#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Shurrikhan]

My argument against it has always boiled down to it not remaining optional because if they keep adding buttons without pruning others, you'll inevitably run out of comfortable space and be forced to consolidate. For example, if they added 3-4 new buttons on Ninja, I have nowhere to put them if I don't consolidate both my single target and aoe combos.

Now I could come around to the consolidation if I had any faith they'd add interesting abilities but if the trade off is "press this button every two minutes" or "keep Spinning Edge and Gust Slash separate," I'd prefer the latter.

This might be one of those cases where I'd actually take their word for it if they said something along the likes of "We will continue to limit the acquisition of new skills as if the previous degree of consolidation persisted from these last few, small but near-unanimously requested consolidations." It excuses doing less work, after all.

[ForsakenRoe]

Now I could come around to the consolidation if I had any faith they'd add interesting abilities but if the trade off is "press this button every two minutes" or "keep Spinning Edge and Gust Slash separate," I'd prefer the latter.

I think this is the main argument against some consolidations. If we knew, for example, that having Spinning Edge/Gust Slash be one button, so that your 'filler' on NIN is either 112 (Aeolian) or 113 (ArmorCrush), would result in something interesting being added in the newly-freed hotbar slot, then a lot of people would likely switch views and say 'ok that is a fair consolidation to make', but the issue is, we've often seen SE consolidate things and replace those freed up hotbar spaces with... nothing. And if that's the choice, then to some the 'illusion of complexity' that something like a 123 provides is preferable to the alternative, of dispelling that illusion and just having 111 in its place.

SMN illustrates this quite well, I think, as the current kit could just as well have kept aspects of the old kit (eg it could have probably kept the DOTs in some way/reworked the DOTs into a more thematic alternative, like Ifrit burning the enemy instead of a poison), or is the old kit renamed (eg Gemshine/Astral Flow is just Egi Assault 1/2). SMN's consolidations are a step too far in many players' eyes, but could be forgiven if the EW rework of SMN was shown to be a 'new foundation' to build off of. The issue with it (and MCH before it), is that SE did not meaningfully build upon that foundation, instead replacing our Demisummon with... a reskin that functions pretty much identically. In fact, the new demisummon could have been any powerful entity from previous FF games, Alexander, Odin, heck even more odd, one-off type ones like Eden or ARK, but they instead went with another variant of Bahamut. Not only is the new action 'not really changing anything' from a gameplay perspective, it's not really changing anything from a visual perspective either, as while Solar Bahamut looks a little different from regular Bahamut, they're both dragons at the end of the day.

The other thing is how much consolidation is acceptable, and that's a subjective thing. Some people like SMN in its current form. Some people like that healers have effectively 2 buttons in their main GCD rotation. The devs can't consolidate too much, though, else jobs lose their 'interactivity'. Compare playing SMN, with playing SMN using the 'one button macro'. It's funny that you can play it via a single button pressed over and over, because of the macro, but it's also going to get very boring very fast for a lot of the playerbase. Pressing the same button over and over is going to just lead to burnout, you can see this in this very thread, with healers complaining about their Glare key breaking etc. So the devs have to be very careful on how far they take consolidation.

Bringing it back to healers, however, we can see the end result of 'consolidate X and Y please'. SCH, having previously had 4(?) DOTs with 100% uptime to maintain as its gameplay in HW (Bio, Bio2, Miasma, Shadowflare IIRC), now only has one DOT. While this is more accessible to casual players, it comes with its own downsides. Firstly, the potency of those four DOTs has been redistributed through the rest of the SCH kit that remains. In essence, where Broil used to be just 170p (on HW release), now Broil 4 is 310p in DT, making missing a single filler spell cast more punishing (coupled with how much more we have to move about for mechanics). But also, Biolysis is now 750p total potency over its duration. Compare that to the HW potencies of these DOTs:

Bio: 40p, 18s, total 240p
Miasma: 20p on cast, 30p, 24s, total 300p
Bio 2: 35p, 30s, total 350p

