#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Allegor]

Only a vague statement about job changes coming in 7.1 and more info coming in the part 2 LL.

They did confirm no nerfs though, only buffs, because they don't want to mess up the tuning for the ultimate.

Dia's potency increased from 75 to 80.

[Aravell]

But yeah, I'm not even sure if giving current DPS jobs a "dual role" would get me in there being a "Ninja dodge tank" or "Machinist turned Chemist", or how the idea of dumping healing/mitigation responsibility on DPS is just going to make me avoid playing those jobs that got saddled with it. I mean, compared to my fondness for NIN and MCH, I don't really like playing MNK and BRD as-is, and wouldn't you know it, they've got more support skills than most other DPS. At *best* I like playing RDM as well, but Raises are not a constant thing I need to do (or at all most of the time), and I use my Cure about as much as the healers get to ...and that's kind of the problem with the role right now, isn't it?

This is what I'm trying to get people to understand. There are different types of players and the player types that would gravitate to the DPS role are rarely the types that would also overlap with the support roles. Sure, there are people who play all roles comfortably, but that is not the majority of the playerbase, most people tend to stick to one role and only dabble in others or not touch them at all.

You simply cannot entice a DPS main to become a healer main in large enough numbers to justify cutting off a large number of veterans. Further simplifying healers would only just make more and more unsatisfied healers while not even guaranteeing an influx of new healers. In fact, we've had quite a few new healers asking if the role ever stops being boring, so their approach has very clearly failed.

Although, you might manage to entice some DPS mains over if you rework healers into jobs with deep complex rotations and big damage that just pulses out healing passively, but what's the point of the role at that point?

[Rehayem]

With their track record, they're going to buff tank healing to compensate for all the Healer mains stopping playing Healer.

In before they add more self sustain and shields to DPS as well

[Kes13a]

where even the whole "pure vs. barrier healer" thing seems to have weakened over time.

it didnt really weaken over time as much as was run over by a bus, then had its limbs amputated and then shot to death before it had a chance to really work.

probably because it was too stressful.... or some other BS

[Azurarok]

I had assumed that was what SGE was supposed to do, be the "DPS healer" but it doesn't seem like that was the case, and it plays virtually identical to the rest from what I've read around here.

But that was brought up before as well, that the game *could* have it's super-simple healer (likely WHM), while the other three have differing levels of complexity or just be different *period*, same with how even for a DPS main like myself I obviously don't enjoy *all* DPS jobs because I don't jive with their mechanics or rotation. As much as people bring up homogenization, most DPS at least *feel* different even if the total numbers coming out of them are identical otherwise (broken SMN traits aside), healers don't get that benefit though, where even the whole "pure vs. barrier healer" thing seems to have weakened over time.

My theory has been that it did manage to feel considerably different when they originally planned it out but it fell apart when the savage/ultimate devs shortened Dosis to 1.5s

Eukrasia, Phlegma and Toxicon would've meant much more at least

[Allegor]

My theory has been that it did manage to feel considerably different when they originally planned it out but it fell apart when the savage/ultimate devs shortened Dosis to 1.5s

Eukrasia, Phlegma and Toxicon would've meant much more at least

As much as I like SGE aesthetically, it utterly failed in its very concept though. Needing to press dps spells to trigger not-Regen's heal is redundant if I'm spamming said dps spells anyway. By that logic, even AST is a "dps healer." Toxicon also sounds good on paper, being similar to TBN, but in practice it's just an instant cast Dosis. If it at least left a dot or something it may be more interesting but I digress.

My guess is they were too afraid SGE's damage would need to be on par with tanks (or higher) for the "damage-to-heal" niche to work, and we can't have that.

[Aravell]

I honestly get this vague feeling that SGE was meant to be something more than what we got, it was probably closer to what Yoshida mentioned it would be back in the concept stage.

But then one of the team probably said "Wait a minute, if SCH hard, why SGE also hard?", and then the rest of the team nodded their head in agreement and lobotomised SGE.

[ForsakenRoe]

Just had the realization that SE's approach to healers, of 'what if we try to attract the DPS players to the role, oops we didn't and also we made some of the veterans quit so now the role's stagnating' is very similar to the blockchain/NFT BS they went through. 'Let's sell a load of IPs to get money, and invest it in NFT/Blockchain tech cos it might take off! Oh it didn't, and the general gaming population now sees NFTs as a scam, so now we have a bit of money (but nowhere near what the IPs were actually worth), and like 6 less IPs to work with. Oops'. It'd be at least slightly more palatable, if they were capable of admitting 'that was not a great business decision, we should take steps to remedy it', but they just double down on it instead.

But hey, at least under the new owners, Soul Reaver is allowed to get a HD remaster

But that was brought up before as well, that the game *could* have it's super-simple healer (likely WHM), while the other three have differing levels of complexity or just be different *period*, same with how even for a DPS main like myself I obviously don't enjoy *all* DPS jobs because I don't jive with their mechanics or rotation. As much as people bring up homogenization, most DPS at least *feel* different even if the total numbers coming out of them are identical otherwise (broken SMN traits aside), healers don't get that benefit though, where even the whole "pure vs. barrier healer" thing seems to have weakened over time.

Anyone with any design sense could have told them to drop the Pure/Barrier split in the design phase. They even tried to do it for tanks (splitting them into MT, better at holding the boss and self-defensives), and OT (better at supporting the MT with supplementary CDs like Cover/Intervention/etc). Then they must have had a moment of realization, that 'wait a second, the OT has to take the boss sometimes too, because of tankswaps' and decided to make them all capable of being MT.

