A summary of healer issues

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

SE really should embrace the job system's flexibility and push for diversity within the roles.

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That will never happen; this dev team is obsessed with homogenization sadly.

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Originally Posted by Truen

That will never happen; this dev team is obsessed with homogenization sadly.

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Anecdotally, the reason for that is probably that myself and people I've spoken to don't identify themselves as a role. Rather, for example, they identify as a WHM that happens to be a healer, for example.

This is a bit personal too, as whenever I play SCH or AST, I don't really enjoy myself. I've been asked a couple of times to do it in pugs and statics and I hated it. Guess I just won't be able to pug if the pf strat calls for astro and sage to use their unique, unhomogenized tools, and I only enjoy white mage.

If SE wants to avoid having people feel like that, then I can see how this homogenization has come about. I wonder if they can avoid this situation, while also giving each job unique tools still... and how impactful can those tools be.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

Anecdotally, the reason for that is probably that myself and people I've spoken to don't identify themselves as a role. Rather, for example, they identify as a WHM that happens to be a healer, for example.

This is a bit personal too, as whenever I play SCH or AST, I don't really enjoy myself. I've been asked a couple of times to do it in pugs and statics and I hated it. Guess I just won't be able to pug if the pf strat calls for astro and sage to use their unique, unhomogenized tools, and I only enjoy white mage.

If SE wants to avoid having people feel like that, then I can see how this homogenization has come about. I wonder if they can avoid this situation, while also giving each job unique tools still... and how impactful can those tools be.

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They absolutely can avoid these things. They could start by communicating with the playerbase again, a two way communication that is. Especially here on the official forums.
Then take feedback, and with official threads explain areas they are looking at, maybe get suggestions for alternatives, and then when the unfortunate happens, explain rationale and how they will improve later.
I'm not sure what happened but the devs stopped responding here sometime in late hw. Since then the game has notably slipped in several areas where it shouldn't have.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

Anecdotally, the reason for that is probably that myself and people I've spoken to don't identify themselves as a role. Rather, for example, they identify as a WHM that happens to be a healer, for example.

This is a bit personal too, as whenever I play SCH or AST, I don't really enjoy myself. I've been asked a couple of times to do it in pugs and statics and I hated it. Guess I just won't be able to pug if the pf strat calls for astro and sage to use their unique, unhomogenized tools, and I only enjoy white mage.

If SE wants to avoid having people feel like that, then I can see how this homogenization has come about. I wonder if they can avoid this situation, while also giving each job unique tools still... and how impactful can those tools be.

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here is the thing with that. If you cant find a group then you will create your own.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

They absolutely can avoid these things. They could start by communicating with the playerbase again, a two way communication that is. Especially here on the official forums.
Then take feedback, and with official threads explain areas they are looking at, maybe get suggestions for alternatives, and then when the unfortunate happens, explain rationale and how they will improve later.
I'm not sure what happened but the devs stopped responding here sometime in late hw. Since then the game has notably slipped in several areas where it shouldn't have.

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While I am not sure that actually communicating with the players would align the desires of all the healers that play this game, I would love to have someone from the dev team actually explain themselves. It beats trying to glean their intentions from their actions, of which I can't ever be completely confident.

Hopefully Friday we get something besides "look how pretty the new effects are".

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Originally Posted by Axxion

here is the thing with that. If you cant find a group then you will create your own.

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Indeed, and I did.

However, that has nothing to do with the schism that forms between those who aim for performance over all else, and those who don't have fun with that way of thinking. It at least seems to track how the community viewed AST cards and SE's shadowbringers response, for example.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

Anecdotally, the reason for that is probably that myself and people I've spoken to don't identify themselves as a role. Rather, for example, they identify as a WHM that happens to be a healer, for example.

This is a bit personal too, as whenever I play SCH or AST, I don't really enjoy myself. I've been asked a couple of times to do it in pugs and statics and I hated it. Guess I just won't be able to pug if the pf strat calls for astro and sage to use their unique, unhomogenized tools, and I only enjoy white mage.

