T/H/D/D vs T/3DPS - By the numbers

[WaxSw]

GCDs

The problem with the GCDs is that they are as tasteless as the dps nuke, only Whm has in its afflatus heals a GCD that somewhat interacts with its kit, you can change a dps spell for a gcd but it wont make it much better because those GCDs does not offer any kind of depth, interactions, job knowledge, etc...

Ultimate number lol

...You're bringing up a ultimate, a fight with over 15m length, that has multiple phases where healing is necessary and you can't damage the boss, that has multiple sets of downtime and has healing requirements 8-13x times more than a dungeon to a discussion about dungeons. If you can't see how those two can't be compared and the difference between the healing aproach in both I honestly don't know what to tell you

Worst is that you could only remove 20% of the nuke spam under that context, imagine how little that percentage would become in savage and below where the problem is at its highest.

1) You can spin it the way you want but its a relevant difference that you were handwaving

2) As I've told you, there are no evidence that supports that this difference would be smaller at the average level of play, in fact rough estimations seem to indicate the opposite

3)The % are still wrong the lowest was 13%, the highest 22% and you've had plenty of time to change it since it was indicated

4)If you do that you introduce variables like party comp, strat and patch in which those runs were made reducing the precission by a lot and it was a rough estimation as I said, by simply looking at the jobs in a vacuum you can establish a proportionality between them, if that were to change significantly between a top and an average run that would suggest that the difference between a 1T3DPS and a Standard performance changes in a significant way, it doesn't so if anything the estimation says there is no change in proportionality between a top and an average run as the most used dps is still worth the same amount of highest damage healer

5)Yes, yes it is, in fact if you analyze the logs that you did not open at the beggining you'll see how the bosses don't cast attacks that they do in normal runs, that is because they are dead before they can do it

6)This is a fallacy, we were talking about efficiency and numbers, idc what you think the commmunity wants (besides, no proof again), your initial thesis was wrong as well as the subsequent ones, stop moving goalposts and accept it.

[AmiableApkallu]

*snip*

In any case, the overall point is, for the bulk of the playerbase, who doesn't want to deal with PF and doesn't have a pre-formed static, standard composition runs are going to be safer and - FOR THEIR PURPOSES - a negligible time difference of their weekly playtime.

*snip*

I feel like you're tilting at windmills.

The corners of the internet I tend to frequent, the people I talk to and play with… The speed of ye olde dungeon run is a complete non-issue, and T/H/DD party comps are alive and well. Even as a DPS, my dungeon roulettes pop in reasonable time. Party Finder has a distinct lack of T/DDD dungeon groups. How long it takes to complete a dungeon is rarely, if ever, a topic of conversation.

If I were to make a claim, it would be that the bulk of the playerbase doesn't stop to think about this "overall point" because they're not trying to min/max their game time down to the second. The bulk of the playerbase does whatever the game seems to suggest they should do, which is T/H/DD.

[Rilifane]

The problem with the GCDs is that they are as tasteless as the dps nuke, only Whm has in its afflatus heals a GCD that somewhat interacts with its kit, you can change a dps spell for a gcd but it wont make it much better because those GCDs does not offer any kind of depth, interactions, job knowledge, etc...

Since my sub ran out about 2 weeks ago today is probably the last day I can post anything before I get yeeted from the forum.

I just want to stress how important this part here is and why encounter design alone is not the problem.
It contributes to the problem, yes. But it is not THE problem and treating it as the root cause of all evil is just handwaving a lot of issues away.

There are two simple facts:

1. you cannot increase the required healing in all content to a point where a veteran would be constantly engaged with healing itself by going through their entire toolkit (including GCD heals) on a regular basis without a very high risk of negatively affecting non-veteran healers.
   We're talking about making us push 15k-20k or even more HPS on a regular basis. Below 15k you don't even need to touch GCD heals.
   WoW can easily get away with cranking up the damage to 11 in M+, LFR/ normal/ heroic/ mythic because none of it is mandatory for story but they also have a much better downtime kit
2. both the healing and the dps side of all healer toolkits are bland, lack interaction and opportunities for skill expression and using your job knowledge - the majority of them are copy&pasted flat single target or aoe heals with very few nuances in practice and almost no interaction which means trading a Broil for a Succor isn't much better, as Wax said.

Besides, solo content exists. Even if every dungeon boss sudeenly had NA1/2, lots of bleedwides, Dominion, Tumults, Terminal etc. added - what about MSQ solo duties, fates, treasure maps and overworld encounters in general?