And you can see that while there are more DOTs, the potency a player would lose from missing a tick from one would be less than what we see today. Coupling that with the fact that having one DOT that is refreshed less often, means it's more likely for a player to simply 'forget' about the DOT and lose ticks, means that these design choices that are meant to 'help' players, can actually be detrimental. I find myself forgetting about the DOTs quite often, because they're so non-interactive and forgettable. Contrast that to SB SCH, where I'd be refreshing Bio because I see it's running out, and at the same time, looking at Miasma and Bio 2, and noting 'okay, Miasma is at 6s, and Bio 2 is at 12s, I need to refresh Miasma in 2 GCDs time', by constantly having to refresh the timers on several DOTs, it'd give me a reason to look at the DOT timers, and remind myself of the status of the other DOT timers.

If the devs wanted to consolidate healer actions, they could have looked at things like Cure 1 (upgrade to Cure 2), Benefic 1 (upgrade to Benefic 2), Medica/Helios (upgrade to Medica2/Aspected Helios by just attaching the HOT to the base version), Physick to Adloquium (changing Adlo from 300/180% to 450/120% keeps the shield potency identical, while making the base potency equal to Physick), and adjusting the MP cost of the 'upgraded' forms if needed. Most players nowadays consider the true 'cost' of casting an Adlo or a Cure2, never to be the MP cost but the GCD that it takes away from your damage. Additionally, the removal of all of our 'extra' damage actions in SHB (leaving us with just the filler and a single DOT) has effectively kneecapped a lot of design options, because of the lack of variety in the damage kit.

We can't have, for example, a gauge that fills up as you deal damage, because it only fills at one speed: how fast you cast Glare/Broil etc. Take a WAR, Maim/Storms Eye fill the gauge at a different rate than Storm's Path. This means that, even though it's one of the most simple things imaginable, there's the risk of overcapping the gauge by having 90 stored and using Storm's Path, and so you have to consider that and Fell Cleave to prevent that overcap. Now, you might say 'that takes literally one braincell' and you'd be right, it's pretty obvious, but the problem is that healers don't even get that. We can't have a gauge that builds based on dealing damage/casting healing spells, or some interaction with our DOTs, and the one time that we see a system that has some potential, to change up how we tackle healing our party, the Kardia system, it's hamstrung from the get-go and turned into 'the Fairy's auto-heal, but you can direct who it goes on'. There's so much potential for SGE to play completely differently from SCH, and for WHM to grow beyond the bonsai pot that the devs keep it in.

Don't get me wrong, the new damage actions in DT are a step in the right direction, and I'd rather have them than not have them. But they feel like they were designed by someone who was scared of going any steps further, like they were worried that if Psyche was used more often than once per minute, or Glare 4 was useable more often, that someone would be very angry with the decision. We need changes like that, but bold changes in that direction. Healers can have a 'rotation' that is still simple, but has more depth to it than our current 'press 1 many times in a row' gameplay, and by doing so, it enables so much more design-space for the healers. WHM has Misery, a way for its heals to interact with its damage, so why not explore the opposite, a way for its damage to fuel some kind of healing? Why not explore a way for SCH to have interaction with its DOTs again? Why not have SGE's healing be more based around Kardia, and temporarily 'Augmenting' Kardia to have different interactions (Soteria is a great example, boosting the potency), eg converting it to shielding, causing it to be AOE, etc.? Why not have AST as a healer who focuses less on the filler spell of Malefic, and instead has its damage contribution be more 'buff-your-allies themed' via cards?

This probably should have been 2 posts

[TheDustyOne]

The complaint of only spamming a single button has less to do with actual button count and more to do with the lack of interactivity. Reduce the DoT duration to 15s and that solves part of the issue. Have Glare sometimes proc Enhanced Holy and that also solves part of the issue without adding more buttons. Have Dia proc a cooldown reduction on Assize and that also solves part of the issue. Do all 3 of those and you have a decent enough kit without even touching on Glare IV and PoM. It's less about sheer number of buttons and more how they interact with each other; more buttons can give more interactions overall, but you could also just give a 50-button long combo sequence and it'd be just as dull as Glare spam but with 50 hotbar slots instead of 1.

