Healers need an overhaul

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

I think they're just not wanting to admit that healers are in fact in need of more damage spells to make things less boring. I excluded Sage because Phlegma at least is a full on damage move with no healing attached...and judging from the post above, they're trying to compare it with oGCDs you can't compare it to because they either require you to sacrifice healing (Energy Drain takes Aetherflow) or are used for the heal mostly. Phlegma is pure damage.

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What gave you that impression? I want ALL healers to have more damage tools, not JUST White mage. Especially on Sage. Just because Sage has "Toxikon II" or Phlegma it doesn't make the rotation any more interesting than what any other healer has as the "DPS to heal" healer. I'm just pointing out that Sage doesn't have more DPS tools than other healers.

Phlegma is pure damage, but are you implying you hold Assize to only heal? Even when it's your skill you should be using 24/7 when it's your only source of MP recovery outside of Lucid Dreaming? I understand if you want to hold Assize for a small duration of time to heal for a mechanic, but drifting it too much and losing a cast is more detrimental than simply using a GCD heal because Assize is a bigger DPS loss than Glare. It's pretty much in the same vein as using the skill 24/7.

Phlegma is also one of those skills you want to put in a burst window when it aligns, so it's not as if you want to use it all the time even if it gives mobility. The skill you use for mobility is Toxikon II, but you still rely on Slidecasting with Dosis III regardless since Toxikon II is highly limited. Same goes with every healer at this point. SCH, especially, since Energy Drain is a bigger dps tax with Ruin II than with simply weaving it in Broil.

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

Because it is fact. This is the samething as someone accused me of "gaslighting" for simply saying "green DPS".

There were no issue with WHM at the beginning of 6.0 if you look at from a healing respective. It has strong heal, decent MP economy if one ultilize its full kit, while still contribute meaningful DPS. In the absent of FFlog and players are inclined to play the class as it's designed, there would be no problem because there would be no reason not to. The minimum DPS loss wouldn't make or break even the hardest encounter. It's a simple, comfy healing class with plenty of mobility.

That issue was 100% a self-created, artificially constructed by the community because of a small difference that makes no difference in any in-game context, but some ranking on a third party website.

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You're ignoring the fact that 5.x existed sir =(

People weren't kicking off about it specifically because it was a DPS loss, that side of things was nothing new. People were kicking off about it because the job design team seemingly forgot it existed and didn't scale it up for the new level cap. The most interesting bit of WHM kit in years got worse relative to the rest of our kit as we levelled up. It's never been a good feeling for any class when it's happened before (usually SCH with the Fairy) and it certainly wasn't here either.

You didn't need to look at logs to know it was worse off with the release of 6.0, simply reading the tooltips made this abundantly clear.

As it is now, it's pretty much as perfect as can be expected IMHO. It's useful across all ranges of content, it's versatile in it's use, it's simple in it's application but it has pretty substantial depth if you really want to min max with it (aligning misery to burst windows, strategic hoarding to align misery with trash or solace/rapture with movement/downtime.

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Originally Posted by Zebraoracle

I think what people are forgetting to mention regarding WoW is that WoW actually offered multiple styles of healing - there was something for everyone.

You want to be a pure healer? Holy priest and holy paladin (and even then these two are focused on AoE/raid heals and tank heals respectively)
You want to put a ton of HoTs on everyone and giggle as damage can't keep up? Resto druid
You want to be a jack of all trades and still very effective? Resto shaman
You want to heal by DPSing and damage prevention? Disc priest and kind of (not as much anymore from what I've heard) monk
You want to heal by... doing whatever the heck mistweaver monk does? I still don't know how to categorize this one and I've played it and it's fun and it still baffles me.
Who knows what the evoker healing style is going to be like.

Meanwhile you have sage as a supposed "heal by dps" job, which is kind of very misleading, and a worse scholar but with less jank.
You have white mage and astro with very similar play styles, only thing really separating them is astro cards.

That's it. The healers feel so incredibly homogenized compared to other games that offer actual variety.

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Oh, I didn't forget it. I just wanted to touch on the crux of the issue with FFXIV healing, which is the lack of meaningful choices. This causes it to be unfulfilling. You're just pushing the same buttons over and over without thinking about it.

I agree the healers in FFXIV are more homogenized than in other MMOs. They definitely need a complete overhaul to regain their identities.

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

First, RPG and MMORPG are two distinct gene. You dismiss WoW (an actual MMO) as a anomoly, yet using a bunch of single player to make your case ... how does that even make sense?

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Because MMOs grew from single-player RPGs. Hence MMORPG. If you want MMO examples, how about Aion? I remember healing in SWTOR. I spent a ton of time debuffing + dealing damage and miraculously, my parties stayed alive through it. The entire RPG genre family looks askance at "pure healers". "Pure healer" classes are the ones you tend to replace in most games. They're just not that useful as you get more skilled. It's just how the zeitgeist of the game style works. Killing things has a functionally infinite ceiling on usefulness. Health bars do not. Eventually you get good enough at filling the health bars that your utility ends. And then you do other things. Constantly spamming healing spells is boring. Healers are fun because you weigh options and multitask with them. If you want to spam spam spam one task, go play a DPS and stop trying to ruin the healing role. Hyperfocusing on one(ish) task are what DPS are good at: they have a theoretically infinite ceiling on refining their one task and getting better at it.

