Give your opinion on healer design!

On the idea of tying damage and healing more closely together, for the Scholar, if it goes back to being more DoT focused, why not give the Scholar a DoT ability where each time it ticks, it heals the party for a similar amount?

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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No, not really. SCH is probably my favorite for a full party (it has enough to do without it being too much) and WHM for light party (stuns make trash pulls relaxing).

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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Healing checks keep me on the edge of my seat. Wish there were more of them.

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-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

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I'd be surprised if they didn't add one. I would hope for either Geomancer (a la AST quests) or Green Mage (a la removal of Protect/Shell) and for it to be a healer that can take the place of a WHM. AST and SCH are the raid DPS healers, WHM is the progression/defensive buffs healer. Green Mage could do this well with mechanics to utilize FF staple spells like Protect, Shell and Blind for example, while giving them new life and interaction with a job gauge.

We're also missing a nature themed job at max level, which either GEO or GRM would be able to fill the shoes of nicely.

Roll them back at least how they where in 4.0 then might start healing more.

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-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

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Very conflicted, but not happy with current design. For AST, my complaint is just the cards. Overall though, AST is my favorite healer.

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-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

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When tanks pull huge and I suddenly go alert while figuring out how to heal and minimize what doesn't need to be healed off. Instead of DPS, I'm focusing on healing and mitigating that damage off to keep everyone alive and happy, and that's what makes me continue as a healer.

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-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

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WHM - strongest at heal / regen / AoE Stunner / high DPS out of the healers based on spells/abilities - the classic I heal the damage instantly
Scholar - predict / strongest at shield / plan / DoTs providing a lot of extra DPS

AST - strongest versatility (heal/shield/buff), team support and can adapt to the situation via debuffing enemies or buffing allies with card effects, or just minor arcana for flat dps/heal gain. Not the strongest at anything, but the versatility of its kit allows it to bring enough that it can compete with the other jobs.

AST in particular - I dislike having cards centered to purely raid DPS since it takes the versatility of dungeon/solo play in the outer world away. I felt those changes the most in MSQ instances on solo play in particular because if you take away your allies, AST is pretty much a sitting duck. Your solo ability shouldn't be entirely dependent on whether or not you have allies. Giving more card effects that can be used on more variant situations is better. It's not the best at any one thing, but it has enough different abilities that can be used in conjunction in any situation within an extended period where the overlapping effects can be more than the sum of its parts.

If there is a new job for healers in the next expansion, I expect it to be focused towards a new playstyle - such as debuffing enemies. Rather than regen, they use multiple mitigation abilities. If AST is supposed to lose its time manipulation focus, then I would assume eventually a new healer would probably be a time mage with the ability to heal and extend buff/debuff durations in that manner. Perhaps even manipulating time where after a certain period of time, the heal goes off on any character who receives a heal buff - but it's a major heal like Stellar explosion and one that can't be pre-detonated and such. Or they can just use a weak regen, have an oGCD that speeds up time and applies to all the characters affected by it, and can extend positive buff durations with another time ability. Maybe even reset all characters status to a state before effect goes off.
And you know what, I would totally be down for that if that is a new healer gimmick. Seeing friendly ally damage buffs suddenly disappear by fastforwarding the time buff though would be very funny to watch. Would probably require a lot of coordination if it did that, unless it just speeds up general cooldowns too.

In any MMORPG that I've ever played I've never hated playing a healing job (class) more than I do now.

Honestly, this is the most brain-dead, boring design (SCH). It really needs to be changed in the next update, I can't believe this is the garbage they released to Live.

Questing is literally: Broil, dot, Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil, dot, Broil, Broil, Broil, Broil... mob is dead.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

Overall, no. However, White Mage isn’t bad. Scholar’s kit is clunky and doesn’t know what it wants to be. Astrologian’s healing kit is enjoyable but only at the last few levels. Before that, it’s just tedious.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

Feeling I can contribute to the party, which gets more difficult as players get better geared and understand mechanics.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

White Mage is almost in a good place. It needs something to use lillies on that isn’t a healing spell. I don’t care if it nourished the blood lily, it just needs something to dump lillies when healing isn’t required. Also, the full kit needs to revolve around the. Alan e between nature and light instead of one or the other.

