#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[IDontPetLalas]

Why did they decide to have casters in the first place then if they were gonna design fights that require too much mobility to play one? They're the ones creating the issuse in the first place.

You can actually reward good gameplay with more mobility. Or you can design fights that take into consideration the fact that the game you're making has caster jobs. Or you can stop being so obsessed with the 2min meta that you account casters having to move sometimes and mess their rotation/uptime.

There are a number of ways to solve the issue without just handing out free mobility. And we're talking about Holy... how many Ultimates and Savages require so much Holy spam while moving anyway?

I was probably being unclear- first of all, I wasn't referring specially to Holy as there has be more than one change that affected cast times. Secondly, I'm not by any stretch an expert in game design, I did however main a caster (similar to a BLM by the way) for years , so I'm very familiar with traditional casters with reduced mobility.

I'm not posting to defend any design decisions, I would say that I expect that Square has to balance all the people who were complaining that encounters were stale and boring and people who want balanced jobs, those who want simple jobs, and those who want some skill expression. Personally, I really am more on the "create fun jobs that with some complexity, and reward skill" and less of a "how many AOEs can I dodge / how well can skills be aligned per "x" meta then sleep" person.

[Tigore]

I am more neutral in the decision for Holy to universally get a shorter cast time too. I have dealt with the longer cast version just fine in the past. I was more of trying to digest what goal was being accomplished by Square and what thinking process they are going through.

In any case, there may be an idea to make turret casters work while also adding mobility. We could explore the idea of move casting cooldowns. Shamans in Warcraft still have their 2 minute-ish cooldown that lets them move for around 15s for casting. Mages used to have single use ones with 3 charges (Ice Floes) as a talent choice.

[Supersnow845]

It just seems like a decision by tank and melee mains who are almost wholly unaffected by DDR design deciding what’s better for the casters at the expense of the casters themselves

As a “turret caster” I don’t want infinite mobility nor do I want fight designs that necessitate it

Every decision they make with the jobs makes me more and more convinced this game is designed by and for tank and melee mains. PCT is just the current “pity anomaly” they allow to be good so their bias isn’t as clear

[Aravell]

I just want to point out that the change to the cast time for Holy actually did have some basis, surprisingly.

I've seen quite a number of people complain about being unable to weave Assize or a Tetra/Benison on the tank while spamming Holy without clipping, so there is actually a reasoning for the change (whether or not it's good reasoning is another matter).

No, what truly baffles people this time is the DRG changes. That one is the one that actually no one asked for.

[Kaliesto]

I just want to point out that the change to the cast time for Holy actually did have some basis, surprisingly.

I've seen quite a number of people complain about being unable to weave Assize or a Tetra/Benison on the tank while spamming Holy without clipping, so there is actually a reasoning for the change (whether or not it's good reasoning is another matter).

No, what truly baffles people this time is the DRG changes. That one is the one that actually no one asked for.

Yeah who even asked for that change?

[Supersnow845]

I just want to point out that the change to the cast time for Holy actually did have some basis, surprisingly.

I've seen quite a number of people complain about being unable to weave Assize or a Tetra/Benison on the tank while spamming Holy without clipping, so there is actually a reasoning for the change (whether or not it's good reasoning is another matter).

No, what truly baffles people this time is the DRG changes. That one is the one that actually no one asked for.

Isn’t that……you know what Lily’s are for

[Tigore]

The change to reduce the Nastrond charges from 3 to 1? Not even sure. I only notice a few DRG players say they are loaded with oGCD casts for their opener in the past. Whether they liked it or not ... I would guess more of them liked being busy with lots of oGCDs. It does seem like the one who decided the melee changes likes the SAM the best with a change of animation to the repeated Tendo Kaeshi Setsugekka. Not saying they shouldn't have, but the other melee should get similar care.

And ... MCH didn't get what they needed again. Auto Crossbow still doesn't reduce cooldown timers of Double Check and Checkmate. Flamethrower still doesn't look good. It could very easily be the AoE battery charger like Air Anchor is with big heat gauge charging and the players suggested an additional explosion burst with the lackluster Bio DoT being present.

