#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[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?

[Kes13a]

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.

hey. you arent alone in being a "super casual". I would use that term to describe myself as well. the only thing "optimized" would be my desk I play at, and its a holy mess. my partner does savage etc and I live vicariously through them, I have seen the inside of savages by watching them if their static streams them playing. but I dont do them since I have a hard time grasping mechanics, I have what I call "rng feet" that may, by sheer random chance, have me in the right place to avoid something.

The point of this strike is not to make everyone have to crunch numbers, to always have smooth flawless runs etc, but to make things fun and interesting. playing games is supposed to be fun. the problem as someone has said, the way encounters are designed. if healers are meant to contribute damage, having more damage options is not going to make healing more complicated or challenging. a couple extra options wont make or break you especially since using them are still your choice. if healers are just supposed to heal, then having more party damage wont change much either because you are still going to be choosing to heal or not.

the encounter design, SE needs to work on. if there is no place to stand to cast heals etc, then its going to be a bad run, especially if they ramp up party or raid wide damage.

job design decisions need to be revisited. such as giving an already virtually unkillable tank an AOE heal. or a dps the same thing? how long before tanks get a raise and kill of healers for good?

the best time to push back against changes is while there is time. I think the continual simplification of jobs isnt good for you, me or anyone else. and I empathize with you 100% being a casual. the point of all this isnt to make things harder for us or other people that enjoy healing, its too make sure we still have a role we enjoy.

[Tigore]

Yeah. ForsakeRoe has some neat ideas to look at from the last time I checked. You wouldn't be alone with the Strayborough first boss opinion. From the last few weeks, the healer I was with was usually cursing it by saying they look forward to the Expert roulette dumping the dungeon away. Even as melee for me, I sometimes can't even hit the boss except for sometimes using my slightly weaker ranged attacks. So even though getting grabbed by the adds stuns us for 8s, the stunned feeling is not very different from having to disengage from the boss to avoid everything in all directions. One may think a VPR would laugh at this with Uncoiled Fury, but I am actually using the base Writhing Snap because I still can't get in over several GCDs. Having a lag spike makes it worse, of course since now you see the add catch you from an extended 8 - 10 yalms away instead of melee range from your end. It doesn't sound bad on paper, but the adds in practice are nearly around 3 - 15 yalms apart from each other with 5-ish at once frequently. If Square and CS3 wants to keep the mechanic, they may need to tone it down with half of the adds in comparison. It may be an Expert, but it's supposed to be a casual end game option.

For the record, I wasn't trying to advocate for more of those troll adds in Strayborough. I think it went too far into that pendulum swing of "avoidable dance mechs" for content in general. Since it causes different issues for casuals and veterans with a huge delta for damage taken. If nobody gets hit, the boss is doing "almost no damage" and the healer is yawning for 10 seconds. If everyone gets hit, it is emergency mode with Medica 3 + Asylum + Regen on high vuln stack players. Possibly even Medica / Cure 3 usage with the lilies dried up. The point I was making is some of the mechs could be switched to unavoidable pulses of damage that deal less than those dance mechs with no vuln stacks. Of course, ForsakenRoe has the heal absorb idea that can be healed through or dispelled with Esuna. That way, we have some moments to actually stop to heal without requiring an emergency mode of mistakes to stress out on.

The tanks having very high sustain will be something to look at too. Although we might not need to nerf them much if the encounter damage is designed around the presence of those tools. Well, except WAR. There is no justification for Bloodwhetting and Raw Intuition to fully heal them from 10-100% in one GCD because they hit 8 - 10 enemies at once. Even during Endwalker when my WAR class had fresh gear for our first 90 story dungeon, my friend from savage using SGE said he still didn't need to heal me much. If that is not enough proof, Xeno also made a video of not needing the healers and also not wanting our help during a Savage run. Whether he was just joking or not with an outrageous sounding point, he was still right in a way.

[GartredZW]

maybe it's not that great to play a turret job in a game that keeps demanding more and more mobility?

Personally, I'll put equal blame on the average pseudo-parser and the dev team.
What I mean by pseudo-parser is someone who tries to optimize as far as it's convenient, and anything that isn't convenient is a problem that the dev team have to fix.
I signed up for Black Mage when I first started playing because I wanted to be the one with long cast times and big powerful hits. I don't care if I need to not do anything for a couple seconds to move out of a mechanic. Minimizing that downtime was a lot of fun trying to master.
But then someone took the ever reliable "Always Be Casting" way too literally, and complained that certain casters weren't viable because they couldn't always be casting. They want to optimize the job, but not if it means minimizing movement time to do it. They see the lack of mobility as a bug instead of a feature.
Now, at level 100 Black Mage, in a normal 2 minute rotation without overcapping on resources, we get roughly 34 casts out of 48 GCDs instant. (this doesn't account for leylines speeding up your GCD, or saving polyglot and triplecast to use outside of this window, but you get the point.)
That's completely insane if you ask me. I also did the math for Endwalker, and it's only 21 out of 48. Still pretty high, but at the very least it's not almost three out of every four casts that you don't even need to cast on this immobile caster class.

If you're someone who says that it's not fun to play a job that needs to stand still to deal damage in a game that forces you to move sometimes, I'd suggest playing Dancer.
I know I kind of got off track of healers here, but I'm just still mad about what they've been doing to my baby this expansion.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]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

Well there you have it. That's the consequences of dev's approach to shove majority of difficulty to encounters. Going down this path, what do you think will happen to the hypothetical 'hypercasuals' when they couldn't deal with... say, "Strayborough on steroid"-in their roulette? It doesn't matter what job they pick up, they'll just get eviscerated (unless if they're a tank maybe, lol).

So how about we tone that down and dial back the job gameplay difficulty so we can have both in moderation? :P

[...]If you're someone who says that it's not fun to play a job that needs to stand still to deal damage in a game that forces you to move sometimes, I'd suggest playing Dancer.
I know I kind of got off track of healers here, but I'm just still mad about what they've been doing to my baby this expansion.

This is precisely why I despise the Trashologification done to healers back in 6.0. Having to think even in E5N thunderstorm phase? Anybody remember that? Hell no we can't have that!

Looking at their recent decision to further reduce Holy cast time, they've done anything but 'adding stress' back to the gameplay, which goes against what they've stated.

[GartredZW]

Looking at their recent decision to further reduce Holy cast time, they've done anything but 'adding stress' back to the gameplay, which goes against what they've stated.

I don't know about you, but I'm stressed as hell. With the way this game is going, class design wise, the best we can hope for right now is our class not even being included in the patch notes for more than slight potency adjustments.
Maybe Machinist players have it better than we thought.

[Gwenkatsu]

The only thing I’m gonna roast you for is after 969 pages people are still coming in here...

I hope you did not expect me to read through 969 pages in this thread. To be honest, I stumbled in here by accident, and when I saw someone on the last page asking for a casual's insight, I thought that this could be my 15 minutes of fame

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'

Then I got everything here wrong, maybe I really should have read through all those pages
If it tones down the overwhelming mechanical mess FF14 dungeons are becoming, I'm all for more complex classes. This is something I can handle, while the crazy lightshow some of the fights are these days is just getting too much for me. Zeromus felt like juggling seven glasses while someone shoots a laser pointer at my eyes in random intervals. Not fun. Not fun at all.

Sorry for derailing this thread with my rant about annoying dungeon mechanics.

[Somnolence]

Rin just dropped meaty healer issues video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTT5LGWt35k