A summary of healer issues

Toxicon is basically SGE's Ruin II with extra steps

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Originally Posted by AngeliouxRein

Lol its real easy to fall into the toxicon trap. Either you’re doing it out of boredom or you’re doing it because you genuinely think it’s the better way to go. But a large portion of the player base cares nothing about optimization so tanks now have a new type of healer to be concerned about. I personally do it out of boredom. When the tanks hp hits about half is when I use other skills to top them off but to fight off boredom… shield, all the shields lol.

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I'd rather just have 200-250 pot with zero drop off and call it a day.

Or raise it to 400 with the 50% drop off so it's at least better than Dyskrasia for aoe and better than Dosis for single target.

You're using a resource, it should hit hard.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I'd rather just have 200-250 pot with zero drop off and call it a day.

Or raise it to 400 with the 50% drop off so it's at least better than Dyskrasia for aoe and better than Dosis for single target.

You're using a resource, it should hit hard.

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As much as I'd like it to be stronger, I think that'd only make the problem of fishing for Toxicons even worse, not to mention the huge mp dump it'd be

The Haimas should provide Addersting when the shield breaks. Perhaps cap it to once per ability use.

I think I have come across my first sign of the content not matching our tool kits. I ran the level 89 dungeon for the first time yesterday and was healing as SGE, I died to an early mechanic during the second boss with a PLD tank. With no SMN or RDM to raise me it would surely have been a wipe? Nope. Nor did it look like they struggled. This was something I complained about in ShB in the level 80 dungeons.

I get content has to be approachable to heal, but at the very least balance it so the healer role is needed, else we're just green DPS.

Doing leveling roulettes and MSQ with SCH I realised your Energy Drain stays at 100 potency through out the lower levels.

I don't know why I figured it would start at lower potency and update into higher potencies as you level, but nope. The moment you get it its 100 potency forever.

It has this strange effect of becoming weaker as you level. At level 50 your Ruin is 150 potency and your ED is 100 potency, meaning weaving your ED in is a huge gain in DPS, almost another nuke's worth. Then as you level that ability gets weaker and weaker comparatively, which its not what you want an ability to feel. You don't want your Job to feel weaker as you level.

They won't ever raise energy drains potency again, if anything they'll need

Curse auto correct and the awful mobile version of this forum.

If anything they'll nerf energy drain again to try to reduce its usage.*

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Originally Posted by Allegor

As much as I'd like it to be stronger, I think that'd only make the problem of fishing for Toxicons even worse, not to mention the huge mp dump it'd be

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toxicon being the same potency as dosis kind of makes it almost completely useless though. the mobility isnt needed if you know how to slidecast and even then you can use a charge of phlegma for the same effect since its instant

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Originally Posted by QooEr

toxicon being the same potency as dosis kind of makes it almost completely useless though. the mobility isnt needed if you know how to slidecast and even then you can use a charge of phlegma for the same effect since its instant

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Not every movement can be covered with slidecast and Phlegma requires melee-izh range.

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Originally Posted by rewd

Not every movement can be covered with slidecast and Phlegma requires melee-izh range.

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Which brings me to my biggest question to the design team, why do so many of your casters have one or two abilities that bring them into melee range, they are not melee jobs and the melee range is already crowded with tanks and jobs that need to be there. Seriously are we ranged casters or not make up your mind here.

I don't even think it's a resource they want you to fish for. You see tank buster, shield the tank, get a ruin 2 stack, have fun during mechanics. Heck, most fights start with an very early AoE fart so you could just shield your party pre-pull and when the AoE hits, you trigger all 3 stacks at once. This is nowhere near level of freecure useless trap.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Which brings me to my biggest question to the design team, why do so many of your casters have one or two abilities that bring them into melee range, they are not melee jobs and the melee range is already crowded with tanks and jobs that need to be there. Seriously are we ranged casters or not make up your mind here.