Scholar needs to be reexamined through the lens of its lore. Currently I don’t understand what it’s supposed to be, but when I think of a Scholar, I think of a master tactician that has a fey bond. So I’d like to see Tactical abilities (positional buffs and such) for their downtime, separate abilities for Selene that can be used alongside Eos, and a healing kit that doesn’t require six buttons to do twelve different things. (That’s an exaggeration.)

Astrologian needs to lose the stances, and the card system needs a rework; one that doesn’t forget the players that use controllers.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

I honestly do not know. I imagine they will, but last precedent doesn’t give me much hope.

-Are you happy with the current design of the three healers? Which one is your favourite?

Overall, no. However, White Mage isn’t bad. Scholar’s kit is clunky and doesn’t know what it wants to be. Astrologian’s healing kit is enjoyable but only at the last few levels. Before that, it’s just tedious.

-What keeps you engaged when playing a healer?

Feeling I can contribute to the party, which gets more difficult as players get better geared and understand mechanics.

-Regarding healer identity, what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime.

White Mage is almost in a good place. It needs something to use lillies on that isn’t a healing spell. I don’t care if it nourishes the blood lily, it just needs something to dump lillies when healing isn’t required. Also, the full kit needs to revolve around the balance between nature and light instead of one or the other.

Scholar needs to be reexamined through the lens of its lore. Currently I don’t understand what it’s supposed to be, but when I think of a Scholar, I think of a master tactician that has a fey bond. So I’d like to see Tactical abilities (positional buffs and such) for their downtime, separate abilities for Selene that can be used alongside Eos, and a healing kit that doesn’t require six buttons to do twelve different things. (That’s an exaggeration.)

Astrologian needs to lose the stances, and the card system needs a rework; one that doesn’t forget the players that use controllers.

-Are you expecting a new healer job to be added in the next Expansion? If so, what job would you like to see and what type of gameplay would you like the new job to have?

I honestly do not know. I imagine they will, but last precedent doesn’t give me much hope.

At this point I don't really think not putting a healer in to the game is an option.

As for healer identity they have covered a lot so far in that regard, hots and heals, shields, a mix. So it would be fun to bring something akin to warcrafts discipline priest with damage to heal or if they could somehow work chemist out like they couldn't in Heavensward.

Something I think SE overlooked is that healing is not just the role people are thrown in because 'somebody has to heal' but a considerable amount of people do it willingly, even favoring healing over being a dime a dozen damage dealer (no offense). They claim to want to make fights more healing intensive, but as long as fights are scripted that's really just impossible to achieve unless almost any form of damage hits like a tankbuster.

Ya know I’m kinda Glad they didn’t put a fourth Healer considering they are clueless on how to handle the ones we have now.

Scholar is all about it’s shields and summons and it’s mostly has its identity in check. The removal of its offensive prowess is concerning and having the worst Aoe of them all with Art of War. (WHY NOT LET IT HAVE SHADOWFLARE!)

White Mage was a simple healer and still is. I dig the iteration of more White magic like Dia (Glare not named Banish is a wasted effort) would’ve went even further and replaced Stone and Aero with Dia III/ Glare/ Banish III but I guess those are still White magic spells despite being replaced

Astro is the most polarizing, it has a lot more toys but lost the variety of its Card Buffs with only Ranged and Physical.

SHB did a great number to simplify them mostly for worse. But they still have their individual charm

Healers should be focused on healing while bring other things to the group like Buffs and Debuffs. their DPS should be marginal and only enough to get through solo questing.

#oldschool

It's alright so far, but I feel like we could use a few more offensive tools, A group AOE (and the return of Aero III to be replaced by a Light aspected version) and something to do during downtime (maybe a buff that heals nearby party members based on the damage?)

Would like to see Royal Road return for AST as well, and Divination buffed to avoid redundancy

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Originally Posted by Vulcann

Healers should be focused on healing while bring other things to the group like Buffs and Debuffs. their DPS should be marginal and only enough to get through solo questing.

#oldschool

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A thing I noticed around this thread is complaints of what do do dueing downtime (read: when everyone is topped) and the sensible option would be to contribute to the DPS. the other alternative would be to increase group-wide and tankbuster damage so that healers don't have time to DPS, but seems antithetical to the current design at this point (especially considering the new healing oGCDs, of course it would be interesting to see fights like E7 where both tanks have to aggro separate bosses.).

Of course depening on what you mean by debuffs (my post assumes you mean ailments in general like Heavy, Slow, Silence, Knockback etc), it doens't help that they were phased out over the game's lifetime bar stat reductions, Stun and DoTs, the latter feeds back into the Healer DPS thing.

