#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Tigore]

I don't think ForsakenRoe is refusing to play other games per say. She posted how empowered spell casting worked from the direct competitor Warcraft. I didn't even know about it beforehand since I am actually unsubscribed from Warcraft ever since the Shadowlands expansion. There comes a point where the second chances we give to a company start to dwindle too. I had decided to not get into the Dragonflight expansion hype for the first time. The news I heard seem to be mixed overall. The art teams are still trying really hard, but the story is still faltering on some spots. The gameplay is still largely similar where harder grouped raiding has a very high focus with lower levels of casual content still hitting the back burner. The Heroic queue (equivalent to Expert 4 man) is probably still there, but the rewards were trash compared to the solo world quests.

I used to be in the harder raiding groups from Warcraft, but most of my friends left. I was wanting the Heroic queues and Mythic Zeros to mean something with the few friends left. The story needed massive upgrading too since it was clear some characters were Blizz favourites despite other characters deserving some spotlight love. I think the FF14 fans here can understand that sentiment with Wuk Lamat shoving Krile and Erenville away from the spotlight, right?

[Colt47]

After reading through some of these this sounds sort of like some of this is related to the fact that people really don't need healing in this style of game. The more skilled the players generally get, the less healing they need, and the more the healer gets stuck spamming their DPS keys. So having a healer strike is kind of like begging for more stupid people that get hit by mechanics. Except the game actively teaches people to avoid these mechanics or gives them debuffs that render healing pointless after a while.

Also, alternative sources of healing exist in the game in terms of skills on other jobs, which is basically like the single player game problem where people can buy dozens of potions. Ironically, they sort of thought of this and made potions that heal useless at end game, but why does that matter if I literally got a free potion via skill through second wind and then also have bloodbath? As a dps we have a magical, often forgotten ability called "DODGE THE FREAKING ATTACK!" that seems to be forgotten in M3S for some reason, and if someone is dodging things, they never need healing from a third party because they can self heal often enough to not need the help.

And the third problem is that the fights that render the self healing useless do it in the most boring and least organic way possible. They just spam bleeds to neutralize the healing from players, or spam the living hell out of AOE skills that are unavoidable and take out huge chunks of HP.

[Hazama999]

And the third problem is that the fights that render the self healing useless do it in the most boring and least organic way possible. They just spam bleeds to neutralize the healing from players, or spam the living hell out of AOE skills that are unavoidable and take out huge chunks of HP.

At base, healing has never been interesting in this game, in my opinion.

Well, that's not very charitable... Let's just say it's never been that interesting. With the caveat that this is just my perspective on it as a doctor, the mentally stimulating part of healing comes from identifying the cause or causes of the issue and addressing them as necessary. Of course, I'm really stretching the comparison here since irl medicine has infinitely more factors to deal with that go into the art of it. That said, the part that is prime for "gamification" is exactly "identify and react." The issue as I see it is that the developers have whittled down the concept to the very dichotomy of "number go down, make it go up." This, to be honest, is just... very boring design. I know that, ultimately, what determines whether you're alive or dead really does come down to you either having 1HP or 0, but it is the how you get there, and how you deal with it, and the dynamic between the two, that has to be interesting. Right now, neither are quite there. The problem with this is that it would likely involve major changes to how damage is dealt to you and the party. This could possibly mean an upending on the whole damage system, and that's... very unlikely to occur.

We have been at this for more than 10 years now. SE has built a good amount of momentum when it comes to heal design, and it shows no signs of stopping or changing its trajectory... so while I don't want to be all doom-and-gloom, well... I would recommend setting your expectations low. I know mine have been for quite some time now.

[IDontPetLalas]

At base, healing has never been interesting in this game, in my opinion.

Well, that's not very charitable... Let's just say it's never been that interesting. With the caveat that this is just my perspective on it as a doctor, the mentally stimulating part of healing comes from identifying the cause or causes of the issue and addressing them as necessary. Of course, I'm really stretching the comparison here since irl medicine has infinitely more factors to deal with that go into the art of it. That said, the part that is prime for "gamification" is exactly "identify and react." The issue as I see it is that the developers have whittled down the concept to the very dichotomy of "number go down, make it go up." This, to be honest, is just... very boring design. I know that, ultimately, what determines whether you're alive or dead really does come down to you either having 1HP or 0, but it is the how you get there, and how you deal with it, and the dynamic between the two, that has to be interesting. Right now, neither are quite there. The problem with this is that it would likely involve major changes to how damage is dealt to you and the party. This could possibly mean an upending on the whole damage system, and that's... very unlikely to occur.

