#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[RhodesToRome]

1) Healing should be fun for everyone, not just the high-end. Jobs should still feel relevant in "easy" content. Dungeons were easy in HW. But healers felt critical back then. The mechanics in damage output in HW dungeons aren't higher than EW dungeons. In fact they are actually often much lower. But healing was way more important back then. Healerless HW dungeon runs can't be pulled off by random midcore players.

3) I agree that encounter design should be reworked as well, but job design is still the principal problem because we have very simple points of comparison: HW dungeons required far more healing during that era, while EW dungeons do not. Both were not mechanically complex at all. The job kits on healers back in HW also meant that there were many things you can do to optimize your job even if all the mechanics were simple, which added to the fun.

Truthfully, I'm struggling a bit to follow your train of thought here. You say that dungeons in HW were easy, but healers still felt critical. You say that mechanic damage output in HW was similar to EW, but HW required far more healing. That HW dungeons weren't complex, but a midcore group could not pull off a healerless dungeon run.

These statements are honestly just reaffirming my point that the main culprit is the battle content. As all of the jobs have gotten stronger, a lot of the content has not kept pace. Healers have so many tools, but nothing to use them on. Instead of trying to go back to "the good old days", I'd prefer to move forward with the current philosophy surrounding job design and see how else players can be engaged.

Interviews from the recent Media Tour have said that they are planning to focus more on job identity starting next expansion (and possibly during the patches leading up to it), so maybe you'll get your wish with added complexity to the Healer jobs. I just hope to god they don't start heading back to where the game was in HW/ARR. I personally didn't raid during those times, but from everything I've heard and read, the best words I can use to describe it are "obtuse" and "inconsistent". Some jobs didn't even function properly and were not even allowed in a group.

2) You didn't seem to have done high-end content before ShB. You probably don't have first-hand experience with how much more optimization there was in HW/SB healing, and how much more skill you required back then.

If you want to look up my logs feel free to pop into the Discord and I'll prove to you my rank 4 AST in SB.

As an aside, I did raid during StB (starting playing in HW casually) on a different character. But that's not really important and I'd rather not get into a measuring contest.

[HighlanderClone]

Truthfully, I'm struggling a bit to follow your train of thought here. You say that dungeons in HW were easy, but healers still felt critical.

HW dungeons are easy, but healers felt critical because without healers everyone would die. A healer forgetting to heal means everyone would die.

Yes, pressing Medica II every once in a while was easy, but if you did not do it everyone would die. That's why the content can be easy but the job is still critical.

You say that mechanic damage output in HW was similar to EW, but HW required far more healing.

Yes, because tanks and DPS had very little self-sustain. On top of that your healing oGCDs were also much more limited and less powerful, which means you required far more healing casts and healing actions.

That HW dungeons weren't complex, but a midcore group could not pull off a healerless dungeon run.

Yes? It is not hard to heal a dungeon and making sure everyone stays alive. They weren't complex. But because tanks and DPS had little self-sustain, most people couldn't pull off a healerless dungeon run. Not sure how much simpler I can explain this. Was it hard to heal through Cutter's Cry? Was Cutter's Cry a hard dungeon? OK, go try it healerless. It'll be far harder than doing any of the EW dungeons healerless.

Instead of trying to go back to "the good old days", I'd prefer to move forward with the current philosophy surrounding job design and see how else players can be engaged.

When content and job design are regressing, going back to the "good old days" is a positive. The old days were good. There is nothing wrong with pining for the good old days when the game was more engaging in the past. The current philosophy is something even Yoshi P regrets pursuing. Even the developer team does not want to move forward with the current philosophy. They want to go back, maybe not entirely to SB but it still shows that there is merit to the "good old days".

I personally didn't raid during those times, but from everything I've heard and read, the best words I can use to describe it are "obtuse" and "inconsistent".

OK, maybe you believe /r/ffxivdiscussion or somewhere else is the pinnacle of quality gameplay discussion and so believe everything you've read. But I've seen absolutely NO ONE make an effort to disentangle HW's objectively poor job clunkiness, horrible job QoL like stance switching on tanks, and pointless systems like accuracy, versus the superior job identity, higher skill ceilings, engaging and unique gameplay like SMN's DoT extension or AST's time mage gameplay. It's easy to dismiss the pining for HW/SB as rose-tinted glasses, but it's much harder for people to justify why the positive aspects of the previous expansions cannot be brought back into modern FF14. It's so hard that nobody ever tries to tackle it and resort to the lazy attempt to dismiss everything as nostalgia.

But that's not really important and I'd rather not get into a measuring contest.

OK?

