#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForsakenRoe]

Just had the realization that SE's approach to healers, of 'what if we try to attract the DPS players to the role, oops we didn't and also we made some of the veterans quit so now the role's stagnating' is very similar to the blockchain/NFT BS they went through. 'Let's sell a load of IPs to get money, and invest it in NFT/Blockchain tech cos it might take off! Oh it didn't, and the general gaming population now sees NFTs as a scam, so now we have a bit of money (but nowhere near what the IPs were actually worth), and like 6 less IPs to work with. Oops'. It'd be at least slightly more palatable, if they were capable of admitting 'that was not a great business decision, we should take steps to remedy it', but they just double down on it instead.

But hey, at least under the new owners, Soul Reaver is allowed to get a HD remaster

But that was brought up before as well, that the game *could* have it's super-simple healer (likely WHM), while the other three have differing levels of complexity or just be different *period*, same with how even for a DPS main like myself I obviously don't enjoy *all* DPS jobs because I don't jive with their mechanics or rotation. As much as people bring up homogenization, most DPS at least *feel* different even if the total numbers coming out of them are identical otherwise (broken SMN traits aside), healers don't get that benefit though, where even the whole "pure vs. barrier healer" thing seems to have weakened over time.

Anyone with any design sense could have told them to drop the Pure/Barrier split in the design phase. They even tried to do it for tanks (splitting them into MT, better at holding the boss and self-defensives), and OT (better at supporting the MT with supplementary CDs like Cover/Intervention/etc). Then they must have had a moment of realization, that 'wait a second, the OT has to take the boss sometimes too, because of tankswaps' and decided to make them all capable of being MT.

By enforcing a Pure/Barrier split, the only thing they do is paint themselves into a corner on what can be added to each job. WHM can't have a more easily accessible party Barrier or Mitigation (both are tied to the same button, Temperance, a 2min CD), because it's a Pure healer. Conversely, you'd expect the same to be true of Barrier Healers (that they struggle to top HP up, and are proficient in preventing it from dropping in the first place), but because of certain HPS checks like Seat of Sacrifice's Doom, they HAVE to have a certain amount of Pure Healing capabilities. So, we end up with this situation we're in now: Double Barrier works (and in certain cases like TOP, is optimal), Double Pure sucks and only works in BIS (often requiring high coordination and certain other non-healer utilities like Magick Barrier to plug holes in the Mit plan).

If I could suggest an idea to SE, it'd be this: Drop the hard split, and swap over to a 'sliding scale' system. The better at 'Pure healing' a job is, the less Barrier capability it has, and vice versa. With this, WHM and SCH can be the champions at the far ends of the scale, masters of Pure and Barrier healing respectively, and AST/SGE can be a bit closer to the middle, leaning towards one side, but not fully abandoning the other. With this 'sliding scale', it becomes much easier to slot a new healer in too, eg one could be added that perfectly straddles Pure and Barrier capability, directly in the centre (I'd suggest a gameplay where the Barrier side is achieved by turning a portion of damage taken into a DOT, and the Pure side is achieved by mainly using HOTs to counteract the delayed damage DOT).

DT's additions give a flicker of hope that they will move away from the Pure Barrier split, at least in gameplay if not in UI. Sun Sign and Divine Caress are clearly Barrier Healing tools, but are on AST and WHM. And Seraphism allows SCH to pump out AOE GCD healing that is stronger than Cure3, for only 2/3 the MP cost of Cure3.

Lastly, I don't necessarily agree that we should have a 'super simple healer (likely WHM)' and 3 with differing levels of complexity. Instead, I think we should have 4 healers, where the barrier to entry is 'super simple', and the skill ceiling of all four is somewhere akin to Stormblood Scholar's skill ceiling. I've mentioned as much (and how to get there designwise) multiple times, and it looks like it's time to mention it again. If someone wants to play WHM (as I've designed it in that thread) and have very chill gameplay, they could just spam Glare (as we do now mostly) and still perform well. In fact, if they play as they do now (refresh Dia when it is needed, press Glare if not), that'd be 95-98% of the effectiveness of the 'fully optimized' gameplay. If they want to be a WHM main and have depth in their journey to optimize, however, said design would offer additional gameplay systems and loops to allow for them to do so. Think about a game like DMC. As Dante, you can probably beat the game by just using Swordmaster. But for those who want to 'get crazy', you can do the whole 'TrickGunSwordGunRoyalGuardTrickSwordRoyalGun' crazy combos. The game has a low skill floor (be in Swordmaster and press 'attack'), and a massive skill ceiling (TrickSwordGunSword), and that is the design direction I believe would best suit job design here. Low skill floor is the way to get players into the role, High skill ceiling is the enticement to keep them enjoying the role and feeling like there's more to learn to master it

