#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Rolder50]

Adding on to the accessibility argument, I thought that is what Trusts are for? If you really need the help, then the NPCs can and will straight up do the dungeon for you.

[aquarys]

older does not mean they are incapable. at this point SE is about one step away from catering to turnips in the field. I fall into the "older" category... and once I cannot game, I will take up a different game, because at my age, I dont want the equivalent of tapioca pudding every time I log in. I want something to KEEP my brain active... not a snooze fest.
do we start granting "accessibility" to people that are barely capable of turning on their computer or console? maybe we can have someone visit to do it for them.

once it gets to the point where every disability is catered to, then there is no more "normal" content. it is a race to see who drools the least while drinking the koolaid.

I kind of hard disagree with that. I think that SE did the right thing by putting accessibility first in their content design, especially since FFXIV has a MSQ system that is not optional and cannot have certain dungeons or trials skipped, such as in WoW, where people can just not do certain content to progress the story.

[ForsakenRoe]

Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if SE just develops two different kits per class. A simple one that's perfectly capable of clearing casual content and an advanced one that you can select/toggle on and off in your actions and traits window.

The way to do this is by balancing potencies intelligently. For a quick example, take WHM. I often mention my idea for it would be to add a new button, Water (later Banish), with a 15s CD and dealing just 40p more than Glare. Then, lowering Dia to 12s duration, and changing it's potency from 65+65 per tick, to 150+70 per tick, going from 715 total over 30s, to 430 over 12s. By increasing Dia's base potency, clipping it by accident/purposely for movement would lose you less damage, helping those players at the skill floor to keep up. Additionally, if you ignored the proposed Banish (350p) entirely, and just use Glare in its place, you'd lose just 160p per minute, pretty much half a Glare worth of damage. We don't need to have SE's constant ballooned potencies on things, like the new Glare 4 being somewhere in the 500s. By keeping the 'optimal gameplay' that people seek for the 'skill ceiling' as a gain, but a very small gain to keep the skill floor able to clear content easily, then you can have the best of both worlds: A complex rotation to aspire to mastering, yet one that is entirely optional (and can be easily 'dropped out of' to heal when necessary)

[Somnolence]

but that is the crux of the issue as a whole. The vast majority of the player base are HYPER casual players. They are not good at their jobs. Its a small minority that can pull of the things that everyone claims make healers irrelavent in the current state of the game.

This is a bit exaggerated. At least from my experience, majority of people in my roulettes play OK and they go smoothly: healers AoE, tanks mit, dps do their thing so the run takes expected amount of time - bellow 15min for dungeons.

There was a post on reddit where somebody did the stats on all the duties on mentor roulette grind and by his estimation 17% of the players played their jobs bad enough to be noticed.

As for what is needed, yesterday I had a run of Smileton. After the first pull I was curious what is happening, since Scholar was not using any healing abilities whatsoever (well, technically, Selene ) - they were not needed, I was tanking on WAR. I believe he only cast succor outside combat on me for chip dmg when pulling and some whispering dawn for unavoidable damage.

WAR shenanigans aside, there are not enough mechanics that damage dps that don't stand in bad. There is nothing for healer to do than be moral support mascot in this scenario.

[Kes13a]

I kind of hard disagree with that. I think that SE did the right thing by putting accessibility first in their content design, especially since FFXIV has a MSQ system that is not optional and cannot have certain dungeons or trials skipped, such as in WoW, where people can just not do certain content to progress the story.

yes, accessibilty is good, but content outside of the MSQ is and has usually been optional to the story. I mean I am pretty sure that even people with disabilities enjoy being treated like people. its getting to the point where pushing a button is "too difficult"

no healer I know of is arguing for an extreme level skill floor for MSQ or normals. just a bit more of our kit to engage with. thats all.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

you realize there is a large OLDER player base to this game, as in there are people with disabilites as well that will be locked out of the game if the floor is moved up too much beyond what it is. People in their 50s and 60s who play but don't have the reaction times of young ones in this game? People with disabilites that want to enjoy the normal content.

Oh bröther please... not the "people with disabilities" card...

Our basic GCD is 2.50s, we have cheap and frequently available heals for the most basic players' needs. The game is hardly APM-intensive at all for most jobs, so don't give me the "people in their 50s and 60s" or "people with disabilities" crap. Nobody is asking for every single healer NEEDING TO juggle an extensive DPS rotation and having to deal with healing requirements akin to savage/ultimate level mechanics like Harrowing Hell or Wroth of Flames. But even in standard play I see so many people either having a gap of doing anything but moving because they are waiting for a heal to be required (I respect it, I guess) or having the majority of their filler be a 30s and otherwise the same attack spell over and over again. The moment nobody takes unnecessary damage anymore HEALING BECOMES BORING.

You design a floor that can be reached with basic tools, yes, but even right now, there is such a huge gap where you can't even make use of your basic tools because the incoming damage is just a joke unless players make severe mistakes. And the moment the mistakes aren't done? Back to square one of healers being bored.

