Is the "healing portion" of healers hitting a wall in EW?

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

Ugh, please no. GW2's little role-less experiment was wholly unappealing. My gripe has more to do with aggro management than healing but I find a solid trinity works best for the content that I like to do.

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Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather replace the Glare spam with a Cure spam and play whack-a-mole with my party's HP. That's the healing style I grew up with, and the one I'm used to. We both know that kind of hot take is incredibly unpopular around these parts, though.

Healing should be, in my humble opinion, a game of attrition where you are trying to manage the group's resources before the timer (aka, MP depletion) runs out. But in FFXIV, MP is plentiful and healing impactful. So the only thing left to optimize is movement and DPS.

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Originally Posted by Raskbuck

Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather replace the Glare spam with a Cure spam and play whack-a-mole with my party's HP. That's the healing style I grew up with, and the one I'm used to. We both know that kind of hot take is incredibly unpopular around these parts, though.

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Is it though? I'd love to see some proper triage checks and it'd be a huge step up over what we have now.

IMHO at least as far as these boards are concerned, the only truly unpopular take is to simply keep things as they are.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Is it though? I'd love to see some proper triage checks and it'd be a huge step up over what we have now.

IMHO at least as far as these boards are concerned, the only truly unpopular take is to simply keep things as they are.

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I'd be stocked if we had a proper triage system in my favorite MMO, and I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong. But in a game where DPS metrics is how people measures someone's performance (and worth), I doubt it would be well received.

How do people usually determine if a healer is good? I'd be inclined to say it's through a parser, to check a percentile and see which candidate can squeeze the most amounts of Glares as efficiently as possible. Eliminating that metric would likely make it harder for people to sort others based on performance. Damage is, unfortunately, the only thing people seem to care about.

(Edit: I still remember one time, during a Trial, my co-healer did nothing but cast Stone III on the boss. He left all the healing to me in a seemingly unspoken agreement. When the fight ended, a party member commented on his performance and praised him for it. I think that experience stuck with me, despite happening many years ago, and it made me realize healers are just different in this game.)

I've seen all sort of arguments defending the status quo too. From people feeling anxious about increasing the healing requirements, because they feel the average healer wouldn't be able to handle it; to others being content with dealing so much damage to what's normally considered a support role.

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Originally Posted by Raskbuck

How do people usually determine if a healer is good? I'd be inclined to say it's through a parser, to check a percentile and see which candidate can squeeze the most amounts of Glares as efficiently as possible. Eliminating that metric would likely make it harder for people to sort others based on performance. Damage is, unfortunately, the only thing people seem to care about.

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Simple DPS percentiles are the most obvious metric, but people who are looking more deeply into things will tend to focus more on a players active rate. A player who can keep their GCD rolling through adversity will almost always be a 'better' player than one who freezes and starts dropping GCDs. They will simply be able to react better mid mechanic.

Ironically in the ARR beta when I was picked up by Solitude (who were one of the top EU raiding FC for a good long time), it was actually my habit of preemptively casting and then canceling if it wasn't needed that got me recruited ;)

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Originally Posted by Raskbuck

(Edit: I still remember one time, during a Trial, my co-healer did nothing but cast Stone III on the boss. He left all the healing to me in a seemingly unspoken agreement. When the fight ended, a party member commented on his performance and praised him for it. I think that experience stuck with me, despite happening many years ago, and it made me realize healers are just different in this game.)

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A question for you, did you ever see a log of that fight? Healing in this game can be surprisingly deceptive if you're just relying on cast bars.

If we use this P1S log as an example

In that 7 minute fight, the only healing I did with a cast bar was 3 medica IIs (Which is ironically more than I needed really) and the rest of my kit was barely pressured either so if you were listening out for Tetras, watching for Asylum etc, it would have still looked pretty grim.

I actually out healed my co healer by ~20% there and we were both at around 40% overheal.

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Originally Posted by Raskbuck

I've seen all sort of arguments defending the status quo too. From people feeling anxious about increasing the healing requirements, because they feel the average healer wouldn't be able to handle it; to others being content with dealing so much damage to what's normally considered a support role.

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It's a tricky situation for sure. There's a million different angles and it's gotten to the point now where no matter what Yoshida does or doesn't do, people are going to be mad over it.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Ironically in the ARR beta when I was picked up by Solitude (who were one of the top EU raiding FC for a good long time), it was actually my habit of preemptively casting and then canceling if it wasn't needed that got me recruited ;)

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I remember pre-casting! That brings back some fond memories, and looking back, I feel like I enjoyed healing back then a lot more than I do now. It's still something I do from time to time, even if it's not as needed.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

A question for you, did you ever see a log of that fight? Healing in this game can be surprisingly deceptive if you're just relying on cast bars.

If we use this P1S log as an example

In that 7 minute fight, the only healing I did with a cast bar was 3 medica IIs (Which is ironically more than I needed really) and the rest of my kit was barely pressured either so if you were listening out for Tetras, watching for Asylum etc, it would have still looked pretty grim.

I actually out healed my co healer by ~20% there and we were both at around 40% overheal.

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I didn't, no, so I concede there could have been something more to it than that. I'm usually very mindful about overhealing, and I let my regens do the work if possible. But, you are right, it's possible there was something more to it than what I remember.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

It's a tricky situation for sure. There's a million different angles and it's gotten to the point now where no matter what Yoshida does or doesn't do, people are going to be mad over it.

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Agreed. I think healing in general is difficult to design properly without compromising one side or the other.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Hell, ST mitigation skills on healers aren't new at all. Eye for an Eye, while proc based, was a ST mitigation skill that got removed years ago for being superfluous and it was much more unique than what Healers currently got, especially since it had special synergy with SCH since they could spread it to everyone with Deployment and had a reduced CD on it vs other healers.

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Ah, I really miss it. I wish we would've kept it in some capacity. It was such a great feeling to DT it with Galvanize. I guess that makes sense though, considering they removed most %debuffs. I really, really miss Disable on Astrologian as well. The animation was excellent.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

If all SE is going to do for healers is refurbish old, removed skills and give them back as "new" skills, why did they feel the need to remove them in the first place?

