#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[TaleraRistain]

i still don't understand why cleric stance was straight up removed. it was too hard? ok, but it was also fun, so don't delete it, re-balance it. make it an optimization thing instead of a requirement. like a +5%/-5% alteration.

"Yoshida: For example, in a side scrolling game, if there aren’t any holes you can drop down into if you miss a jump, ofcourse the game would lose its stress, but it would also lose its fun."

They did that with the second iteration as a role action and it wasn't too bad. The problem with the first iteration was it was fairly janky, had a CD to turn off but not turn on, and someone would inevitably take avoidable damage the second you turned it on. I was very happy when they made our damage scale off mind and removed the stance requirement because that allowed us to add in dps in a much more fluid manner, while being prepared for those necessary spot-heals if things went south. I do think they could have kept the role action, though.

[ForsakenRoe]

i still don't understand why cleric stance was straight up removed. it was too hard? ok, but it was also fun, so don't delete it, re-balance it. make it an optimization thing instead of a requirement. like a +5%/-5% alteration.

A SCH rework I posted over in healer forums had this, but even less punishing: Three stances called Strategies that modify certain abilities. For example, Defensive would make your gameplay more defensive in nature, with such things as Indom applying as a barrier, Expedient's mitigation being boosted to 15%, or Excogitation additionally applying a barrier. Strategy: Emergency would replace Emergency Tactics, and effectively function similarly: Sacrifice the barrier for stronger healing. Unlike ET, it'd be a Stance and so you could use multiple actions in 'Emergency mode' (and more actions would be modified by it, such as boosting Indom's potency by 100p, making Protraction/Excogitation have an upfront heal, etc).

Finally, the point I was getting to, Strategy: Offensive. All it would do is increase the potency of the base cast (not the DOT portion) of Bio, the returning Miasma, and the returning Shadowflare, by 20p. Optimization would be to swap to Strategy: Offensive right before any DOT refreshes, and swap back to Defensive or Emergency to bolster the power of your healing tools. But choosing not to optimize would lose a mere 20p per DOT refresh, of which there would be (due to their durations of 30s, 24s and 15s respectively) 4 Bio refreshes per 2min, 5 Miasma, and 8 Shadowflares. So, ignoring Strategy: Offensive entirely would lose a player just 340p per 2 minutes, just over one single Broil worth of damage. It's absolutely nothing when it comes to enrage checks, but optimizers would find fun in trying to eke out any amount of bonus damage.

The issue with Cleric Stance of old was that it screwed you out of healing power if you mismanaged it. I think the design can be made to work well, without punishing the player for mismanaging because of stressful situation (eg overwhelmed in progression) or because they're new to the job.

[KisaiTenshi]

i still don't understand why cleric stance was straight up removed. it was too hard? ok, but it was also fun, so don't delete it, re-balance it. make it an optimization thing instead of a requirement. like a +5%/-5% alteration.

"Yoshida: For example, in a side scrolling game, if there aren’t any holes you can drop down into if you miss a jump, ofcourse the game would lose its stress, but it would also lose its fun."

Non-conspiracy theory reason: Simply that cleric stance was not compatible with lag. All "stance dancing" was incompatible with lag, but as a healer, cleric stance swapped MND and INT, so if player had min-maxed MND as a healer, and not PIE, then when they hit cleric stance, they could do as much damage as a black mage does. But that's not the reality that happened. People would hit cleric stance, and then their heals would drop to 1-10% of what they should be, and if that was done at the wrong time, that wiped the party. Every time. People were mad.

You still see this effect with swiftcast. Where swiftcast will fire but then the thing you cast after it still takes the GCD time to cast. The only time swiftcast ever fires perfectly is when it's in a macro without any "wait" statements, because the game client is assured to have sent it in the same data packet.

Cleric Stance was only introduced in 1.20, so it hailed from the game's initial rework of the classes. Back when the combat involved little movement and a lot of standing in place.

