Why is FFXIV Tuned to Discourage Healing?

[HappyHubris]

Please no. Crowd control should be a almost exclusively a solo tool. A rare boss/raid exception would be fine, for example the old use of Heavy on the cyclopes in Turn 7 to fix them in place until they could be petrified; but it needs to be not a common dungeoning mechanic.

The biggest issue with crowd control is that damage breaks it. This means that if you want to use crowd control effectively, everyone has to switch to single target attacks. This is not something we should want in dungeons, ever. That leaves just boss battles, and you can't have a strict crowd control mechanic in a raid because then you have to bring a certain job for the CC. And since we can't require a CC, the mechanic needs to be manageable without it, so then why even bother with the CC.

Crowd control is not the answer to fixing anything, unless the question is about balancing solo survivability.

Crowd control worked with AoEs in tons of other MMOs. You just stand away from the group of enemies, pull them, and CC the CC targets as the pulled enemies approach the tank. It just took a bit more finesse than running into four pulls at once and shouting "AOELOLOL."

[Kalise]

Crowd control is fundamentally a defensive technique not an offense one, if it had an offensive purpose it wouldn’t be called control, it would be a DPS ability. It would be no different from giving healers another healing oGCD, which they do not need.

Crowd Control can be both offensive and defensive.

Defensive benefits are obvious, stun an enemy to stop them attacking, silence a caster, use Heavy to kite the untankable mob etc.

Offensive benefits are prominently displayed in the game Astellia Online where all classes get skills that are crap on their own, but deal massive damage against targets with specific CC's on them. Thus causing CC's to become mini-burst windows where people got to use these bonus damage skills. (Astellia also went further and had it so that DoT's were also a condition for bonus damage on skills while also making it so that no class had 100% uptime on any DoT's)

A similar methodology is found in Blue Mage skills, where you have several skills that deal amp'd up potency against targets aflicted with specific ailments (Though, these all remove said ailments at the same time, making them of little use in group scenarios)

[Shurrikhan]

Crowd Control can be both offensive and defensive.

Defensive benefits are obvious, stun an enemy to stop them attacking, silence a caster, use Heavy to kite the untankable mob etc.

Offensive benefits are prominently displayed in the game Astellia Online where all classes get skills that are crap on their own, but deal massive damage against targets with specific CC's on them. Thus causing CC's to become mini-burst windows where people got to use these bonus damage skills. (Astellia also went further and had it so that DoT's were also a condition for bonus damage on skills while also making it so that no class had 100% uptime on any DoT's)

A similar methodology is found in Blue Mage skills, where you have several skills that deal amp'd up potency against targets aflicted with specific ailments (Though, these all remove said ailments at the same time, making them of little use in group scenarios)

Heck, just think of the Dragonkiller missiles in Steps of Faith (dodged by default), or any fighting games with big chunky strikes that are hard to land because they're normally hard to land. Now, you snare the dragon or break the opponent's knee before attempting the strike. That can make for quite the indirect damage buff.

XIV PvP, too, has gone through a few similar situations with CC being used to lock enemies into AoE Adrenaline Rush attacks, in the times they weren't almost impossible to dodge on their own. Pacifying, silencing, or snaring an enemy at an opportune moment can change an offense from merely threatening to deadly.

[Brandedblade]

I still don't understand why some DPS have de-buffing skills (that they rarely use while as they have enough to do to keep their rotation up) while Healers don't anymore... give this and stuns to healers instead while DPS can focus on pewpewing more.
We can handle what gets stunned/silenced and what damage we want to decrease based on our other cooldowns.

They wanted dps to take a more active role in aiding the group with damage mitigation.

[Sloprano]

They wanted dps to take a more active role in aiding the group with damage mitigation.

Find that'd a move in good faith with no understanding of the devs own game. Outside of maybe a sprout just learning addle and is excited to use it whenever they can, I find it is rarer to see that purple icon than getting a Little Leviathan in groups except when I explicitly ask caster to use it compared to every minute when I had Virus on SCH.

And that leaves green-iconed combat jobs without any kind of buff to react to a great big unavoidable castbar when we are in the best position to react to it. Spreadable virus with Bane was one of the big old hopes for further evolution of SCH, instead the very same spell turned into AoE was handed to tanks. I won't deny other roles having some kind of fun involved debuff, I just really fucking wonder where our own went.