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Originally Posted by Vulcann

Healers should be focused on healing while bring other things to the group like Buffs and Debuffs. their DPS should be marginal and only enough to get through solo questing.

#oldschool

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See, that works in games like WoW where as a healer you barely have enough time to throw a Holy Fire in between heals. In XIV, however, chances are that unless someone messes up or an unavoidable AoE happens, there's no damage to be healed.

Everything I've wanted to say has been said by other players already so I'll answer this one.

- what gimmick or gameplay style would you give each of the healers? Both in terms of how the healing itself would work and what to do during healing downtime
I would make MP management fall on the healers, have jobs slowly run out of MP instead of being able to fight forever in combat. The healers would have separate abilities that would be used to restore MP like that do HP i.e. restoring over times, aoe, etc. MP restoration would be the secondary focus of healers when healing doesn't need to be done. They need to make sure people don't go OOM. You could make these abilities not castable on themselves so mana management is still something they need to handle on themselves. And in raids healers would be responsible for restoring their partner healer's MP. And simply make non-MP jobs like samurai etc. use MP the way they used to use TP.

The devs seem adamant that they no longer want healers to be doing damage during their downtime. Well this could be their new role in their downtime. You could even let them cast buffs on other players that temporarily increase MP consumption but increase damage done with that. I.e. the next X spells do 110% damage but consume 200% mana. That way we always have things to do when we don't need to be healing.

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Originally Posted by Vitreus

The devs seem adamant that they no longer want healers to be doing damage during their downtime.

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They are not adamant about healers not doing damage when not healing. They just don't want healer damage to be required for clearing content (assuming appropriate gear and very solid play by other roles), or for healers to turn into green DPS. Just because content technically can be cleared without healer damage doesn't make it easy or preferable to do so. And that isn't remotely close to SE being resolutely opposed to healers casting damage spells in group content. As always, healers can help significantly in dungeon DF groups with their extra damage, especially on large pulls, and help close clears on raid bosses with single target damage.

Plus if they didn't wanter healers to DPS, they wouldn't have given them spells for the job (and design the overworld content around damageregardless of role), let along made them usable and scale them for group content beyond Haukke Manor.

Unfortunately, that appears to be a front as they have not changed the healing requirements nor the dps requirements during the fights to exclude healer dps.
and even if that was the case, it doesn't explain why the rest of the game got shafted because of it for healers

That being said, a clue to the terrible job levelling appeared in the live letter yesterday- they only focus on how jobs play in new content and dont think about older content. Certainly explains the extreme boredom in 50-70 content

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Originally Posted by tinythinker

They are not adamant about healers not doing damage when not healing. They just don't want healer damage to be required for clearing content (assuming appropriate gear and very solid play by other roles), or for healers to turn into green DPS. Just because content technically can be cleared without healer damage doesn't make it easy or preferable to do so. And that isn't remotely close to SE being resolutely opposed to healers casting damage spells in group content. As always, healers can help significantly in dungeon DF groups with their extra damage, especially on large pulls, and help close clears on raid bosses with single target damage.

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I must have misheard or misunderstood something then. But if that's true that they didn't want healers not to do damage and just wanted us not to rely on the damage in raids, why not nerf potency instead of remove abilities? Because the latter really seems to be a job design philosophy change instead.

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Originally Posted by Vitreus

I must have misheard or misunderstood something then. But if that's true that they didn't want healers not to do damage and just wanted us not to rely on the damage in raids, why not nerf potency instead of remove abilities? Because the latter really seems to be a job design philosophy change instead.

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I agree, but maybe they though it was too tempting having so many DPS abilities? Or that weak spells would feel bad? I'd like to know, too.

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Originally Posted by Vitreus

I must have misheard or misunderstood something then. But if that's true that they didn't want healers not to do damage and just wanted us not to rely on the damage in raids, why not nerf potency instead of remove abilities? Because the latter really seems to be a job design philosophy change instead.

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If you nerf healer potencies, people who play as a healer main will complain for a nerf for the sake of nerfing because it equates to having more buttons to press to do the same amount of work. if you remove abilities, you essentially took a part of the rotation and became unfun. Either way, it's a lose-lose. Rather than thinking how to make healer gameplay worse, it should just focus on how to keep healer gameplay interesting.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

If you nerf healer potencies...