I've also simultaneously been looking up people's characters to see what kind of content they are engaging in. And, to no surprise, the vast majority of the players complaining here are not doing high end content (Savage, Ultimate, and Criterion Savage). Maybe some Extremes here and there, but for the most part they do not seem to be raiding.

As someone who has healed Savage and some Ultimate, I do not share most of the sentiments voiced in this post.

[RhodesToRome]

When content and job design are regressing, going back to the "good old days" is a positive. The old days were good. There is nothing wrong with pining for the good old days when the game was more engaging in the past. The current philosophy is something even Yoshi P regrets pursuing. Even the developer team does not want to move forward with the current philosophy. They want to go back, maybe not entirely to SB but it still shows that there is merit to the "good old days".

OK, maybe you believe /r/ffxivdiscussion or somewhere else is the pinnacle of quality gameplay discussion and so believe everything you've read. But I've seen absolutely NO ONE make an effort to disentangle HW's objectively poor job clunkiness, horrible job QoL like stance switching on tanks, and pointless systems like accuracy, versus the superior job identity, higher skill ceilings, engaging and unique gameplay like SMN's DoT extension or AST's time mage gameplay. It's easy to dismiss the pining for HW/SB as rose-tinted glasses, but it's much harder for people to justify why the positive aspects of the previous expansions cannot be brought back into modern FF14. It's so hard that nobody ever tries to tackle it and resort to the lazy attempt to dismiss everything as nostalgia.

The interesting thing is you don't actually know that they want to "go back", and certainly not where they want to "go back" to. Focusing more on job identity could mean so many things. It's such a general sentiment that we can only speculate as to what that would look like and where they would take their inspiration from.

And I'm sorry, but it is absolutely rose-tinted glasses. I'm very confident that a majority of the playerbase, if given the choice, would prefer the game in its current iteration over HW. I could absolutely see an argument for some aspects of StB, but there were issues there that I would not like to see repeated.

You also seem to have missed my point when I mentioned the types of players and content that the complaints are coming from. Stating that I believe the majority of the responses here are from more casual players is not a knock against them, but more so pointing out where these problems are more obvious because they cover a wider range of the playerbase compared to the higher end content. It certainly was not intended to demean them or somehow prove I was better.

[GoodPerson]

-snip-

I do both savage, ultimates, and casual content alike with a biased towards healing endgame content. The core issues still stems from lack of engagement or dopamine hits. Even in ultimates/extremes or in general "higher end" content, healing is not as difficult nor engaging in action as it is just in planning. "What will i do in response to this particular scripted raidwide. Do i need to pair it with something else?"

These leads to pretty much just pressing 1 or 2 OGCDs coupled with whatever particular raid-wide or mechanic, barring heal checks or particularly heavy healing segments(say, Eden 4) . Which then means, you're spending over half the counter exclusively pressing a Glare/Dia equivalent.

Whether the answer is DPS buttons, or a higher necessity for healing, either in context to more complex healing rotations or more damage to targets beyond the tank, I'm not sure, though personally I prefer the latter. I played WoW doing Mythic+ dungeons And mythic/Heroic raiding(Equivalent to Variant/Criterion dungeons & Ultimates) for about 6 months playing Preservation Evoker, and having to keep my cooldowns, mana, and HPS rotations on a tight budget was the most fun I've had in a MMO healing in a long while. In particular the combo-based healing was really entertaining, plus , actually pretty strong and fun CD damage abilities to keep off cd and in some cases, empowering your healing . Content outside of endgame in WoW (Basically roulette tier), was still fun to do as a healer while keeping me decently engaged as if I was playing a DPS in say, XIV.

Really I just want Roulettes to feel fun regardless if I'm playing Tank, Dps, or Healer. But as it stands, healing in roulettes is genuinely the most mind-numbing content one can engage in in XIV atm. There's no progression, depth, or even just plain mindless fun. The way I get my kicks on the off-chance I play healer is when I'm playing with friends and just straight up play as wrong as I possibly can. Or playing around with Rescue lmao. OR very rarely, being able to get off a big LB3 and save a wipe.

