Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Then you have a spell that puts the symbols of the Twelve on the ground, and whichever one you stand on, your buff enhances the damage dealt by any players who's patron deity matches that symbol. So if for example, two players have the patron deity of Rhalgr in your party, standing on the symbol of Rhalgr will make your spell stronger on those two characters.

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...I'm guessing this isn't a serious suggestion, for the simple fact that who tf knows the patron deity of each player in their party...

But, if it is... why would you want a job mechanic that entices statics to have identical role-play choices?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

...I'm guessing this isn't a serious suggestion, for the simple fact that who tf knows the patron deity of each player in their party...

But, if it is... why would you want a job mechanic that entices statics to have identical role-play choices?

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You could have it appear above characters when the spell is active.

But I'm just throwing stuff at the board. How would you go about improving the concept?

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Originally Posted by Connor

I saw it more as a core mechanic than being the actual ‘rotation’ itself. But using the same scenario there could be things like buffs that only affect the ‘Astrologian-dancer-partner’ targets, mitigation/shields/regens associated with the ‘ast/dance-partner’ buffs to balance out spamming it on dps, increased or adjusted card effects based on who has the buff. Plus they could do things like having each consumed ‘star’ give a stacking buff to the Astrologian for ‘big potency attack’, and possibly a competing ‘big potency heal’ (not that we need any more lol).

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I'm fine with AST doing more with a sort of Synastry-esque general mechanic. That's fine by me. I just don't see anything more interesting in "I reload my turret-buff that makes me auto-Ruin when YOU punch (but I can't use this on hybrids)" than just using my attacks myself.

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It’s not much so that simple buff/debuff/utility skills themselves can make healers enjoyable, it’s the way in which they could be utilised to create a healer contribution that ends up more ‘support’ oriented than the ‘direct personal damage’ we have now.

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Again, I'm all for for buffs/debuffs. I just don't get why we're treating things like %Damage buff as if they had no skill ceiling or were super basic/banal... only to then suggest flat, unscaling potency with shallower, if any, available optimizations. We have low-hanging fruit dangling in front of us already. We needn't search a refuse pile for oddball novelty, especially if we're not going to be interested in its effect in practice.

The hype of complexity that is purely on paper only lasts for a few uses, while complexity in practice has actual longevity despite typically being the more intuitive. We want a gaming exercise, I would imagine, not merely a reading (tooltip-deciphering) exercise.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

You could have it appear above characters when the spell is active.

But I'm just throwing stuff at the board. How would you go about improving the concept?

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If it had to be an ally-based self-buffing mechanic (generate buff stacks + link aura that triggers the expense of personal buff stacks), as per that original idea, then I'd at least want it to be more timing-sensitive, and ideally to offer further agency. That model definitely constrains that goal, though.

Now, if the AST itself could tap into the benefits of that "buff engine" and the AST had the ability to release up to n stars at once (where n is the number granted by the GCD, but the max might increase higher) via an oGCD action, for potency varied by some sort of match-up in the workings of that "buff engine" or from the target ally's actions, then I'd probably dig it.

By itself, fail-conditions aside, optimization for the earlier proposed mechanic would just be...

• "Use during downtime (including as early pre-pull as allow all to be spent before duration ends, or just 2 GCDs pre-pull as necessary for later raid-buff sync)",
• "Hit on CD (if any)",
• "Use just before raid window" (though this can generally be accomplished via the two above), and
• "Track MCH Heat (if there is a MCH)", "Influence party finder to ensure the presence of a MCH and/or MNK"

None of that, though, is unique to it; most would be found even on a GCD Earthly Star. And it includes far less consideration than a GCD Card, even of the current variety.

I would need it to outpace the optimizations available to a GCD ~12% Damage for ~20 seconds buff for me to feel any hype for that design direction.

I suspect it's possible, but I also wouldn't spend mechanics on it over a reworked Card system, if there'd be room/opportunity only to place them on the one or the other.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'm fine with AST doing more with a sort of Synastry-esque general mechanic. That's fine by me. I just don't see anything more interesting in "I reload my turret-buff that makes me auto-Ruin when YOU punch (but I can't use this on hybrids)" than just using my attacks myself.

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Of course, I meant that the ‘turret-buff’ in that situation could act as a vehicle for further interactions, synergies and interesting effects that can be leveraged in some way. Extra dps, buffs, debuffs, whatever. Not that it would work by itself in a vacuum.

