Do you want healers to be reworked from the ground up?

The best "rework" healers could have is for content to be designed to actually require us to heal... and challenges our healing... and isn't so damnned predictable.

If that cannot be done, heal jobs need a more comprehensive set of DPS tools to use between the heals we need to use for predictable/boring encounter scripts we currently have.

They need to design one healer who focuses strictly on healing another who heals and supports then one who heals and dps and finally the new healer could heal and debuff while all can heal equally well how they do it and what else they bring (direct heals, buffs, debuffs and dps) will make each unique and have different play styles ,

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

The best "rework" healers could have is for content to be designed to actually require us to heal... and challenges our healing... and isn't so damnned predictable.

If that cannot be done, heal jobs need a more comprehensive set of DPS tools to use between the heals we need to use for predictable/boring encounter scripts we currently have.

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I agree with a couple more DPS tools, but not for content that is "designed" for healers to heal unpredictable damage.

Correct me if I'm wrong. A lot of healers want unpredictable mechanics, but what kind of mechanic and content will make healing unpredictable? Scripted Content will always be difficult & challenging until players understand the mechanics and can figure out what happens next. It rewards the players to avoid predictable incoming damage and rewards healers to have downtime. This is especially prevalent in ShadowBringers since you can't always heal the damage away after accumulating vulnerability stacks. Fights should always become easier after understanding the mechanics. If it's unavoidable damage, unpredictable boss mechanics will cause the requirement for healers to always top off everyone since you don't know if you're going to have back to back raidwide damage or a double tankbuster, which could lead into some serious issues for healers that just burnt their healing tools to get everyone's HP up again or if one of the healers end up dying and have their MP/cds used up. Due to the way the kits are designed, unpredictable damage is actually the worst way to utilize the healer kit - especially for Scholars since their kit is pretty dependent on knowing the fight to predict when to use their cooldowns as shields that are not consumed become wasted resources. I see deaths in E5N so often, and while I can attribute some of them being new and unfamiliar with this fight, even players who know the mechanics will have moments of carelessness and end up taking lots of damage or dying as a result to predictable incoming mechanics.

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Originally Posted by glamazon

They need to design one healer who focuses strictly on healing another who heals and supports then one who heals and dps and finally the new healer could heal and debuff while all can heal equally well how they do it and what else they bring (direct heals, buffs, debuffs and dps) will make each unique and have different play styles ,

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While this sounds good in theory, the problem with debuffs & buffs is that it's tricky to balance them to make them not be overpowered. A healer that strictly focuses on healing is also pretty bad for the current content since it'll reinforce the idea that one healer can just heal and the other DPS instead of sharing their healing toolkit together. In the endgame & high-end content, people want healers to both DPS and heal. Having one healer only heal will be thrown away for one that can DPS and heal once people can understand the mechanics well enough to minimize the amount of healing required as good healing gameplay is always to minimize overhealing and increase DPS; this is especially important for optimization to avoid the bosses' enrage by increasing overall DPS on all characters when everyone's gear is not up to par or there is a min ilvl setting locked onto the encounter.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

I agree with a couple more DPS tools, but not for content that is "designed" for healers to heal unpredictable damage.

Correct me if I'm wrong. A lot of healers want unpredictable mechanics, but what kind of mechanic and content will make healing unpredictable? Scripted Content will always be difficult & challenging until players understand the mechanics and can figure out what happens next. It rewards the players to avoid predictable incoming damage and rewards healers to have downtime. This is especially prevalent in ShadowBringers since you can't always heal the damage away after accumulating vulnerability stacks. Fights should always become easier after understanding the mechanics. If it's unavoidable damage, unpredictable boss mechanics will cause the requirement for healers to always top off everyone since you don't know if you're going to have back to back raidwide damage or a double tankbuster, which could lead into some serious issues for healers that just burnt their healing tools to get everyone's HP up again or if one of the healers end up dying and have their MP/cds used up. Due to the way the kits are designed, unpredictable damage is actually the worst way to utilize the healer kit - especially for Scholars since their kit is pretty dependent on knowing the fight to predict when to use their cooldowns as shields that are not consumed become wasted resources. I see deaths in E5N so often, and while I can attribute some of them being new and unfamiliar with this fight, even players who know the mechanics will have moments of carelessness and end up taking lots of damage or dying as a result to predictable incoming mechanics.




While this sounds good in theory, the problem with debuffs & buffs is that it's tricky to balance them to make them not be overpowered. A healer that strictly focuses on healing is also pretty bad for the current content since it'll reinforce the idea that one healer can just heal and the other DPS instead of sharing their healing toolkit together. In the endgame & high-end content, people want healers to both DPS and heal. Having one healer only heal will be thrown away for one that can DPS

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Okay
Whm heal direct and direct damage
Scholar heal shields and dot damage
AST heal shields and regen and Buffing others for its damage
Chemist heal regen potions and debuffing enemy to account for its damage

That way all can heal and share healing when grouped together but each brings something unique to help kill the mobs

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Originally Posted by glamazon

They need to design one healer who focuses strictly on healing

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A healer who only heals and does deal damage will cause one of two cases:

1) The no-damage healer can dish out two healers' worth of healing. 2/2/4 comps are replaced with 2/1/5 comps and all other healing jobs are passed over.
2) The no-damage healer cannot solo heal and two healers are still required for all content. The no-damage healer will never be welcomed in any groups because two healers dealing damage is superior to one healer dealing damage.