[Sebazy]

No, I already said it. 10% +/- 5%. I think it should be 15% +/- 5%, but it was just a quick calculation.

This is the only part of the entire post that matters.

I don't buy the 'it was a quick calculation' excuse whatsoever. I put the exact and precise math right there for you and you refuse to accept it. Why? Because it doesn't support your narrative.

Better luck with the next bit of hyperbole sir. Your credibility and honesty is shot to bits in my eyes.

[GrimGale]

TLDR: Delve deeper before you jump to a conclusion sirs++

Now that we're 6 pages deep, how do you feel about it?

[Sebazy]

Now that we're 6 pages deep, how do you feel about it?

I still think the initial mistake was genuine. Logs can be tough to read and this is just one silly facet of it.

Trying to downplay numbers to mask the extent of the difference despite being handed clear and obvious math beyond a decimal point is just a show of the true colours though. It's not 5-15%, it's not 10-20%, it's literally 13.5% to 22.2%. I merrily wager that these 'margins of error' would be on the opposite side of the true values if the shoe was on the other foot for this one. I'm sure this is all hyperbole though

[ForsakenRoe]

I still think the initial mistake was genuine. Logs can be tough to read and this is just one silly facet of it.

Trying to downplay numbers to mask the extent of the difference despite being handed clear and obvious math beyond a decimal point is just a show of the true colours though. It's not 5-15%, it's not 10-20%, it's literally 13.5% to 22.2%. I merrily wager that these 'margins of error' would be on the opposite side of the true values if the shoe was on the other foot for this one. I'm sure this is all hyperbole though

Imagine if someone from 'the other side' had interpreted that range as '20%-30% faster', still the same 'only 2% of the actual range falls in the stated range' and 'range stated spans a gap of 10%', just on the other side of the scale

[Renathras]

...

I've told you before, so I won't bother doing so again.

On another note, I don't feel uncomfortable saying there is no room for a support in this game without a near complete combat overhaul.

Agreed. It's unfortunate, but then, that's largely the problem with the game right now. The combat system has become way too rigid. It's how they manage balance and make "exciting" encounters, but it's going to start hurting the game (if it hasn't already)

Bringing up 'Roe made a mistake on another thread but I didn't hammer her on it' here is, uhh, kinda the beginnings of 'hammering her on it', isn't it? And the main difference is, Roe actually said 'yep I see I was an idiot and made a mistake, my bad'.

Pointing out by way of illustration. Hammering her would have been bringing it up in every single post after that "Well, you made this mistake and were WRONG, so you're wrong about everything.", "Oh, I see you want to talk about that other thing, yeah no, we're going to talk about your mistake more", "Oh, you said 'you must have read it wrong'? How did you read THAT wrong? They weren't even close!", "Oh, I know you want to move on - you'd like that, wouldn't you? - but we're not moving on until you can EXPLAIN TO ALL OF US HOW YOU MADE THAT MISTAKE!", and then if there were 2-4 other posters going "Yeah, you haven't answered Ren yet on how you made that mistake. Why's that?", "Looks like you're ignoring Ren pointing out you shouldn't have made that mistake and aren't explaining how you made such a huge mistake", "Hey everyone, looks like Roe's at it again!", "I think we can all tell Roe is a troll because she won't explain to us how she was off by a factor of 2 in her math guys!", "She didn't include the decimal and won't edit her post to include it now, clearly she's past the point of it being an innocent mistake."

Note those are more or less what you guys have done in this thread.

What did I do?

When she said this:

As for rework/majority, I guess my whole argument falls apart because I was wrong about WHM's 'no rework' chunk being the smallest, gg, what the hell was I looking at then, maybe I had one of the other sheets open and got them mixed up. Anyway, I'd call whichever has the larger percentage 'the majority' even if it's not over 50%.

Which wasn't exactly a "I totally own everything and am the worst person alive" type of post (it was more a "oops, my bad; but I still think I made a decent point worth considering that minor error doesn't detract from", which is basically the same thing I did here), I made a post with actual analysis and argument (not a "Ooooh, you're wROOONOG!!"), and said:

Also, no worries on honest mistakes. /hug

I actually discussed the points she brought up! I didn't insist we keep talking about her mistake. I didn't insist she correct it. I didn't insist she explain how she made the error. I didn't insist she acknowledge the "true" numbers. None of that.