I just now realize that the 'optimal' SCH gameplay I made in that thread, is kind of like the DMC TrickSwordGun thing (albeit at a much slower pace due to the pace of FFXIV combat). And like DMC, the player would be able to simply stay in one 'stance' the whole time and still beat all the content in the game (but those who want to SwordGunTrickGun, would be able to)

But then one of the team probably said "Wait a minute, if SCH hard, why SGE also hard?", and then the rest of the team nodded their head in agreement and lobotomised SGE.

Funny thing is, 'job is hard' and 'job is fun' don't need to be intrinsically linked like that. Job can be 'not so hard' and still be fun. I think SGE with a burst window (akin to Enshroud, or now Reawaken) would be fun, but I don't think it'd necessarily be 'hard'. In the same way that, if we had Pankardia at like level 52-58 (instead of Philosophia giving the effect at 100), it'd be a more interesting way to heal, and it wouldn't necessarily be 'harder' per se, because if Pankardia isn't enough to heal the team in time, we have like 6 other OGCDs we could use to supplement it. If anything, the 'hard' part is actually designing the job to be forgiving, not playing it, but A: it's literally what SE is getting paid for, and B: I'm a goober on the internet, and while it might be quite egotistical for me to say, I think I did a pretty good job of illustrating 'how we can make X healer more 'fun to play' at all levels of gameplay, without making it require a PHD'

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I will never agree to the notion of keeping WHM the 'stupid' of the role. See how well that flows on SMN within caster role lol.

If people want to play 'simple healer' there's already one in the game: Conjurer. Use that. Or suck it up and play inoptimally on any 4 healers. You don't need to be performing at 101% at all times. That's just unrealistic.

[Aravell]

I will never agree to the notion of keeping WHM the 'stupid' of the role. See how well that flows on SMN within caster role lol.

If people want to play 'simple healer' there's already one in the game: Conjurer. Use that. Or suck it up and play inoptimally on any 4 healers. You don't need to be performing at 101% at all times. That's just unrealistic.

It's because the community have shifted the collective opinion to "Anything that loses me even 1 damage per minute is the devil and needs to be purged from the game and never spoken of again".

Look at all the tanks who reject any suggestion of making their multitude of free healing (not you DRK) a little bit less free. Look at all the healers in PF that kick and scream when you suggest that maybe a GCD heal would be good at some point. Look at all the casters or melee who get annoyed when you ask them to Addle/Feint because they have a minor clip to their GCD.

The community is so poisoned by the "damage is everything and anything that loses me damage can die in the fire" mindset that it's probably now unsalvageable. To some people, a 95 on the numbers website isn't a good run, it's the baseline.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]The community is so poisoned by the "damage is everything and anything that loses me damage can die in the fire" mindset that it's probably now unsalvageable. To some people, a 95 on the numbers website isn't a good run, it's the baseline.

In a hindsight, I don't blame that entirely on the community. The devs plays a huge part in reinforcing this ideal when they keep deleting anything that doesn't come down to as simple as "more damage vs less damage" for whatever reason.

[Supersnow845]

It shocks me that expedient survived

Actual true raw utility, in my 14, preposterous

[Aravell]

In a hindsight, I don't blame that entirely on the community. The devs plays a huge part in reinforcing this ideal when they keep deleting anything that doesn't come down to as simple as "more damage vs less damage" for whatever reason.

While the devs designed the jobs to enforce this kind of thinking, I can still blame the community for using the funny coloured numbers to boost their own ego or to try and dismiss opposing viewpoints, that kind of attitude can be wholly blamed on the community mentality of "the colour of your number proves your worth as a player".