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Because while casters and phys ranged can stay at range, there is no benefit in doing so. On the contrary, most mechanics are far easier to resolve if people stay close to melee range (donut, cones etc) and only move out when absolutely necessary for mechanics that have limited space at melee range like spread markers. Healers have everyone in range, people with party buffs/ mitigation have everyone in range even for skills with a fairly limited range like Curing Waltz.
And SE knows that.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

Because while casters and phys ranged can stay at range, there is no benefit in doing so. On the contrary, most mechanics are far easier to resolve if people stay close to melee range (donut, cones etc) and only move out when absolutely necessary for mechanics that have limited space at melee range like spread markers. Healers have everyone in range, people with party buffs/ mitigation have everyone in range even for skills with a fairly limited range like Curing Waltz.
And SE knows that.

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But then they went and made Earthly star cover nearly the entirety of every arena, also they should be able to realize that the hit box for enemies is going to get real crowded if they want all jobs to be in melee range. Can you imagine doing a 24 raid with all 24 players standing within melee range of the boss. Unless its something like Cid where alliances are separated that is going to make it real crowded.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

But then they went and made Earthly star cover nearly the entirety of every arena, also they should be able to realize that the hit box for enemies is going to get real crowded if they want all jobs to be in melee range. Can you imagine doing a 24 raid with all 24 players standing within melee range of the boss. Unless its something like Cid where alliances are separated that is going to make it real crowded.

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Yes, most likely because one of the major complaints about Star was that the effect was very subtle and somehow people never stood in that thing because they thought "I'm a ranged hurrdurr let the healer chase me with heals hurrdurr".
There is no downside to the "hitbox being crowded". Every halfway decent ex or savage party spends the majority of their time stacking with 6-7 people at the back of the hitbox and the MT plus sometimes OT in front of it. If there is a spread mechanic coming up, you have ample time to spread. It works perfectly fine for mechanics that force you inside the hitbox and immediately after into a spread position like on 2nd trial ex.
The majority of people (at least the ones that knew what they were doing) were constantly stacking near the hitbox of several of the Nier alli raids. Why? Because you really don't want to try dodging a gigantic sidecleave while standing in Narnia. So, yes, I can imagine how it is: perfectly fine.
Ranges have to move out for spread mechanics and they got the tools to get back in range with a gap closer because the devs know perfectly well that dodging almost every mechanic is easier at 5y than 20y.
This game doesn't give ranges a special award for staying at max range.

This thread needs to see the light of day again. "Just play ultimates" isn't the answer.

I'd argue that Ultimates don't even make the act of healing that much more difficult or interesting, as a rebuttal to Yoshi's dismissive comment. Think about it. Ultimate mechanics usually come in two flavors: chunk its targets down 90% of their max HP, or outright kill them for failing. You're still not doing anything interesting with your healing, not anything that lasts more than a GCD or two tops. Indomitability. Whispering Dawn. Back to Broiling.

Ultimates just make the mechanics more complicated and increase failure punishments. You can't heal through punishments that cause instant death or cascade immediately into a party wipe due to mechanic failure.

"Go play Ultimate" is the latest in the long list of "I've never played a healer after Copperbell" evidence tidbits from our fearless leader.

It does need to see the light of day again but unfortunately I have yet to have the time to update the first post and cut down the bloat in the thread. Rl is being as bad to me as yoshida is to healers rn

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

It does need to see the light of day again but unfortunately I have yet to have the time to update the first post and cut down the bloat in the thread. Rl is being as bad to me as yoshida is to healers rn

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Don't worry about toning down the bloat, almost all of them were good points that where relevant when they were written. Hell most of them still are. If the devs didn't see this thread when it was posted they're probably not going to now anyway.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Don't worry about toning down the bloat, almost all of them were good points that where relevant when they were written. Hell most of them still are. If the devs didn't see this thread when it was posted they're probably not going to now anyway.

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There's a few ways the Devs could reduce Button Bloat on Healers.

