FFXIV Healer Strike and the 'How would you fix it?' line

[Iedarus]

Snip

Makes sense! As long as the transformation is fairy themed I'll be happy.

[Mapleine]

Make healing more involved. I think the concept of Picto mechanics opened up a good way forward for the way spellcasting works in this game.

I think a DPS rotation is a really lame solution, procs maybe but no rotation. Still I'd happily take it over what we have now, HAPPILY, but I'd rather they actually design a healing model and new spell types other than just massive oGCD blasts.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think a DPS rotation is a really lame solution, procs maybe but no rotation.

There's been a discussion recently about the term 'rotation' and whether it's appropriate to describe healer's DPS gameplay. As far as I can see, the playerbase has accepted the term 'rotation' to mean 'the gameplay loop the job participates in, in order to deal damage'. If you zoom out far enough, this applies to healers too. SCH's 'rotation' currently, for example, is Broil x 11, Biolysis, Broil x 11, Biolysis, Broil x 11, Biolysis, Broil x 11, Biolysis. And that is a 2minute 'loop', which we 'rotate' through. Other jobs have more... varied, buttons to press within their 2min loop, but in the end, every job has one, even the healers. Even on a proc-based job like BRD, we refer to its gameplay loop as a 'rotation'.

I wouldn't ask the question of 'should healers have a rotation', because they do, even if that rotation was only made of one button (eg they remove our one DOT too). Rather, the question I'd ask is 'why do healers feel like the term 'rotation' does not apply'? And the answer to that, I think, is simply that there's not enough pieces to put together to create something we'd consider a 'rotation'.

As I mentioned in the OP, I would like to see the healing paradigm addressed. But I am all too aware that trying to use only changes to 'how we heal' (be that amount of HP, frequency of damage, etc) for a solution to the problem will not work. It needs to be a combination of the two halves of our kit, addressing both the damage side AND the healing side. And that's why I think the best way to start tackling this is to make adjustments to the damage side first. By adjusting the damage kits first, it is a much smaller job, with a much more 'instantly obvious' effect to the playerbase at large (that is, new actions/VFX/systems etc), and would serve to show, with tangible evidence, that 'hey we're working on adjustments', rather than a hazy 'please wait patiently' Lodestone post. It also means that for those who do not like the current healer gameplay, and wish to see adjustments, they might feel they can 'return to the role' sooner.

[CaptainLagbeard]

The healer I have the most experience with is WHM, so I'm more comfortable trying to put out ideas to fix it than others...

One change for all would be to make their DoT into an AoE for the sake of dungeons... But, aside from that for WHM

Keep Stone I to Stone IV as the primary attack spell, and just increase their potency through traits throughout the levels.
Make Glare I to Glare IV into a separate spell, one that requires stacks of Sacred Sight to cast as the way Glare IV currently does.
Entirely replace Freecure with a new trait with one that would grant a stack of Sacred Sight at about 30% proc chance on ever Spell cast.
Replace Planary Indulgence with Seraph Strike, make Seraph Strike cost 1 Lily to use and nourish the Blood Lily.
Because of a better alternative for nourishing the Blood Lily, Afflatus Misery's potency can be dropped as it no longer would have to be DPS neutral to Glare(or Stone with these changes).
Remove MP recovery from Assize, and add it to Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture.

[Aurelius2625]

It's not the JP forums, and something doesn't have to be a "hivemind" with unanimous agreement to still be the norm for a culture. Way to make false assumptions and then use it to attack me, though. Just another revealing post about what happens when people dare oppose the "hivemind" or echo chamber around here...



See the post I quoted above and the rest of your reply for some great examples of that...



Please read what I wrote again. GNB and PLD are not DPS classes and "old SMN" is irrelevant when talking about now. I said I believed all DPS classes should be given an AoE DoT before Healers get it. (I would also agree that all Tanks should get them before healers, too, since their primary purpose involves maintaining aggro on all enemies in a battle simultaneously.)

Where's that poster in the other thread who claimed the echo chamber around here doesn't gang up on or attack those who disagree with it? *chuckles* Man...

You are so painfully ignorant that I don't even want to begin to argue with you because you've already decided what you "believe". SE designs healers with DPSing as their main function in mind. Don't believe me? Look at literally any log from a competent healer. It's 95 percent Dosis/Glare spam with dots. They are the vast majority of casts of abilities by far. Like by far by far. It's not even anywhere near, and their healing skills are vastly inferior in number to those casts. The devs literally take healer dps into consideration when designing fights.

The fact that you are willing to deprive your fellow players with more flushed out DPS kits for healers when they don't have to heal (which is the majority of the time because healer tools are all scripted and fixed into a fight on a spreadsheet) just because "you don't want them to have it" is absurd. It's so cruel to do that to your fellow players. A true conservative at heart: I don't want things to change for the better, so I'm going to advocate for them remaining the same because I'm too scared to see what change might bring. Yuck.

[Asako]

They don't need to fix it. It's fine. People just need to stop crying and just play the game. If they don't like healer then play a different role or quit. Healers are fine.