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To be fair, they atleast added something with Temperence. It's absolutely nothing new of course, but it's the kind of thing that makes me happy to see back in some fashion.
I do agree, though. It doesn't make any sense. Though, I kinda disagree that Stoneskin and Divine Benison are the same. Like, sure, they both do shields, but it gave healers something to do during tankbusters, or when an ally was HP weakened by a raise. It's not exactly the same context (and Stoneskin had a price, atleast), but eh. I do get that.

Protect didn't do too much aside from consuming a healer GCD when someone died, so I can see why it got removed, but I'm still very nostalgic about it for some reason.

That being said though, yeaaaah nevermind. If you put it this way, yeah, they might actually be out of ideas haha.

Its crazy to me that Sage and Scholar have so many abilities that are the exact same thing, just one without a fairy.
Is it really healthy for the game that we're designing content around healers requiring like 10 abilities that every healer must have just to be able to function?

I can understand like, a strong single target heal, and a strong aoe heal, and regen and some form of mitigation, but they completely gave up on giving these classes significant identity in exchange for balance.

Physis (this is whispering dawn)
Druochole (this is lustrate)
Kerachole (this is just a better sacred soil but points for it not being exactly identical I guess)
Ixochole (this is indomnitability)
Taurochole (this is their version of excog. Why does excog need to be mimicked too?)
Krasis (the single target buff every healer gets)

When you look at all the tools healers get, it feels like their design pales in comparison to dps purely because they insist on giving every healer a bajillion methods to deal with every mechanic.
They really need to spend time working on strong mechanics that take up far more of a healer's kit than they have now, but play into their healing more.
Even white mage's single mechanic, lilies, is just a single target heal and aoe, then a nuke. Its so basic! There's no flavour in it at all. Healers deserve better.

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Originally Posted by Doragan

Ah, I really miss it. I wish we would've kept it in some capacity. It was such a great feeling to DT it with Galvanize. I guess that makes sense though, considering they removed most %debuffs. I really, really miss Disable on Astrologian as well. The animation was excellent.

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That's the worst thing about it, they didn't remove it. They just gave them to DPS roles as Addle and Feint, which I still don't understand why they did that. I can't even remember the last time I saw a DPS consistently use either skill, outside the odd static group that needed a fill in for the night. It's so infuriating that they felt that Virus/Disable needed to be removed from healers, like it was so stressful for us to have it.

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To be fair, they at least added something with Temperence. It's absolutely nothing new of course, but it's the kind of thing that makes me happy to see back in some fashion.

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They could've just upgraded Divine Seal into Temperance, like they do with pretty much everything else nowadays. It really didn't need to be removed from level 40+ content and just makes the new healer experience worse for its removal. I've been suggesting for awhile now that SE just return all these old skills and make them into low level versions of our existing toolkit so that new player can actually get a good feel for the job and given that they've already set a presidence doing this, given the MNK rework refurbishing Steel Peak and Howling Fist as low level version of MNK's chakra system, I don't see why they can't do the same for healers.

It's like that old saying "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it". SE is failing to learn and are repeating themselves over and over again.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

DPS complexity issues aside, looking to the four healers today, regarding their healing kits, I simply can't see anywhere to go on 7.0 and beyond apart from animation/potency upgrades.

I don't play Ultimates, so I can't say how the full extension of the healing kits fare there, but for the remainder (given the group performing well), a portion of the healing kit feels like overhealing or redundancy. I wonder if they need yet a new healing oGCD in 7.0.

Is either a (much needed) healing redesign or (besides trait improvements) all that healers wil get next expansion are (also much needed) dps or support actions.

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I mean there's always room for novelties, just for example, you could introduce more situational abilities, simple example being a variant on Esuna+Heal, a combo heal that is expensive but gives a good heal as it cures debuffs but the heal only triggers when used on someone with dispellable debuffs so then as a healer you have an active 3-way decision, pure esuna for debuff on undamaged person, HealEsuna for a damaged + debuffed person, Heal for not debuffed damaged person, a shield that when popped provides a small AOE heal around the shielded person for using on tank stack busters. There are also options around buffs eg heals or shields that give small short term buffs or other buffs like a team-mate targetable Arms Length spell etc etc. You could also get fancy with queue and mirror type spells like enchanter style classes in other games, ie the class of spells where you pre-cast before a heal to modify/duplicate/ricochet it. You could also take a leaf from sage's style and adjust some heals to be target at the boss instead of the player, ex heals that are part of the DPS rotation (spell does 100 Pot dmg & -100 Pot dmg to target's next attack)

You could argue these spells aren't "needed" because after all you can just cast Esuna followed by an oGCD heal or just be lazy and brute force heal but there's probably still some room for people to play for efficiency of time/mana.

Tl;dr I think the main direction left available to them design-wise is heals/shields with special effects that aren't +X HP, ex: Heal + arms length, Heal + shave death debuff timer, Heal + reflect dmg, whatever. Personally I also think they need to make the DOT style enemy debuffs put more pressure on the healer, some fights have this but there is still room to increase the global pressure on healers caused by bleeds/poisons/burning etc, things that cause long term efficiency pressures without just being another buster attack. Instead of making an AE that just blows people up give it a vicious burn/bleed that lasts a LONNNNG time.

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Originally Posted by Zaniel

I mean there's always room for novelties, just for example, you could introduce more situational abilities, simple example being a variant on Esuna+Heal, a combo heal that is expensive but gives a good heal as it cures debuffs but the heal only triggers when used on someone with dispellable debuffs so then as a healer you have an active 3-way decision, pure esuna for debuff on undamaged person, HealEsuna for a damaged + debuffed person, Heal for not debuffed damaged person, a shield that when popped provides a small AOE heal around the shielded person for using on tank stack busters. There are also options around buffs eg heals or shields that give small short term buffs or other buffs like a team-mate targetable Arms Length spell etc etc. You could also get fancy with queue and mirror type spells like enchanter style classes in other games, ie the class of spells where you pre-cast before a heal to modify/duplicate/ricochet it. You could also take a leaf from sage's style and adjust some heals to be target at the boss instead of the player, ex heals that are part of the DPS rotation (spell does 100 Pot dmg & -100 Pot dmg to target's next attack)

You could argue these spells aren't "needed" because after all you can just cast Esuna followed by an oGCD heal or just be lazy and brute force heal but there's probably still some room for people to play for efficiency of time/mana.