See: Mr.Spreadsheet

[Hazama999]

Dia's potency increased from 75 to 80.

Woah!

Let's not go crazy now.

[Fandele]

If I could suggest an idea to SE, it'd be this: Drop the hard split, and swap over to a 'sliding scale' system. The better at 'Pure healing' a job is, the less Barrier capability it has, and vice versa. With this, WHM and SCH can be the champions at the far ends of the scale, masters of Pure and Barrier healing respectively, and AST/SGE can be a bit closer to the middle, leaning towards one side, but not fully abandoning the other. With this 'sliding scale', it becomes much easier to slot a new healer in too, eg one could be added that perfectly straddles Pure and Barrier capability, directly in the centre (I'd suggest a gameplay where the Barrier side is achieved by turning a portion of damage taken into a DOT, and the Pure side is achieved by mainly using HOTs to counteract the delayed damage DOT).

In my previous mmo, there was actually a third option, which was an HoT focused healer. It was very strategic, in a similar way to the shield healers, but you'd stack various HoT's on the tank/party to try to match the damage input. There were a couple instant emergency heals available if you needed them, but which were also grossly inefficient and/or had a very long (5 min) recast. This same job also had a Dot-centric damage model. I actually enjoyed the heck out of it. I'd love to see something like that make an appearance in 14.

[ForsakenRoe]

In my previous mmo, there was actually a third option, which was an HoT focused healer. It was very strategic, in a similar way to the shield healers, but you'd stack various HoT's on the tank/party to try to match the damage input. There were a couple instant emergency heals available if you needed them, but which were also grossly inefficient and/or had a very long (5 min) recast. This same job also had a Dot-centric damage model. I actually enjoyed the heck out of it. I'd love to see something like that make an appearance in 14.

Mmm, and ideally such a thing would be possible here. Unfortunately, however, we have a raiding paradigm wherein certain attacks from the enemy simply cannot be 'healed' through. They do more than 100% of our Max HP, and serve to 'require' mitigation to survive. With that in mind, the 'sliding scale design' would mean that, in a WHM/AST comp, rather than the current situation of 'it doesn't work', I'd have it so AST is given ways to be the 'Mitigator' (eg by bringing back Nocturnal Sect, which reduces throughput of skills like Earthly Star but attaches Mitigation effects to them), but has little to no access to Barriers. On the flip side, I'd make WHM have access to Barriers (as a Lily spender), but little to no access to Mitigation (outside of Temperance). Thus, the two would need to work together, and cover each other's 'blindspots' if paired together. Similarly, SGE would take the lead on 'Pure healing' in a SCH/SGE comp. This hypothetical '5th healer' that is equal Pure/Barrier, would be flexible and adapt to their partner on a fight-by-fight basis, focusing more Pure healing output when with a SCH/SGE, and more on Mitigation when with a WHM/AST

An entirely HOT focused (eg what I suggested, but it doesn't have the mitigative half of the gameplay) job sounds cool on paper, and it can be in other games (where damage is faster paced, multiple hits, and doesn't instantly take us from 100% to -20%), but here it'd mean another 2 nonfunctional comps in raiding (WHM/new, and AST/new, to go with our current WHM/AST), and I'd rather reduce the number, not increase it

[Aravell]

An entirely HOT focused (eg what I suggested, but it doesn't have the mitigative half of the gameplay) job sounds cool on paper, and it can be in other games (where damage is faster paced, multiple hits, and doesn't instantly take us from 100% to -20%), but here it'd mean another 2 nonfunctional comps in raiding (WHM/new, and AST/new, to go with our current WHM/AST), and I'd rather reduce the number, not increase it

Speaking of regens, there's actually a way they can make it work better.

Imagine if you have a healer that can stack HoTs to an absurd level, then damage taken is partially mitigated by the HoT, so the attack deals 10% less damage but that damage will erase a portion of the active HoT.

That way, all the ticking HoTs can contribute to the mitigation and so the regen healers wouldn't be useless in a mitigation check. But the mitigation also comes at a cost, so you have to plan when you want to use it because it will weaken your HoT.