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Again, I'm all for for buffs/debuffs. I just don't get why we're treating things like %Damage buff as if they had no skill ceiling or were super basic/banal... only to then suggest flat, unscaling potency with shallower, if any, available optimizations. We have low-hanging fruit dangling in front of us already. We needn't search a refuse pile for oddball novelty, especially if we're not going to be interested in its effect in practice.

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I’m a bit confused on what you’re saying here. Who is treating %damage buffs as banal or boring? I thought the point was about moving healer dps from being so heavily personal focused to more rDPS oriented (i.e % damage boosts, fundamentally).

I don’t think it’s fair to call support effects ‘low-dangling fruit’ or ‘oddball novelty’ when nobody is actually asking for such things (besides maybe me lol). I always assumed when 90% of people say ‘support’ in ffxiv they’re specifically referring to rDPS type % buffs. I find using mitigation buffs fun too personally, but they’re not exactly the most needed thing right now, so I wouldn’t imagine anyone would want healers to be full of defensive oriented buffs either.

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The hype of complexity that is purely on paper only lasts for a few uses, while complexity in practice has actual longevity despite typically being the more intuitive. We want a gaming exercise, I would imagine, not merely a reading (tooltip-deciphering) exercise.

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Right, but isn’t that why different jobs offer different playstyle? (or at least they’re meant to). Personally I’d prefer a playstyle that revolves more around understanding of how to tactically leverage a toolkit contextually as opposed to simply maximising personal dps relative to party performance. But I don’t see why that has to preclude another healer from being more about a consistently aggressive and/or reactionary playstyle that revolves around maximising dps rather than pre-planning and managing things like buffs or debuffs

hahaha


no. lol lmao

there should be ways to make healing fun that should be considered by the devs. admittedly DPS jobs put me to sleep. especially brainless ones like RPR and SAM. at least healer keeps me awake for the most part. maybe add one more damage spell to make it less monotonous and a couple of other things for WHM as an example, but there are ways people have suggested to make healing more fun.

...have you tried Black Mage?

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Originally Posted by Jatoi

hahaha


no. lol lmao

there should be ways to make healing fun that should be considered by the devs. admittedly DPS jobs put me to sleep. especially brainless ones like RPR and SAM. at least healer keeps me awake for the most part. maybe add one more damage spell to make it less monotonous and a couple of other things for WHM as an example, but there are ways people have suggested to make healing more fun.

...have you tried Black Mage?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

There are many reasons why it's difficult to resolve this issue by trying to replace DPS spam with more healing instead.

1. There has been no notable change in the frequency of outgoing damage between ARR content and current content, or if anything, damage is sometimes less frequent than in ARR/HW content. Meanwhile, every expansion has not only added more healing resources to the healers, but every new resource added has been DPS neutral--either OGCD and thus weave-able, meaning it gives healers more DPS uptime, or GCDs that also deal the same damage as the healer's basic spell, or refund that damage via the blood lily. Meanwhile every healer attack spell has been streamlined to a 1.5 second cast time, meaning every GCD gives you room to weave any of these resources. We have more DPS uptime than ever before because of all these reasons.

2. Other roles have received increased levels of sustain, particularly Paladin and Warrior who are able to answer to the already diminished instances of necessary healing. As has been discovered, there's enough non-healer sustain that a healerless party was capable of clearing Ultimate. While that is not a normal expected playthrough, it speaks to the above points about how little healing is needed vs how much healing is available to use.

3. Consider that a player has the ability to cast a new spell every 2.5 seconds. If your goal is to rework healers to heal with their GCD more often than they attack with their GCD, how often do you think damage needs to be delivered to the party in order to sway healer gameplay away from DPS and toward healing? Consider points 1 and 2 as well. You would probably need raidwide damage every 3-7 seconds in all forms of content, even dungeons, to demand healers stop attacking and heal given our current resources.

4. FFXIV healing has vastly more accessible forms of AoE healing than WoW does. Generally, party damage can almost always be resolved in 1-2 GCDs ignoring all of the OGCD healing resources at our disposal. WoW does have AoE healing, but far more often has to rely on single target healing because their AoE healing doesn't have the same power and availability as FFXIV AoE heals.

5. If you want to change the the environment for healers to prioritize healing over damage, you're going to need to make some drastic changes to a combination of both healer kits and fight design. This would inevitably require reworking every single fight in the game to ensure the new model for healing encourages healing over DPS, and is also doable with whatever changes the healers receive to their resources, even if that's just rebalancing HP to account for considerably less healer DPS. It should go without saying that this is a truly monolithic task and would be incredibly time consuming and expensive to accomplish.