If SE wants to avoid having people feel like that, then I can see how this homogenization has come about. I wonder if they can avoid this situation, while also giving each job unique tools still... and how impactful can those tools be.

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This is precisely the reason they don't place higher emphasise on role diversity. They don't want players to feel obligated to play jobs they aren't interested in even within their own role. It's hard to fault them either when looking back at Heavensward and Stormblood. If you were a White Mage, you were likely asked to play Astro incessantly, and had difficulty finding a static willing to accept you as a White Mage. Meanwhile, Dragoon players practically had a red carpet rolled out for them.

While that issue isn't nearly as prevalent nowadays due to rDPS, but if stronger job diversity created an imbalance, it would happen again.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Fun>balance because ilvl tends to make up for lower parse numbers.

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Healers should be the strongest damage dealers in all content. Sounds fun to me. It highlights the uselessness of DPS players. But because Balance > Fun that will not happen untill the game is able to accommodate to such changes without making DPS players irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

But because Balance > Fun

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The funny thing is that, in the past, Yoshi-P and his crew would vehemently disagree with you. At least according to a particular slide.

Then again, what room do I have to trust what they say and write anymore, considering where we are now.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

The funny thing is that, in the past, Yoshi-P and his crew would vehemently disagree with you. At least according to a particular slide.

Then again, what room do I have to trust what they say and write anymore, considering where we are now.

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https://i.imgur.com/yx0dKYK.png

Don't believe him and his lies.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

The funny thing is that, in the past, Yoshi-P and his crew would vehemently disagree with you. At least according to a particular slide.

Then again, what room do I have to trust what they say and write anymore, considering where we are now.

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Hah.

While I still do think the team are trying to make the "best" game they can, their focus seems to have shifted as they have gotten more popular, and veteran healers are one of the groups who got lost in the shuffle.

I really hope they can make the role engaging for general high skill play for Endwalker. If the casual experience remains as sacred as it has been, then I wonder how much can actually be done.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

The funny thing is that, in the past, Yoshi-P and his crew would vehemently disagree with you. At least according to a particular slide.

Then again, what room do I have to trust what they say and write anymore, considering where we are now.

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If they really said that Fun > Balance they must have been joking. It is completely irrational statement to make for a game. Lack of balance leads to very frustrating situations. People in general don't have fun when there is no balance. It is only the very small minority who are going praise an unbalanced state of the game as something better than the more balanced state of the game. Boring gameplay is actually far less detrimental than the lack of balance. At least they got their priorities straight in Shb.

I kinda disagree. I like to have another healer in raids because I'm not sure I know what I'm doing in most of them.

In the lower level ones I can get hit and still live, but the higher ones I might die and then I'd need another healer to help me.

I also don't want to do damage. I want to do healing. Thats why I made a white mage first so I could do healing instead of damage.

If ur a healer and want to do damage then I dunno they could make a job that does both better, but I just want to do healing.

Maybe they can make more damage so I can just do healing stuff. Ya the solo duty and quest was kinda long, but after my white mage I did a monk and it was so damn hard I gave up on it and didn't level it up until more than a year.

I just want to do healing. Why are you telling them to make me do damage. Stop speaking for me I just want to do healing when I play a healer.

That's nice and all, except every single class in this game is a dps in some way, shape, or form.

Tanks are just beefy blue dps that can take tankbusters without melting like a snowcone on a hot summer day, and have more defensive cooldowns than anyone else. Their responsibilities are making sure enemies aren't running rampant, facing bosses with fat cleaves away from the party, and not eating vuln stacks like candy off the ground.

DPS are DPS, their only responsibilities are not eating aoes like an all you can eat buffet, and executing their rotations with more competency than your average chimpanzee. Any buffs and/or debuffs they make use of should be looked at as a bonus, because a distressingly large amount of DPS players won't even glance at stuff like feint/addle, and getting a summoner to sacrifice their swiftcast to resurrect someone is like pulling a tooth out of a baby.

