1. #47321
    The Unstoppable Force Granyala's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Delever View Post
    Thing with healing in this game is that even in savage an ultimate MOST (not all) mechanics are so incredibly scripted that once you have the entire fight boiled down, if no one in your team fucks up a mechanic and proper mitigation is used for everything, the spells that you will be using for healing will be the exact same in every situation therefore leaving you with a ton of space to dps.
    Yop. IF the performance of the group is at such a level.
    Personally, I've never encountered such a group neither in WoW nor in FF. :X

    Typically, people always make some mistakes, making me deviate from the scripted routine and start to improvise. Which is a good thing and the reason I play a healer. Most fun is to be had when I can save butts on the fly. Farm encounters are super boring and I always hated farming for some dumb loot.
    Biggest challenge is: not falling asleep. That goes for both: DPS and Healer. Tanks are half asleep anyway.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Delever View Post
    Which has led me to believe that whatever Yoshida is saying during the live letters about healers not required to dps is entirely damage control and shoving problems aside.
    AFAIK he only stated that enrage timers were designed around 0 healer DPS.
    He never stated that healer DPS would not make things easier: e.g.: compensating for errors in play or even the odd death of a DPS.
    That's the real reason people want healers that aren't half AFK. Not because the encounters would be unbeatable but because it makes things easier and keel over faster.

  2. #47322
    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Yop. IF the performance of the group is at such a level.
    Personally, I've never encountered such a group neither in WoW nor in FF. :X

    Typically, people always make some mistakes, making me deviate from the scripted routine and start to improvise. Which is a good thing and the reason I play a healer. Most fun is to be had when I can save butts on the fly. Farm encounters are super boring and I always hated farming for some dumb loot.
    Biggest challenge is: not falling asleep. That goes for both: DPS and Healer. Tanks are half asleep anyway.
    Then you simply have awful groups. I've been in 2 statics in the year i played endgame FFXIV and getting to that performance isn't hard, it's all about people not being greedy because parsing in FFXIV requires the most ego mindset known to man because of how the encounters are made.

  3. #47323
    Scarab Lord Kaelwryn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Yop. IF the performance of the group is at such a level.
    Personally, I've never encountered such a group neither in WoW nor in FF. :X

    Typically, people always make some mistakes, making me deviate from the scripted routine and start to improvise. Which is a good thing and the reason I play a healer. Most fun is to be had when I can save butts on the fly. Farm encounters are super boring and I always hated farming for some dumb loot.
    Biggest challenge is: not falling asleep. That goes for both: DPS and Healer. Tanks are half asleep anyway.

    - - - Updated - - -


    AFAIK he only stated that enrage timers were designed around 0 healer DPS.
    He never stated that healer DPS would not make things easier: e.g.: compensating for errors in play or even the odd death of a DPS.
    That's the real reason people want healers that aren't half AFK. Not because the encounters would be unbeatable but because it makes things easier and keel over faster.
    This is the (very old) quote from EU media tour of Heavensward.
    Yoshida: Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

    Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers. Then when those publish clear videos and other people see the healers DPSing, they might think that healers need to be DPSing even though its a situation that only arose because their clear would have otherwise been impossible. While we could take this into account, and assume a different item level in the next update which would then make it impossible to clear even with the healer DPS, we'd eliminate this type of play for highly skilled players who use communication, items, and a high level of understanding to come up with those last second clears. That would be a tough decision to make, so I still think it should be up to each party's own plans.

    This is also one of the reasons we decided to implement both a normal and savage version of Alexander. Once again, healer DPS was not included in the development team's calculation as it was for other jobs, so you should just think of healer DPS as a last way to get your overall party's DPS up to where it needs to be.

  4. #47324
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaelwryn View Post
    This is the (very old) quote from EU media tour of Heavensward.
    Thats actually a statement I can get behind.

  5. #47325
    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Yop. IF the performance of the group is at such a level.
    Personally, I've never encountered such a group neither in WoW nor in FF. :X

    Typically, people always make some mistakes, making me deviate from the scripted routine and start to improvise. Which is a good thing and the reason I play a healer. Most fun is to be had when I can save butts on the fly. Farm encounters are super boring and I always hated farming for some dumb loot.
    Biggest challenge is: not falling asleep. That goes for both: DPS and Healer. Tanks are half asleep anyway.
    In FFXIV (savage), if someone makes a mistake, the group wipes or at the very least, the player himself.
    That basically means you won't adjust, you just rezz and up him to full health so that he can survive the next raid-wide AoE.