Merging Aqua Veil and Divine Benison into 1 button
Merging the Cure 1 equivalent on all jobs with their Cure 2 equivalent OR merging Cure 1 with Esuna.
Giving WHM a Eukrasia equivalent skill so that it can be used to merge Afflatus spells with their corresponding skill (Solace=Cure 2, Rapture=Medica, Misery=Holy)

That alone removes 4 buttons off the bar instantly, and allows for the creation of more Afflatus Spells since they no longer contribute to button bloat. People will complain about Homogeny because Eukrasia is supposed to be SGE's gimmick but since healers already share 80% of their toolkits between each other, I don't really see it as much of an argument if 2 healers share a little more.

Just wondering, do anyone else know how the other healer communities feel about the statement

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

There's a few ways the Devs could reduce Button Bloat on Healers.

Merging Aqua Veil and Divine Benison into 1 button
Merging the Cure 1 equivalent on all jobs with their Cure 2 equivalent OR merging Cure 1 with Esuna.
Giving WHM a Eukrasia equivalent skill so that it can be used to merge Afflatus spells with their corresponding skill (Solace=Cure 2, Rapture=Medica, Misery=Holy)

That alone removes 4 buttons off the bar instantly, and allows for the creation of more Afflatus Spells since they no longer contribute to button bloat. People will complain about Homogeny because Eukrasia is supposed to be SGE's gimmick but since healers already share 80% of their toolkits between each other, I don't really see it as much of an argument if 2 healers share a little more.

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I think by bloat Recon was talking about the OP, pretty wordy but it needs to be honestly for non devs who come looking at the thread and might not understand the veteran healer Point of View.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I think by bloat Recon was talking about the OP, pretty wordy but it needs to be honestly for non devs who come looking at the thread and might not understand the veteran healer Point of View.

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My mistake.

Couple of random points that may or may not be worth considering :

1. Healers DPS both in terms of amount and rotation is going to change radically over the next few years given the stated goal of a move to more solo RPG playstyle in the game.

2. Boss damage has changed so much (spikes instead of constant dmg output) that WHM feels totally gimp to me compared to how it was historically. It used to be that Regen >> all for healing but now Regen and Medica (I/II) are far less important than they were. WHM needs help - as someone who has played WHM from the beginning I was shocked at how poor the experience of playing WHM now is compared to AST and Sage.

As an aside, Sage needs some help with Party heals for 4 man dungeons. It's a superb partner to a second healer in 8man/raid but its verging on gimped for healing multiple targets that can't avoid damage in roulette groups.

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Originally Posted by Mitsubashi

As an aside, Sage needs some help with Party heals for 4 man dungeons. It's a superb partner to a second healer in 8man/raid but its verging on gimped for healing multiple targets that can't avoid damage in roulette groups.

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Sage is very much dependent on tanks knowing what they're doing (and properly rotating CD's) in Dungeons and it does get a LOT better when you level up.

What they lack in pure raw heals they, more than make up in a lot of +healing and minus damage received buffs.

Every trash pull you can have some +healing buff up and a damage down buff up so if a tank is properly mitigating, they should be taking at minimum 20% less damage every single time.

Once Kerachole gets the regen attached to it, it's your go to ability.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Sage is very much dependent on tanks knowing what they're doing (and properly rotating CD's) in Dungeons and it does get a LOT better when you level up.

What they lack in pure raw heals they, more than make up in a lot of +healing and minus damage received buffs.

Every trash pull you can have some +healing buff up and a damage down buff up so if a tank is properly mitigating, they should be taking at minimum 20% less damage every single time.

Once Kerachole gets the regen attached to it, it's your go to ability.

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Yes you're right on all of this. I'm at lvl 90 with all classes.

What I was talking about is DPS classes getting hit on trash pulls and sucking on bosses in 4 man roulette dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Mitsubashi

Yes you're right on all of this. I'm at lvl 90 with all classes.