Healers are of course green DPS, but with a "rotation" so mind numbingly dull it's insulting. Apply dot, spam nuke for 30 seconds, reapply dot, spam nuke for 30 more seconds, repeat until the heat death of the universe. Sure, their primary responsibility is to keep the party alive and kicking, provided said party isn't doing their absolute best to leap into an early grave. But once you're sure they're not going to die within a nanosecond of breaking eye contact from their health bar, then what? Do you just stand there with your thumb plugged firmly up your rear and do some good old fashion Bee's Knee's? Or do you go back to throwing rocks at the enemy like an ornery school kid? If you pick the first option, I will not hesitate to Dragon Kick your rump into the Milky Way, and out of my party.

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Originally Posted by HollyJolly

I just want to do healing. Why are you telling them to make me do damage. Stop speaking for me I just want to do healing when I play a healer.

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What else do you do when there is no need to heal that contributes to beating the encounter? You can't heal your way past a dps check which this game is filled with.

Furthermore, if you do the hall of the novice which is the tutorial, even the game says throw in damage as a healer. https://i.imgur.com/0knYTAx.jpg

As you get more skilled at healing and learn the fights more, you need to heal less because you know your kit better and you don't need to watch out for as many mechanics because you know how to solve them and avoid death.

You don't ask a tank to just sit there pushing no buttons after getting aggro with his tank stance on. So you shouldn't sit there as a healer waiting for a hp bar to drop. Do some damage.


Finally, my very first problem that I mentioned in the thread was that there's a lack of dps buttons. If more dps buttons were added, you wouldn't be any further obligated to push them. But while they are not there, the majority of us that do damage while healing feel their absence, particularly when all 3 healer jobs were able to use them. Plus they make the solo duties faster and more entertaining

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

If they really said that Fun > Balance they must have been joking. It is completely irrational statement to make for a game. Lack of balance leads to very frustrating situations. People in general don't have fun when there is no balance. It is only the very small minority who are going praise an unbalanced state of the game as something better than the more balanced state of the game. Boring gameplay is actually far less detrimental than the lack of balance. At least they got their priorities straight in Shb.

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I disagree. Enjoyment is king, but balance, or lack thereof, can impact that. And for each person, the degree of this impact is different. This is the dilemma in game design; each person has their own criteria.

On the other hand, your statement reads odd to me; making it seem like you would rather play a balanced game you are lukewarm on than an unbalanced one you otherwise enjoy. After all, I would not spend any time on a game that I did not enjoy, even if it is the most balanced.

Did you mean your enjoyment comes mostly from balance? How do you feel about the game's need to add new jobs each expansion, since that mere act makes things less balanced? Don't mean to sound aggressive, it's just this idea is truly baffling me.

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Originally Posted by HollyJolly

If ur a healer and want to do damage then I dunno they could make a job that does both better, but I just want to do healing.

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I'm a healer that wants to be useful. Damage is useful. Overhealing is useless. Simple as that.

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Originally Posted by HollyJolly

I kinda disagree. I like to have another healer in raids because I'm not sure I know what I'm doing in most of them.

In the lower level ones I can get hit and still live, but the higher ones I might die and then I'd need another healer to help me.

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I mean is it really the end of the day? Wipes means you have something you can learn and get better. Surely players are not staying incompetent from day 01 & never improve, aren’t they?

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Originally Posted by HollyJolly

I also don't want to do damage. I want to do healing. Thats why I made a white mage first so I could do healing instead of damage.

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Sylphie?

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Originally Posted by HollyJolly

If ur a healer and want to do damage then I dunno they could make a job that does both better, but I just want to do healing.

Maybe they can make more damage so I can just do healing stuff. Ya the solo duty and quest was kinda long, but after my white mage I did a monk and it was so damn hard I gave up on it and didn't level it up until more than a year.

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Sure. First SE needs to ramp up the incoming damage & add some randomness to encounter so that I can be more wary & actually use all these healing spells that I almost never press. That’s the least they can do to make me heal more alongside my co-healer.

