#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForsakenRoe]

I think the problem is healers never really come out of training mode. The opportunity to use your entire kit is few and far between and devs are too scared to do really big hits. This causes hiealing for the most part to be rather dull and less engaging when things are going right and more engaging when things go wrong.

Content design is set to where things rarely go wrong in casual content which is where healers need help the most. However their gameplay loop is tuned to 8 man savages where things go wrong in early prog which results in a simplistic DPS kit of 2 buttons.

Problem is, whenever anyone suggests the seemingly obvious followup to this, of 'well, what if we add some stuff that you can use to make that time where 'nothing is going wrong' feel more interesting?', we get some shade of 'no don't do that, healers are meant to heal'. It's so incredibly easy to make the downtime feel more varied with as little as 'add literally one new damage action, and shorten the DOT timer so we press the DOT more often', but there's this pervasive stance that 'Healers should heal', so SE doesn't take the time to address the problem, and the problem has persisted for years despite a solution staring them in the face.

Take WHM. Add new action, Water, at level 15. Give it 40p more than Stone, a 15s CD, and make it instantcast so you can use it for mobility. Upgrade Water each time Stone upgrades, including converting it to Banish when we learn Glare.
Reduce Aero/Dia's duration to 12s, rescale potency to compensate. My maths has 150p, plus 70 per tick, as good numbers, and this would also benefit 'clip it on purpose for mobility because you have nothing else' even more than currently.

That's all that's needed to spice up WHM's gameplay sufficiently (for my tastes at least). WHM gets 50 GCDs per 2min (cos of POM). As it stands, you get 6 Lilies, 2 Miseries, 3 Glare4, 4 Dia, leaving 35 GCDs as Glare3.
With the above example, you'd instead use 6 Lilies, 2 Miseries, 3 Glare4, 10 Dia, 8 Banish, and that leaves just 21 GCDs per 2min as Glare3. From 35/50, to 21/50, is a pretty big leap in 'rotational variety' IMO

[BunnyQueen]

Gonna keep saying it, healers should be healing a lot more then they are, make it so healers need to heal 60% of the time! SE killed the fun of healers in stormblood!.

Not just in raids and trials but all content including low level dungeons! Crack down on level sync! make it more effective!

[YarnMage48]

This seems to be the core of our disagreement, you see difference where it exists in the tooltips, I see it where it affects gameplay. This also extends to your second quote about how you picked a very specific situation and said that “this adds 500 potency or so to my healing that SCH can’t replicate with the equivalent skills”, yes sure but do you need that 500 potency? In your specific example the answer is no, if you did substitute the equivalent SCH skills you wouldn’t get that 500 potency but you wouldn’t be in any danger of dying and the next damage is ages away. So differences exist as per the tooltips but they don’t exist as per gameplay

I simply pulled an example from the current raid series. I could pull another one, if you like? I picked it because its a spot where I used both of Panhaima's effects and both of Holos's effects, which seemed liked a good way to illustrate gameplay differences. There are other spots where I used both effects of Panhaima and Holos if you'd care to hear about them. I really enjoy situations where I can use their full potential, so there are a few. But you know, I'm not really inclined to do so when you don't seem to be really reading my posts. I mean, you didn't acknowledge the gameplay examples I gave for Philospophia, and you used the wrong numbers for the heal potency I had in my heal plan. That makes it seem like you weren't paying attention to what I was saying. And having the impression that you weren't paying attention to what I wrote just causes me to feel really disrespected. Maybe you didn't mean to give that impression. But that is the message you send when you don't acknowledge what I'm saying.

I'm genuinely interested in knowing how you would handle those mechanics in M2S. Actually, how did your team handle those mechanics? Why do you think 700 potency of healing isn't needed when each of the 4 hits of damage takes out a significant amount of the party's health? Would not 700 potency of healing be relevant when you need to recover a lot of health in between each hit? Auto-hp regen isn't going to cut it, so that healing has to come from somewhere. Or are you trying to say that there's time to use other skills? Why use additional skills when you can utilize a more efficient heal plan, keeping those skills available for other mechanics?

[YarnMage48]

Gonna keep saying it, healers should be healing a lot more then they are, make it so healers need to heal 60% of the time! SE killed the fun of healers in stormblood!.

Not just in raids and trials but all content including low level dungeons! Crack down on level sync! make it more effective!