[CaptainLagbeard]

They don't need to fix it. It's fine. People just need to stop crying and just play the game. If they don't like healer then play a different role or quit. Healers are fine.

Maybe if Healers are fine as they are, they should fix all the other classes to match them...

Do Tanks really need all those attacks? No. Just trim them down to only having Total Eclipse, Overpower, Unleash or Demon Slice, depending on the class. Just give it a big enough "Increase Enmity" effect to keep aggro with it. And then just 10 copies of Rampart.

[ForsakenRoe]

They don't need to fix it. It's fine. People just need to stop crying and just play the game. If they don't like healer then play a different role or quit. Healers are fine.

Strange that this exact reasoning didn't apply when the Healers were more complex in HW, and people were complaining that it was too hard to get into, isn't it? Should we, as HW players who learned to play around the jank of the old Fairy AI or Cleric Stance, have said 'if you don't like healer (as it was at the time) play a different role or quit'? No, because that would be a ridiculous take. But that doesn't mean that people who enjoy a semblance of complexity in their Healer designs should get rolled in favour of the people who not only demand that the gameplay be reduced to 'spam a single button' but also don't even bother to spam that single button.

You might have missed the part where I advocated for WHM to get 3 new healing/mitigation actions (and a rework to an action that adds mitigation to it in addition to what it currently does). If your response to my asking for additional healing/mitigation on healers is 'healers are fine as they are', that'd mean you're flatly rejecting both the idea of healers getting more damage, AND healers getting more healing, or mitigation actions. In which case, SE might as well not bother adding any new actions at all to healers, right? I don't see that going over well with the playerbase at large, even more so than 'WHM now has one extra button to press for damage sometimes'

Maybe if Healers are fine as they are, they should fix all the other classes to match them...

Do Tanks really need all those attacks? No. Just trim them down to only having Total Eclipse, Overpower, Unleash or Demon Slice, depending on the class. Just give it a big enough "Increase Enmity" effect to keep aggro with it. And then just 10 copies of Rampart.

Don't bother. We've tried that line for 5 years and not only does it not work, some people (who shall not be named but their name did begin with R) have said 'actually that does sound like it would suit my playstyle better so yes please'. Like, unironically saying that the obviously hyperbolic example would be a good idea, instead of the trashfire 'game killer' idea that it is

[Iedarus]

Looking at this again, the only change I'd make is how Strategy: Offense is used. As it stands now, it feels like you would simply swap to offense, unload your dots then drop offense. I would add a slight potency increase to Broil, Ruin II and AoW as well just as an added little minigame of how long you can stay in offense before you have to switch.

[ForsakenRoe]

Looking at this again, the only change I'd make is how Strategy: Offense is used. As it stands now, it feels like you would simply swap to offense, unload your dots then drop offense. I would add a slight potency increase to Broil, Ruin II and AoW as well just as an added little minigame of how long you can stay in offense before you have to switch.

I could write a whole load of text about my decisionmaking re: Strategies, but the tl;dr is 'it is purposely kept to only the DOTs, because if it affected Broil/AOW players who don't want to interact with the system (and would prefer to simply stay in Defense for a more 'stress-free' gameplay experience) would feel like they're 'forced' to interact with the system and they don't want that kind of complexity forced upon them'. You can see Striker earlier in this thread make reference to how he does not want to play with any stance-dance gameplay because he remembers how jank Cleric Stance was. I can't exactly say anything to convince him that these stances would be 'less jank', but the point is, even with Offense affecting only the DOTs, he felt that he would be 'forced' to interact with the Strategies. Adding Broil/AOW to the list would only compound that, and turn more players off from such a system. And that's... kinda the exact opposite of the goal I had in mind (that is, design healer kits that are welcoming to newer players, but also have depth for veterans to explore).

Consider Strategy: Offense less of a 'you want to stay in this as much as possible' and more something akin to... a Recitation for your DOTs, albeit much weaker and with no CD. Where you're thinking of 'camp in Offense, swap to Defense/Emergency to heal, then back to Offense', I intend for the exact opposite. You'd stay in Emergency/Defense for quite a lot of the fight, swapping to Offense only to refresh the DOT before swapping back. You ARE a Healer after all, so I'd argue that it makes a lot more sense to mostly be staying in a Healing-related Strategy for the majority of the fight (to react to sudden healing requirements faster), no? Plus, there's plenty of Strategy-Swapping optimization possible even without having Offense bound to your bars, as IIRC I didn't actually say that the barrier from Selene's Embrace was exclusive with Galvanize, did I? So, theoretically, you could be swapping between Defense and Emergency, just to balance 'healing via Embrace' with 'have fairy set up fairy-barriers on each of the 8 raid members in time for the next raidwide'. Just that alone would add optimization to the job I think. Do you let the fairy's barriers handle the damage, or do you need to top it up with a Galvanise of your own? And if so, where does it come from, a GCD like Succor, or Deploying a Defense-Excogitation? Or what about Defense-Indom? Do you need the Galvanise at all, or would a Deployed Protraction be enough? So many choices, so many ways to handle the situation

Sorry if this doesn't read well, very tired