#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]In end-game content you would have to manage all of this, raid frames and mechanics at once. Be careful what you wish for. And if healer DPS would get higher then it would be more punishing to heal more so the potency of all of this could be lowered to "balance"

I'm not sure why having to manage all of that in 'end-game contents' is even a bad idea. Players are supposed to have SOME degree of competency in that level - that's to be expected. If they can't meet that expectation, then they should go back and try again after improving.

Furthermore, varied damage options would definitely lower the output of some healers who're used to 1 2 1 1 1. That's to be expected. But that's also SE job to decide how far low: will they do 70% out of full potential for keeping 1 button spam? Or will be 50%? 30%? 85%? Personally to me, I'll take any. Even reducing Dia DoT to 18s like old Aero II would've been a boon for such a 'simple change'. (just one from many low bar examples)

[Alice_Rivers]

But we can do both, and we need to.

You do realize that in DF, the overwhelming majority of healers you'll encounter don't GCD uptime (we're talking less than 50% here) nor DoT uptime ? Don't align buffs, don't use ogcds correctly, and so on ?
Why cater to these players ? At this point why not implement changes like :
-every 10th glaroilosis cast applies a dot
-native autocasting damage gcd for healer jobs
Because otherwise maintining uptime is too hard and sooooo stressfull for the poor casuals :'(

if they don't want to improve nor play decently, it's a choice and their problem, it shouldn't be everyone's.

I agree in so far as there are some terrible healers out there with terrible dps uptime, often terrible healing too, worse is the game does a bad job of teaching healers how/to heal and makes almost no mention I can see of actually pushing dps as a healer. Rather that is player convention and that may or may not be accounted for in higher tiers of content. There should be a requirement for players to have a brain, the game really should teach healers how to play healer and with that to dps, I'm just saying that we should fix healing first and then build any added dps rotation around that scenario.

Is there a single issue with having what I suggested above ? , a complex rotation which can be some or all of :
-multiple dots
-various buffs with decision making to do
-damage gcds filling a healing gauge (or vice versa)
And this rotation would be the theorical 100% efficiency of the job, but if you just do 121 you still get around 80% efficiency.
It is an amount that almost no healer in DF meets anyway, because, as said before, by designing healers for the most braindead players, SE effectively made the playerbase of heals mostly braindead & lazy people.

And such changes ar in no way prohibiting changes to encounter design and reducing dps & tanks absurd amounts of self sustain (lmao at thing like earth's riddle or 3rd eye, and don't even start with the tanks).

I don't think there's anything too offensive here, at least to me, I would be concerned about the button count since my bars are kinda full as is but that's another matter. Ultimately pushing more dps is always going to be healer optimisation, for me it's more about getting things to being 60% or more healing uptime with dps filler rather than 90% dps uptime with healing filler. That would make our existing small handful of dps skills a lot more palatable.

[CaptainLagbeard]

For starters, what I want to see two things.

1. Healers being absolutely necessary to beat end-game content... Trials and Raids... Normal, Alliance, Extreme, Savage. Healers shouldn't be replaceable.
2. Healers getting buffed to a point where their base damage output is at the same level as Tanks.

[CaptainLagbeard]

They should introduce a new Healer class mid-expansion, one that uses the current Healer design as they fix all the other healers... It can even start at 100 with the requirement of any other Healer at 100 to unlock... See how many people would switch to it.

[ForsakenRoe]

And for people who don't want to improve beyond 11112111111 + occasional ogcds heals, SE should just do the maths so 12& "rotation" is 80% efficiency, and the perfect rotation is 100%.
And before complaining, 121 rotation with 80% efficiency but 90% uptime is already better than the vast majority of modern healers, people should work on ABC instead of wanting the maximum job complexity to be leveled down to their personal "best".