What I was talking about is DPS classes getting hit on trash pulls and sucking on bosses in 4 man roulette dungeons.

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Well, you can't fix stupid. You can only raise it :D

Don't really feel like creating a thread that will get forcibly moved to the tank forums so might as well put it here:

P2S cleared by an all Warrior team.

That's:

Both current EX's done without a healer

1st and 2nd savage fight in current content done without a healer.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Don't really feel like creating a thread that will get forcibly moved to the tank forums so might as well put it here:

P2S cleared by an all Warrior team.

That's:

Both current EX's done without a healer

1st and 2nd savage fight in current content done without a healer.

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If they get past P3S without a healer, I will cry.

Talking about that full-warrior clear as if tankCoB didn't exist, shall we nerf clemency too?

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Originally Posted by Vortuna

Talking about that full-warrior clear as if tankCoB didn't exist, shall we nerf clemency too?

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"Tanks are so overpowered that they regularly clear current and ultimate-difficulty content while flaunting the hell out of the trinity. The fact that this is neither uncommon nor a recent development makes it okay."

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Don't really feel like creating a thread that will get forcibly moved to the tank forums so might as well put it here:

P2S cleared by an all Warrior team.

That's:

Both current EX's done without a healer

1st and 2nd savage fight in current content done without a healer.

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I just want to point out that when Ramuh EX was cleared without tanks during patch 2.3, it took SE 1 day to hotfix the Ramuh fight and abolish the no tank strategy.

Ramuh was added in July 7th, 2014. On July 14th, several videos of the strategy in action were published including MrHappy reporting on it and testing it out to confirm the strategy worked.

[NA] FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Hotfixes (Jul. 15, 2014)

The following issues have been addressed:

• An issue in “The Striking Tree (Hard)” and “The Striking Tree (Extreme)”, wherein the damage taken by pets was abnormally low.

Source: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...48#post2267548

Just want to say this regarding What we want #9:

9. Give back the old unique options for esuna (leeches and exalted detriment)

Having played the Physical Ranged jobs, Shield Samba / Tactician / Troubador being different buttons seems counterintuitive. They all do the exact same thing.

I think this points back to that healer double standard I'm always harping on. The game needs to be designed in a consistent way with consistent rules for everyone.

Either similar abilities need to be one button or job flavor exists. Pick one.

I'm actually working on this atm

Considering the sheer complaints about the destruction of job identity, I'm in favour of restoring them with secondary effects and a synergy buff that boosts the next gcd attack as a reward for healing. Tanks have some of their mitigation to be different despite being the same function (yes i know about rampart) and that is preferred by most.

Why should healers suffer further?

Example proposals:
-Leeches restores some mp to the sch. They suck blood after all and energy drain also drains the enemy's blood to restore hp and mp
-Esuna adds a weak shield equal to cure 1 as a nod to ff2 where it could cure KO with 1 hp
-Exalted detriment restores some health equal to benefic 1
-Sage's version should grant an addersting as a reward for cleansing

and all of these should reward the next gcd attack with double potency to make up for the gcd if they aren't going to mae cleanses worthwhile

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

I'm actually working on this atm

Considering the sheer complaints about the destruction of job identity, I'm in favour of restoring them with secondary effects and a synergy buff that boosts the next gcd attack as a reward for healing. Tanks have some of their mitigation to be different despite being the same function (yes i know about rampart) and that is preferred by most.

Why should healers suffer further?

Example proposals:
-Leeches restores some mp to the sch. They suck blood after all and energy drain also drains the enemy's blood to restore hp and mp
-Esuna adds a weak shield equal to cure 1 as a nod to ff2 where it could cure KO with 1 hp
-Exalted detriment restores some health equal to benefic 1
-Sage's version should grant an addersting as a reward for cleansing

and all of these should reward the next gcd attack with double potency to make up for the gcd if they aren't going to mae cleanses worthwhile

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More class mechanics is good, especially for healers.

