to Healer design and more a combination of FFXIV's encounter design (which you seem to at least acknowledge) and that FFXIV's combat system is very rigid. For example, a sustain Healer wouldn't work in FFXIV's combat design because of the damage spikes being something it wouldn't have an answer to. We're seeing this in FFXIV's DPS/Tank design as well, just with the 2 min meta likewise making sustain damage Jobs (pre-6.3 PLD) unviable. The healing check spikes are a healer version of the 2 min meta...

...and honestly, I'm surprised I've never put that together before now. Huh.

Really? I'd legit expect this comment from Titanmen.

Who?

I feel this is an attempt at an ad hominem or insult...

Did you play WoW in 4.1 as a Healer, by chance? I was the only Healer I knew that didn't boycott doing dungeons that patch. Cataclysm saw so many Healer players retire because their healing kits WEREN'T powerful enough for the content. FFXIV's Healers now would work in that kind of content just fine.

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The one really big issue right now is that encounter design isn't actually flexing Healer toolkits AND/OR the Healers have WAY too many and too powerful oGCD heals. Fix either of those issues and the entire landsape would change.

Though personally, I'm also a fan of giving SGE it's SB rotation back and AST its SB incarnation as well (which also seem to be popular overall)

Best designed

I didn't say they were the best designed, now did I?

Worst designed healers don't make me laugh. You don't know what the F you are talking about.

Again:

From a design perspective, WHM is better now than it was in ShB or in SB, and depending on how you view Cleric (a lot of people hated it), better than HW or ARR.

This is what I mean by looking at Job/class design as separate from encounter design. Designs can absolutely not match encounters. That doesn't make them bad design. Especially when the encounter design used to more fit them.

That said:

SCH and AST were objectively better off in SB.

So take that as you will.

EDIT2:

This I agree with, though:

So yes, content design definitely has a lot of room to improve and even as someone who's been around and on the edge of world prog since ARR, SE's current 'esports friendly' design approach to high end content just feels super strange and at odds with the rest of the game to me. Sudo's designs were so much more organic and less 'by the numbers'. By comparison today's bosses feel like a box ticking exercise. AoE 5 seconds into the fight to remind healers that we care about them? Check.

One thing I'm not certain of, though - I've seen it said the Devs (or Yoshi P) have said they'll never go back to HW designs. I'm guessing that means Cleric, but not sure since I've never seen the exact quote. Or even if there is a quote and it wasn't just made up... I'm curious if it was real/legitimate or not. And I don't think they ever want a repeat of Midas/Gordias.