[Gwenkatsu]

The problem is mostly how we reach out to the casuals who are silent about this. Most of them probably don't know or care this site exists, so we and Square can only guess what they are thinking unless they are actually in party with our characters.

Since you asked... super casual here. I'm playing FF14 for years, never set a foot into anything the game did not ask me to do (i.e. blue quest icon). No savage, extreme, mythic, absurd, unreasonable, or whatever it's called these days The raids I played on normal are some of the most beautiful places in the game (Ivalice), but the mechanics are counterintuitive and unfun, so I do not even think about setting my foot into harder content.


I like healing since I started playing healers back in WoW/WotLK. I also like the healer roles in FF14, and am fine with the state they're in. I don't involve in theory crafting, so I have no idea if spell X is 2.8579% more effective in situation A, B, or C... nor do I care. And as long as the people in my groups know what they're doing, I can do a decent amount of damage while keeping everyone alive (this does not include the Perfect Legend DD running ahead of the tank, pulling 5 groups, then dying graciously at the next wall before anyone can even reach them ).


And now I stopped healing completely for the simple reason that the game's mechanics are getting too complicated for me. Golbez, Zeromus, and now Strayborough first boss - I cannot for the live of me survive this guys. Strayborouh is the newest and the worst: I tried with players, with NPCs, watched videos, but I just cannot get beyond this guy. And whenever I died as a healer with no RDM or SUM around, it was a wipe. So much for the forum's theory that healers are useless. Maybe on the level you're all playing on, but the people I get mixed with in roulettes definitely need them... and I cannot play the role any longer in what I consider as my personal endgame. This sucks.


And if you all get your way to make the healer role more challenging complicated, I guess this will be the end of me playing my favourite role at all. I hate being a carry or leaving groups, but this is where I'm at now (whenever Strayborough pops up in the extreme roulette I'm instantly gone, I just refuse wasting my time in this ****hole - consider this to be my very personal strike).

tl;dr: healers are ok, but it feels like raid encounter design is more and more spilling over into normal dungeons, making them an unplayable mess.

Of course that's just my 5 cents, so have fun roasting me for good

[Supersnow845]

snip

The only thing I’m gonna roast you for is after 969 pages people are still coming in here thinking we want the skill floor raised when we simply want the skill ceiling to be raised so that those of us who are comfortable with what you struggle with still have something interesting to do while you aren’t locked out of content you enjoy either

If anything your problem with the changing design of dungeons is a reflection of the strikes overarching opinion about the jobs relation to savage in that we are sick of 99.9% of the games complexity being shoved onto the encounters with little complexity in the jobs, your problem is similar, the dungeon boss design is approaching the point of becoming too complex for you as a compensation for the lack of complexity in the jobs. That’s certainly not a bad opinion

[ForsakenRoe]

And if you all get your way to make the healer role more challenging complicated, I guess this will be the end of me playing my favourite role at all. I hate being a carry or leaving groups, but this is where I'm at now (whenever Strayborough pops up in the extreme roulette I'm instantly gone, I just refuse wasting my time in this ****hole - consider this to be my very personal strike).

tl;dr: healers are ok, but it feels like raid encounter design is more and more spilling over into normal dungeons, making them an unplayable mess.

Of course that's just my 5 cents, so have fun roasting me for good

As mentioned, this is the inevitable end result of following the logic of 'if we make jobs less complex, we can make encounters have more complexity'

Funny thing is, it's possible to design Healers to be more challenging, or complicated, or whatever descriptor, at the high end only, without affecting the low end's accessibility. Here's an example, from my megathread:

On WHM, we reduce the Duration of the DOT from 30s, to 12s. Additionally, we add Water/Banish as an instantcast GCD attack with a 15s CD, that has 40p more potency than the Stone/Glare variant you have at that time.