I accepted she made an error that anyone could make, assumed there was no ill will behind it, and addressed her points instead of sinking my teeth into that one error and refusing to let go and browbeating her over the head for 6 pages about it. SIX. PAGES.

The only reason I'm even bringing this up HERE is to contrast the way you guys are acting to the way I did. I've completely conceded the point and made first one edit (with a quick approximation) then a second edit (with a closer approximation), then a third edit (with Sebazy's initial numbers), now a FOURTH edit (to add in the BLOODY DECIMAL POINTS!), and you guys STILL won't lay off of it.

I feel like you're tilting at windmills.

The corners of the internet I tend to frequent, the people I talk to and play with… The speed of ye olde dungeon run is a complete non-issue, and T/H/DD party comps are alive and well. Even as a DPS, my dungeon roulettes pop in reasonable time. Party Finder has a distinct lack of T/DDD dungeon groups. How long it takes to complete a dungeon is rarely, if ever, a topic of conversation.

If I were to make a claim, it would be that the bulk of the playerbase doesn't stop to think about this "overall point" because they're not trying to min/max their game time down to the second. The bulk of the playerbase does whatever the game seems to suggest they should do, which is T/H/DD.

Yeah, I know you're right. It's one reason I hate the Healer forum here. It's ALWAYS like this. I try to make literally any point, and it doesn't matter if I'm at all right or wrong on it, the hunt goes to find SOMETHING. And once something is found, tenacious teeth dig in and refuse to allow anything else to happen or any discussion to happen. I've had a lot of posts here that weren't like this thread, even ones where other people were at fault in their reading of data or statistics, and I don't go on a crusade against them. I accept mistakes or approximations (seriously, DECIMAL POINTS!!) as "close enough", and I try to listen to their overall point and contest their overall points and arguments.

But from those who like their crusade more than discussion - who cannot stand someone NOT agreeing with them that Healers are fundamentally broken - the courtesy is never returned.

Oh, but they accuse me of having an attitude problem...

And the worst part is, not one of them will see they've done anything wrong or apologize for it any time it happens. In another thread, someone lied about me FROM ANOTHER THREAD, I corrected the record, the person didn't apologize, they lied AGAIN doubling down on it, and while I just moved on, their posts got likes and people didn't seem to have a problem with that lie being doubled down on and not being a mistake. No one asked how that person arrived at their wrong conclusion. No one demanded edits and a public debasing to make it right. GrimGale is still trying to convince Sebazy to call me a troll.

And I won't here, either. I just want to talk about actual issues and discussion topics, and try to come up with different ways of looking at problems. I just tend to move on from threads like this one that have become so toxic and derailed that there's no hope for salvaging them.

Don't hold your breath waiting for civility, apology, or any one to say "Oh, you're right, we ARE kind of being jerks...", though.

I merrily wager that these 'margins of error' would be on the opposite side of the true values if the shoe was on the other foot for this one. I'm sure this is all hyperbole though

Imagine if someone from 'the other side' had interpreted that range as '20%-30% faster', still the same 'only 2% of the actual range falls in the stated range' and 'range stated spans a gap of 10%', just on the other side of the scale

Nah, because (a) when I'm actually digging into numbers in depth I pull out the calculator; at the point it was noted that all the top ones were T/3D just recorded wrong in FFLogs, I abandoned the point since I agreed it was untenable in error, and instead looked at how much time was being saved (something I made several posts about, but those don't matter because DECIMAL POINT, right?) and (b) when someone makes a similar error, all I do is correct the error, I don't spend SIX PAGES telling them they were wrong and accusing them of foul play and trying to mislead people. And if they agree with the correction, yay. If not, I just state the actual number and move on. I don't demand they make edits or admit to anything.

SOURCE: The General Discussion thread where I didn't do any of those things in response to someone else making an error. (For you, no less, Roe - and I'd do it again and again because I think it's the right thing to do. I see I'm not in company on that, though.)

[ASkellington]

Don't say things like "and you know it" when I don't, in fact, know it, because it doesn't, in fact, deal with the problem.

Adding things just so people who are "experienced" aren't bored shouldn't be the problem framing at all. If "experienced" players are bored, it should be asked "why are they bored?"

Sigh. I started all of these simply because in the beginning people called you a troll when you and I both know you aren't and so in good faith I keep up discussions with you that have now devolved into nothing more than meaningless back and forth. So I am going to answer the question as clearly as I possibly can.

The problems will healers are as follows:

1. Outgoing damage is too low
2. Our healing kits have little to no interactivity with skills making healing boring.
3. Our dps skills a a nuke and DoT.