Second, if they want to get rid of our damage spells, then get rid of damage requirement from our job quests…. Oops! Can’t do that either! We still have MSQ which are shared across all jobs! :p No dps means no clear! How I wish my Cure II can damage enemies now!?

Fun aside: I too, like healing. But effectively it’s a team game. Overheals doesn’t help my party; 1 extra Glare/Broil/Malefic does, and the more I can squeeze it in, the faster the encounter will end and the less healing -you-, my cohealer, need to throw out. Win-win, isn’t it?

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Originally Posted by HollyJolly

I just want to do healing. Why are you telling them to make me do damage. Stop speaking for me I just want to do healing when I play a healer.

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Yep, definitely Sylphie.
They are the reason why I deliberately leave most of the ‘lower lv raid/trials’ cohealer solo heal their way through. Sometimes even the ‘high lv ones’ . I.e. What am I supposed to do when they choose to overtop my Whispering Dawn with their Plenary-buffed Medica II + Asylums? Cast more Succor? Nah no. Next time raidwides happens I’ll just Broil away. They wanna heal? I’ll let them do that. I personally don’t like to play the ”Who gets to heal more!?”-game.

@Holly

You…might be better off on the general forums where there is two other people that states they also only want to heal but refuse to acknowledge all the changes that would be needed for this playstyle to properly exist in this game.

I’m not sure what game, or if there is one, that healer mains like you are coming from where you only healed but I’ve never played a game where healers only healed. Hell the first mmorpg I played, the healers were ice mages with only two heals. One aoe and the other a single target. That was it. This is the first time I’ve seen healers with an unnecessary amount of heal spells. Speaks even louder volumes when even raiders that main healers STILL complain they have nothing to do unless they do a specific fight.

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Originally Posted by HollyJolly

I kinda disagree. I like to have another healer in raids because I'm not sure I know what I'm doing in most of them.

In the lower level ones I can get hit and still live, but the higher ones I might die and then I'd need another healer to help me.

I also don't want to do damage. I want to do healing. Thats why I made a white mage first so I could do healing instead of damage.

If ur a healer and want to do damage then I dunno they could make a job that does both better, but I just want to do healing.

Maybe they can make more damage so I can just do healing stuff. Ya the solo duty and quest was kinda long, but after my white mage I did a monk and it was so damn hard I gave up on it and didn't level it up until more than a year.

I just want to do healing. Why are you telling them to make me do damage. Stop speaking for me I just want to do healing when I play a healer.

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I also want to do healing when I play a healer. The thing is though, when I get good at my healing class there is not enough healing to justify what I want to do. Its as simple as that. Healing every 1hp missing or one block is just as boring as spamming our 1 button nuke.

I want to correctly use EXOG here cause if I use it too late or too early its not gonna be up when I need it. I want to rely on using Regen/Aspected Benefict to heal the tank from the last tank buster cause I need Benediction/ED a few seconds down the line. This, is what I mean when I say I want to be a healer. This is not how the game plays. The game plays to where you can pretty much heal in w/e order you'd like with malms of leeway to the point where instead of being forced to use a gcd, your oGCD is already up and ready instead of still being on CD. Ergo, if you know your oGCD is going to heal how it needs to cause the next raid wide is too far away to actually care do you either

A. Stand there and wait for said raid wide

or

B. Do damage

There is not enough outgoing damage to justify doing nothing but healing.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

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I think the reason why balance matters so much is because players are torn between playing what they know provides more value to their team, while simultaneously wanting to play a job with gameplay/aesthetics that they are attracted to. I think that there's a middle ground that you need to strike between making jobs feel unique, while also giving them the capability of solving the same set of problems (ideally in unique ways).

The other issue that crops up is that players just get tired of seeing the same comps being used in skilled play expansion after expansion with the same interdependencies. Heavensward was particularly bad for this. Pretty much every comp was running WAR/SCH/NIN/DRG, and the remaining four slots didn't have that much variability in them either. Ranged demanded a DRG. Tanks demanded a NIN. NIN demanded a WAR. And so on. And this game is incredibly slow to make balance adjustments, so if something is grossly unbalanced you pretty much have to put up for it for the next two years. That's why it's so important for them to get it right at the start of an expansion.