[Supersnow845]

^the problem with savage content comes from the fact that even in content designed to test you to your near limits we are still spending 80% of our casts on our filler spell and our dot (and that’s inclusive of healing oGCD’s and other damage options like phlegma and assize)

Sure you can up damage and that’s a good thing to do but the slow methodical of 14’s combat means that you’ll struggle to get healers to spend more than 50% of a savage raid healing, should there not be better options for downtime in this other 50-80%

It doesn’t even have to be actual damage it could be buffs and debuffs and the like, just something that’s not broil

However i don’t think it’s wrong for casual players to ask for improvements to the casual experience even if they don’t do high end content, I mean you can look at my logs but it won’t show much, my logs on Andreas are outdated because this isn’t my raiding main (though I’m not disappointed with the EW logs I have on this character my raiding main regularly gets purples), however I don’t think damage experience is necesssry to have an opinion on this

[Oizen]

Normal content is simply too easy, and unlike most I do actually view this as a problem. A problem thats very difficult to solve because this game does not teach you how to play it in any regard, so raising the difficulty is a hard thing to do because the game has a lot of catch up to do in order to expect more of its playerbase. Which is probably why SE doesn't view this as a real concern.

I honestly cant even remember if this game explains the concept of global cooldowns or weaving to you.

[KageTokage]

Normal content is simply too easy, and unlike most I do actually view this as a problem. A problem thats very difficult to solve because this game does not teach you how to play it in any regard, so raising the difficulty is a hard thing to do because the game has a lot of catch up to do in order to expect more of its playerbase. Which is probably why SE doesn't view this as a real concern.

I honestly cant even remember if this game explains the concept of global cooldowns or weaving to you.

Normal content doesn't do a good job of conditioning people even for later normal content.

I've had to practically solo heal/mit heal check mechanics like Harrowing Hell on multiple occasions because people are wholly unconditioned to anything resembling such in prior content.

[Oizen]

Normal content doesn't do a good job of conditioning people even for later normal content.

I've had to practically solo heal/mit heal check mechanics like Harrowing Hell on multiple occasions because people are wholly unconditioned to anything resembling such in prior content.

I agree, and in general what little this game does do is very bad at it. Its kinda just throwing very vague explanations in wordy unvoiced chat bubbles.
The hall of novices is honestly a joke, for tanks it teaches you combo actions and to have stance on, thats literally it.
Beyond that a lot of buttons in this game aren't rewarding to press, or at least they're not satisfying, I imagine if rampart felt good with a more persistent animation, changed how damage rolls to show you're taking less damage (like block/parry does) or even just gave it a different sound on impact people would probably learn on their own. Instead I find they kinda go for systems where the game kinda plays itself (Trusts for example, or even traits like Tank Mastery), leading to a lot of people with max level characters who never even learn how to play the job they picked.

I do not play healers, which is why I'm talking from a tank perspective, but I assume its basically the same thing or not at least a very similar situation

[Kes13a]

I agree, and in general what little this game does do is very bad at it. Its kinda just throwing very vague explanations in wordy unvoiced chat bubbles.
The hall of novices is honestly a joke, for tanks it teaches you combo actions and to have stance on, thats literally it.
Beyond that a lot of buttons in this game aren't rewarding to press, or at least they're not satisfying, I imagine if rampart felt good with a more persistent animation, changed how damage rolls to show you're taking less damage (like block/parry does) or even just gave it a different sound on impact people would probably learn on their own. Instead I find they kinda go for systems where the game kinda plays itself (Trusts for example, or even traits like Tank Mastery), leading to a lot of people with max level characters who never even learn how to play the job they picked.

I do not play healers, which is why I'm talking from a tank perspective, but I assume its basically the same thing or not at least a very similar situation

the hall of Novices for healers, if I can remember, isnt much better. as many have said, in many different threads, the game itself, is not designed to make people become more skilled. it is more and more apparent that the need to be skilled left some time ago, and what we are left with is just the need to be able to slog it through to cap. for normal game play, if you have any skill, its likely because you did some research and learned from experience, its not because SE provided any skill plateaus to master. I mean, I know they want everyone to be able to do msq and experience the story, but lets be honest, at this point you could teach a turnip to make it to level cap in any role or job. well, maybe not blm, but give it time...

[localareanetwork]

Normal content is simply too easy, and unlike most I do actually view this as a problem. A problem thats very difficult to solve because this game does not teach you how to play it in any regard, so raising the difficulty is a hard thing to do because the game has a lot of catch up to do in order to expect more of its playerbase. Which is probably why SE doesn't view this as a real concern.

I honestly cant even remember if this game explains the concept of global cooldowns or weaving to you.

I think just making healer kits in general more interesting would be a better solution than making a dungeon stat check you harder by doing more damage, most of the time queueing a dungeon regardless of role people are there to get it over with, especially if it's a roulette. Bad healers as it is now already make them a pain, having a bad healer in a dungeon where they actually have to heal would cause people to just leave the duty. Make their abilities and damage methods more interesting. You're not meant to use your entire healing ability in a dungeon since that stuff is balanced around Ultimate, so that makes sense to me at least.