But of course the problem for this specific example would be the need for partymembers to actually be inflicted with removable debuffs. Just like with healing, you can make it super fun engaging and interesting, but if it healing (or in this case, cleansing/dispelling) isn't actually needed or required, your fantastic design goes down the gutter.

This would be amazing if for example, healers could actually remove Vulnerability and damage down debuffs.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

More class mechanics is good, especially for healers.

But of course the problem for this specific example would be the need for partymembers to actually be inflicted with removable debuffs. Just like with healing, you can make it super fun engaging and interesting, but if it healing (or in this case, cleansing/dispelling) isn't actually needed or required, your fantastic design goes down the gutter.

This would be amazing if for example, healers could actually remove Vulnerability and damage down debuffs.

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Considering how they've strayed away from any healer mechanics other than "Heal more" or Stack mechanics, the likelihood of making Esuna actually useful for anything beside removeable Doom is about as likely as aggro mechanics becoming a thing again.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

More class mechanics is good, especially for healers.

But of course the problem for this specific example would be the need for partymembers to actually be inflicted with removable debuffs. Just like with healing, you can make it super fun engaging and interesting, but if it healing (or in this case, cleansing/dispelling) isn't actually needed or required, your fantastic design goes down the gutter.

This would be amazing if for example, healers could actually remove Vulnerability and damage down debuffs.

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Endgame content has been lacking uses for Esuna in general. Feels like a forgotten button at this point

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Just want to say this regarding What we want #9:

9. Give back the old unique options for esuna (leeches and exalted detriment)

Having played the Physical Ranged jobs, Shield Samba / Tactician / Troubador being different buttons seems counterintuitive. They all do the exact same thing.

I think this points back to that healer double standard I'm always harping on. The game needs to be designed in a consistent way with consistent rules for everyone.

Either similar abilities need to be one button or job flavor exists. Pick one.

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At this point, I don't really care about this. There are so many issues with healing that are a detriment to the gameplay that whether or not niche buttons with the same functionality have the same icon and animation is a moot point to me. Considering the track record of how healer concerns are misconstrued, I'd worry that bringing this up might convince the team that this is the only problem and just correct superficial issues, assuming any of this actually got listened to.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

At this point, I don't really care about this. There are so many issues with healing that are a detriment to the gameplay that whether or not niche buttons with the same functionality have the same icon and animation is a moot point to me. Considering the track record of how healer concerns are misconstrued, I'd worry that bringing this up might convince the team that this is the only problem and just correct superficial issues, assuming any of this actually got listened to.

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this is why it was far down on the list
aesthetics come last in the list. First a kit needs to be fun. Then functional, then "balanced", then cosmetic

when I eventually finish the updated version of this for EW, number 1 issue is getting more damage options, number 2 is more to heal

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

this is why it was far down on the list
aesthetics come last in the list. First a kit needs to be fun. Then functional, then "balanced", then cosmetic

when I eventually finish the updated version of this for EW, number 1 issue is getting more damage options, number 2 is more to heal

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I don't really believe we're going to get more to heal no matter what we do. They've pretty firmly planted their stake in the matter, and while it's not impossible for them to change their mind, they definitely just want people to clear without issues, and the one way they can control that regardless of player skill is lowering damage output. That said, I do feel like there's more hope for more value getting added to GCD healing like with DPS neutral lilies and adderstings. If you give me an incentive to use GCD healing over OGCD healing, that they will indirectly give us more opportunities to choose healing even when OGCD healing options are available which does at least gently address the core of our concerns. I don't mean to discourage you trying of course, but that's just my two cents on the matter.

I've used this phrase before, but we are basically in a position of begging for table scraps, which just feels hopeless for a lot of people. It's hard to really hope that anything will happen, but I do feel like there is logic in improving at least some of the concerns in a way that can benefit their objectives with healers, but perhaps that's just lofty expectations.