To make things worse, there are a couple of jobs that have been kicking around since ARR that are just consistently on top because they've been grandfathered into a bunch of advantages, and there's a very vocal playerbase that gets real, real mad if you try to take those advantages away because they're used to ruling the roost. We're only more recently starting to see those jobs finally get gently moved out of the meta, and it's a massive step forward for the long term health of this game.

I would say that it's critical that the dev team take an iterative approach to balance and show ongoing, active responses to player feedback. You can't wait two years between balance adjustments. Because if people feel that the job that they want to play is completely ineffective and that they aren't being listened to, then it definitely won't be fun, and it they'll likely just lose interest and find something better worth their time.

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Originally Posted by HollyJolly

I just want to do healing. Why are you telling them to make me do damage. Stop speaking for me I just want to do healing when I play a healer.

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This was far too good of a setup for it to not be deliberate, but someone had to do it.

https://i.imgur.com/53yfWmgl.png

Jokes aside, though, I think anyone who is truly serious about healing focused gameplay would want a major revamp of both the current healer job designs and the current approach to raid design. Both are inadequate as they stand.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

I disagree. Enjoyment is king, but balance, or lack thereof, can impact that. And for each person, the degree of this impact is different. This is the dilemma in game design; each person has their own criteria.

On the other hand, your statement reads odd to me; making it seem like you would rather play a balanced game you are lukewarm on than an unbalanced one you otherwise enjoy. After all, I would not spend any time on a game that I did not enjoy, even if it is the most balanced.

Did you mean your enjoyment comes mostly from balance? How do you feel about the game's need to add new jobs each expansion, since that mere act makes things less balanced? Don't mean to sound aggressive, it's just this idea is truly baffling me.

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Games are business and what gets most people satisfied is king aka balance. Adding more jobs is not directly related to imbalance. GNB is a new job but that's finely balanced. The dmg dealt is roughly the same as the dmg of the other tank jobs so GNB is only adding variety to the tank class.

What I enjoy is having relevant DPS as a healer and SE is probably going to continue going in that direction. I don't like healing that much but I like the option of having access to heals.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I'm a healer that wants to be useful. Damage is useful. Overhealing is useless. Simple as that.

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This makes the strongest damage dealers the most useful healers which is why healer's dps should be greater than that of a DPS and tanks. This is how the game operates and we are getting there. Healers in HS and SB were the weakest damage dealing class in the entire game. In Shb, we are surpassing tanks in raids not only in rDPS but with sheer DPS numbers as well with our 1 button spam. In Endwalker we will most probably be closing the gap in DPS numbers with actual DPS roles if they expand our DPS kit.

We are also getting a healer that augments their own offensive spells which makes them less of a support class and more of a DPS class that also happened to heal.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Games are business and what gets most people satisfied is king aka balance. Adding more jobs is not directly related to imbalance. GNB is a new job but that's finely balanced. The dmg dealt is roughly the same as the dmg of the other tank jobs so GNB is only adding variety to the tank class.

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All the tanks are balanced as in each one is damn near a copy of each other. Are they fun? Maybe, maybe not

Same goes for healers right now.

Having every competent group run a mandatory WAR and SCH across three 'expansions' was far, far worse. You can forget copies, everyone literally was playing the same job. At least we currently get to choose the aesthetics that we like. That's progress.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

GHealers in HS and SB were the weakest damage dealing class in the entire game.

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It's worth noting that there's pretty important caveats to this. In single target healers were indeed a good way behind. But in AoE, healer DPS was seriously underestimated back then, laughably so at times.

At the very start of HW I could out AoE any DPS except a SMN in neverreap on Scholar pulling 1000dps+ on trash. In Stormblood I never figured a means to reach the same silly numbers but for the most part I'd be right there with a well played DPS' numbers on trash still routinely beating decent players if they weren't on a particularly strong AoE job.