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Also the irony is in almost half of those games (the D&D style ones), healers main purpose is a buff bots, heal second, and DPS is a distant third only useful late game with a min/max build. I enjoy those games a lot. Path 1 + 2 together clocked in 1000h for me on steam. But no, keep those healers away from my MMO please.

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D&D style games see healers as buffbots first, DPS second, healers third if you're actually good at them. Casting healing spells in combat is something you want to actively avoid. You want to patch people up after everything is dead.

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On unrelated note: my observation on this forum about WoW is it seems to be like a certain ex-president. Both the people who hate it and love it seem can't help but let it live rent free in their head. It's always funny seeing two sides gaslighting each other over it.

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Funny, I don't often bring up WoW until other people do. I have no interest in that game, but good lord do its disciples love to invade other MMOs and wail and screech and gnash their teeth demanding that the entire design paradigm be upended to make it more like WoW. It's happened in every. Single. MMO. I have ever played.


MP and aggro management is interesting insofar as it enables/adds flavor to choices. In a better system, I'd love to see 'em. In the current one? Good riddance. There's no point to punishing players for just playing the game. And GOD no, I wouldn't want old Everquest-style "MP management" anywhere near me. Sitting on your butt in the middle of combat for 8-10 seconds at a time is somehow even more boring than spamming Glare.

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Originally Posted by Aword3213

just do what I do. Leave them be and let them keep on agreeing with each other in circle

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Well yeah, it's because Sylphies don't have compelling arguments. Just rewordings of "HeALeRS sHOuLd HeAL OnLY", then they pitch fits when people dare to disagree with that simplistic stance. Make healers interesting to play. Not boring spammy snorefests. What a novel opinion, how dare we agree that healers should be improved. NO! Keep them as they are! They're in the best state ever! Spamming one button over and over and over again is a good start, but we need to make them even more boring to finish perfecting them.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

And GOD no, I wouldn't want old Everquest-style "MP management" anywhere near me. Sitting on your butt in the middle of combat for 8-10 seconds at a time is somehow even more boring than spamming Glare.

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Off topic, but as a Shaman main and hardcore raider, I ended up on a model M keyboard and even then, I still polished my 8 key (cannibalise) smooth over all those years ;)

Everquest's style of combat had it's place, but that was in a time where we were on average much younger and could merrily afford to waste entire days on a raid or camp. A modern day raid is done and dusted in the time many EQ raids took to simply prep and setup.

Back on topic:

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Constantly spamming healing spells is boring.

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If you can count dual purpose abilities as healing, it can be done in a way that's enjoyable. It just requires inventive approaches. SWTOR did this well, Warhammer did it to perfection.

Abilities like current Lilies, Earthy Star and Macrocosmos show that they understand the theory, but haven't got to grips with it yet for whatever reason.

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Originally Posted by Aword3213

just do what I do. Leave them be and let them keep on agreeing with each other in circle

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Looks at the tags

Yeah, because we are the toxic ones right? ;)

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Phlegma is also one of those skills you want to put in a burst window when it aligns, so it's not as if you want to use it all the time even if it gives mobility. The skill you use for mobility is Toxikon II, but you still rely on Slidecasting with Dosis III regardless since Toxikon II is highly limited. Same goes with every healer at this point. SCH, especially, since Energy Drain is a bigger dps tax with Ruin II than with simply weaving it in Broil.

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I really feel like the only problem with Toxicon is Addersting. You only get it for a single target shield breaking, which IMO should be changed. You should also get one for using Addersgall. Since this then allows for a Toxicon more often, which spices up Sage a little. Sage IMO is the easiest to fix for that very reason, as every Toxicon is basically just an instant Dosis.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Back on topic:

If you can count dual purpose abilities as healing, it can be done in a way that's enjoyable. It just requires inventive approaches. SWTOR did this well, Warhammer did it to perfection.

Abilities like current Lilies, Earthy Star and Macrocosmos show that they understand the theory, but haven't got to grips with it yet for whatever reason.

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Yes, please. Especially on White Mage.

It's jarring when most of your spells are just some variation of Cure but special™
- Cure 2? Stronger cure
- Afflatus? Instant cure
- Tetra? OGCD cure
- Cure 3? Cure 2 but AoE
- Medica? AoE cure
- Medica 2? AoE cure but with regen tacked onto it
- Benediction? Full Cure
- Plenary? Putting cures on your cures

Other jobs are just as simple, but at least they have special effects that don't make the similarities as jarring!
Astro has delayed cures, cures that scale, cure after mitigation... and Scholar and Sage have mitigation, shields, safety nets and heals as well.