Tl;dr I think the main direction left available to them design-wise is heals/shields with special effects that aren't +X HP, ex: Heal + arms length, Heal + shave death debuff timer, Heal + reflect dmg, whatever. Personally I also think they need to make the DOT style enemy debuffs put more pressure on the healer, some fights have this but there is still room to increase the global pressure on healers caused by bleeds/poisons/burning etc, things that cause long term efficiency pressures without just being another buster attack. Instead of making an AE that just blows people up give it a vicious burn/bleed that lasts a LONNNNG time.

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I mean heal + x doesn’t change the fact that we still don’t need even half the heals that we currently have, if you add the heal then we get more heals that we don’t need, if you don’t add the heal we just end up with extra button bloat that we also don’t need

At best they could redesign the exisiting heals to have secondary effects but making an entire healer expansion “now kerachole also acts as an Esuna” would be even more boring than what we currently have and doesn’t fix the overarching problem regardless

Go to Savage or Ultimate fights if you want to use GCD heals.
The game is balanced around those contents and casual contents will essentially require less healing.

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Originally Posted by TakumiHarada

Go to Savage or Ultimate fights if you want to use GCD heals.
The game is balanced around those contents and casual contents will essentially require less healing.

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I mean savage doesn’t need GCD healing at all and ultimate doesn’t need that much of it once you have organised mitigation

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Originally Posted by TakumiHarada

Go to Savage or Ultimate fights if you want to use GCD heals.
The game is balanced around those contents and casual contents will essentially require less healing.

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say you dont do savage or ultimate without saying you dont do savage or ultimate

Having only 2 main damage buttons wouldn't be as bad a problem if healers had a reason to use their other GCDs. Incoming damage is too light and oGCD skills are free and plentiful. Bosses tickle the tank and will put out no damage for several seconds when casting abilities. If people die, it's usually not due to lack of healing but because they failed a mechanic.

When I used to raid hardcore in WoW, incoming damage high and frequent. As a tank, my number one priority was maximizing my survivability, not how much damage I could do. Doing mechanics was still a thing, but healers needed to constantly spam heals or people will die from other damage. Avoiding defensive stats should be something you do when you overgear an encounter, not when first stepping into a new tier. There's something wrong when healers rather meld Direct Hit over Determination when the DPS increase is extremely small and provides no healing benefit.

Incoming damage should be high enough that healers want Determination and Piety over Direct Hit, and tanks should want Tenacity, but this would require them to completely rethink how encounters should be designed and add a cost to and change many oGCD healing abilities. A big revamp like that would be something best done in a new expansion.

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Originally Posted by TakumiHarada

Go to Savage or Ultimate fights if you want to use GCD heals.
The game is balanced around those contents and casual contents will essentially require less healing.

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This doesn't really stand up well anymore though. To try and highlight how far off the mark content is vs our kits now I'll use the same P1S log I linked earlier:

The fight was 7:20, it wasn't clean, we had 2 deaths and 2 additional damage downs ontop of that so hardly smooth. Also note it was in 6.0 so no 20 second lily yet.

I had room for approximately 14 Lilies, 4 black lilies, 4 PoMs, 2 Benes, 5 Asylums, 10 Assizes, 9 Thin Airs, 7 Tetras, 15 Benisons, 7 PIs, 3 Temperances, 7 Aquaveils and 2 Lilybells (With those numbers varying slightly depending on if I use the ability on pull or early).

In reality I used:

14 Lilies, 4 black lilies, 4 PoMs, 1 Bene (To keep someone alive through their missed mechanic), 3 Asylums, 10 Assizes, 0 Thin Airs, 2 Tetras, 8 Benisons, 2 PIs, 1 Tempereance, 1 Aquaveil and 1 Lilybell. In doing so I out healed my co-healer and had ~40% overheal.

Take out the abilities that I'm spamming for damage and I'm not even using half of the oGCD healing available to me. And this is P1Savage, far from an especially challenging turn, but still worlds beyond what something like Aglaia dishes out. Should I do this for the current 24 man? I suspect it'd look even more horrible.

IMO the answer is right there, add more utility onto fluff healing oGCDs and we will use it more. This is why shorter cooldown abilities like Asylum and Soil are so good now even if they don't have actual damage potency themselves, the additional effects make them worth using more often which in turn helps alleviate the glare monotony.

The encounter design is primarily the reason why we have this situation. Incoming damage is scripted and is in 95% cases either raidwide or tankbuster.

For the latter tank kits are so strong that tank busters don't need that much attention, especially when in savage people use invulns to make the job even easier for healers.

For raidwides besides the rare ones that set HP to 1 they generally do fluff damage so even shield healers don't bother with pre-shielding and for harder savage raidwides if it kills somebody then party just uses more mitigation next time.

So encounter design + competent party makes healer kits like that redundant. Only w2w pulls and people playing bad cause healers to use most of their kit.

Ironically I think w2w pulls might not be viable in upcoming savage dungeons so healers there will likely play like in savage raids as well - as glare bots with oGCD heals.

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Originally Posted by Somnolence

The encounter design is primarily the reason why we have this situation. Incoming damage is scripted and is in 95% cases either raidwide or tankbuster.

For the latter tank kits are so strong that tank busters don't need that much attention, especially when in savage people use invulns to make the job even easier for healers.

For raidwides besides the rare ones that set HP to 1 they generally do fluff damage so even shield healers don't bother with pre-shielding and for harder savage raidwides if it kills somebody then party just uses more mitigation next time.

