#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[AmiableApkallu]

If the devs fix healing I'm sure we'll see more threads about how "healer dps is unengaging" "healers need a dps rotation" "healer dps is too low" "devs! Play MSQ as healer! See how slow and boring it is compared to everything else!" which honestly I think is leagues better than "#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE".

A small bit of history: We already had all those threads. The OP in #FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE itself cites a four year old summary of the main issues.

[Connor]

It makes sense to me that healers would naturally seek to do more dps when we're in a good spot in our primary role. Of course it's true that a fair number of people here are still calling for more healer dps/abilities but I think everyone agrees that the state of healing is so bad that it needs attention more immediately than dps. If the devs fix healing I'm sure we'll see more threads about how "healer dps is unengaging" "healers need a dps rotation" "healer dps is too low" "devs! Play MSQ as healer! See how slow and boring it is compared to everything else!" which honestly I think is leagues better than "#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE".

I agree, but that doesn’t seem to be the general solution offered by the thread. The solution is ‘give healers more dps abilities but make them decision-based resource-costing irregularly timed nukes and dots and somehow so wholly optional that the normies will never be expected to use them (frankly I don’t see this situation ever existing in ffxiv lol).

Then as soon as someone mentions healing suddenly it’s
‘We can’t put healing requirements above what they are now or normies can’t handle it’
‘We can’t make healers heal because it’s impossible because game design so just delete a bunch of heals and turn them into dps’
‘Healers had more nukes in the battle system that was effectively a different one from what we have now therefore they should go back to that design from 8 years ago’

I mean, personally, I’m pretty sure most of the ‘more dps options’ perspective is filtered through savage/ultimare content. Dps uptime is an actual concern, decisions between healing and dps aren’t 99% weighted towards dps (because no healing requirement), MP (might?) actually be taxed.

Outside of that however? They could give us 100 dps abilities and they could be the most powerful and flashy skills in existence; it would still be business as usual outside of savage. Just with a couple extra steps (that are supposed to be optional except nobody doing normal content has any excuse not to be dps’ing 100% of the time, so…)

[Alice_Rivers]

A small bit of history: We already had all those threads. The OP in #FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE itself cites a four year old summary of the main issues.

Having seen people in game and on the forum I didn't actually need that spelled out, hence "more threads".

I agree, but that doesn’t seem to be the general solution offered by the thread. The solution is ‘give healers more dps abilities but make them decision-based resource-costing irregularly timed nukes and dots and somehow so wholly optional that the normies will never be expected to use them (frankly I don’t see this situation ever existing in ffxiv lol).

Then as soon as someone mentions healing suddenly it’s
‘We can’t put healing requirements above what they are now or normies can’t handle it’
‘We can’t make healers heal because it’s impossible because game design so just delete a bunch of heals and turn them into dps’
‘Healers had more nukes in the battle system that was effectively a different one from what we have now therefore they should go back to that design from 8 years ago’

I mean, personally, I’m pretty sure most of the ‘more dps options’ perspective is filtered through savage/ultimare content. Dps uptime is an actual concern, decisions between healing and dps aren’t 99% weighted towards dps (because no healing requirement), MP (might?) actually be taxed.

Outside of that however? They could give us 100 dps abilities and they could be the most powerful and flashy skills in existence; it would still be business as usual outside of savage. Just with a couple extra steps (that are supposed to be optional except nobody doing normal content has any excuse not to be dps’ing 100% of the time, so…)

I can't actually speak to stormblood healing, I've only read about the old systems and much as that era of AST appeals to me I don't like the idea of Cleric Stance making a return. I like the current model around which healer jobs are built and function, I just don't like the environment within which they operate, to me the heals are good, the tools function well and if 60/70% of my uptime were some kind of healing I wouldn't object to the one or two button dps filler. I don't object to it now but I do recognise that it's not for everyone and as far as I'm concerned the more people who actually play healers to heal that healers appeal to the merrier, if appealing to more healers means having a 1-2-3 dps rotation rather than a 1+DoT then so be it - so long as that rotation isn't disrupted by actually healing.

Hence the common thread in my comments here that I want healing fixed, and more dps as a secondary matter.

[AmiableApkallu]

I like the current model around which healer jobs are built and function, I just don't like the environment within which they operate, to me the heals are good, the tools function well and if 60/70% of my uptime were some kind of healing I wouldn't object to the one or two button dps filler.

Healers, as they currently exist, are just as badly designed for 60/70% uptime on healing as they are for 60/70% uptime on DPS. For example, SCH and SGE functionally have one single-target GCD heal and one AoE GCD heal. Spamming Succor/Adlo is no more interesting than spamming Art of War/Broil.

You'd have to fundamentally redesign healing kits by turning a bunch of oGCDs into GCDs, and then tweaking things based on balance and desired distribution of actions.

[Connor]

Perfect? No. Leagues better than the travesty we have now? Yes.