I get that WHM is meant to be straightforward in design, which is why it works. But without any further effects, you're really better off choosing the better spells until they're on cooldown rather than have to choose your approach.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

If you can count dual purpose abilities as healing, it can be done in a way that's enjoyable. It just requires inventive approaches. SWTOR did this well, Warhammer did it to perfection.

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Same thing in Tera, as a healer you can help party member dodge damage (by give them an ifram teleport), provide buff, cleansing, MP recovery, not to mention healing come in many different forms. Healing is so simple that if you think about it, would it make any difference for a healer to heal a group of 4, of 8, of 12 or even 20? I think the answer will be no because the majority of the kit is basically a one size fit-all, fire and forget abilities. In other games, the complexity of healing scale with party size.

Buff in FF14 is also extremely simple comparing to many of its peer. Like it always come at specific time, and you basically just press one button. In other games often there are both on demand buff and full up time buff that the healers have to manage and maintain, adding cleansing duty (which notarious lacking in FF14 so whenever it shows up once a blue moon it feels like a gimmick), actually have to manage your MP and the healer basically would have a full pallate. Can they still DPS? Sure, but that would be like the last item on the list, instead of something on the fore-front like FF14.


People only say "more healing is boring" simply because they don't envision the healer role as anything else but just casting a spell to top people off. Someone had mentioned it before, the healing model in FF14 is boring isn't because they have one DPS button, but because it's too one dimensional. Hell, the fact that "oh I don't have cleanse on my hotbar" is a meme should tell you something. While I agree the healing in FF14 can use more "engagement" and should be more "interesting", I simply don't believe DPS focus in the way to go. In fact if I can be so bold, I certainly will claim FF14 is the one MMO where I see healer does the most DPS while also have the most simple healing model.

I wouldn't have a problem if the dev drop their pants and just scrap the trinity system and adapt a model like Guild War, then I would change my expectation accordingly. But for a game that bill itself as using the trinity, having essentially a Red DPS, a blue DPS, and a green DPS just feel ... wrong.

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Originally Posted by Yeastyloins

So I'm curious then, how do you (or any other healer in this thread) feel about healing in the current savage tier? It seems to me (looking from the outside) that there is more of an emphasis on healing given the number of TB and raid wides that apply heavy dots on the party in addition to damage events that seem to only be there to strip shields before a heavier hit (think the sonic screams into a Ruby glow on P5s). Especially when it comes to TBs given most tanks are unable to simply invuln it and call it a day and need to use their own mitigation to lessen the subsequent bleed/dot.

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This tier has been a nice step forward in opinion. It doesn't address the post-prog healing gameplay because we still reach a point where we simply outgear P5-7 enough to entirely oGCD them. Purgation is probably the only mechanic in those three fights that may still need a GCD shield but progress is progress. P8S is the first Savage fight in six years we literally can't oGCD heal. I want to see more of this because it's actually making us utilize our full kit regardless if it's a safety clear or a log run.

Of course, this does nothing to address the content below Savage. Which remains a snore. I like the concept of Variant Dungeons but it really highlights how poorly thought out the Healer role is. With a four person comp, healers are entirely irrelevant. That should never be the case, regardless of the content's intended difficulty. So the dev team still has a ways to go in making the healing role interesting again.

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

Because it is fact. This is the samething as someone accused me of "gaslighting" for simply saying "green DPS".

There were no issue with WHM at the beginning of 6.0 if you look at from a healing respective. It has strong heal, decent MP economy if one ultilize its full kit, while still contribute meaningful DPS. In the absent of FFlog and players are inclined to play the class as it's designed, there would be no problem because there would be no reason not to. The minimum DPS loss wouldn't make or break even the hardest encounter. It's a simple, comfy healing class with plenty of mobility.

That issue was 100% a self-created, artificially constructed by the community because of a small difference that makes no difference in any in-game context, but some ranking on a third party website.

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It isn't fact though.

White Mage was the only healer essentially punished for utilizing their own job gauge. Someone wanting their job to be at a competitive level to its respective counterparts doesn't necessarily make them a "green DPS". At least not in the context you're using that term. Furthermore, it wasn't a minimal DPS. In fact, let's review! Grabbing a random top ranked White Mage from P6S. They used Rapture 21 times. At 310 potency from Glare III, this would equate to a 2,170 potency loss throughout the fight. A rough estimation puts that well over 500 rDPS just... thrown away for no tangible benefit. What does White Mage offer the other healers cannot do better without suffering a massive damage loss? Absolutely nothing. Those big "burst heals" aren't relevant. Not only is shield healing and mitigation objectively better than regeneration, Astro can easily handle the load just fine.

In other words, there is no reason to bring a healer whose main gimmick is "healing" at a loss. This isn't a "self-created" problem but a poor balancing one.

The irony here is you bring up FFlogs, which yes, have influenced the community on the whole. It's also the only reason Savage retains any relevancy outside of Ultimate gearing. Without that website, Savage would be entirely dead content within 2-3 months. If not sooner.