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Just give us back our dps rotations. I'm sorry, but anything that's easy enough for anyone usually means little to everyone. It's MY job to find a balance between weaving dps and applying healing abilities. Healers that dps'd instead of healing are doing the exact same thing after 5.0 as they were before--albeit with just a heck of a lot less enjoyment.

Healing jobs that don't have differing and unique dps abilities will never feel complete. And, the community backlash against green dps needs to quiet down. I mean, if you're content just watching Netflix and no-braining your time through a dungeon without applying damage, that's fine. Own it. But for those of us who are active and competitive players, these Shadowbringer changes rank among some of the most disappointing job/class design overhauls we've ever seen...across ALL games/platforms.

Literally, I'd freaking dance if they'd announce in 5.3 they will be restoring the SCH to what it was before the latest expansion. Why? Because it sucks so terribly bad right now, and lowering my potency level isn't going to make me hate this very 1-dimensional job any less.

To those who still want to claim that SE does not take into account healer Dps when designing fights, i'd like you to look into Shiva Savage, a fight that is impossible without healer Dps, no matter how perfect tanks and Dps are without the healer Dpsing you will hit enrage, the Dev team expects you to Dps, a lot, they expect you to be able to balance both healing and Dps at this level of play.

The question is why make it so goddamn boring? And if it is boring at high end play then how bad do you think it is in lower end difficulty content.

Too summarize healers in ShB is pretty easy. Sch lacks a decent fairy. Casting fairy abilities yourself is a stupid idea, and the fact that the fairy needs around 3 seconds to use the ability after you press the button makes it even worse and don’t forget the fact that a lot of time seraph just straight up eats the ability. Astro is just Balance throwing we’re the rng can make you hate the job in the opener when you draw 3 times the same card (mind you with redraw even). But astro atm feels the most healer job too do things and has decent ogcd , but they lost its time identity in the process. And then Whm, too be fair it’s not hard to improve on stormblood whm garbage that we had. And still the job with almost no decent micromanagement except pure dmg has only 2 dps buttons like all healer, were Lily’s are just to heal on a gcd that doesn’t loses you dmg after 3 uses because afflatus misery does 900 but so do 3 casts of glare. So even after me being stormblood whm main and doing some fights in ShB I swapped too astro because whm make me fall asleep in raids. Even in ultimates sadly.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

Too summarize healers in ShB is pretty easy. Sch lacks a decent fairy. Casting fairy abilities yourself is a stupid idea, and the fact that the fairy needs around 3 seconds to use the ability after you press the button makes it even worse and don’t forget the fact that a lot of time seraph just straight up eats the ability. Astro is just Balance throwing we’re the rng can make you hate the job in the opener when you draw 3 times the same card (mind you with redraw even). But astro atm feels the most healer job too do things and has decent ogcd , but they lost its time identity in the process. And then Whm, too be fair it’s not hard to improve on stormblood whm garbage that we had. And still the job with almost no decent micromanagement except pure dmg has only 2 dps buttons like all healer, were Lily’s are just to heal on a gcd that doesn’t loses you dmg after 3 uses because afflatus misery does 900 but so do 3 casts of glare. So even after me being stormblood whm main and doing some fights in ShB I swapped too astro because whm make me fall asleep in raids. Even in ultimates sadly.

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Actually Misery is a dps loss, as Misery is a gcd ability too so it's 4x glare for 1200 potency vs 1x Misery for 900 potency.

That said if you are forced to gcd heal then it is best to go after Misery, problem is though that the game tries to make you use gcd healing as little as possible because ogcd heals are abundant and powerful combined with things not hitting constantly hard enough and scripted fights you get a resource good on paper but lacking in execution. This lily system is far better than SB's version but it still is flawed by how the game is designed with regards to healers.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Actually Misery is a dps loss, as Misery is a gcd ability too so it's 4x glare for 1200 potency vs 1x Misery for 900 potency.

That said if you are forced to gcd heal then it is best to go after Misery, problem is though that the game tries to make you use gcd healing as little as possible because ogcd heals are abundant and powerful combined with things not hitting constantly hard enough and scripted fights you get a resource good on paper but lacking in execution. This lily system is far better than SB's version but it still is flawed by how the game is designed with regards to healers.