Let's start with 1. Across all stages of the game from MSQ to even Ultimate outgoing damage is too low. This is something we all agree with and something that we pointed out back in Shb. This isn't a new problem. Its an old one.

The simple fix you would think is to increase damage. Yeah its not that simple. First - SE doesn't want to increase healing to make things accessible to new healers. They also don't want content to be too hard as to stone wall a group in DF because the healer can't heal properly.

What does this mean for experienced healers? Their gameplay is dull. Either because we came from previous expansions that have already taught us how to heal or another MMO, we're capable of healing as little as possible to save our bigger heals for emergencies, how to manage our CDs so we always have something in the event of a screw up AND also how to manage our mana so we either never run out, or have a good buffer for heavy intensive healing that isn't going to run us dry. All of which FFXIV as of Shb does not do (can't speak for previous expansions).

What we have left is a bunch of CDs we don't need and/or use in the majority of content and our down time filler. We'll get to that.

2. Is best summed up as 1 button press to heal with no thought. There are a handful of skills we have left that actually interact with one another but not enough to either give each healer a strong identity from one another in their game play (they all feel the same) or even enough to make our kits interesting and fun to engage with.

Synastry only really works with Benefics 1 and 2. No oGCDs or even A. Benefic properly (it doesn't apply the HoT). Neutral only works on GCDs (Nocturnal at least worked on some oGCDs). Lillies are a good idea, but again GCD and doesn't even interact with Glare/Holy or even boost the next Medica 2 for example. Toxicon is a worse Lily because SGE much like SCH is best to heal on the oGCD so once they're gone it isn't even worth to reapply your shield to make it break to get it back (and again, doesn't work with oGCDs).

SCH is the best of the four because at least Aetherflow lets you decide between healing and damage and a lot of the abilities it has access to are ones you're going to regularly use.

So with both 1 and 2 being an issue it makes 3 WORSE. Because there's nothing to distract the experience player from spamming their nuke over 50% of a fight with the occasional DoT or w/e other damage button they have access to (Misery, Toxicon, Phlegma, Energy Drain).

So what is the fix?

The fix is threefold - increase healing across the board, reduce redundancy in kits by removing unneeded tools and condensing them into nuanced buttons to allow the healer to have a choice in how to approach a situation that is different per healer (example - remove charges of ED and CI from AST and allow Synastry to work with both), and add extra dps buttons to make the down time less boring.

SE refuses to do any of it. I don't know why we have bloated kits. Tanks don't need 15 mitigation options we sure as hell don't need 15 healing ones. We already talked about increased healing requirements and dps? Frankly the old post of requesting Yoshi P to play a Hrothgar healer from fresh start of game to current patch is still a fitting punishment.

We've asked. For all of it. First starting with higher healing because "healers must heal" thinking they would give us a bone. Then it came to "at least let our down time not be boring by giving us extra dps buttons". Is that a bandaid fix? YEAH. Its only part of the problem, but its the part that's the EASIEST to fix and one to "silence the wails of QQ healers".

They don't want to put in the work to make healers good. Or any class imo outside of BLM. They seem to only want to do the bare minimum and for healers? The BARE MINIMUM they can do is give us 2 more dps buttons.

So what does all of this have to do with the topic of this discussion?

1T/3DPS and all the 1 healer runs and no healer runs are to show case to the devs and the rest of the community who think we're whining for no reason that, yes, get your head out the sand, healing is that low to both make healing an unenjoyable experience when you GET experienced to healer mains and (if for whatever reason you don't think our enjoyment is worth crap) you can straight up replace us in content, in a holy trinity game.

It quite literally is meant to be nothing more than a wake up call to the devs that there is a problem and they need to fix it.

[Renathras]

...

1 - I agree with 1 (by your writing, you seem to be saying you know I do, so we're good there). I think the solution is less big spikes of damage and more gradual, consistent but smaller, damage, and possibly pruning/weakening oGCDs. It seems from survey answers, this is what a lot of other people agree with as well. While many want more DPS actions, many more say they want to heal, they just need encounters to actually use their healing ability. While it is oft said here that the Devs won't increase healing requirements in any way (even by making them lower intensity...which seems an odd thing to insist would be harder...), Yoshi P is already on record (quote produced by AmiableApkallu above) saying they, the Devs, believe that adding to the damage kits will be what drives novice Healers off and creates animosity in the community towards those who use less DPS buttons in their kit (something we know historically happened with Cleric and it is reasonable to assume would happen again).