So encounter design + competent party makes healer kits like that redundant. Only w2w pulls and people playing bad cause healers to use most of their kit.

Ironically I think w2w pulls might not be viable in upcoming savage dungeons so healers there will likely play like in savage raids as well - as glare bots with oGCD heals.

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W2W might not be viable for the simple reason tanks have completely unbalanced survivability in dungeons. Scale it to challenge a WAR and it would be impossible on DRK, scale it to make it challenging to DRK and WAR could do it asleep

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Originally Posted by Espon

A big revamp like that would be something best done in a new expansion.

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Unless they clearly state that they will be changing healers by introducing fun and engaging DPS kits with interaction that requires thinking I will not be waiting for a new expansion. Also, they will have to communicate the changes before they get implemented and listen to feedback regarding them.

Healers should have been given DPS rotation back in Shb. We are half a year into EW right now. The GCD nuke spam is years old. And we still have people arguing about healers only healing, an argument debunked countless times over and over again.

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Originally Posted by Somnolence

The encounter design is primarily the reason why we have this situation. Incoming damage is scripted and is in 95% cases either raidwide or tankbuster.

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I feel that more or less this the breaking point - no matter how creative a healer design gets to be, healer as an activity (meaning JUST the act of not letting people die) will only have more excitement to it if they stray further from this formula. Sadly, the conundrum here is that if they change a healing philosophy, they would have to adjust all encounters in the game, which could be quite the work.

Not surprising that when healers get to put their triage hats to work is exactly when other people (or themselves) mess up from the tight script and they have to get creative to minimize their dps losses when the inevitability of using GCD heals is looming over.

The healing situation isn't getting unsustainable, it's been unsustainable since mid-ARR. I used to complain about it back then in my FCs, but after getting shouted down by people who just wanted fast dungeon runs I stopped bothering. I watched as they added more and more OGCD healing bloat, watching healers actually start talking about "DPS Uptime" unironically.

This isn't a new problem, it's always been like this. Things being a touch undertuned and the amount of raw cooldowns + OGCD healing available is just making the problem more easily evident. Green DPS should have died as a concept forever ago, but after everything from "Healers DPS in FF per lore!" to "just stfu I want dungeons to go faster.", my opinion is that players were willing and eager participants in making this bed and now they're going to have to sleep in it. We need an entire fundamental rework of what it means to heal in FFXIV, and it's not gonna happen in one patch or likely even in an entire xpac.

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Originally Posted by Atma

The healing situation isn't getting unsustainable, it's been unsustainable since mid-ARR. I used to complain about it back then in my FCs, but after getting shouted down by people who just wanted fast dungeon runs I stopped bothering. I watched as they added more and more OGCD healing bloat, watching healers actually start talking about "DPS Uptime" unironically.

This isn't a new problem, it's always been like this. Things being a touch undertuned and the amount of raw cooldowns + OGCD healing available is just making the problem more easily evident. Green DPS should have died as a concept forever ago, but after everything from "Healers DPS in FF per lore!" to "just stfu I want dungeons to go faster.", my opinion is that players were willing and eager participants in making this bed and now they're going to have to sleep in it. We need an entire fundamental rework of what it means to heal in FFXIV, and it's not gonna happen in one patch or likely even in an entire xpac.

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Green DPS is an entirely viable concept, if they actually committed to it. Nowhere does it say that healers need to abide by the oldschool mmo design of "spend every second healing or someone dies".

What we have right now is healers with a toolkit designed for massive amounts of healing, but the content design for green DPS which never utilizes said toolkit. This just doesn't work, it leaves both the players who want to struggle to keep their party alive and the people who want to be a combat medic unsatisfied. The only ones happy with it are the people who engage with the job at the most surface level possible.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Green DPS is an entirely viable concept, if they actually committed to it. Nowhere does it say that healers need to abide by the oldschool mmo design of "spend every second healing or someone dies".

What we have right now is healers with a toolkit designed for massive amounts of healing, but the content design for green DPS which never utilizes said toolkit. This just doesn't work, it leaves both the players who want to struggle to keep their party alive and the people who want to be a combat medic unsatisfied. The only ones happy with it are the people who engage with the job at the most surface level possible.

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I will actually agree with you in that by the 80%/20% rule, this is 80% a content design problem and absurd level of scripting to the encounters. And I've seen the "combat medic" players satisfied to the detriment of the players who want to engage with the healer role by actually having to heal for long enough. The scale is already stacked on one side heavy enough, thank you. It's time to start putting some weight on the other. If you're bored by the lack of DPS options in the class, it's because you're being given long enough time of not focusing on your role's primary responsibility to get bored by it.

Nothing will get fixed by healers getting more DPS buttons. Nothing. All you're doing is pushing out the problem another expansion, possibly two. 1-2-1-2-1-2 is no more engaging than 1-1-1-1-1-1.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

DPS complexity issues aside, looking to the four healers today, regarding their healing kits, I simply can't see anywhere to go on 7.0 and beyond apart from animation/potency upgrades.

I don't play Ultimates, so I can't say how the full extension of the healing kits fare there, but for the remainder (given the group performing well), a portion of the healing kit feels like overhealing or redundancy. I wonder if they need yet a new healing oGCD in 7.0.

Is either a (much needed) healing redesign or (besides trait improvements) all that healers wil get next expansion are (also much needed) dps or support actions.

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Id like to see Multi-use abilities to be honest.

Cast on ally -> Heal
Cast on enemy -> Damage

Would give healers more of a DPS kit while also expanding their healing kit a bit more.

Just.. please no abilities like sage, i HATE using a button.. just to change the rest of my skills

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Originally Posted by Atma

I will actually agree with you in that by the 80%/20% rule, this is 80% a content design problem and absurd level of scripting to the encounters. And I've seen the "combat medic" players satisfied to the detriment of the players who want to engage with the healer role by actually having to heal for long enough. The scale is already stacked on one side heavy enough, thank you. It's time to start putting some weight on the other. If you're bored by the lack of DPS options in the class, it's because you're being given long enough time of not focusing on your role's primary responsibility to get bored by it.