I made a rotation for WHM like a year ago (and rewrote it more recently, but still pre-DT hence it uses EW values), that would allow a player who plays as they currently do (that is, refresh Dia when it falls off, press Glare otherwise) to achieve 98% of the damage potential of someone doing the 'full rotation' I had created. In fact, all of the healers I redid, if you ignored the 'new damage button', would lose like, a single filler spell cast (Broil/Malefic etc) or less, per MINUTE. Still got complaints from certain individuals (if you know you know) that 'casuals would be causing enrages because they can't do the full optimal rotation'. I think that for some players, the idea of change itself is more scary than the actual proposed changes, and I fully expect that, were we in a different MMO with a PTR, the changes I would propose (if I were at a pitch to SE) would be accepted pretty well (if anything, I'd expect some 'is that all???' from some players rather than 'this is too much')

Like, as an example, if I reduce 'what I would do to WHM' to the smallest possible changes with the largest possible impact, it'd be 'Reduce Dia to 12s duration, rescale potency. Add new action Water (later Banish) with 15s CD, dealing 40p more than Stone/Glare.' And that's literally it. The funny thing is, since we have so little already, we don't actually need much changes to have a big impact on the 'feeling' of playing the job. And with this, ignoring the Banish button entirely would lose the player 160p per minute, which is now less than half of a Glare. In fact, with the way I had set the potencies up, IIRC the only way that the proposed rotation would be 'more punishing to a casual' than the EW rotation (was current at the time) was if you played the exact EW rotation (that is, you use exactly two Dia casts per minute, no more no less)

But then, by doing tiny changes like that, we can then build off of that with 'phase 2' and phase 3' as optional additions (eg SE could agree that P2 sounds good, but P3 goes too far). So for WHM again, P2 would be to add a new gauge that goes from 0-100, called Nature's Vigilance. Casting spells would fill it (eg Stone is 1pt, Aero is 5 over its 12s duration, Water is 5, and the healing spells range from 5-20). IIRC, full dummy uptime would give about 55-60pts per minute. 50 Vigilance would then be spent on a new AOE healing action, Blessing of the Elementals. A 'healer Fell Cleave' of sorts. Using this action would then give you 3 Petals on the gauge corresponding to Earth, Wind and Water. These petals would then convert Stone/Glare, Aero/Dia and Water/Banish into their ultimate elemental spells of Quake, Tornado and Flood (to mirror how BLM gets Flare/Freeze). These 3 spells would make BOTE damage neutral, and would provide optimizers something more to optimize (trying to get them all, plus Misery, into raidbuffs). Also, by making Quake, Flood, Tornado AOE (with 50% damage falloff), we take our AOE rotation of 1 button (Holy) to (optionally) FIVE (Holy, BOTE, Quake, Flood, Tornado)

Phase 3 would be 'add a Lily spender that applies barriers to party'. I would bring back Stoneskin at 30, move the Lily system to be learned at 30, and bring back 'Graniteskin' as the AOE version. Then at 76ish (where we currently learn Rapture), upgrade them to 'Afflatus Bastion' and 'Afflatus Sanctuary'. By having a shielding Lily spender, we can change the stupid 'overheal to prep Misery' into 'apply a barrier to prep Misery, which has a 30s duration so you might be able to get some use out of it at some point in its duration'. And it opens up potential for healers to save GCDs, because the WHM's shields would be damage neutral (but weaker than SCH/SGE of course).

But maybe SE sees all this, and goes 'OK this all sounds cool, but we want WHM to be the 'pure healer' so we don't think it should have access to barriers like that'. OK, cool, sure, then we ignore Phase 3, and just implement Phase 1 and 2! There's still enough meat on the bone with those changes, I think, to bring some fun back to the job. Trying to set up your healing rotation such that your POM window is Misery, Quake, Flood, Tornado, 3xGlare4, would be enough to make the job interesting in all content I think.

Eukrasian Dyskrasia was the perfect opportunity to put all of this to the test. A 40p gain, over the course of 30 seconds, would be an incredibly small DPS gain, nobody would cause enrages because of ignoring it. But SE took it away, because I guess they think we're too irresponsible to 'ignore' it and would bully people for not using it with 100% efficiency? I guess??? IDK what their logic was but I don't expect it to track. If they don't want people to bully other people for suboptimal gameplay, we have the TOS protecting those who would be bullied

Rather than seeing more complex healers I'd rather start with content actually demanding healers heal, then I wouldn't mind having more complexity if it's called for. But I think it more important to address the main problem first and secondary things after.