You could add Miasma back to SCH with a 30s timer and I still wouldn't consider that enough for it to be in a state I'd enjoy. Add back Bane and it at least makes dungeons a little more bearable than AoW spam, but still not ideal. If you had Fester on a cooldown that also has cooldown reduction with every broil cast, now you have more to pay attention to and it furthers that old identity of being a DoT based attacker. Even if both Biolysis and Miasma(lysis) were still 30s, Fester with some Broil interaction and Bane would make me want to play it again.

[Kozmakis]

How's that healer strike workin out for you guys? Did Yoshi reach out to your leader and negotiate a new contract or better terms in general? There doesn't seem to be any shortage of healers. Surely you must've resolved this issue by now.

Thank you for asking, it is going great so far, I started leveling up my Samurai and it is so much fun - it's not all great, the 15-17min queue time isn't fun.. But nothing beats seeing so many healers idling half of the time (never DPSing) and casting Cure from time to time - which is good for me, I can pew pew for a little bit longer Waiting to see if they combine Trust with DF and have Alphinaud heal hundreds of dungeons every day, so queues can drop and I can have more frequent fun

theirs no longer a strike just a dead horse of a necrobumped topic

Thank you for bumping!

[Rolder50]

Do I need to link the “AIN isn’t actually reflective of role imbalance” post again

You can also look at PF and see that most groups are waiting for healers. At least, that’s the case on Aether.

[Galvuu]

You can also look at PF and see that most groups are waiting for healers. At least, that’s the case on Aether.

It's the same in EU datacenters.
I don't know if it's due to the strike or just another symptom of how poor healer gameplay is, but people saying tanks are the most scarce of the roles, at least in high-end content, are on copium.
I was farming ex2 last night and my friend asked me if there was a GNB slot- nop, you either Astro or we're gonna be sitting in here for an hour.
Second most uncommon one seems to be phys ranged, but far behind healers (and more easily replaceable, too).

[ToodlesElNoodles]

You can also look at PF and see that most groups are waiting for healers. At least, that’s the case on Aether.

It’s absolutely the last to fill up on Crystal. I’ve also noticed a severe lack of ASTs.

I worry that the devs will get the wrong message of “Oh no! We made DT healing too hard!” when it’s actually, “It’s still too boring.”

[Tint]

It’s absolutely the last to fill up on Crystal. I’ve also noticed a severe lack of ASTs.

I worry that the devs will get the wrong message of “Oh no! We made DT healing too hard!” when it’s actually, “It’s still too boring.”

Actually it's both. Kind of.

There are way too many mechanics and mechanic combos which will one shot you. And then? Nobody will raise you. So you let the team down and then have to watch how useless you actually are to the team when they kill the boss anyway.

You feel like you have responsibility and are a burden at the same time. Playing healer is probably not difficult - but it can be frustrating. Couple that with boring gameplay and you have a recipe to have a role which is too taxing to play for casuals and too easy for hardcore players.

There is no room inbetween.

Of course nobody wants to play the role.

[ToodlesElNoodles]

snip

Very well said!

[Kozmakis]

Actually it's both. Kind of.

There are way too many mechanics and mechanic combos which will one shot you. And then? Nobody will raise you. So you let the team down and then have to watch how useless you actually are to the team when they kill the boss anyway.

You feel like you have responsibility and are a burden at the same time. Playing healer is probably not difficult - but it can be frustrating. Couple that with boring gameplay and you have a recipe to have a role which is too taxing to play for casuals and too easy for hardcore players.

There is no room inbetween.

Well put, hats off to you!

Of course nobody wants to play the role.

This statement, I unfortunately would have to disagree with... Not because it's incorrect, but because it's only been 11 days since the release of Dawntrail - and, after all, each expansion so far lasted for about 2 years... It's just too early to say how many of the healers will stick to the role. I am seeing a good amount of Sprout icons next to healers in Dungeons and Alliance Raids; time will tell what they will decide to do in the future, maybe they will enjoy it.