We have been at this for more than 10 years now. SE has built a good amount of momentum when it comes to heal design, and it shows no signs of stopping or changing its trajectory... so while I don't want to be all doom-and-gloom, well... I would recommend setting your expectations low. I know mine have been for quite some time now.

I'd say that your comparison, while interesting, is setting the bar a bit too high it's really stretching the comparison.

However, your comment about "number go down, make it go up." does reflect what I would expect if someone was designing a healer from someone who doesn't main a healer, which I understand to be the case here. It come from a much different, and even more self-centered perspective i.e. the recipient of healing who is far more concerned that the healer is going to let them die, or who has one too many let them die.

My own perspective is that healing gets interesting when I have choices, and when I have decisions to make. I don't find that designing jobs for the lowest common denominator, and removing skills on the premise that people can't make decisions to be particularly motivating.

[OliviaLugria]

I always found what made healer fun in the past was juggling all the small things. No mechanic, rotation, or healing upkeep was super demanding, but making sure they all got done at the same time was what made it fun.

They've continously removed these different things to juggle. There isn't mp management, aggro control, a dps rotation, keeping the tank alive, cards to manage, or pet to control.

While previously we had 6 or 7 balls to juggle, we're now closer to 3.

[Hazama999]

I'd say that your comparison, while interesting, is setting the bar a bit too high it's really stretching the comparison.

However, your comment about "number go down, make it go up." does reflect what I would expect if someone was designing a healer from someone who doesn't main a healer, which I understand to be the case here. It come from a much different, and even more self-centered perspective i.e. the recipient of healing who is far more concerned that the healer is going to let them die, or who has one too many let them die.

My own perspective is that healing gets interesting when I have choices, and when I have decisions to make. I don't find that designing jobs for the lowest common denominator, and removing skills on the premise that people can't make decisions to be particularly motivating.

Ha! Figured.

Yeah I'm in full agreement here with your statement on choices.

[Colt47]

I'd say that your comparison, while interesting, is setting the bar a bit too high it's really stretching the comparison.

However, your comment about "number go down, make it go up." does reflect what I would expect if someone was designing a healer from someone who doesn't main a healer, which I understand to be the case here. It come from a much different, and even more self-centered perspective i.e. the recipient of healing who is far more concerned that the healer is going to let them die, or who has one too many let them die.

My own perspective is that healing gets interesting when I have choices, and when I have decisions to make. I don't find that designing jobs for the lowest common denominator, and removing skills on the premise that people can't make decisions to be particularly motivating.

I'm mostly fine with how it is right now. All the stuff I had posted about healing problems are sort of a global thing that impacts both single player and multiplayer, because the reality is few people really like playing the healer archetype even in SINGLE PLAYER games.

[GartredZW]

You gotta love the DPS mains who start playing healer for the quick queues and easy PF spots, and act like they're king of the world because of it.
I just tried to make an M4S group. we finally filled, and started picking our positions. Scholar takes H1, but White Mage doesn't move at all. We're waiting for a minute or so before White Mage just leaves out of nowhere. Scholar leaves too, but I don't blame him given what happens next.
White Mage joins back in a minute later, and goes "Sorry, had to prove a point." I won't give the play by play, but essentially he said that he left because Regen Healer always takes H1, and the Scholar needed to "Learn his place"
Instant Blacklist. I'd rather wait another 20 minutes for two more healers to show up than help someone like that get a clear. (everyone else left after, so I'll get my clear later today, but you get the idea.)
I'd at least **MAYBE** understand if it was the tanks fighting over Main Tank and Off Tank; there's at least some mechanical difference. For healers, it's literally just whether you go left or right.

Add this to the list of reasons why this strike exists. A true healer main would be a better team player who can adapt better. If/When we get some good changes to the role, all the skilled players will start coming back to the role.

[Alice_Rivers]

You know, seeing real world medicine mentioned, I'd love to see a damage/healing system based on that. I don't know how it would work, I don't know if I'd enjoy it if it did exist, but I would still be interested to see it tried.