My static is fairly laid back and we've never told anyone that we'd rather they play something else, but if my cohealer wanted to swap to a class that didn't deal meaningful damage I'd either disallow it or find a replacement for her. While the loss in damage wouldn't matter in easier content the mentality that that healer class is worthless and not worth bringing would carry over and lead to a lot of harassment.

The only possible way to make it work is if healing gets converted into damage in some form without needing the player to focus on attacking the enemy. It could be that all healing spells buff allies' damage, raw healing is stockpiled as a class resource and unleashed as damage periodically, or a mark placed on the enemy that causes them to take damage when healing is done. Using a weapon and autoattacking to build a gauge that's used for healing might also work. The healing spells themselves would need to be interrelated and more complex than all the standalone healing abilities than are currently used, else the class is going to feel very barebones and the skill ceiling would be purely a function of uptime. Using overhealing would be problematic since it would lead to damage output being inversely proportional to content difficulty. High damage in dungeons where no one gets hurt, low damage in savage and ultimates where everyone is taking damage frequently. Effective healing done (raw minus overheal) would have a similar issue.

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

The best "rework" healers could have is for content to be designed to actually require us to heal... and challenges our healing... and isn't so damnned predictable.

If that cannot be done, heal jobs need a more comprehensive set of DPS tools to use between the heals we need to use for predictable/boring encounter scripts we currently have.

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There's a small problem with making content that "requires us to heal." What happens when the players get better, both the tank and the healers? Unless one makes it so one needs to have full BiS gear AND play absolutely perfectly in order to clear content, any time the players do better than the bare minimum requirement this will create downtime for the healer. Downtime that eventually needs to be filled with something to do.

I'd love more healer checks in content, but I fully realize that it 's not something that will fix the current problem in healing, since unlike dealing damage, healing is something you can often be "done with" many times during a fight.

@Another Person
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Healers being able to plan out their abilities is as important as tanks being able to plan out their mitigation.
Something like SoS EX has a great amount of randomness and if there was content with more randomness than that I guarantee I and many others would hold onto abilities thinking "but I might need this" and causing party wipes from holding onto things for too long.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

@Another Person
Word
Healers being able to plan out their abilities is as important as tanks being able to plan out their mitigation.
Something like SoS EX has a great amount of randomness and if there was content with more randomness than that I guarantee I and many others would hold onto abilities thinking "but I might need this" and causing party wipes from holding onto things for too long.

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On the contrary, I welcome more random and frequent bursts of damage, because SCH, the healer that's currently the 'weakest' in many's eyes, has by a wide margin more flexibility and ability to react to more frequent instances of damage using their oGCDs compared to the other two. We know this because it's what kept them on top of the other two in ShB as well as HW consistently. That aspect of the kit hasn't suddenly vanished just because their throughput's tuned lower now. If anything, the reason they suck now is because healers -don't- need to heal that much, if they plan accordingly. In particular, their ability to handle tank damage in the past is what kept them on top for so long. But it's not -just- the Embrace Nerfs that killed that. Tank Mastery and SE's gradual shifts in tank autoattack damage intake in raids has only benefited the other two by comparison. When WHM and AST both have to start using GCD heals consistently, even in BiS gear, that's when SCH starts outshining them both, up until the point SCH also has to use a ton of GCD heals as well, which, frankly, only happens in SCH/AST comps, given Cure III's power budget. Randomness in timing (not necessarily in number, when instances of damage happen throughout a given period of say, 30s, is exactly what matters) is a good way to achieve that kind of balance while actually highlighting the edges of each of the three healer pairings quite well.

I'm not sure they can rework healing from the ground up. What we got in 5.0 was just a nerf to healing tools we had, and the addition of other healing oGCDs. Encounter design has not changed, it always boils down to "keep people alive and DPS the rest of the time". Changing this would require far more changes than tweaks in healing kits.

The only thing they could do is improving the downtime for endgame healers (by DPS or AST-cards-like systems) in a way that would not confuse "casual" healers and be dissuasive for them (because I think that's why we can't have nice things).
For instance, WHM could keep the same healing kit, but also have 5 or 6 DPS spells and oGCDs added in with a proper rotation, more mitigation tools, more "risk vs rewards" systems. Casual healers wouldn't be too confused and could focus on spamming medica 2 in dungeons, and competent to high-end healers would not be so bored most of the time. (Slightly sorry for being sarcastic)

I'm done thinking FFXIV will ever try to push players to pass certain skill caps at this point, so I think this "work around" solution is the most plausible.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

There's a small problem with making content that "requires us to heal." What happens when the players get better, both the tank and the healers? Unless one makes it so one needs to have full BiS gear AND play absolutely perfectly in order to clear content, any time the players do better than the bare minimum requirement this will create downtime for the healer. Downtime that eventually needs to be filled with something to do.

I'd love more healer checks in content, but I fully realize that it 's not something that will fix the current problem in healing, since unlike dealing damage, healing is something you can often be "done with" many times during a fight.

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"Healer check" -- can be another type of predictable content which, frankly, does not require anyone to become good at HEALING. Memorizing a script and casting shields/HoTs is just another lame excuse for encounters that do *not* challenge healing, but rather, your ability to memorize a script and plan accordingly. The better game would be one in which healing is an accomplishment of skill, not memory.