The truth is that FFXIV has always been an environment that promoted a very offensive healer playstyle--more combat medic if you will. Whether intentional or not, it has also only ever continued to feed into that environment with every expansion. Constantly providing more and more free healing, incredibly powerful AoE healing, faster DPS cast times that enable weaving, and more non-healer sustain than the game has ever had before. All things that lend themselves to maximizing the time healers get to spend DPSing instead of healing.

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Just something I shared earlier.

It's a combination of factors, really.

1- The mechanics are pretty easy and aren't that punishing for the most part. Just get out of the glowy orange and you're fine. It's why in Anabaseios, I was happy to see a roomwide bleed. I don't even play savage by the way and I don't see myself as some expert elite whatever. Healing being as boring as it is just a symptom of another, larger issue.

2- DPS also have been going through another problem themselves that is also a symptom. There has been an obsession with balance and I swear things are feeling homogenized. I feel like I am playing SAM while I play most other melee.

It's also not just bad balancing but also the design. Covering the issue up with having a healer get more damage spells won't solve that. It's imperative that healers do damage as I am of the camp that if there's no healing to be done, you better be slinging damage out. It's why I think healing should be more interesting and why I think it's a combination of iffy balancing and very meh mechanics. Mechanics that won't chase off casuals but will keep the healers engaged isn't impossible.

Oh god the tanks. Help.

edit: I thought I quoted you but I didn't. Sorry about that!

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Originally Posted by Jatoi

It's why I think healing should be more interesting and why I think it's a combination of iffy balancing and very meh mechanics. Mechanics that won't chase off casuals but will keep the healers engaged isn't impossible.

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I've previously suggested that, since we have Misery acting as 'use healing to charge a damage move', what if we had 'use damage to charge a healing move'? It'd be great if SGE fully leaned into 'Augment Kardia to have extra effects/strength' gameplay, as I really do think that balanced correctly (potencywise), THAT could be the 'skillcap' of the class: trying to get to zero GCD heals used via the Kardia system.

But the idea also works for other healers. I've suggested a gauge for WHM that is charged by casting Glare, Dia or one new damage button on a 15s CD (or by healing, for the 'healers should focus on healing not damage' players). And using that gauge lets you cast a powerful instantcast AOE heal, which also has it's own 'Misery style' damage refund, so it's damage neutral. It's a very simple gameplay loop that fits well (imo) with the level of simplicity that WHM currently holds, like look at the gauge we currently have, you could just have Solace/Rapture share a charge time of 20s and give them a shared pool of 3 charges. That's the current WHM gauge. It's so empty right now that I don't feel remotely bad about suggesting an extra element for it.

Then I'd add 2 DOTs to SCH and rework AST cards to have unique effects again, all dealing damage but with different ways to deal that damage such that you'd want to play certain cards on certain roles, not this melee/ranged split rubbish. The problem is, I went about my ideas with the specific idea in mind, make something 'that won't chase off casuals but will keep the healers engaged'. But even what I came up with, while aiming for that goal, is 'too much complexity' for you-know-who. It's shouldn't be impossible, but some people are so galvanized in their opinions of 'we MUST make the solution be that healers heal more!' that they get caught up in their own fervor, and don't actually consider the butterfly effect of things. Like how much extra healing would be required to pressure more skilled players, how much we'd have to kneecap OGCDs to make GCD healing be 'actually required', or my favorite from catching up on this thread:

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Originally Posted by vetch

And it's not necessary to adjust all encounters. Just do the ones going forward.

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Which would damn every 90 or lower piece of content to being 'just as boring as it is now' for me and players who have the same opinion on current healers as me. Requiring 500% as much healing from the player in the level 100 EX roulette means dick if the 70-90 dungeons are all still asking for the current amount. We've seen what happens, from Abyssos, when the 'healing demanded of the player' suddenly spikes: players quit. And I've said many times: if we only have one chance to make a solution that creates a noticeable impact, to get SE to think 'okay we might be on the right track here', it's gotta be a solution that affects every level of content, because 'people who have some degree of skill at the game are finding EX roulette kinda boring' is the issue at hand and all the suggestions to make 'more healing needed' either makes casuals more likely to fail (SE won't want that), or is not enough of a jump up to pressure veteran healers. There's no overlap on the Venn Diagram here, it is two distinctly separate circles.