Also keep in mind that it's very possible for them to add extra depth to our DPS without inflating the numbers by simply tuning the potency back down or even using the stat crunch as a means to camouflage how our damage scales with MND relative to DPS jobs and their mainstat.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Games are business and what gets most people satisfied is king aka balance. Adding more jobs is not directly related to imbalance. GNB is a new job but that's finely balanced. The dmg dealt is roughly the same as the dmg of the other tank jobs so GNB is only adding variety to the tank class.

What I enjoy is having relevant DPS as a healer and SE is probably going to continue going in that direction. I don't like healing that much but I like the option of having access to heals.

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You know... you just contradicted yourself.

Imagine the healers were rebalanced so that none of them could contribute an appreciable amount of damage in raids, yet have the same amount of downtime as they do now. Just give the people who don't like dealing damage everything they want in this regard. They would be balanced, yes, but by your own admission, you would not like this.

Therefore, Balance is not king. Something else is.

I'm not saying that balance isn't important. But it comes into play later, once a good foundation is set. Because while balance does nothing on its own, unbalance can kill enthusiasm, generally through community pressure in this game. But balancing without considering what brought people to your content in the first place can do the same.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

You know... you just contradicted yourself.

Imagine the healers were rebalanced so that none of them could contribute an appreciable amount of damage in raids, yet have the same amount of downtime as they do now. Just give the people who don't like dealing damage everything they want in this regard. They would be balanced, yes, but by your own admission, you would not like this.

Therefore, Balance is not king. Something else is.

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That's not balance. This is making one class equally useless in the game. Uselessness is not something balancing can bring. This is also the main reason why a healer's total DPS output is not more than that of an actual DPS job. This would have made DPS jobs completely useless, can't say that I don't prefer it that way, but it is unrealistic. It can only become a possibility when DPS jobs become something more than a class that deals damage. Currently, there is nothing that makes a DPS job valuable other than DPS. The only difference between a ranged melee and magical DPS is LB and aesthetics. Rotation is something you learn by heart and unlike healers, even if something goes wrong with your party members, you keep on DPS-ing because you have nothing else to do. The exception from this rule is the SMN because they can raise and the RDM because they can raise and heal.

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

That's not balance. This is making one class equally useless in the game.

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Exactly. Equally useless, therefore balanced.

It seems that we are using different definitions of "balance". I have a rather strict one, and it goes like this. Decide what quality you want to measure, and what objects you want to measure. Measure them, and compare the difference(s). The less of a difference there is, the more balanced they are in that respect. This entire time I was measuring "DPS" between "healer jobs". If the healer jobs all did 20 dps, that would be balanced. If they all did 3000 dps, that would also be balanced.

As such, let me clarify and repeat that dps balance amongst healers (or tanks, or dps) is important, but does not bring value on its own. You mention jobs being useful, which does bring value. Amusingly, this is done right now by making sure damage bewteen healers, tanks, and dps are unbalanced in favor of the DPS, which you agree is a good thing. This imbalance is a choice made when designing the jobs, and these conscious choices make all the difference in the world. Things like "usefulness" are a bit nebulous though; I'd argue that role usefulness is unbalanced in favor of Tanks at the moment.

Still, regardless of balance or imbalance, what's most important is how players feel about a job. Usefulness is a part of it, yes, but so are other intangibles like aminations, rotations, glamour, story, so on, and so on. That was what I was trying to impart - there are many things that go into this, and not one of those things are king. Enjoyment, or rather, the combination of it all is king. And the thing is, you can't exactly measure that, since each person values things differently.

You mentioned earlier that Balance brings in the business. I believe certain imbalances hurts business, like dps within the healer role. But what brings in the business in the first place has little to do how jobs stack up against each other.

unlike the majority of the members of the forums here, I had to sleep because the live letter was 3am for me

Good fucking grief its a good thing i did. Otherwise i would have been too annoyed to sleep.