We want (or I assume so at least) a reasonable floor where you don't get bored playing a key role of the holy trinity because your service is basically replacable with basic game knowledge and a skill ceiling that ISN'T bound to encounter difficulty (i.e. what everyone has to do anyways) to allow for personal fun and skill expression.

[Evergrey]

Adding on to the accessibility argument, I thought that is what Trusts are for? If you really need the help, then the NPCs can and will straight up do the dungeon for you.

Back when before Trust was a thing I heard more people wanting NPC companions due to not wanting to play with others than it being for accessibility reasons.
And there was those amongst them that wanted it simply because then they wouldn't have to feel the pressure if something goes wrong.
Mostly from people playing Tank & Healer.

[Loggos]

I sit here watching this and for funsies queued dutyfinder with a smn since I was distracted by all these threads..... and in expert roulette had 3 party wipes due to mistakes by a healer that couldn't keep up and yet "we don't need healers anymore" and we had the god tier warrior tanking that supposedly can replace a healer

It's true that healers are needed when other people play badly but that is also the problem: As people become good this changes.

This means that healer is, as somebody else said, more or less a "prog job". It's a crutch as long as people make mistakes. But as soon as people stop making mistakes (because they know a piece of content well enough) their necessity decreases.

Personally I consider this an inherent design flaw because in a trinity system no job should only be needed conditionally or situationally.

In my opinion you shouldn't be able to do content (as efficiently, when we talk about normal mode) without everyone from the trinity present.
1T1H2DPS should always be the most optimal team comp to complete content as fast/successfully as possible, even when players are good and don't make mistakes.

Their necessity should be baked into their design/the encounter design.

A good dps for example will only become better the better the player themselves and everyone else becomes (if tanks and healers are better then this means less dying, ergo more time for a dps to do damage).

But from the perspective of a healer the better people become the less they'll have to do.

Healers are the only class that are the "inverse fun job" in that sense.

(Sorry to everybody else reading, yes I just copied this from an earlier post because I don't want to write the same thing again but with slightly different words.)

[aquarys]

yes, accessibilty is good, but content outside of the MSQ is and has usually been optional to the story. I mean I am pretty sure that even people with disabilities enjoy being treated like people. its getting to the point where pushing a button is "too difficult"

no healer I know of is arguing for an extreme level skill floor for MSQ or normals. just a bit more of our kit to engage with. thats all.

I think that's fair enough. I do think DPS on AST (the only healer I really play right now) is kinda braindead in roulettes. Not sure how it's like on other jobs. I would hope that it's more involved for Sage, since I thought that healing through DPS was the whole point of the job? Edit: this is a genuine question because I've been hoping to start leveling Sage soon after AST because I like the idea of doing more DPS

[Loggos]

you realize there is a large OLDER player base to this game, as in there are people with disabilites as well that will be locked out of the game if the floor is moved up too much beyond what it is. People in their 50s and 60s who play but don't have the reaction times of young ones in this game? People with disabilites that want to enjoy the normal content.

I'm replying in good faith because I could also be counted as someone that falls into the disability group: Would you consider a fight design for casual content that replaces some of your damage GCD casts with healing GCDs (turning 111111 into 11h11h1h11hh1h) accessible?

I think that “needs a healer” and “is not too difficult” are not mutually exclusive.
Imo there just needs to be enough damage over time that exceeds the healing non-healer jobs can provide/mitigate.

Example:

(This is just a very simple example. I’ll focus on GCD healing for the sake of the argument but of course this should also work with other/more interesting healing mechanics. I’m also not addressing more DPS options here.)

You have your standard dungeon run/boss fight and the boss will cast their usual “big” raid wides. You can deal with those with your oGCD tools as you normally would.

But in-between those raid wides the boss would continuously deal low damage to the whole group (either by bleeds or by high frequency low-damage raid wides).

This damage can be countered by casting GCD aoe heals.

Additionally it could also keep on targeting random players to deal single target damage. That damage doesn’t need to be super high.

One GCD could cover it.

Why could this work:

1. Since the damage isn’t high, one “tick” of this low frequency damage shouldn’t lead to much stress and could be dealt with by replacing one of your regular DPS casts with a GCD heal cast.

1. As mentioned above the goal of this kind of approach is that the cumulative damage should exceed what non-healers can mitigate/salvage.

This means by pure numbers a healer would be mandatory because after too many ticks of low damage (plus “regular” big raid wides) the party would just be dead.

But at the same time dealing with it should be comfortable enough for casual players.


You could argue that replacing 11111 DPS GCDs with heal GCDs doesn’t make a difference but I’m not sure I completely agree (though as said above I’m certain there are more ways to make a healing scenario like this interesting).

Imo it continuously forces you to divert your attention to your party’s health (your party as a whole plus alternating between individual players’ health pools).
This could break up the 111111 tunnel during downtime, at least a little bit.


In harder content you could gradually increase the difficulty of resource management to up the stakes.

In midcore content dealing with frequent partywide and random single target damage should be more taxing than on normal mode but not completely unforgiving.

Hardcore content should really test your resource management.