The reason why "Cleric Stance" itself was bad, and say, "DPS stance" for a tank wasn't, was because Tanks had to tank swap. There is no point in the game that requires the healer to ever DPS, so having this skill at all during dungeon play was pointless. So when they removed the ability to set custom INT/MND/PIE values at level up, they had to remove Cleric Stance, because it no longer did anything. Now DPS is fixed and predictable without having to waste two GCD's to cast DPS. The DPS GCD should have just been 5s recasts, while the Healing 2.5s GCD's being affected by skill/cast speeds.

People who "weren't there" didn't experience the numerous bad "green DPS" players who played healer just to get a fast queue pop, and then they all die at the first pull. Healing isn't "1-2-3" combos where you have to be casting continuously. In 8-player content you could always tell which was the green DPS because they would switch to cleric stance and STAY in it. Healing was more "intense" by pure virtue of the number of players who just didn't know how to heal, and didn't know that they shouldn't be in Cleric stance to heal.

Cleric Stance intended only so you didn't spend 10x as long in solo MSQ content, and that skill should have been inaccessible during a party. But alas, the game's MSQ doesn't require anything but DPS, so people never required to play their non-DPS job. Tank stance is more complicated, and if the duty only requires one tank, then the tank stance should have been locked on, since there isn't a second tank to shirk enmity to. But people keep floating this notion that every job in party content must be doing 95% DPS rather than being completely optional. So a lot of ARR-era fights on the forums were this circular argument about "pure healer" (who did zero DPS) and "lazy healer" (who only used Medica and focused on DPS, even without cleric stance.) Once Cleric stance was disposed of, there was no more reason to have this argument because the time penalty to DPS was removed. Now anyone telling you to DPS can be ignored because you will DPS if you find time to, or you can just do no DPS and it won't be missed except by people violating the TOS who can't say anything.

[Jeeqbit]

Well there is a live letter tomorrow. If they're gonna comment on it, it'll probably be there.

[Gemina]

Well there is a live letter tomorrow. If they're gonna comment on it, it'll probably be there.

Probably not. I don't say that because I have doubt about Yoshi and the dev team becoming aware of the strike, but because what he plans to address in the LL likely took place well before this thread's existence and the ensuing coverage it has received. There's an itinerary to these kind of things so the release of DT stays on course. I haven't lost my sense of reality amongst all this. Just sleep xD

[Jeeqbit]

Probably not. I don't say that because I have doubt about Yoshi and the dev team becoming aware of the strike, but because what he plans to address in the LL likely took place well before this thread's existence and the ensuing coverage it has received. There's an itinerary to these kind of things so the release of DT stays on course. I haven't lost my sense of reality amongst all this. Just sleep xD

Often they would see if they need to respond to something that is 100-200 pages and this many likes, nevermind youtube videos on it. I am just thinking it doesn't make logical sense to bother with that when a live letter is about to happen. I wouldn't expect there to need to be a lengthy segment on it, but they make them last a few hours anyway so what's a bit more time...

[Ravenblade1979]

Lol still going. Strike...lots more to replace ya.

[Eorzean_username]

Lol still going. Strike...lots more to replace ya.

[Morr_Ar]

Given that Healers have the shortest queues by far, there really aren't lots more to replace them. Healers represent 25% of the group in most content but they are nowhere close to 25% of the overall player population. Given that Healers represent the main bottleneck in forming DF groups, any hit to their participation, even a minor one, has a disproportionate effect on queue times. Especially if those same Healers who are striking switch to other roles and add their numbers to the roles trying to get through the bottleneck.

[Merunari]

There's something so incredibly frustrating about people citing that healers don't need a more engaging DPS rotation because they're healers first and that's what their primary job should be and say that if healers want to heal more, they should play harder content (raids, savages) where parties actively work together to minimize the amount of healing that needs to be done.

So once you've minimized that healing, where exactly does that leave us? Oh, right. Back at square one with our lack of engaging DPS rotation to make up for not needing to heal.

You can't design encounters around requiring healer DPS and then also say that healers should be focusing on healing instead when a) there's very little to nothing to heal and b) the encounters themselves literally want us to DPS, regardless of what Yoshi-P himself may say on the matter (ie that healers don't need to worry about DPSing). If you're going to design encounters around requiring healer DPS, healers should have a more engaging DPS rotation. That's really all there is to it.