    So, you don't go and pop emergency shields on a DPS so that he survives XY after failing a mechanic. He won't. Mechanics that will only get you a Vuln. are rare, and when they get one, you can't preemptively do anything about it, you just change a DPS hardcast to a Cure hardcast or something and cross your finger that he outgears the fight enough so that he won't get one shot from the next best thing.

    This is in my opinion further proof that healers are just DPS with support abilities (and I like(d) it that way).
    If they want that to change, they should do what they said they'd be doing - add more "stuff" for healers to heal and get them the additional utility they need to counter that additional "stuff"

    FF logs also logs avoidable damage, if you compare that to WoW, you'll notice that in WoW, people often suffer additional ticks because not moving far enough or not dodging fast enough.
    In FFXIV, you see that additional damage sources are often 1:1 the same as death counts.
    Last edited by KrayZ33; 2020-06-09 at 04:16 PM.

  6. #47326
    The Unstoppable Force Granyala's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KrayZ33 View Post
    In FFXIV (savage), if someone makes a mistake, the group wipes or at the very least, the player himself.
    That basically means you won't adjust, you just rezz and up him to full health so that he can survive the next raid-wide AoE.
    Many mechanics are instagibs but not all of them are. I am speaking from personal experience up to Eden 3.
    Yes I did notice a trend more towards instagibs and away from stuff that just hurts and gives a vuln stack.

  7. #47327
    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Many mechanics are instagibs but not all of them are. I am speaking from personal experience up to Eden 3.
    Yes I did notice a trend more towards instagibs and away from stuff that just hurts and gives a vuln stack.
    Shiva savage is full of instagibs. And even though I killed it multiple times already, progressing shiva was frustrating as fuck because often times its insanely hard to tell wtf killed you thus halting your progress significantly by putting in arbitary difficulty. Especially the fucking orb phase...

  8. #47328
    The Unstoppable Force Granyala's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Delever View Post
    progressing shiva was frustrating as fuck because often times its insanely hard to tell wtf killed you thus halting your progress.
    Huh? Don't you log your fights via ACT or did SE expand upon the "sudden death" crap that does not produce a proper log entry?

  9. #47329
    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Huh? Don't you log your fights via ACT or did SE expand upon the "sudden death" crap that does not produce a proper log entry?
    We logged of course but even then this orb phase was so difficult to figure out what went wrong everytime. Also people on the logs often appeared at the correct spot but apparantely werent.

  10. #47330
    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Huh? Don't you log your fights via ACT or did SE expand upon the "sudden death" crap that does not produce a proper log entry?
    so light rampant does a 120k aoe burst if you snap a chain, eat an orb early, or miss a tower, and instawipes you if somebody hits 5 stacks.

  11. #47331
    The Unstoppable Force Granyala's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nasuuna View Post
    so light rampant does a 120k aoe burst if you snap a chain, eat an orb early, or miss a tower, and instawipes you if somebody hits 5 stacks.
    Ah I can see that being frustrating to diagnose, aye.

  12. #47332
    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Ah I can see that being frustrating to diagnose, aye.
    oh i forgot, also the orbs explode if you dont soak them early enough lel

  13. #47333
    The Unstoppable Force Granyala's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nasuuna View Post
    oh i forgot, also the orbs explode if you dont soak them early enough lel
    Wouldn't be a proper orb if it didn't go boom w/o attention!

  14. #47334
    Quote Originally Posted by KrayZ33 View Post
    If they want that to change, they should do what they said they'd be doing - add more "stuff" for healers to heal and get them the additional utility they need to counter that additional "stuff"
    I'd say the issue is the opposite - Healers already have too many tools to use to heal that stuff with. To the point that they don't need to use most of their spells with a cast time because they can use an oGCD or instant and go right back to casting Broil. If they want healers to be healers, they need to prune some of that back.

    I briefly mentioned this earlier, but on the Scholar you have 5 (five!) different AoE heals. You also have 3 AoE Shields (including Deployment Tactics). With that many to choose from, the obvious optimal stratergies are the most GCD efficient followed by which ones are most resource efficient. Naturally that leaves some of them so far down the picking order that they'll only ever get used when all of the better options have already gone.

    On the other side of the spectrum, there are skills which are in game but barely have a use. Esuna, for example. Dispelable debuffs haven't been a major feature in.... 2 expansions now? There are a lot of annoying but nothing more debuffs in the ARR dungeons, and the odd debuff here and there you can dispel if you like, but it won't make a difference if you do or don't. Has anyone ever needed to use Sleep for anything outside of escaping combat with mobs you can't be bothered to kill?