[ForsakenRoe]

Traditional Poison / Disease: This one will probably be still classed as "boring" by Hazama999. It's literally just an Esuna and forget debuff. ForsakenRoe did suggest a Healing Absorb type debuff that can fit under this category, but you can out heal the variable assigned to it if there are too many. Out healing it would be the solution for a weaker heal absorb plastered on a full party / raid.

To clarify somewhat on this point since I brought up the concept of Heal Absorbs (or Aetherblight, as I'd call it here), it can be boring on its own, but it is also a very good design element to mix into a collection of simultaneous mechanics. Let me explain an example from a dungeon in the new WOW expansion (using Mythic 0's version of the mechanics):

- Every 20-25ish seconds, someone is marked with a hefty DOT (which also reduces movement speed, making it harder to dodge other mechanics). The DOT can be cleansed with the WOW version of Esuna, and has an infinite duration, it lasts until cleansed.

- Upon cleansing this DOT, everyone who didn't have the DOT will be given 1.2m (for context, my best geared healer has about 5m HP) of Heal Absorb. While any HA remains, the player also takes 100k damage per second. In M+, these numbers scale up as the key's difficulty scales.

- At 50% and 0.1%, the boss consumes the entire battlefield space (an airship deck) with shadow, instantly killing anyone who didn't mount up to fly away to dodge the blast. While mounted, you can't heal, and so if there's any HA left, the DOT might end up killing your team, meaning that fast cleansing of the HA is paramount

On its own, 'heal hard' is not necessarily 'interesting'. It's what it allows for (designwise), when combined with other mechanics, that makes it interesting. That, combined with the fact that in WOW, we have a LOT less access to AOE healing. We don't have Medica, or Succor, or Cure3. The healing combo I would use to handle something like the above mechanic, on the healer I main, requires 4 different buttons, with CDs of 10s, 10s, 20s and 30s respectively. If I don't have one of those buttons up (eg the 30s CD hasn't come back yet), then I am required to 'improvise' to fill that gap, something that we don't really have here in FFXIV because we always have Medica/Succor etc to fall back on as a 'last resort'. Our 'challenge' is derived from 'how do I heal this while losing the least amount of damage?', but over there, 'how do I heal this' can sometimes be the whole question

Also, on the subject of UA, 'when this debuff is dispelled, it does damage to the raid' is something I've seen in a fair few raids in WOW, and it'd be nice to see it here, but the devs tend to instead swap the 'dispel method' from casting Esuna (giving Healers full control over 'pop speed'), to 'everyone has to 'pop' their thing by doing some movement thing' (eg break thorn tethers in P4S Curtain Call, stand on fuses in M3S, etc).

Here's a random funny idea I just had while writing this: A mechanic in a raid fight that works like Allagan Rot. It hits 0, you all die. The way to pass the Rot though, is by casting Esuna on the player with it, at which point it jumps to the closest player in proximity. Throw a 'you cannot receive Rot again or you instantly die' debuff on someone for a bit once they're cleansed (so you don't just juggle it back and forth between two players, eg the tanks), there you go, new raid mechanic

You know, seeing real world medicine mentioned, I'd love to see a damage/healing system based on that. I don't know how it would work, I don't know if I'd enjoy it if it did exist, but I would still be interested to see it tried.

SGE's ability names are based on the Four Humours theory of medicine, but A: it's names only, and B: they prioritized 'sounds cool' over 'has thematic sense'. Which is why we have Addersgall gauge (named after Gall Bladder Bile) that is spent on several moves (-Chole, the other bile (I forget which is black and which is yellow)), Haima (blood) as an OGCD that applies a load of layers of shields, and Phlegma (wonder what this one refers to) as 'it does damage'. If we were prioritizing theming, maybe we'd have some system wherein we have 4 gauges, referring to the four humours, and each is spent on their own spender (eg the Blood Humour gauge is spent on Haima/Panhaima, rather than them being 2min CDs). But hey, SGE is such a blank canvas (due to being such a clear copy of SCH for the majority of its actions) that I'm sure we all have our own ideas on what could be added to SGE to give it a design direction of its own (personally, I'd heavily expand Kardia's role in the gameplay)