I get what you are saying, but I don't agree. Dungeons are the first level of content new healers will engage with. If dungeons are too difficult, then players who might be interested in trying out the role will be scared off and won't try it. Realistically, there needs to be a steady influx of new healers. New players join the game all the time, and if they all become tanks and dps, there wouldn't be enough healers to balance that out. Plus, players leave the game for a variety of reasons, including the fact that sometimes life changes. If healers leave as part of the natural loss of players, but the barrier of entry for the healer role is too high, eventually there won't be enough healers to go around. This stalls out gameplay for players who are trying to get through MSQ, or even get their roulettes done in a timely fashion.

All of this is to say that there needs to be content that new healers can cut their teeth on. Dungeons are perfect for this because you can engage with the toolkit as it grows more complex. Now, I know it's a common opinion that dungeon healing is easy. And I agree, it is easy. But when you talk to players who are trying out healing for the first time, you'll find that they still find it intimidating. It can be scary until you get the hang of it. And don't get me started on how one nasty player can scare people off of trying healing again. I encountered some nasty players when I was learning how to heal dungeons, including the classic "constantly fails mechanics but blames me for not being rezzing when I already burned swiftcast rezzing you the last time you stood in the obvious red circle and I don't have the time right now to stand still to hardcast it". I didn't let it stop me but I've heard some pretty bad stories. All of this is to say that I don't want to make dungeons more difficult because I want new healers to have a space where they can start to spread their wings. Literally, if they are a White Mage. Let them grow into the role as they take on progressively more difficult content.

It can be hard to find enjoyment in easier content when you get used to more demanding options, I know. But I think its important to remember that the player base is made up off people with a large variety of skills, and the game is just as much for them as it is for us. There are also a lot of people who like more casual content, and who maybe aren't up to more challenging content. Again, the game is just as much for them as it is for us. This game isn't built to have only super mega hard content for super mega hard core players. And this is never going to be that kind of game.

[Supersnow845]

snip

The feeling of “we aren’t being heard” is mutual I can assure you

As I’ve posted like 5 times. Take a step back. Look at the kit of SGE. Look at the kit of SCH. Why are they so similar? I NEED you to answer this question because otherwise everything else is pointless. Every single point you have made dances around this issue and this is why I keep bringing it up with comments like “you are trying to sell difference”. Sure you came up with a way to effectively use the heal of holos: but you aren’t looking at the wider picture. Why does SGE need the same 10% mitigation on a 2 minute CD SCH already has with the same 300 potency heal from blessing tacked onto it. Why is SGE’s primary mitigation a bubble that’s a 10% mitigation for 15 seconds with a 30 second CD that gets a regen for 550 potency at 78 given that’s a literal 1 to 1 rip of sacred soil. Why are you trying to act like SGE had no choice but to be a slightly different SCH so the only option is to look at these tiny differences? Why wasn’t SGE totally unique. Like PCT is totally unique, the closest analogue to PCT is SB SMN, why can PCT be unique but SGE has to be so similar to SCH that we are arguing about the colour of the rose petals in the weed filled garden

Mitigation plans for healers should not be “oh yeah we pressed the same button but I got an extra heal out of it” it should be completely different between healers. If you think the peak of shield healer optimisation is pressing holos as one button rather than expedient+blessing then sure…….i don’t remotely think so. SGE should be a DIFFERENT healer to SCH. Minute differences in mitigation plans isn’t “difference” in my eyes

As a side note I ignored the specifics of your philisophia example because nothing you mentioned was a niche. You just said “oh I need a regen for this mechanic” but didn’t explain why ONLY philosophia could fill that niche and not kerechole or physis. If you can think of an actual unique niche for philosophia I’m all ears

snip

On the topic of your dungeon point dungeon healing is fine to be easy. But the other roles aren’t “helping” make dungeon healing more accessible. They are straight up replacing the healer. Like I’m a more garbage healer in dungeons than any other content because the game simply does not encourage me at all to pay attention so I end up slacking. The dungeon healing curve should still be a progressive curve, but instead the hardest dungeons to heal are the mid 40’s and 90 you are functionally vestigial. How many healers are we losing to “why am I playing a role when the dungeon doesn’t need me”

[Basteala]

You know, in a weird, ironic way, healing is both more difficult for new healers than ever before, yet more mind numbingly boring for any healer with experience.

Why? It comes down to tax damage.