    Leaving aside the matter of HPS requirements for the time being, we're in a state where healers have too many overlapping tools for the same problem. But little to no additional utility outside of that. What utility they do bring is either tied to extra DPS (Chain Strategem or Astrologians Cards), or is almost never required (Esuna or Sleep).

    Part of this is in mechanics. FF14 uses a very limited pool of mechanics for it's boss design, and while they have branched out with things like Active Time Manouvers, they've stuck almost entirely within the lines. There hasn't been any need to expand on mechanics available to healers, because the range of situations they have to deal with has also not been expanded. The existing healer tools are also broad enough in their usage that they cover all of these existing situations already.

    So what's the solution? Simply ramping up HPS requirements is the lazy way to keep healers engaged. By forcing them to heal, you're going to force them to use all the top-choice options in their toolbox and have to dig deep to the skills which normally play second fiddle.

    If healers are to move into a more utility orentated role, then they need to have uses for that utility. Not just random gimick fights, but actual times and places where those utility skills are going to be used.

    The better solution would be to strip back some of their healing skills, and reconsider the purpose of the job gauges. I've complained about this a lot, but they're just clunky bolt on additions that don't feel organic to play and create janky play cycles. If healers are to move into a more supportive role, then instead of the Lily bar filling over time perhaps have it fill on offensive spell casts. Instead of each lily giving you an instant heal, maybe allow it to be used on a powerful short-term DPS buff for an ally? Or Haste - I bet some Jobs would simply *love* going crazy fast. How about a defensive buff that completely nullified the next hit on the tank?

    There should also be more offensive support options in there too. Debuffs like Slow would be a winner. Or perhaps really spice things up and have a debuff that increased damage taken from the flank by 60 or something? There's the potential for some interesting options here if Squenix decide to explore that space.

    That being said, what would be required to make healers stand apart is giving them some unique utility skills that don't have equivelents else where. WoW does a great job here across all it's classes. Warlocks have their Healthstones and Portals, Rogues have Shroud, Paladins have BOP and so on. Those skills aren't useful all of the time, but they've all got plenty of situations to shine. And that is what Squenix really need to consider with utility based roles. They need a time to really shine, situations where it's useful but not essential and situations where it's not at all useful.

    Where we're at with FF14 right now is HPS is irrelevent and utility isn't worth mentioning outside of DPS buffs. Both of those things need to be reconsidered, in my opinion, going forward if healers are to be fun and engaging Jobs outside of simply being Green DPS with the occasional oGCD heal thrown in.

  15. #47335
    The Unstoppable Force Granyala's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by StrawberryZebra View Post
    Esuna, for example. Dispelable debuffs haven't been a major feature in.... 2 expansions now? There are a lot of annoying but nothing more debuffs in the ARR dungeons, and the odd debuff here and there you can dispel if you like, but it won't make a difference if you do or don't.
    Unless it's the funky doom debuff, some of them need to be dispelled, some go away when you heal the person to 100%.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by StrawberryZebra View Post
    Where we're at with FF14 right now is HPS is irrelevent and utility isn't worth mentioning outside of DPS buffs. Both of those things need to be reconsidered, in my opinion, going forward if healers are to be fun and engaging Jobs outside of simply being Green DPS with the occasional oGCD heal thrown in.
    On that we can actually agree. I'd love to be able to support more than by providing personal DPS (Whit Mage).
    The the flip side: I do think they need to make the encounters more dynamic/random and branch out with the mechanics a bit.
    Go beyond Mechanic X, which exists since ARR, getting a new coat of paint each tier.
    On top of that, make stuff actually hurt but don't instagib the player for nearly every tiny mistake.

  16. #47336
    Quote Originally Posted by StrawberryZebra View Post
    snip
    I wasn't talking about more player abilities, I was talking about more boss abilities.

    If the only thing you have to heal is far in between, you will never have to heal properly. You need constant damage output and you need the healer to have to focus on mana too, so that they won't just spam heal AoEs to cover it - that's where utility comes in.
    And constant damage output is something Bosses currently do not have. It's always AoE burst whenever it's about the group taking damage.

    Very rarely it's something like chain lightning which hits the group over a longer period of time.. but at the same time, that abilitiy hits like a noodle so a healer is never even busy healing it back up, especially since Melees for example have bloodbath, which could probably take care of most of it alone.
    Last edited by KrayZ33; 2020-06-11 at 08:26 AM.