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Oh yeah you are right makes it even worse because like you said, you lose 300 potency rip

Honestly it wouden't hurt to give back one offensive spell like Aero 3/Stella/Miasma, its not like it's gonna enforce a complex rotation

To be honest. SE will never satisfy everyone and I think they understand that. They wanted to kill the meta and they’ve done that. Take Sch and Astro back to the way they were in 4.0 will only create that meta again and Whm will get ousted. They not doing that. Sch needed its DPS slashed completely because it was way to OP with the fairy. Astros fished for balance and so they made every card a mini balance. Yeah it’s boring and I think they should be more unique with their ideas for the healers but I really don’t want Sch going back to having all those dots with bane and shadowflare. Astro cards should have some variety but maybe not make them strong as they were in 4.0. All healers are quite balanced now and it should stay that way. Giving healers more to do than just dps is something that I personally am wanting. Dps is fine but it can get boring. I want them to create some unique ways to make healers more interesting in dungeons and raids. More support type skills for all healers will be nice.

Please don’t come for me saying I’m one of those healers that only wants to heal. Not true. However I don’t agree that healers should have more dps skills either. I want more support type/debuffing type skills. That way it can bring some complexity and decision making back to healers. SE needs to stop giving healers so many OGCD heals anyway. We barely use GCD ones anymore.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

To be honest. SE will never satisfy everyone and I think they understand that. They wanted to kill the meta and they’ve done that. Take Sch and Astro back to the way they were in 4.0 will only create that meta again and Whm will get ousted.

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...AST is still right there at the top, performance-wise. Its only how annoying it is to play (on controller, at least) that is keeping its parse count at just over a half and third of SCH and WHM respectively. SCH is the only real loser of the expansion, and only to the same degree that AST trumps WHM in performance.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

...AST is still right there at the top, performance-wise. Its only how annoying it is to play (on controller, at least) that is keeping its parse count at just over a half and third of SCH and WHM respectively. SCH is the only real loser of the expansion, and only to the same degree that AST trumps WHM in performance.

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and yet ASTs aren't being played as much because of the lack of buff variety in the card system and its complex way to give the same buff in a more roundabout manner. Actually hilarious.
It's terrible on the controller and sleeve draw's tunneling hurts just as much on the pc tbh. Let's just all hope the healers in the next expansion gets a bit more of their class identity back.

Frankly, I'm glad to see Shadowflare gone, It seems to be better served as an ability and I'd think 1 should be the maximum amount of abilities per job that require you to manually place an AoE on the ground. Though That might be because I use a macro for such abilities that places them on the target and I might make an exception for Jobs based around the concept (lay say maybe Geomancer)? At best maybe make it a SMN-only oGCD ability, not a GCD skill.

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

Frankly, I'm glad to see Shadowflare gone, It seems to be better served as an ability and I'd think 1 should be the maximum amount of abilities per job that require you to manually place an AoE on the ground. Though That might be because I use a macro for such abilities that places them on the target and I might make an exception for Jobs based around the concept (lay say maybe Geomancer)? At best maybe make it a SMN-only oGCD ability, not a GCD skill.

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I'd say the Shadowflare issue is more that you can't have it out and Sacred Soil at the same time for some reason. I'd prefer to have it back though. Shadowflare is such a cool, icon Final Fantasy ability and it's a shame to ditch it.

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

Frankly, I'm glad to see Shadowflare gone, It seems to be better served as an ability and I'd think 1 should be the maximum amount of abilities per job that require you to manually place an AoE on the ground.

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The simple solution would be to have shadowflare be a targeted ability that appears at the location of the target so it could be macro-d instead of just removing it.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I'd say the Shadowflare issue is more that you can't have it out and Sacred Soil at the same time for some reason. I'd prefer to have it back though. Shadowflare is such a cool, icon Final Fantasy ability and it's a shame to ditch it.

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If anything, I'd like to see some synergy added between them, if only of a sort that's too expensive to see frequent use.

That said, I still don't see what Shadow Flare has to do with the Arcanist toolkit, let alone Scholar's. I can kind of imagine Summoner having access to it, but it doesn't feel as related to mana banking and manipulation, as per most SCH skills, as, say, Ruin, Broil, Galvanize, Deployment, or even Meltdown would.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

To be honest. SE will never satisfy everyone and I think they understand that. They wanted to kill the meta and they’ve done that. Take Sch and Astro back to the way they were in 4.0 will only create that meta again and Whm will get ousted. They not doing that. Sch needed its DPS slashed completely because it was way to OP with the fairy. Astros fished for balance and so they made every card a mini balance. Yeah it’s boring and I think they should be more unique with their ideas for the healers but I really don’t want Sch going back to having all those dots with bane and shadowflare. Astro cards should have some variety but maybe not make them strong as they were in 4.0. All healers are quite balanced now and it should stay that way. Giving healers more to do than just dps is something that I personally am wanting. Dps is fine but it can get boring. I want them to create some unique ways to make healers more interesting in dungeons and raids. More support type skills for all healers will be nice.