Making healers heal is an idealistic goal, but one that will take a lot of time. Time that the dev team simply doesn't have to spare. I ask primarily for 'more complexity to DPS rotation' not just because I think it'd help address the issues, but because it's so much quicker to implement. The dev team needs to score a 'win' now, and make tangible steps towards showing 'we are working on it', whereas with 'more healing' it'd take a lot longer and all we'd get is a hazy Lodestone post saying 'Please look forward to it'. So if the devs actually improved the DPS rotation (and ideally, had some more interactions between damage and healing to optimize), they'd get some goodwill from the disgruntled veterans, and buy themselves some more time for a more indepth overhaul of the role. Additionally, the small changes to the damage rotation might be enough to convince some veterans that 'hey, I guess they are working on it finally, I'll give it a chance (to show their metrics that I think this is the correct direction)'

[Ritsugamesh]

For anyone keeping track we've hit over 1,000,000 views now for this thread. Like holy moly.

I really hope we get something, anything, in terms of recognition out of this from SE. Even if it doesn't come until the next expansion. Something's gotta give.

[Jojoya]

For anyone keeping track we've hit over 1,000,000 views now for this thread. Like holy moly.

I really hope we get something, anything, in terms of recognition out of this from SE. Even if it doesn't come until the next expansion. Something's gotta give.

Nothings going to give until enough players quit the game.

Sorry, but that's just the way business works. People pay, business is good. People stop paying, business make changes so they're willing to pay again.

At this point, no one is quitting. They're switching to other jobs at most.

Tired of healer design? Play tank. A tank not using their stance is a very sturdy DPS with healing and mitigation utility. If the amount of DPS a group of tanks can put out is sufficient to beat DPS checks, there is no reason to play anything else.

[Supersnow845]

Nothings going to give until enough players quit the game.

Sorry, but that's just the way business works. People pay, business is good. People stop paying, business make changes so they're willing to pay again.

At this point, no one is quitting. They're switching to other jobs at most.

Tired of healer design? Play tank. A tank not using their stance is a very sturdy DPS with healing and mitigation utility. If the amount of DPS a group of tanks can put out is sufficient to beat DPS checks, there is no reason to play anything else.

The healer shortage has ground PF to a halt, people are reporting 4 hour waits for healers and paying grey healers millions of Gil hush to fill their parties

A massive loss of subscribers would have the most noticeable effect but I can’t imagine they will just gone ignore the whole built in trinity in PF and DF grinding to a halt

[Tigore]

I suppose I am now fitting into the camp of trying other job classes now that all 4 of my healer classes are capped. Normally I didn't notice much troubles when I was levelling as a healer, but my stories change for a few parties as DPS. Just recently for one of the (spoiler) 90 trial fight, we had troubles with the Doom mechanic for a few pulls. Some of the players were only healed to around 80 - 95% HP when we need 100% to drop the debuff and prevent death. I had to use Second Wind to get to my full health state several times. The DRK tank was not so lucky. I mentioned this bit of trouble only to get a remark from one saying they are the only one trying to heal it. The tanks were also immediately pulling before I could make any suggestions on what cooldowns could help.

I don't know how often this happens though for others currently. Although I am seeing some ripple effects with what appears to be less veteran players healing. A few other friends levelling up from the expansion start did notice a sharp decline in the quality of healers for some of their 90 - 100 dungeon runs. When said spoiler trial raid was current, there was never a problem with the Doom mechanic being respected from what I could recall.

I am not trying to brand anyone forever with these mistakes. Although I can only help if the new players are willing to listen. It also helps to stop pulling so suddenly to let the mentors teach the sprouts with obvious problems. After all. Once the new players know our tricks of the trade, they may eventually notice our Glare spam too and chime in with feedback as well.

[Ritsugamesh]

Nothings going to give until enough players quit the game.

Sorry, but that's just the way business works. People pay, business is good. People stop paying, business make changes so they're willing to pay again.

At this point, no one is quitting. They're switching to other jobs at most.

Tired of healer design? Play tank. A tank not using their stance is a very sturdy DPS with healing and mitigation utility. If the amount of DPS a group of tanks can put out is sufficient to beat DPS checks, there is no reason to play anything else.

Completely agree, as sad as it is. I'd have unsubbed a long time ago but I still hold so much love for the game (played since 1.0) - it's been my mmo home for a decade now, and I have roots with my houses (personal and FC, not one of those multi-home legacy jobbies) and the like. I'm essentially trapped to keep subbing if I ever want to play in the future so I don't lose my homes and progress, or I completely cut loose and stop.

I know it's just a house, but also, it's a house in FFXIV. That stuff is harder than savage!