  17. #47337
    Quote Originally Posted by StrawberryZebra View Post
    snip
    There are a few major dispell mechanics this expac so far, haven't seen any in general gameplay though, only top end

    (Throttle in TEA, Freeze on Shiva)

  18. #47338
    Quote Originally Posted by KrayZ33 View Post
    I wasn't talking about more player abilities, I was talking about more boss abilities.
    When it comes to healers, you can't discuss one without also discussing the other. The bosses need to have abilities that need to be healed, and the healers need the tools to deal with that damage.

    As things stand at the moment, healers have too many tools and bosses have too little damage. Having too many tools is why the ones which are most time efficient are most commonly prefered over the slower alternatives, especially when resources aren't an issue. Bosses having too little damage is why the vast majority of those tools aren't often required.

    One side of that equation needs to change for healers to have engaging gameplay.

    The alternative, as you pointed out, would be to shift healers to a more utility orentated role. Which is also a solid niche, however most of the current utility skills are seldom used as is. WoW has extremely strong utility skills like Shroud or Demonic Gateway, FF14 has nothing comparable and the game mechanics don't offer the space for those kinds of skills to be all that useful.

    There's not much to expand those utility orentated roles into because the only variable that matters, that currently CAN matter, is DPS. The mechanics aren't currently there to support anything else.

    Quote Originally Posted by Granyala View Post
    Unless it's the funky doom debuff, some of them need to be dispelled, some go away when you heal the person to 100%.
    Quote Originally Posted by Nasuuna View Post
    There are a few major dispell mechanics this expac so far, haven't seen any in general gameplay though, only top end
    There are a few, sure. It's not a mechanic that's often used though, and seldom in a way that a large section of the player base are going to run into it. Interrupts are the same story really, and also rather wonky due to the server tick rates.

  19. #47339
    The Unstoppable Force Granyala's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by StrawberryZebra View Post
    It's not a mechanic that's often used though, and seldom in a way that a large section of the player base are going to run into it. Interrupts are the same story really, and also rather wonky due to the server tick rates.
    I'd like to see both used more often and I interrupt pretty much anything I can get my hands on as a tank, though I am somewhat afraid of mandatory interrupts in combination with randoms.

    Blame Cataclysm's dungeons. :X

  20. #47340
    Quote Originally Posted by StrawberryZebra View Post
    When it comes to healers, you can't discuss one without also discussing the other. The bosses need to have abilities that need to be healed, and the healers need the tools to deal with that damage.

    As things stand at the moment, healers have too many tools and bosses have too little damage. Having too many tools is why the ones which are most time efficient are most commonly prefered over the slower alternatives, especially when resources aren't an issue. Bosses having too little damage is why the vast majority of those tools aren't often required.

    One side of that equation needs to change for healers to have engaging gameplay.

    The alternative, as you pointed out, would be to shift healers to a more utility orentated role. Which is also a solid niche, however most of the current utility skills are seldom used as is. WoW has extremely strong utility skills like Shroud or Demonic Gateway, FF14 has nothing comparable and the game mechanics don't offer the space for those kinds of skills to be all that useful.

    ????

    the heck. I think you misunderstood me completely.

    Not sure how to make myself more clear though. I'm basically agreeing
    All I'm saying is that current healers are "overgeared and overequipped" for current damage levels and boss mechanics.


    People don't have to pretend that FFXIV game system/mechanics are *that* limiting, they are surely not. They are just "slower". That's all.
    That doesn't mean bosses couldn't force players to watch debuffs more often or make use of interrupts and stuns more etc. etc. yada yada.

    Stuff like demonic gateway could easily be used in most FFXIV encounters for example.
    BLMs make use of teleportation all the time.

    FFXIV encounters need to change by design for healers to be engaged with healing.
    FFXIV encounters are however currently designed as if healers are damage dealers too, with very rare exceptions.

    So it's either:
    change FFXIV encounter design. (i.e. less strict timers and script, more non-tank damage)
    or (more likely and has been a thing in the past)
    give healers back their damage rotations, or at least, give them something to work with and balance them arround support/dmg.

    Even ressource management could be engaging enough to make healers fun again (alongside other changes of course)
    For example, the Bounty Hunter in SwtoR was nothing special other than the fact that it had to work with "heat"... and that was more than enough for me to actually list it as one of my favorite healer specs in MMOs. (no idea how the spec plays nearly a decade later, so no hate)
    Slap some skill interactions alongside that (like, after casting cure, your next XY will apply a shield of Z damage healed) and it's going to be fun.
    Last edited by KrayZ33; 2020-06-13 at 12:20 PM.

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