Nothing will get fixed by healers getting more DPS buttons. Nothing. All you're doing is pushing out the problem another expansion, possibly two. 1-2-1-2-1-2 is no more engaging than 1-1-1-1-1-1.

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But Yoshida already said that he won't make greater healing requirements in the game so the badest healer in the game can still clear content. With that in mind, you know that the only options left is to make a better rotations for green DPS...

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Originally Posted by Atma

I will actually agree with you in that by the 80%/20% rule, this is 80% a content design problem and absurd level of scripting to the encounters. And I've seen the "combat medic" players satisfied to the detriment of the players who want to engage with the healer role by actually having to heal for long enough. The scale is already stacked on one side heavy enough, thank you. It's time to start putting some weight on the other. If you're bored by the lack of DPS options in the class, it's because you're being given long enough time of not focusing on your role's primary responsibility to get bored by it.

Nothing will get fixed by healers getting more DPS buttons. Nothing. All you're doing is pushing out the problem another expansion, possibly two. 1-2-1-2-1-2 is no more engaging than 1-1-1-1-1-1.

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The problem is that the class design hasn't satisfied 'combat medic' players arguably since SB and certainly not post SHB's launch. IMO it doesn't really satisfy anyone the moment they start paying attention and memorising fights. Saying this is a combat medic vs actual healers thing is completely missing the point.

I'm quite willing to bet that a healthy majority of the old school healers here arguing for more DPS complexity would happily jump at the chance of getting HW era healing back if it was coupled with the HW's monster damage output as well. Would they be willing to take it back if it Cleric Stance was dropped in favour of a few highlight reel abilities from recent times such as Macrocosmos and 6.1's Lilies? I'm not sure that would be such a strong response but I'd certainly take it.

I 100% agree that I'd love to see more healing across the board but I think some complexity should be added into the healers downtime kit regardless to make solo content or duties like Aglaia a little more bearable as this is really where things are at there worst now IMO.

Understand that more buttons doesn't just equate to generic combos, ironically if we do get any combos, I'd actually prefer them to be pvp style auto combos that simply break when anything else is used to avoid button bloat (granted I admit I'm probably not the majority here), it's more about making the downtime more engaging and having us think a little. Multiple dots on different timers worked just fine for years, as did niche or quirky abilities and buttons such as fluid aura, miasma II, aero III etc. Another route is process. DNC at it's core is barely more than a combo, but it's layer upon lay of proc systems coupled with a big 2 minute flurry seems to keep it well liked. A greatly simplified version of that would do wonders on one of the healers no?

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Saying this is a combat medic vs actual healers thing is completely missing the point.

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I'd agree, but this comes down to really more of an opinion thing. I don't really have a lot of respect for the "I want to be a 'combat medic'" opinion. That is wanting to be a DPS that just has buttons that heal everyone. I view it as wanting to be overpowered to the level that playing a warrior feels like today when they rush into a big pack of monsters and pop bloodwhetting, except all the time.

If that's how people want it to be, we might as well just give all DPS cooldowns and put them in charge of their own HP management like GW2 and - frankly - how they're already trending with tanks.

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Multiple dots on different timers worked just fine for years,

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Ew.. No it didn't, and if they add multi-dots back in I'm out. I'll never touch healers again and I know plenty of people with the same mindset. I would argue multi-dotting is a playstyle only a niche level of players enjoy to begin with given you don't see it all that often in MMOs, and we can already see a clear trend of DOTs being the first thing on the chopping block when they need to reduce button bloat (shadow fang) or update jobs (summoner). I'd be willing to bet in the preparation for the next xpac and it's abilities, that cutting goring blade has been discussed many times.

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Another route is process. DNC at it's core is barely more than a combo, but it's layer upon lay of proc systems coupled with a big 2 minute flurry seems to keep it well liked. A greatly simplified version of that would do wonders on one of the healers no?

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A greatly simplified version of that is pretty much a 1-2 with a proc, so... I really doubt it's going to be that compelling.

Look, here's the situation, because I know what it is. People want "Gunbreaker, except a healer", and think that's the solution to this problem. But the problem is, they've gotten attached generally to the one that they like, so they want "Gunbreaker, except a healer" done to all of the classes. While I would certainly argue that Gunbreaker improved the tank situation because it got some DPS to finally just play a tank, I don't think this is the right solution because there is a different mindset within people who classically enjoy the healer role. All we can do is speculate because frankly it's impossible to know, but my belief is you lose more than you gain on that trade.


... I actually have to split this into two posts because it's too long.. hah...

(con't)

The problem at its core is that fights in this game simply do not throw enough random, untimed/unscripted damage at the group to keep healers even remotely on their toes. Combine that with the fact that they've moved probably 80% or more of healing to OGCDs (some would probably argue higher, I stick with a world where it is humans that are playing and not robots) so mistakes are going to happen) leads to a very boring playstyle where yes, you are sitting there spamming your 1 DPS ability and dot for entirely too long periods of time, because the way things 'tend to work' is that the damage output from the target roughly correlates to when your abilities come off cooldown.

I often joke the entire game is "scripted around scholar" because with excog, lustrate, and indom you basically get your 1 tankbuster, your 1 "recharge the tank"/heal the DPS oops", and your 1 unavoidable AOE per minute. Obviously that's not every fight, but it's certainly a clear enough pattern for the joke to work. Tank self-healing also went *completely* off the rails in EW and needs to be severely reigned in, but of course the tanks love their new fun toys and getting to feel like tiny gods so now that's going to be a problem - the entire community should have pushed back against that (tanks included) when it first became apparent how much it breaks the game but, again - "we just want fast dungeon runs" mindset triumphs over what's actually good for the game.