There is no magical amount where 'casuals won't be affected too much' AND 'veterans will find it challenging' for a solution like this, I fear. As it stands, I can heal a pack of trash in EX roulette on SGE with Krasis, Physis, Kerachole (Taurochole when it falls off), and potentially one of my other four skills as a 'top up', from Holos, Haima, Panhaima and Soteria. Increasing required healing in a pull to, what I perceive as, the theoretical maximum increase before you hit 'casuals are going to struggle now', will ask me to use two 'top up' skills. Okay, so one pack I'll add with Haima and Soteria, the next I'll Panhaima and Holos. What changes? For me, basically nothing, I can still OGCD the pack comfortably. It's not a 'solution' if it doesn't solve anything

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Originally Posted by Connor

I’m a bit confused on what you’re saying here. Who is treating %damage buffs as banal or boring?

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Sorry, I should have been clearer that this doesn't refer just to this one thread.

There's been a trend across the healer forums of considering how we could replace percentile damage buffs (and buffs that are essentially percentile damage buffs) on the basis of their being dull or difficult to balance with other options... usually only to suggest options that have far simpler and less contextual of optimization and for which the difference between their categorically best and worst targets would be significantly larger.

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I don’t think it’s fair to call support effects ‘low-dangling fruit’ or ‘oddball novelty’ when nobody is actually asking for such things (besides maybe me lol).

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Low-hanging fruit is generally a remark that something is an obvious choice to go for. Again, I think they're a good idea, and an obvious way to deepen downtime actions without necessarily focusing just But at any rate, neither was commenting on support-effects as a type of action. I meant only to point out that there are more obvious choices that are more intuitive yet have higher (more contextual, more awareness/knowledge-rewarding) optimization ceilings.

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Personally I’d prefer a playstyle that revolves more around understanding of how to tactically leverage a toolkit contextually as opposed to simply maximising personal dps relative to party performance.

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Same. I say all this largely in interest of that.

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But I don’t see why that has to preclude another healer from being more about a consistently aggressive and/or reactionary playstyle that revolves around maximising dps rather than pre-planning and managing things like buffs or debuffs

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Likewise, same. I do think, though, if any healer were to be a bit more focused around team-dynamics-aware buffing, it would be AST. (Well, maybe SCH instead if those two jobs had been introduced differently and SCH more based around its "tactics" flavor, but you get what I mean.)

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

It would still need to be a substantial amounts of encoutners early on because you need to build that mindset early on. ... So with just saying starting from Dawntrail, imagine going 90 levels of lets say 80 percent dps and 20 percent healing and now they suddenly switch it up. This would likely lead to the same thing that we had happen in 6.2 and 6.3.

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A substantial number of early encounters are already harder to heal than ShB/EW content. Stone Vigil was so rough that they removed mob packs during the Duty Support rework, and it's still incredibly hard to do the full first pull. Nabriales can still melt an undergeared tank during Triple. Ser Charibert used to wipe groups. If you want to make healing harder early on to set expectations, tighten the ilevel syncs in 1-60 content to a little above their min ilvl and half the work is done. There's a 200-hour healing tutorial for you, unlocked with the tiniest mote of developer effort.

In contrast, even the leveling dungeons in Endwalker, which are usually more fun to heal than levelcaps in any other expansion, have been so walled-in and on-rails, with unremarkable trash and DDR instadeath-gotcha bossfights and the surfeit of free heals spilling over onto the tanks, that casually healing for fun is the worst it has ever been. The actual design rot has gotten bad only quite recently.

Well for one I was been here since 2.1 and I remember when the hw dungeons were even harder before they nerfed them. And it shows that its too dependant on variables of under geared tanks and people not knowing the fights.

At the same time though, I never felt like dungeons were an obstacle in HW. Like, to me, "too hard" is people not being able to clear it or losing patients after several wipes, which I never saw happen. You get the occasional wipe or two, but I see that now anyway. Granted I was the healer back then, but I never heard of any of my FC mates or anyone timing out of a dungeon or having to leave the dungeon because they couldn't beat the boss.

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Originally Posted by vetch

A substantial number of early encounters are already harder to heal than ShB/EW content. Stone Vigil was so rough that they removed mob packs during the Duty Support rework, and it's still incredibly hard to do the full first pull. Nabriales can still melt an undergeared tank during Triple. Ser Charibert used to wipe groups. If you want to make healing harder early on to set expectations, tighten the ilevel syncs in 1-60 content to a little above their min ilvl and half the work is done. There's a 200-hour healing tutorial for you, unlocked with the tiniest mote of developer effort.