2 years we pointed out how 1 button dps and pure healing is a terrible design and they doubled down on it. I'll do a breakdown later. Looks like I'll be sticking to dancer and rdm for my healing and buffing.

I'm just depressed at this point. at least SMN looks fun enough to fall back on!

Impressive how the devs ignored this for a 3rd expansion in a row. It isn’t even a hard thing to fix just give each healer some damage variance , SCH gets its old dots back, have AST and WHM get proc based skills but not overbearing to drown out their role responsibilities. They are really delusional to think healers are that vital as content gets hilariously easier and more scripted making the “healers need to heal” argument completely miss the mark

Honestly, I've lost confidence in the Battle Team and the ones directing the battle team. They've lost connection with the player base and just winging it, fueled by success and arrogance. It's not just about Healers either but the whole game design is slipping.

After they had to save the game from an arrogant producer, they made a battle system that work with job that complimented each other. Jobs had a skill level from easy to hard. Jobs had different designs of playstyle. Now Tank Roles and Healer Roles are basically carbon copies. Jobs are being dumbed down for greater mass appeal. Non of the key issues from expansion after expansion are being address because the Devs think everything is fine; the players are just playing the game wrong.

I may not be a healer but I do know this group has point blank told the Devs exactly what they hate and exactly how to fix it; it's an insult that they just flat out ignore the player base.

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Originally Posted by AngeliouxRein

@Holly

You…might be better off on the general forums where there is two other people that states they also only want to heal but refuse to acknowledge all the changes that would be needed for this playstyle to properly exist in this game.

I’m not sure what game, or if there is one, that healer mains like you are coming from where you only healed but I’ve never played a game where healers only healed. Hell the first mmorpg I played, the healers were ice mages with only two heals. One aoe and the other a single target. That was it. This is the first time I’ve seen healers with an unnecessary amount of heal spells. Speaks even louder volumes when even raiders that main healers STILL complain they have nothing to do unless they do a specific fight.

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There WAS a game that healers only heal. The healers there have lots and lots of tools of healing and the environment does require healers to solely focus on healing only. There are some interesting healing mechanics that the ideas would hopefully be utilized in FFXIV someday. Too bad that game died down due to poor contents and bad market decisions

Yeah…

That feeling when a game you love gets destroyed due to unfortunate decision making is rough. But I want to focus in on the fact that you mentioned the game you use to play sounds like it was designed from the start for healers to function that way. As in, the developers knew from the start healers would have to focus on healing. The same as the games I played where the developers knew damn well healers would be required to DPS. Hence the games we played designed their healers accordingly.

If this game was designed for healers to only heal and it actually worked out that way, I would not be here asking for more DPS skills. Probably asking for more ways to buff a party or something but I otherwise wouldn’t be bothered by all the heal spells we have now. But that’s not how this game was designed and on top of that the game itself encourages you to DPS in between. WHM for example has a whole history of apparently fighting against BLM during the Magi war. The way that was being described in game would have you think WHM back then had a ton of offensive skills to fight off a raging BLM. Otherwise, how else would you survive a battle against a BLM? Heal yourself until you were tired meanwhile BLM has an infinite pool of MP? Someone was taking those BLM out as a WHM and there’s no way spamming holy was enough. SCH has a story line that was also all about military combat and what not.

If it’s not the lore that tells you, then it was the hall of novice. And if you started this game from at least back in HW, the jobs themselves didn’t have anywhere near as much heal spells as we have now. Something at all times , whether you ignored it or not, was telling you to do more than heal. I stayed silent this whole expansion about the amount of heal spells we have simply because I assumed, especially when Nier got added, healers would have a reason to use all those spells. But not even raiders fount a use for their whole kit. As if the developers just straight up forgot their own game wasn’t designed this way to begin with.