Please don’t come for me saying I’m one of those healers that only wants to heal. Not true. However I don’t agree that healers should have more dps skills either. I want more support type/debuffing type skills. That way it can bring some complexity and decision making back to healers. SE needs to stop giving healers so many OGCD heals anyway. We barely use GCD ones anymore.

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Why do we have this arguement? The ONLY time people complained Scholar was too OP is when we were all over geared to hell. This is, and always has been, the stupidest arguement against Scholar.

It was the most well made Job, even though it was a completely contradictory mess. The reason why it was so good was because it was the closest thing we were ever going to get to a real Red Mage. It is diversity through skills and damage made it good, and players will always gravitate toward the best that gives you the most options to deal with how the system was made and is being played.

Scholar fit all of those parameters, it could heal sufficiently AND Dps exceptionally well, and (at the time) wasnt bogged down by conceptions that the creators of the game had that contradicts how the players play the game.

It absolutely DID NOT, need to be cut down the way it was; they should have brought every job to Scholars level, instead they gutted all of them because (insert exceptionally stupid) reason here.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Why do we have this arguement? The ONLY time people complained Scholar was too OP is when we were all over geared to hell. This is, and always has been, the stupidest arguement against Scholar.

It was the most well made Job, even though it was a completely contradictory mess. The reason why it was so good was because it was the closest thing we were ever going to get to a real Red Mage. It is diversity through skills and damage made it good, and players will always gravitate toward the best that gives you the most options to deal with how the system was made and is being played.

Scholar fit all of those parameters, it could heal sufficiently AND Dps exceptionally well, and (at the time) wasnt bogged down by conceptions that the creators of the game had that contradicts how the players play the game.

It absolutely DID NOT, need to be cut down the way it was; they should have brought every job to Scholars level, instead they gutted all of them because (insert exceptionally stupid) reason here.

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Thinking how many times Holy was nerfed of the course of history and how the percentages are lower in AST’s new card system tells me that SCH’s DPS didn’t need nerfing, WHM needed to be nerfed less and AST possibly a boost.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

To be honest. SE will never satisfy everyone and I think they understand that. They wanted to kill the meta and they’ve done that. Take Sch and Astro back to the way they were in 4.0 will only create that meta again and Whm will get ousted. They not doing that. Sch needed its DPS slashed completely because it was way to OP with the fairy. Astros fished for balance and so they made every card a mini balance. Yeah it’s boring and I think they should be more unique with their ideas for the healers but I really don’t want Sch going back to having all those dots with bane and shadowflare. Astro cards should have some variety but maybe not make them strong as they were in 4.0. All healers are quite balanced now and it should stay that way. Giving healers more to do than just dps is something that I personally am wanting. Dps is fine but it can get boring. I want them to create some unique ways to make healers more interesting in dungeons and raids. More support type skills for all healers will be nice.

Please don’t come for me saying I’m one of those healers that only wants to heal. Not true. However I don’t agree that healers should have more dps skills either. I want more support type/debuffing type skills. That way it can bring some complexity and decision making back to healers. SE needs to stop giving healers so many OGCD heals anyway. We barely use GCD ones anymore.

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This poor guy...almost felt like giving him a pity "/like," because not a soul seemed to resonate with the arguement, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. The whole "However I don’t agree that healers should have more dps skills either. I want more support type/debuffing type skills," line of reasoning is nauseating.

While debuffs are fine, the current build where healers basically spam ONE button all day long, and that's enough accordingly? Hardly even worth responding to honestly, but I just want to go on record saying: no, we sure as heck need MORE dps options. The current job design for Scholars is garbage.

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Originally Posted by Truen

This poor guy...almost felt like giving him a pity "/like," because not a soul seemed to resonate with the arguement, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. The whole "However I don’t agree that healers should have more dps skills either. I want more support type/debuffing type skills," line of reasoning is nauseating.