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This. I'd argue there's no need for such a surfeit of ilvl in general, as weekly tome (and Savage) gear is ultimately just meant to slowly nerf Savage's (later) floors (as a sort of participation reward for at least getting what floors per week that one can) and really does not need to make a joke of all other content.

There are other efforts we could make to improve the healing itself, but we may as well start with just that. It costs all of a minute of developer work.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

At the same time though, I never felt like dungeons were an obstacle in HW.

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To be fair, 2.0 to 2.1, 2.15 to 2.55, and 3.x are all pretty distinct in terms of dungeon difficulty.

2.0 to 2.1 had rapidly increasing difficulty with each new endgame dungeon (WP -> AK -> PS). 2.15 to 2.55 hugely mellowed that out, but still included interesting environmental mechanics and more novel of boss encounters. HW was when we removed CC and started building almost all trash around wall-to-wall pulls.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

There\\\\'s been a trend across the healer forums of considering how we could replace percentile damage buffs (and buffs that are essentially percentile damage buffs) on the basis of their being dull or difficult to balance with other options.

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I have noticed it too, and I also disagree about them being dull. Chain Stratagem is one of the only things that makes it feels like I’m actually doing something valuable for the party and not just throwing a bunch of fireballs, even if it just copium lol.

When it comes to balancing I do get that any kind of ‘damage increase’ becomes difficult to balance. At the same time though don’t they kind of resolve that issue with Bard’s songs? They grant a support effect with 100% uptime, but that uptime is balanced by the super small increase values and being on substats rather than direct damage. Ultimately, through those buffs alone Bard adds a fair amount of damage over the course of a full fight with those buffs. I mean, look at how strong they were in Stormblood when they were 3% crit increase (though that was critical’s fault too lol).

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Same. I say all this largely in interest of that.

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Yeah; I would much prefer a supportive/tactical healer, but at the same time I get that others don’t prefer that style, so I think diversifying healers is ultimately going to be the most ‘utilitarian’ option. And we already have things like some healers being slightly more rDPS oriented whilst the others are more personal dps oriented. So they’d just be developing what they’ve started further by diversifying them more, like giving Sage/White Mage more varied ways to dps that differentiate them from each other.

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Likewise, same. I do think, though, if any healer were to be a bit more focused around team-dynamics-aware buffing, it would be AST.

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Yeah, it does overall make more sense for Astrologian to be the ‘true support’ healer rather than Scholar. I mean, it’s exactly what it’s been advertised as this whole time. Plus it’s already built around buffing the party.

Wanting Scholar to be more ‘supportive’ is just a personal preference since it’s my main and I like supporting so my brain is like ‘let’s put the two together’ lol.
Though I do think there’s a case for Scholar to be more of a ‘supportive’ role (* huffs copium and repeatedly has Alka Zolka remind him Scholar’s mostly take a supporting role in battle *) but I’m aware it’s mostly personal bias and not what’s actually logical. Particularly if you read the next part where Alka Zolka essentially says ‘that’s not all they’re good at…’ lol.

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Originally Posted by vetch

that casually healing for fun is the worst it has ever been. The actual design rot has gotten bad only quite recently.

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We could make every dungeon be 'Bardam's first pull, with a full regular-Shire tank' like SB launch, I'd be down for that

I never understood why OGCD heals require no MP and are instant and GCDs the opposite. If anything OGCDs should cost way more or GCDs and OGCDs should be swapped or redistributed.

But then again I also don't get the need to make everything DPS. First they remove every RPG element under the sun, then struggle to balance the DPS values against one another and in the end make all jobs play the same. Like, aren't you supposed to design a game as a game designer? You cannot tell me that you didn't foresee the sorry state of affairs we have now.

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Originally Posted by Niroken

Increasing DPS variety is far more beneficial then adjusting all encounters to require more healing.

-Solo content that requires DPS would be improved
-Healing downtime interaction would be improved
-Situations where your party is overgeared, better skilled or both would be improved
-Healer combinations that reduce the need to heal as much (or in some cases not at all *cough24mancough*) would be improved

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They'd need to redesign 10 years of content to make that work. We're at a point where healing also isn't needed not only because of the reasons already stated, but because things melt down so fast and deal so little damage that your services are rarely needed in normal most content, and I'm not taking only about old one, new stuff also melts and tickles. Adjust healer kit for having more dps variety and then you're just playing a gimped RDPS/Caster and encounters would give your even less time to do Healer stuff. It's either that or reducing overall Healer Dps further and spread it towards more buttons to make the class feel busier while achieving nothing but more button bloat.