The reason why I say this is unsustainable is because the more you push the boundaries of what healers are doing for DPS and blur the lines between what a healer does and what a DPS does, the more you risk eventually either:

1) making these classes overpowered, which then does force them to continue to escalate boss HP, etc until everything just becomes a bullet sponge that balances the entire game on the back of the healer role. Either that or it becomes you're just pressing more buttons to get to the same end result for damage. That's an illusion of complexity. - or -
2) blurring the line so much that you have to start asking the question "why do we even have DPS and Healers when they're doing almost the same thing?"

Franky, I just view it as if they are going to blur the lines on this any more, they might as well just eliminate the healer role and put the DPS in charge of their own healing as they've done with many games that have tried to eliminate the trinity. I'm not arguing it can't be successful, plenty of games have done that.

I also think - personal opinion here - that people's expectations here clearly differ from where things are headed. I say this because last expansion, they had to do a major numbers crunch because the numbers were causing them a lot of problems. Next expansion IMO I am expecting to be the great ability crunch. Button bloat is becoming extremely real at this point, and if there's any trends we see observable in the world it's classes losing buttons, not gaining new ones.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

Id like to see Multi-use abilities to be honest.

Cast on ally -> Heal
Cast on enemy -> Damage

Would give healers more of a DPS kit while also expanding their healing kit a bit more.

Just.. please no abilities like sage, i HATE using a button.. just to change the rest of my skills

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That's actually a pretty good idea and it would suddenly give the devs a ton more room to add skills that can allow each healer class to feel unique. Yes SE, I did get nervous when you mentioned ast reworks.

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Originally Posted by Atma

I'd agree, but this comes down to really more of an opinion thing. I don't really have a lot of respect for the "I want to be a 'combat medic'" opinion. That is wanting to be a DPS that just has buttons that heal everyone. I view it as wanting to be overpowered to the level that playing a warrior feels like today when they rush into a big pack of monsters and pop bloodwhetting, except all the time.

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That's literally how healers are designed in most games, video, tabletop, or otherwise. "Pure real healers who cast healing spells constantly" is an aberration from attrition healing MMOs, and that's about it.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

That's literally how healers are designed in most games, video, tabletop, or otherwise. "Pure real healers who cast healing spells constantly" is an aberration from attrition healing MMOs, and that's about it.

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Yeah, and they've always been overpowered in the hands of anyone reasonably competent too. 3.0 Cleric/Druid? Absolutely gods. 3.5? Little better, but still gods. Pathfinder? Yup, still gods.

I'm in a game right now where our party's cleric shucks out 100+ Damage a round, is basically untouchable AC wise by anything other than the nastiest of nasty's primary attacks, and can handle anything else the party needs. Is this a compelling game experience for anyone? No. And we're already talking about how to reign in this crap for the next adventure path we do because people are sick of it.

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Originally Posted by Atma

And I've seen the "combat medic" players satisfied to the detriment of the players who want to engage with the healer role by actually having to heal for long enough.

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I can relate to this. I've adapted to the modern style as much as anyone else, and I've seen people ridiculing Sylphie a million times since ARR for wanting to only heal. Unfortunately there's not many options for people who legitimately enjoy just healing, since the game - and modern MMOs in general - are just not designed around it.

I wish that wasn't the case, but it is what it is. Clearly a lot of people enjoy the combat medic style.

Edit: Yes, I had fun spamming Cure and then resting in FFXI leveling parties. But now you whippersnappers are spoiled with your out-of-combat regen filling your HP in 5 seconds. (I'm just being playful. I realize times change).

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Originally Posted by Atma

Ew.. No it didn't, and if they add multi-dots back in I'm out. I'll never touch healers again and I know plenty of people with the same mindset.

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Which begs the question, why wasn't it an issue for the ~4 years that the game had healers playing this way? Don't get me wrong, I don't think all the healers should get 3/4 dots back, but returning one of them back to that, SCH would probably make the most sense so that it's a play style option makes a ton of sense. Get some diversity back into the role. Give Sadge the procs, have WHM focus on generating burst through Lily/Blood Lily usage whilst AST sinks GCDs into a deck building mini game for card buffs.

At the end of the day I don't want a gun breaker healer. I just want content like Aglaia to be engaging. At this point I really couldn't care how SE do it as long as they do *something* as it's just beyond boring now. I've hit the point where I just can't stomach queueing casual content on my healer anymore as A) There's barely anything to heal & B) My other options are mash /beesknees or mash glare.

You're absolutely spot on with your pattern, I mean look at how just about every fight opens with an AoE like it's pretending that the fights actually going to somehow be involving. However pleases appreciate that there's a difference between wanting some DPS complexity for healers vs simply wanting healers to do more damage. Relative healer damage is the lowest it's ever been in this game since 2.0 but people aren't complaining about that. It's the tedium that's the problem.

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Originally Posted by Atma

I know what the situation is...

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Do you though? The Healer should Heal mentality was already dying in ARR, according to you, and literally everything that SE has done has gone against it; From removing Healer support tools like Stoneskin from the GCD, to lowering the amount of healing needed to clear content, to reducing the cast time of DPS skills to 1.5s to allow weaving our oversaturated oGCD heals in between DPSing (a courtesy not really extended to Healing GCDs) and even just the MP discrepancy between DPS and healing goes against that mentality so why try and support it?


Seems like a waste of effort to try and install a mentality that never existed whereas DPS on Healers was previously supported but got removed.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Which begs the question, why wasn't it an issue for the ~4 years that the game had healers playing this way? Don't get me wrong, I don't think all the healers should get 3/4 dots back, but returning one of them back to that, SCH would probably make the most sense so that it's a play style option makes a ton of sense. Get some diversity back into the role. Give Sadge the procs, have WHM focus on generating burst through Lily/Blood Lily usage whilst AST sinks GCDs into a deck building mini game for card buffs.

At the end of the day I don't want a gun breaker healer. I just want content like Aglaia to be engaging. At this point I really couldn't care how SE do it as long as they do *something* as it's just beyond boring now. (...)

(...) However pleases appreciate that there's a difference between wanting some DPS complexity for healers vs simply wanting healers to do more damage. Relative healer damage is the lowest it's ever been in this game since 2.0 but people aren't complaining about that. It's the tedium that's the problem.