Tax damage in this case being the unavoidable. The inevitable nickle and dimes taken out of your tank's hide. The mild to moderate predictable damage that needs to be healed that the tank simply can't shrug off. Unlike the real world, low taxes aren't desirable here because it means that healing goes from 0 to 100 when some chucklehead picks up three vuln stacks out of left field, and the healer has to go from mindlessly DPSing to snap healing someone almost dead, or simply globalled due to their own ignorance.

Of course, any skilled healer will probably know to throw some OGCD at the derpy DPS or whoever screwed up, but that's the other thing: there's too many buttons for good healers to really actually use what makes the core class feel like the core class, and too many buttons to *not* overwhelm new healers.

Bring back actually threatening auto attacks. Cut back on the arbitrary invisible walls. Cut down on healing CD bloat by like a third. You'll see change.

[miraidensetsu]

And above all, #make-tank-buster-hurt-again

[Maltothoris]

Why do you think 700 potency of healing isn't needed when each of the 4 hits of damage takes out a significant amount of the party's health? Would not 700 potency of healing be relevant when you need to recover a lot of health in between each hit?

Here are the big things. First off, damage is scripted. No matter how many times you do something, all damage is generally the same maybe one time is a higher roll doing 5 percent more damage but generally it's very static. Case in point, look at FRU. We have this right here which helped formed the mit plans that are going around. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=427063653

The other thing is, everyone has something. All melees have feint, all casters have addle, all ranged have their 15 percent, all tanks have their reprisal and their 90 seconds. Not to mention, even then, we still have a lot of overheal. In my fru clears I have about 30 overheal. My pure healing partners have 50. 50 percent overheal does kind of show that we have too much healing.

[YarnMage48]

Here are the big things. First off, damage is scripted. No matter how many times you do something, all damage is generally the same maybe one time is a higher roll doing 5 percent more damage but generally it's very static. Case in point, look at FRU. We have this right here which helped formed the mit plans that are going around. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=427063653

The other thing is, everyone has something. All melees have feint, all casters have addle, all ranged have their 15 percent, all tanks have their reprisal and their 90 seconds. Not to mention, even then, we still have a lot of overheal. In my fru clears I have about 30 overheal. My pure healing partners have 50. 50 percent overheal does kind of show that we have too much healing.

How does the damage being scripted make healing potency irrelevent? That makes no sense at all.

Also, overheal doesn't mean that you have too much healing, it means you are healing when its not needed.

As far as I can tell, neither of these things mean that healing potency isn't relevant in a heal plan.

[YarnMage48]

You know, in a weird, ironic way, healing is both more difficult for new healers than ever before, yet more mind numbingly boring for any healer with experience.

Why? It comes down to tax damage.

Tax damage in this case being the unavoidable. The inevitable nickle and dimes taken out of your tank's hide. The mild to moderate predictable damage that needs to be healed that the tank simply can't shrug off. Unlike the real world, low taxes aren't desirable here because it means that healing goes from 0 to 100 when some chucklehead picks up three vuln stacks out of left field, and the healer has to go from mindlessly DPSing to snap healing someone almost dead, or simply globalled due to their own ignorance.

Of course, any skilled healer will probably know to throw some OGCD at the derpy DPS or whoever screwed up, but that's the other thing: there's too many buttons for good healers to really actually use what makes the core class feel like the core class, and too many buttons to *not* overwhelm new healers.

Bring back actually threatening auto attacks. Cut back on the arbitrary invisible walls. Cut down on healing CD bloat by like a third. You'll see change.

I think, if I am understanding you correctly, that you want unavoidable damage to be higher and avoidable damage to be lower. Is that correct?

If so, then that's not necessarily a bad idea, but I that if you do that, you'll end up with DPS who don't see the need to respect mechanics. I actually wish that DPS got damage downs in normal content as well as Savage/EX, because a vuln stack really is more of a punishment to the healer than the player who messed up. Regardless, I do think that there needs to be felt consequences for failing mechanics in normal content. They gotta learn somehow.

Hmmm but I think you could balance the tax damage a little higher and still have a good difficulty level. At least take away some of the overpowered tank healing and mitigation, so that we don't have literally nothing to do during pulls if we have certain tanks in the party. Although the tax aoe's in some pulls, like the last pull of Strayburough, are a good idea. I'm not 100% happy with the execution but I like that they did something different with the pulls. But at any rate, I think there needs to be a good balance between tax damage and mistake damage, so that there's room for some mistakes in a run with a new healer.

It's just a struggle to find ways to add challenge without overburdening new healers too much.