While debuffs are fine, the current build where healers basically spam ONE button all day long, and that's enough accordingly? Hardly even worth responding to honestly, but I just want to go on record saying: no, we sure as heck need MORE dps options. The current job design for Scholars is garbage.

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The current Job design for *Healers* is terrible overall.

His line of arguement is the reason were in this mess, because all of them suddenly came out of the freaking woodwork to complain on the forums because they get flamed on for standing there only healing, and BARELY keeping up with that, then protesting big pulls.

Look, I guess I'm generalizing, the fact is, usually the people who complain about healers needing less dps skills are the people who can barely handle the role at 10% capacity.

I'm tired of this Healers shouldnt Dps arguement, we almost, gdit ALMOST had this entirely squashed in Stormblood, and then SE has to reignite the whole freaking arguement again by culling all of the damage skills.

Frankly at this point, enough is enough; I'll say it again, no amount of culling of skills or lowering dps or taking it away from us will stop the community from kicking bad healers who stand around and do nothing. No amount of homogenization, no amount of statements saying us doing what weve been doing for SIX YEARS isnt how you think the player base shouldnt be playing.

Healers DPS, PERIOD. END. OF. STORY.

You say, "We dont include healer dps in our needs to beat fights" and then completely contradict yourselves with Shiva Savage.

Whilst I'd be okay with a CC, support & debuff kinda design to be a part of healer design, for it to work with how this game is designed would requite other changes. Debuffs back when SCH had them on DPS skills were useful in that they'd help mitigate damage, but SCH's plenty adequate at healing and damage mitigation these days, if anything it'd add to the down time now. In terms of support, this is already AST's role. BLU has proven CC can be fun and useful in clearing dungeons quicker, but at the same time encounter design is not really created to make good use of CC's, not like SW:TOR, as a example. Future encounters, maybe could be cool.

But performance in this game is purely based on rDPS because the game is designed to zerg things. The current support we have in game is all measured based on how much rDPS contribution they make. Hence AST's cards offer a DPS boost and why people felt non-DPS boosting AST cards were a waste. And SCH still technically has its own debuff, but that debuff only aids DPS (Chain Stratagem).

So, I always feel it comes back to how DPS is the simplest solution. Not only is it the simplest solution, it's the best solution that needn't negatively impact newer or less confident healers. Because until you get to Savage and Ultimate, healer DPS is a "nice-to-have" and a mark of an efficient healer rather than needed. This means efficient healers can have more to do whilst less efficient healers don't have to focus on it. Heck even there's argument for them to contribute to DPS, it doesn't have to be efficient DPS. Most cases people won't care if you're a SCH who only spams Broil whilst everybody else is weaving all other manner of DPS spells. The general rule is "ABC" always be casting. If you're doing that, people will care less or even not notice. And not like people can use a parser to harass you about how much DPS you're doing as a healer because it's something you can report and something they're cracking down on. So you're only raising the skill ceiling here and not the skill floor.

With DPS as a solution you can keep the healing and encounter design EXACTLY as they are. This is a change that would not impact anything else.

And with DPS as a solution. I feel it is pretty Final Fantasy appropriate. Those who fill healer roles in other Final Fantasies will typically contribute to party damage, because there's not pure heal focus in Final Fantasy and it is the case in FFXIV. It has always been the case in FFXIV, it is still the case in FFXIV, just it's more dumbed down. Encounter design means your healer will be DPSing more than healing. If this is no longer desired, healer design wouldn't only need to change, but encountered design too. To retroactively do that would be a logistical nightmare.

If you want future encounters to be more healing focus, then don't remove DPS abilities because it's the encounter and how our healing abilities handle it that determines how much DPS focus there is.

My tl;dr for healer design opinion would be something like:

I get what they were trying to do, but it’s like they forgot what they were doing halfway through and started on something completely different.
Like, ‘we want to healers to heal, so let’s take away their dps skills...wait, what were we doing? Meh lets just leave them like this’...then they wonder why players eventually say ‘you took our dps skills but didn’t change the amount we have to heal or give us something else to do’

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Originally Posted by Connor

Like, ‘we want to healers to heal, so let’s take away their dps skills...wait, what were we doing? Meh lets just leave them like this’...then they wonder why players eventually say ‘you took our dps skills but didn’t change the amount we have to heal or give us something else to do’

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If they wanted players to focus more on healing, they needed to add more healing spells, not abilities. It's more like they wanted to quash the disparity between good and bad healers by gutting DPS rotations and eliminating a lot of decision making.