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More complexity without more damage is illusory complexity. As for DOTs, I can't say definitively. All I can say is that I didn't play healers during that phase at all because of that stuff. I will stop if it comes back. So I mean it was an issue, it just wasn't an issue for me. No one should be forced into juggling multiple dots just cause they want to heal.

I would love for the content to be more engaging too, I simply fundamentally disagree with the notion the answer is in expanding healer DPS responsibilities. It is my opinion that the forums have a loud and vocal advocacy of players who, for lack of a more elegant way to put it, want to play DPS but play healers because they just don't want to deal with queues. Which is fair, but it's also not fair to force that mindset on the people who are interested in healers as *healers*

I want meaningful decisions in healing, I want more randomized instances of damage intended to keep me on my toes, I want more debuffs or situations that come up that require me to take action. OGCD heals should be the emergency option, not the standard.

If you want expanded DPS options - WHM and Sage do it right. They have damage abilities that are fueled by, and triggered by, the results of them actively using their healing toolkit which ultimately goes into a damage ability, Afflatus Misery or Toxikon. Those are examples to me of "healer dps abilities done right, not just adding more abilities. AST is a bit more dubious with their cards leading up to Divination which I *guess* is kind of damage in a roundabout way. You could talk me into shifting my mindset about expanding the healer DPS toolkit if and only if the abilities gained in question are enabled by the results of actual healing actions that would naturally occur from them adding more need to actively heal.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Do you though? The Healer should Heal mentality was already dying in ARR, according to you, and literally everything that SE has done has gone against it; From removing Healer support tools like Stoneskin from the GCD, to lowering the amount of healing needed to clear content, to the reducing the cast time of DPS skills to 1.5s to allow weaving our oversaturated oGCD heals in between DPSing (a courtesy not really extended to Healing GCDs) and even just the MP discrepancy between DPS and healing goes against that mentality so why try and support it?


Seems like a waste of effort to try and install a mentality that never existed whereas DPS on Healers was previously supported but got removed.

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It was dying because players killed it it off. The "I wanna DPS" healers got their way by forcing their "not DPSing = bad" mentality into standard discourse. It was originally really only super viable the way people run dungeons when they healer outgeared the instance. Then it became the normal even when you didn't, which likely probably fueled part of the lowering of overall damage because again, "healers that don't DPS are bad." - it's not maybe the tank's gear makes them take hits like wet toilet paper, or maybe the healer is fresh to the instance and hasn't gotten a meaningful gear drop in a while (or heavens forbid both at the same time), or maybe just a dungeon where the game's gear scaling goes wonky (Bardam's Mettle). Nope, not DPSing = bad so you better be doing it.

Why try to support it? Because again, the current trajectory is unsustainable. Let's give you your way - they add healer DPS abilities. How many expansions can we go of them doing this before they're indistinguishable from DPS classes except for healing cooldowns instead of damage cooldowns? And even then at that point, then healers will just start complaining about "just being subpar DPS and we need DPS cooldowns too." It's not a forward looking mindset, it's at best asking for a band-aid for a sucking chest wound.

Edit: I'm hoping criterion dungeons successfully beat the present speedrunning mentality out of the playerbase. If people launch into that content pulling multiple packs and don't get pounded into the pavement, they're too easy.

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Originally Posted by Atma

Look, here's the situation, because I know what it is. People want "Gunbreaker, except a healer", and think that's the solution to this problem. But the problem is, they've gotten attached generally to the one that they like, so they want "Gunbreaker, except a healer" done to all of the classes. While I would certainly argue that Gunbreaker improved the tank situation because it got some DPS to finally just play a tank, I don't think this is the right solution because there is a different mindset within people who classically enjoy the healer role. All we can do is speculate because frankly it's impossible to know, but my belief is you lose more than you gain on that trade.


... I actually have to split this into two posts because it's too long.. hah...

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No, people want to contribute.
Stop making it into a "you all just secretly want to play dps" when that's not what people are asking for. Many people asking for more dps buttons would prefer to have healing requirements drastically increased. Not just a little bit so it warrants using one oGCD more per fight but rather to a level where tank selfheal isn't nearly enough and you'll regularly have to dip into GCD heals to keep them alive.

Will that happen? No. Plain and simple. We're being realistic here. SE has done everything since ARR to go away from that healer model and they outright stated for years that they will not increase the healing requirement nor do anything else that affects fulfilling their primary role and the skill floor.
If higher healing requirements are out of question, as SE made quite clear with their changes and their explicit statements, we have support and dps left to contribute in our downtime. Support, however, has also constantly gotten deleted or replaced by general 2min raid buffs.
Tell me: what are our options? Realistic options, objectively speaking? We can have our pipe dreams but let's be realistic here for a moment.

You don't know the situation at all if you think this is about making every healer into a dps because we all just secretly want to play dps but can't admit it. Preferring a different route for healers is fine, being hostile towards people that aren't even against that is not helpful though.
Many healer mains have asked for years on end for higher healing requriements and repeatedly got shot down in PLL and other official statements. And most of these people have simply given up on asking for it and instead went for a compromise or their 2nd choice which is doubling down on the green dps route if SE stubbornly refuses to give us more to heal.

If it was entirely up to me, I'd have Cycle/ Terminal/ WL2/ CC level heal checks on dungeon bosses. Frequently. With lots of random damage flying around.
But it's not up to me.

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Originally Posted by Atma

It was dying because players killed it it off. The "I wanna DPS" healers got their way by forcing their "not DPSing = bad" mentality into standard discourse.

Why try to support it? Because again, the current trajectory is unsustainable. Let's give you your way - they add healer DPS abilities. How many expansions can we go of them doing this before they're indistinguishable from DPS classes except for healing cooldowns instead of damage cooldowns? And even then at that point, then healers will just start complaining about "just being subpar DPS and we need DPS cooldowns too." It's not a forward looking mindset, it's at best asking for a band-aid for a sucking chest wound.