On the surface, it sounds more complex to deal damage as a WHM with these changes, and that is a correct assessment when it comes to optimizing damage. For someone who doesn't care about all that guff, the additional times they're pressing the DOT, and the times they're pressing the Water spell, those are instant spells, so instead of the current gameplay loop where each minute we have 2 Dia casts, that would become 5 Dia casts and 4 Banish casts, vastly increasing how much the player can move, which makes dealing their damage during high movement situations (for example, Strayborough's first boss) easier. Additionally, by balancing the potencies carefully, we can make the gain of doing 'the fully optimal rotation' be small (but still relevant, because any getting any gain you can is what makes something 'optimal'), while also keeping the amount 'lost' by not playing 'optimally', super low. For example, I did the maths a long time ago, and if you played this idea (Dia 12s duration, new attack every 15s) with the same logic as you do now (that is, 'refresh DOT whenever it falls off, press Glare otherwise') and ignored the new damage button entirely, you'd get 98% of the damage output that the 'fully optimized' version of the rotation would do. Players would not only be able to do 'spam Glare, ignore DOT' and clear the story/24man/roulettes as they can now, they'd actually be losing less damage by doing so compared to the current version of the game.

Also, with adding more damage buttons (that we've established are 'mathematically optional'), comes being able to create new systems and synergies which utilize them. For example, one of the keystones of the linked WHM design is the new gauge, which fills when you deal damage or cast healing spells (and for those players who prefer to press healing spells, it's got you covered, as that builds the gauge much faster). And 50 gauge would be spent on a powerful AOE healing action, which is also instantcast. So, instead of having access to 4 instant cast spells when you need to heal an ally quickly (via Lilies/Swiftcast), with this you could have up to 6 (Lilies/Swiftcast/2 Gauge spenders), and the reworked Thin Air would allow you to get another two more instantcasts. All of this would serve to make the WHM more 'accessible', or 'easier to execute', but would also give it 'more to optimize around', theoretically satisfying both the players who want it to remain simple to execute, and the players who want it to have more depth to optimize around.

In fact, on the subject of instantcasts and mobility, the 'fully optimized' rotation for the design I made linked above, more of its GCDs are spent on instantcasts, than are spent casting. Some might consider that a bad thing, considering Healers are meant to be 'a form of Caster', and some think that WHM should be the 'turret healer', but if SE wants to go with making it the 'easy to play, easy to learn' Healer, hey I'd double down on that and make it easier to play, easier to learn, and still give it more depth for those who seek it. Any fanmade design I come up with can't help with the first boss of Strayborough though, because while I can come up with design ideas to help players keep damage while moving, or help maintain their MP, or help them better protect their allies, I can't do much about the whole 'you got Nogg'd and now you can't press any actions for 8 seconds' thing

If anything your problem with the changing design of dungeons is a reflection of the strikes overarching opinion about the jobs relation to savage in that we are sick of 99.9% of the games complexity being shoved onto the encounters with little complexity in the jobs, your problem is similar, the dungeon boss design is approaching the point of becoming too complex for you as a compensation for the lack of complexity in the jobs. That’s certainly not a bad opinion

I did the 24man yesterday (blind), and I have to say, the player we're responding to has an absolutely solid point, because wtf was that last boss? I mean, we cleared it without wiping, but I can't imagine a player with the credentials that this one has given about themselves, having a fun time with that raid. AOEs on top of AOEs, having to look at the Boss's model to see a 'tell', having to look at the sides of the arena to see a 'tell' while also looking at the Boss in the middle and HIS 'tell' and processing both at once? A lot of us here are used to it because that's 'our world', we live in that kind of environment via Savage, or Extremes, or Ultimates, but for someone who's just looking to do the MSQ and check out the 24man, the amount of visual BS going on is reaching, like, a singularity of sorts. At this point, it's less about fighting a boss, and more about fighting our own retinal nerves as they try to process wtf we're looking at

Then we look at... IDK, Void Ark? Rabanastre? Previous, Pre-SHB 24mans (especially first-tier ones as Jeuno is) were nowhere near as bad for visual clarity as this, like what would be the most 'look at 3 different things and interpret where the AOEs will be' thing from back then, Hashmal's pillars?