It's why I find it difficult to believe they'll do the opposite of those things.

2 - I think it's fair that some heals DON'T have interactions. Many games have direct healing abilities that don't have gimmicks or tricks. Many MMOs and RPGs have entire classes based around this concept. I believe the problem comes when all the healing classes work that same way, and do agree there should be more going on. The thing is, we have to ask what an interaction is. For example, you list Energy Drain as a good example and I'll point out (in yet another thread) the second most complaint about SCH in all the surveys we've done (after "give us more DoTs") is that people hate Energy Drain because they feel like they can't use their Aetherflow on any of the AF heals without being bad, and how awful that feels because they LIKE abilities like Soil and Excog and feel penalized if they use them. SGE has been consistently praised by these same people as not having that trade-off.

...on the other hand, I'd point out that Recitation, Emergency Tactics, and Deployment Tactics (and Pepsis and Zoe) are "modifier" abilities that work with other abilities. But because they're (a) oGCDs and require (b) GCD heals (damage losses), they get overlooked while the far inferior and LESS interactive Energy Drain (the only way it interacts with your kit is by locking you out of things) is touted as good, when the people responding to our questions seem to think it's pretty bad.

Perhaps we mean different things by interaction, though...?

3 - As I've said, I don't think this is inherently a problem as long as it's not the exact same thing. I don't like BLM's rotation. If I want to play a Caster, I have two other options that play nothing like BLM. But say I don't like WHM's rotation. There are no other options. They're all the same. I think this is the problem - there's no GETTING AWAY from the Nuke + DoT. In the long form survey, I think there were either 2 or 3 people saying they would like Dia removed and JUST be a 1 spamming WHM because they want their focus on healing. While in the minority, and I won't say they aren't, a LOT of the other responses were along the lines of "I just want more to heal", with a few taking the "healing right now is a conflict of two designs, do damage or heal, and I don't care WHICH ONE, but SE needs to pick ONE and run with it". In short, not everyone is at odds with the Nuke + DoT issue itself, the problems are more that it's the same for all the healer Jobs so no one can escape it, and that the healing requirements are low enough for it to even be an issue thanks to too many and too powerful oGCDs.

.

I do agree we have bloated kits. Worse, the kits often have a TON of overlap. WHM/AST is the most egregious case, but if you ignore all the oGCDs and ONLY look at the GCDs, the difference is...what, WHM has Cure 3 and Solace/Rapture (though they're just Cure 2/Medica) and Misery while AST has, what, Macrocosmos?

They both have Cure 1. They both have Cure 2 (WHM has 3 versions of it, basically), they both have Medica, they both have Medica 2, they both have Regen, they both have Dia, and they both have Glare. Taking away the oGCDs (which people often don't "feel", so to speak), the only distinction is WHM has Cure 3 (rarely used) and the Lily abilities in its rotation, and AST has Macrocosmos (which is used as a big CD in a healing plan). It's ridiculous how identical they are.

...then we can add SGE to the mix and see it has Cure 1/Physic and Medica (and Adlo and Succor), Dia, and Glare, which obviously is the same as SCH which is only different in that they DON'T have Medica but have Ruin 2 instead. And Summon, I guess?

Top to bottom, they're the same. Top to bottom, a lot of people felt left out because there's no healing Job that is what they like.

And as you note, it's not limited to Healers, as Tanks likewise have bloated kits.

.

As to the last...maybe. I'm not sure people are doing it to explicitly send a message any more than Sebazy tanking Titan on WHM was meant to. It probably started more as people just seeing if they could do it. That's definitely the 1 healer Ultimate motivation.

And, to be fair, there'd probably be a lot of 1/0 Tank runs on things, too, if it wasn't that Tanks are just invincible, partly due to their Tank Mastery ability and otherwise due to their fairly ridiculous self-sustain. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I don't remember WAR and PLD having that much immunity to damage and "No, it's fine, I'll heal myself" in ARR or HW. I didn't play DRK and only dabbled in WAR, but I didn't remember any Tank having a chunky heal as part of their 1-2-3 back then...

.

I think the Devs recognize there's an issue - Yoshi P's "We're trying to give you what you want, is this not it? WHAT DO YOU WANT?!?" after P5-8S were released indicates the exasperation going on in the Dev team - they just are super kid gloves about solutions because they remember Cleric stance and the massive healer shortage and toxic behavior of yesteryear and don't want a repeat of it.