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Again: people want to contribute and want others in a teamplay-based game to also contribute.
Picking your nose, doing the /beesknees or overhealing isn't contributing and naturally, it's not exactly appreciated if 3 of 4 people constantly push buttons and one person stands there semi-afk and waits for things to happen. If contribution would be possible by healing more, by providing buffs etc. it would be entirely fine but SE took that away so all everyone has left to contribute once the laguahbly low healing requirements are met is currently dps.

My personal opinion before reworking healers and their abilities I say who ever Is in charge of fights needs to make the healers do something, healers by design are reactionary type of class, you heal after the damage Is dealt, SCH and SGE are similar but react to the mechanic before It goes off In general although with the amount of OGCDs they can pretty much do either or.

They need to make fights have more constant damage, the only time I actually feel like a healer and not a malefic/glare/broil bot Is sections like Add phase or FoF In P3s and thats because constant damage Is going out requiring ME to do something obviously Im just using ogcd's still but If more instances existed like that throughout the fight eventually my OGCDs would run dry and require me to actually use GCDS. Mechanics are so telegraphed and for some reason devs hardly decide to change It up for Example almost every double tank buster can be invul'd, tank swapped, or soaked together. Why not make it a god damn penta tank buster that can't be swapped, sure invul could soak a hit or two but if the devs did some tinker and made the busters spread out the healers would at least need to work on the last two busters. Im ranting but you get the idea, the devs themselves need to branch out and try new things that FORCE healers to do something about it because as it stands all a healer does Is press 1 ogcd and the mechanic is resolved

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

No, people want to contribute.
Stop making it into a "you all just secretly want to play dps" when that's not what people are asking for. Many people asking for more dps buttons would prefer to have healing requirements drastically increased. Not just a little bit so it warrants using one oGCD more per fight but rather to a level where tank selfheal isn't nearly enough and you'll regularly have to dip into GCD heals to keep them alive.

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As much as I would reply in-line to this, the order to address some requires a lot of jumping around.

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You don't know the situation at all if you think this is about making every healer into a dps because we all just secretly want to play dps but can't admit it.

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I don't think 'everyone' is that way. But I don't think capitulation is the answer. However, I think *enough* people are like that to make the next statement infeasible -

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Tell me: what are our options? Realistic options, objectively speaking? We can have our pipe dreams but let's be realistic here for a moment.

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The realistic option is just stop healing. If the healer pool were to even remotely begin to dry up because people didn't just slog through it despite being disgruntled about the situation then eventually at some point they'd have to finally reconsider their hardline stance. But enough people will never do so, because plenty of people *do* want that. I saw how many people jumped to SCH when it was introduced and the Faerie was sufficient healing for content and people rejoicing over "green DPS". That's practically where the term originated. You can ask all you want, that easily ignorable. Forcing the matter is the second choice, but you will never get it to happen because too many people are opposed to the notion.

Accepting more DPS actions and more DPS responsibility will feel 'good' for exactly 2 weeks before they just bump up monster HP to compensate if they give more damage or after the coat of paint rubs off when you realize you're just pressing more buttons to contribute the same amount if they keep it on-par with where it is now. It's a lose/lose situation that just sets back everything. The only thing that will ever get to where it actually feels like we are contributing is to continue to apply pressure until there's a paradigm shift.

I'm not going to even attempt to organize such a thing, because I'll just get shouted down for having the audacity to think healers should heal. I've already had enough bad experiences with this community on that topic, I'll spare myself the grief.

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Originally Posted by Atma

snip
I would love for the content to be more engaging too, I simply fundamentally disagree with the notion the answer is in expanding healer DPS responsibilities. It is my opinion that the forums have a loud and vocal advocacy of players who, for lack of a more elegant way to put it, want to play DPS but play healers because they just don't want to deal with queues. Which is fair, but it's also not fair to force that mindset on the people who are interested in healers as *healers*
I want meaningful decisions in healing, I want more randomized instances of damage intended to keep me on my toes, I want more debuffs or situations that come up that require me to take action. OGCD heals should be the emergency option, not the standard.If you want expanded DPS options - WHM and Sage do it right. They have damage abilities that are fueled by, and triggered by, the results of them actively using their healing toolkit which ultimately goes into a damage ability, Afflatus Misery or Toxikon. Those are examples to me of "healer dps abilities done right, not just adding more abilities. AST is a bit more dubious with their cards leading up to Divination which I *guess* is kind of damage in a roundabout way. You could talk me into shifting my mindset about expanding the healer DPS toolkit if and only if the abilities gained in question are enabled by the results of actual healing actions that would naturally occur from them adding more need to actively heal.

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it is an opinion to claim that adding additional DPS or other skills that are not heals means that other people want those skills just because they want to skip queues. Now that may certainly be true for some players, and even so- so what? are you going to balance a job around the fact that some people do that? That also applies to people who play tanks - are you going to design tanks around that too? doesn't make any sense to me.

i understand that you may not want to juggle more dots, i'm not a big proponent of dot classes myself. that being said i wouldn't object at all if one healer had multiple dots since some people do enjoy that. i can understand that you want more challenging heals, however se has already said that this won't be done so we should have options to keep us engaged. that means that damage and buffs is the way to go.

i don't see what you mean by whm or sge does dps right. both are rather disappointing in their current state, and adding more dps abilities only if fueled by healing - what do you do once someone is healed- stop dpsing? no thanks. this would be even worse applied to anyone who wants to play their healer outside of group content.

The big issue is that people are trying to force what they want onto the game without realizing the game at its core is going to always be do as much damage as possible as long as enrages exist. I wouldn't say there's a healing/healing oGCD bloat because every healing option exist for a reason. Whether it be for recovery during a bad pull or to allow u to output more dmg through efficient healing. The biggest issue is that making healing more complex in this game runs the risk of many fights in normal mode being unclearable in Duty Finder. The most engagement you will get with this role will always be in savage and Ultimate because the average player will never be at the level needed to play a healer effectively. It seems to be intended that a healer needs to know when to heal and when to DPS rather than doing one over the other