[Brandedblade]

Find that'd a move in good faith with no understanding of the devs own game. Outside of maybe a sprout just learning addle and is excited to use it whenever they can, I find it is rarer to see that purple icon than getting a Little Leviathan in groups except when I explicitly ask caster to use it compared to every minute when I had Virus on SCH.

And that leaves green-iconed combat jobs without any kind of buff to react to a great big unavoidable castbar when we are in the best position to react to it. Spreadable virus with Bane was one of the big old hopes for further evolution of SCH, instead the very same spell turned into AoE was handed to tanks. I won't deny other roles having some kind of fun involved debuff, I just really fucking wonder where our own went.

Healers still have options to counteract the big cast bar in the sky, such as your damage mitigation cooldowns, and preshielding in the case of sch and ast. I know gcd heals are scary and inefficient but I could argue that reducing their access to damage mitigation could be an attempt by the developers to make you heal more. Whether or not it worked that way is pretty obvious.

[Side-Eye]

Healers still have options to counteract the big cast bar in the sky, such as your damage mitigation cooldowns, and preshielding in the case of sch and ast. I know gcd heals are scary and inefficient but I could argue that reducing their access to damage mitigation could be an attempt by the developers to make you heal more. Whether or not it worked that way is pretty obvious.

Honestly that logic is just as flawed as saying they took away DPS tools to "make us heal more" -- taking away a DPS tool does nothing to increase healing unless encounter design is fundamentally changed to require it. All this removal did was make healer DPS less engaging, less interesting, and give us less things to do between heals. That's not a strategy it's just bad job design.

[Sloprano]

Healers still have options to counteract the big cast bar in the sky, such as your damage mitigation cooldowns, and preshielding in the case of sch and ast. I know gcd heals are scary and inefficient but I could argue that reducing their access to damage mitigation could be an attempt by the developers to make you heal more. Whether or not it worked that way is pretty obvious.

Hell no, gcd should be our bread and butter with oGCDs the lovely spread on top. What we have now is too much spread and anyone who at their first moment of independence decided to try eating Nutella right from the jar will tell you it's too fucking much.

Then tension of having to stand still a lot when trying to do your job is what this game should be selling us, with oGCDs being expensive and weighing the consequences for using. Like when Bane used Aetherflow. Instead I'm zipping around the battlefield using Excog, Sacred Soil, Lustrate, Recitation, Summon Seraph, Consolation, Fey Blessing, WD, Fey Illum, Chain Strat, Ruin II DT, ET, Indom, Art of War, Biolysis, Dissipation, Swiftcast Res, Fey Union without ever standing still. Being mobile is fun, but when all you do is being mobile without even the adrenaline of popping into Cleric Stance for five sec just make everything feel inconsequential.

I was still very mobile in 3.0 but was forced to stand still more often if I wanted more out of the job.

[Brandedblade]

Honestly that logic is just as flawed as saying they took away DPS tools to "make us heal more" -- taking away a DPS tool does nothing to increase healing unless encounter design is fundamentally changed to require it. All this removal did was make healer DPS less engaging, less interesting, and give us less things to do between heals. That's not a strategy it's just bad job design.

I never said it worked, sometimes something can be designed with one intention and fail to achieve it for another. My impression is that the design intention was to heal more and make mitigation a group or at the (least the Tanks) focus on mitigation. The failure in that regard seems more oriented around the fight design in this regard.

[Brandedblade]

Hell no, gcd should be our bread and butter with oGCDs the lovely spread on top. What we have now is too much spread and anyone who at their first moment of independence decided to try eating Nutella right from the jar will tell you it's too fucking much.

Then tension of having to stand still a lot when trying to do your job is what this game should be selling us, with oGCDs being expensive and weighing the consequences for using. Like when Bane used Aetherflow. Instead I'm zipping around the battlefield using Excog, Sacred Soil, Lustrate, Recitation, Summon Seraph, Consolation, Fey Blessing, WD, Fey Illum, Chain Strat, Ruin II DT, ET, Indom, Art of War, Biolysis, Dissipation, Swiftcast Res, Fey Union without ever standing still. Being mobile is fun, but when all you do is being mobile without even the adrenaline of popping into Cleric Stance for five sec just make everything feel inconsequential.

I was still very mobile in 3.0 but was forced to stand still more often if I wanted more out of the job.

There are aspects of this I can come to a compromise on you with, but 3.0 cleric stance isnt one of them.