By enforcing a Pure/Barrier split, the only thing they do is paint themselves into a corner on what can be added to each job. WHM can't have a more easily accessible party Barrier or Mitigation (both are tied to the same button, Temperance, a 2min CD), because it's a Pure healer. Conversely, you'd expect the same to be true of Barrier Healers (that they struggle to top HP up, and are proficient in preventing it from dropping in the first place), but because of certain HPS checks like Seat of Sacrifice's Doom, they HAVE to have a certain amount of Pure Healing capabilities. So, we end up with this situation we're in now: Double Barrier works (and in certain cases like TOP, is optimal), Double Pure sucks and only works in BIS (often requiring high coordination and certain other non-healer utilities like Magick Barrier to plug holes in the Mit plan).

If I could suggest an idea to SE, it'd be this: Drop the hard split, and swap over to a 'sliding scale' system. The better at 'Pure healing' a job is, the less Barrier capability it has, and vice versa. With this, WHM and SCH can be the champions at the far ends of the scale, masters of Pure and Barrier healing respectively, and AST/SGE can be a bit closer to the middle, leaning towards one side, but not fully abandoning the other. With this 'sliding scale', it becomes much easier to slot a new healer in too, eg one could be added that perfectly straddles Pure and Barrier capability, directly in the centre (I'd suggest a gameplay where the Barrier side is achieved by turning a portion of damage taken into a DOT, and the Pure side is achieved by mainly using HOTs to counteract the delayed damage DOT).

DT's additions give a flicker of hope that they will move away from the Pure Barrier split, at least in gameplay if not in UI. Sun Sign and Divine Caress are clearly Barrier Healing tools, but are on AST and WHM. And Seraphism allows SCH to pump out AOE GCD healing that is stronger than Cure3, for only 2/3 the MP cost of Cure3.

Lastly, I don't necessarily agree that we should have a 'super simple healer (likely WHM)' and 3 with differing levels of complexity. Instead, I think we should have 4 healers, where the barrier to entry is 'super simple', and the skill ceiling of all four is somewhere akin to Stormblood Scholar's skill ceiling. I've mentioned as much (and how to get there designwise) multiple times, and it looks like it's time to mention it again. If someone wants to play WHM (as I've designed it in that thread) and have very chill gameplay, they could just spam Glare (as we do now mostly) and still perform well. In fact, if they play as they do now (refresh Dia when it is needed, press Glare if not), that'd be 95-98% of the effectiveness of the 'fully optimized' gameplay. If they want to be a WHM main and have depth in their journey to optimize, however, said design would offer additional gameplay systems and loops to allow for them to do so. Think about a game like DMC. As Dante, you can probably beat the game by just using Swordmaster. But for those who want to 'get crazy', you can do the whole 'TrickGunSwordGunRoyalGuardTrickSwordRoyalGun' crazy combos. The game has a low skill floor (be in Swordmaster and press 'attack'), and a massive skill ceiling (TrickSwordGunSword), and that is the design direction I believe would best suit job design here. Low skill floor is the way to get players into the role, High skill ceiling is the enticement to keep them enjoying the role and feeling like there's more to learn to master it

I just now realize that the 'optimal' SCH gameplay I made in that thread, is kind of like the DMC TrickSwordGun thing (albeit at a much slower pace due to the pace of FFXIV combat). And like DMC, the player would be able to simply stay in one 'stance' the whole time and still beat all the content in the game (but those who want to SwordGunTrickGun, would be able to)

But then one of the team probably said "Wait a minute, if SCH hard, why SGE also hard?", and then the rest of the team nodded their head in agreement and lobotomised SGE.

Funny thing is, 'job is hard' and 'job is fun' don't need to be intrinsically linked like that. Job can be 'not so hard' and still be fun. I think SGE with a burst window (akin to Enshroud, or now Reawaken) would be fun, but I don't think it'd necessarily be 'hard'. In the same way that, if we had Pankardia at like level 52-58 (instead of Philosophia giving the effect at 100), it'd be a more interesting way to heal, and it wouldn't necessarily be 'harder' per se, because if Pankardia isn't enough to heal the team in time, we have like 6 other OGCDs we could use to supplement it. If anything, the 'hard' part is actually designing the job to be forgiving, not playing it, but A: it's literally what SE is getting paid for, and B: I'm a goober on the internet, and while it might be quite egotistical for me to say, I think I did a pretty good job of illustrating 'how we can make X healer more 'fun to play' at all levels of gameplay, without making it require a PHD'

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I will never agree to the notion of keeping WHM the 'stupid' of the role. See how well that flows on SMN within caster role lol.

If people want to play 'simple healer' there's already one in the game: Conjurer. Use that. Or suck it up and play inoptimally on any 4 healers. You don't need to be performing at 101% at all times. That's just unrealistic.

[Aravell]

I will never agree to the notion of keeping WHM the 'stupid' of the role. See how well that flows on SMN within caster role lol.

If people want to play 'simple healer' there's already one in the game: Conjurer. Use that. Or suck it up and play inoptimally on any 4 healers. You don't need to be performing at 101% at all times. That's just unrealistic.

It's because the community have shifted the collective opinion to "Anything that loses me even 1 damage per minute is the devil and needs to be purged from the game and never spoken of again".

Look at all the tanks who reject any suggestion of making their multitude of free healing (not you DRK) a little bit less free. Look at all the healers in PF that kick and scream when you suggest that maybe a GCD heal would be good at some point. Look at all the casters or melee who get annoyed when you ask them to Addle/Feint because they have a minor clip to their GCD.

The community is so poisoned by the "damage is everything and anything that loses me damage can die in the fire" mindset that it's probably now unsalvageable. To some people, a 95 on the numbers website isn't a good run, it's the baseline.