I wouldn’t mind playing a healer that only heals as long as the game gives me a solid reason to use at least half my kit at all times. Hell, I wouldn’t even be here commenting if that was the case. But SE is way too focused on keeping this game accessible to only one crowd and not taking advantage of the thought of creating different play styles across all the jobs. At least this way, there wouldn’t be as much healer rage if it was done that way. And it would cater to a larger demographic of different gamers. But that seems highly unlikely unless Endwalker changes the difficulty that allows healers to put their entire kit to use.

Until then, even the healer mains who want to “just heal” are going to see the problem and eventually get bored as their skills increase. Something gotta give. Either we get more utility or they start adding in encounters that actually require healers to heal. One or the other needs to happen.

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Originally Posted by Aword3213

There WAS a game that healers only heal.

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Name it.

Because in any game healers have to level somehow and you can't heal mobs to death.

It would be nice to have achievements for the healer job like they did for the tank jobs.

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Originally Posted by Caitlyn

It would be nice to have achievements for the healer job like they did for the tank jobs.

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I'd like that but that would require the devs to admit they messed healers up enough that they need to add incentives to get people to play more.

With this dev team I don't see it happening atm.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Name it.

Because in any game healers have to level somehow and you can't heal mobs to death.

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Lineage 2, you can even heal the monster xD but thats a totally different game.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Name it.

Because in any game healers have to level somehow and you can't heal mobs to death.

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Back in my day healers leveled in a group, with others, in a single camp spot, while the other party members killed the mobs for you while you debuffed and buffed and healed.

It was the game that started it all as we know it, and we called it EverQuest.

Soloing was limited to a few classes that could kite well. You made a party, you found a camp, and you stayed there for hours grinding XP. You talked to people while waiting for respawns. You made friends. The game was the social experience, not the content.

And it was great.

Everquest is kind of an iffy one to use.

Clerics were very much the pocket healer as you describe, others not so much to varying degrees.

I can't even begin to express how much I miss my old handbag shaman from EQ1, I started planes raids solo, solo'd fairly significant dragons, solo'd Rakashir for a friends epic, I could just grab anyone from the guild and go merit farming, didn't matter what classes came as I could always just cover any gaps myself. Pulling, tanking, healing, even dpsing (to a lesser degree of course). FFXIV healer's are wastes of oxygen compared to what I used to get up to on my Shammy =(

Druids were less openly broken but still typically did best just soloing via quad kiting.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Name it.
Because in any game healers have to level somehow and you can't heal mobs to death.

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Allow me a moment to gush, but feel free to ignore it.
In Granado Espada, you had the option to run around with any kind of party make-up, and, generally, characters in healing stances were either unarmed or holding a rosario to increase their basic healing potency and defense rating, with no actual means of defending themselves unless they were to arm up (but this would take you out of the healing stances, disabling healing entirely, and was not an option for every character). This meant that other characters would need to protect them and that they couldn't level up on their own, but this was easily circumvented due to the MCC system, which enabled players to make a team of up to 3 characters (which could include a pure healer), and enabled them to create pure healers among other strange character archetypes that most MMOs would stay far away from.
The most "pure healer" of the giant roster of characters was Valeria, who had the most ridiculously potent HP regeneration skills (we're talking, like, 1/3 HP+SP regeneration per second, for 15 seconds, plus 50% magic damage mitigation on a single target, or half that and 30% magic mitigation on up to 5 characters for 30 seconds) and possibly the greatest Revive skill in the game (able to revive up to 12 characters with a single cast, restoring full HP&SP while applying debuff immunity and 10% universal damage reduction for 30 seconds). She was given a single attack skill, but the potency was so weak, and the cooldown was so long, that most players didn't bother leveling it up or using it, even for the possibility of it's stun. Instead, they would keep her busy with healing, cleansing, and buffing.

Of course, Granado Espada is a very different kind of game, but I can't help but always think back to it whenever I find dissatisfaction with a class or character in any (MMORPG) game I've played since. Despite being almost 16 years old, GE continues to be updated, and its roster of characters keeps expanding with new recruitables that offer a unique suite of aesthetics and gameplay while returning to old characters to improve them and keep them relevant..


..Otherwise, yeah, I can't think of anything.