It's understandable to want what worked in the game before and is also more fun that what we have right now. All the speculation about "make healers heal 80% of the time" or "make healers caster DPS with some healing" are all untested, but Stormblood healers? We had them, we played them, and they worked fine.

In my experience during Stormblood, again, healers were very much the same as what we have now just with a couple extra steps to achieve the same (dps) result. Like as a Scholar you could use Miasma II with almost complete impunity in normal content unless you weren’t hitting Aetherflow/Energy Drain/Lucid Dreaming (though maybe that was still Shroud of Saints lol). Who needs MP when you have Excogitation?

And this was before things like Recitation and Seraphism existed, so by today’s standards there would be practically nothing ever clashing with things like DoT timers in a way that you’d ever have to actually consider how/when they’re applied. You just apply them the exact same way every X amount of seconds and just move your many oGCDs around that. Stormblood was very much what I think of as a ‘conveyor belt rotation’. It’s a straight line of ‘use xyz dot, filler, reapply dots in zyx order, repeat’. It doesn’t branch in any meaningful way because that’s not how FFXIV’s healing works (oGCDs don’t affect the belt).

Stormblood healers might sound better on paper, but personally I found them just as hard to enjoy as they are now. Making decisions between healing and damage? That doesn’t bother me. Having illusory ‘decisions’ that inevitably all end in the same outcome (‘use the dps’)? I feel like that’s what we’d get if we went back to ‘Stormblood’ design

[Ramiee]

Stormblood healers might sound better on paper, but personally I found them just as hard to enjoy as they are now. Making decisions between healing and damage? That doesn’t bother me. Having illusory ‘decisions’ that inevitably all end in the same outcome (‘use the dps’)? I feel like that’s what we’d get if we went back to ‘Stormblood’ design

You can water this down to every single job in the game, there isn't any real decisions of any job theres a specific rotation every single one is designed to follow. But I have to say spamming 3-4 buttons over spamming 1 button feels more fun.

[Aravell]

Stormblood healers might sound better on paper, but personally I found them just as hard to enjoy as they are now. Making decisions between healing and damage? That doesn’t bother me. Having illusory ‘decisions’ that inevitably all end in the same outcome (‘use the dps’)? I feel like that’s what we’d get if we went back to ‘Stormblood’ design

You may not personally enjoy Stormblood healers, but many others did. But that's not what I'm pointing out, I'm pointing out that most people who want major overhauls have ideas that may not even work within the game design. You know what did work though? Stormblood worked, and many people have pointed to it as a good compromise.

Also, having done high-end optimisation in Stormblood and Post-Shadowbringers, I greatly disagree that Stormblood is exactly the same as what we have now. We had way more nuance back then than simply following a fixed rotation of Glare x11 then refresh Dia.

[Connor]

You can water this down to every single DPS job in the game, there isn't any real decisions of any job theres a specific rotation every single one is designed to follow. But I have to say spamming 3-4 buttons over spamming 1 button feels more fun.

I’d like to hope they at least make a little bit of effort to differentiate the roles in some way, personally. Just because DPS (and tanks probably idk) are so heavily rotation based doesn’t mean healers need to be. I mean, isn’t one of the main draws of the role ‘no rotation’? Seems a bit silly to just discard that aspect. And I mean, DPS not having their own meaningful decisions to make outside of ‘press glowing button’ is very much an issue to me too.

Personally I’d rather have 2 abilities and actually have to consider what I use and when, than 4 abilities you just repeat ad infinitum. To me 1 button is no more or less fun than 30 unless there’s some modicum of thought around their application. I mean, you could argue ‘ffxiv doesn’t support that design’, but then, it doesn’t support basically anything except everything staying as stagnant as it is now anyway, so sooner or later they’re going to have to do something about it

[Ramiee]

Personally I’d rather have 2 abilities and actually have to consider what I use and when, than 4 abilities you just repeat ad infinitum. To me 1 button is no more or less fun than 30 unless there’s some modicum of thought around their application. I mean, you could argue ‘ffxiv doesn’t support that design’, but then, it doesn’t support basically anything except everything staying as stagnant as it is now anyway, so sooner or later they’re going to have to do something about it

Blue mage is right there. The main game is designed around strict rotations because CBU3 over the last 10 years has removed all management from aggro, to healing, to TP/MP. Now every job is a burst spender and it is extremely boring and badly designed and utterly lazy and unimaginative and thats why the devs love it. The only thing they need to rebalance now is attack potency instead of entire systems, sadly ShB started this and even parts of SB and they only ever got praise for it it was only until EW standardised CDs to make every job explicitly burst jobs is when people started complaining. Healers spamming 1 button is not fun they need damage mechanics they don't need a rotation but they need something that prevent 1 button spam.

[Alice_Rivers]

I don't play much SCH or sage and I'm kind bad at them anyway, I don't have that problem with WHM or AST though. I would have plenty of options to cast - GCD or otherwise, plenty of supporting options to think about and wiegh the use of at any given moment. From my perspective that's far more interesting and engaging than spamming glare 90% of the time or even, as Connor points out, chasing the shiny button around and around.