They cornered themselves with current Healer design and I wouldn't be surprised if they gutted them because that solution was faster than adjusting content.

As it stands now, nearly all essential healing can be done by other jobs besides healers. They really do not know what to do with healers, this is the core problem. Once I saw Savage and Ultimate get cleared with no healers, I knew the entire system is completely broken and in need of a major rework, but we all know that won’t happen.

Sooo… look forward to more healing Warriors, etc. I want to heal more but we have 10 years of content to show that we are needed less and less. I can see the day when tanks and healers are gone, replaced with specific actions in all DPS jobs. Sad day that will be, sad day.

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

It would be way easier + cheaper to just inc the damage output of the bosses.
=> just add a x% inc to autoatk + skill dmg on bosses on every content, make raidwides go off more often..ect..

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Talk like you've got absolutely 0 clue how the game works.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

As it stands now, nearly all essential healing can be done by other jobs besides healers. They really do not know what to do with healers, this is the core problem. Once I saw Savage and Ultimate get cleared with no healers, I knew the entire system is completely broken and in need of a major rework, but we all know that won’t happen.

Sooo… look forward to more healing Warriors, etc. I want to heal more but we have 10 years of content to show that we are needed less and less. I can see the day when tanks and healers are gone, replaced with specific actions in all DPS jobs. Sad day that will be, sad day.

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This is more an issue with encounter design and less about class kits. Yes, I agree Warriors and Dancers shouldn't be able to heal, but it doesn't matter who does the healing when high end content is all about damage avoidance and pre programmed attack patterns where taking as much as a hit means the battle will fail. Which leads to what you say: in order to keep up with current boss design, casters will eventually have to play as pseudo RDPS, and tanks and Healers will just become DPS with extra utility.

I also find it ironic, how Yoshida's mocking response, "just go play Ultimates", is even less relevant and insulting now than before. You're telling Healers to go play the content that makes it safer to NOT use one. Healers funnily enough get to do more stuff in normal content than endgame.

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Originally Posted by Aldath

how Yoshida's mocking response, "just go play Ultimates"

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Indeed, the tone of his response may very well sum up his attitude towards the players.

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Originally Posted by Jatoi

hahaha


no. lol lmao

there should be ways to make healing fun that should be considered by the devs. admittedly DPS jobs put me to sleep. especially brainless ones like RPR and SAM. at least healer keeps me awake for the most part. maybe add one more damage spell to make it less monotonous and a couple of other things for WHM as an example, but there are ways people have suggested to make healing more fun.

...have you tried Black Mage?

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I guess this is why a newer design like Sage tried to lower annoyance by using a modifier spell that would alter spells after such, to compress the number of keybinds. Pecking at too many keybinds is unfun, so less keybinds, but equivalent combinations possible.

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Originally Posted by SquishyPlushie

I guess this is why a newer design like Sage tried to lower annoyance by using a modifier spell that would alter spells after such, to compress the number of keybinds. Pecking at too many keybinds is unfun, so less keybinds, but equivalent combinations possible.

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And yet it only applies to three spells, only one of which is regularly and consistently useful. E. Diag/E. Prog are two of the worst healing resources on your hotbar, beating out only regular Diag/Prog and Pepsis.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Kind of depends, I played GW2 for a bit at launch I remember healing boiling down to personal responsibility? I have it in my head they changed direction with that later though?

Blade and Soul's early Summoner would probably be a better reference point.

You're a DPS, but you also have team healing and support elements baked into your kit.

My own personal take is that SE need to:

A) Hire more job design staff urgently or at the very least take on someone like Mythic in a consultancy level and effectively buy whiteboards of design ideas from them

and then B) Go play Warhammer Online's community server coupled with some SWOTR.

Both did an incredible job with their healers, Warrior Priest might be the most enjoyable healer in any MMO ever in my book, whilst SWOTR also did an excellent job of delivering varied and engaging healers that weren't dependent on unga bunga aoes to have something to do.

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There are dedicated healer Now. I play geal tempest and heal firebrand. The thing about gw2's healer is that.. Your buff to your team is too effective. Like, a dps's damage output can triple if your healer can properly maintain all the relevant buff, and as a healer, you need to maintain all these buffs after handling mechanics. I am not sure if that's exactly the best idea. I had fun, So l am okay with that system. Makes me feel important that my buff can triple my team's damage output. Also, there is another thing. Some old encounters in gw2 has tanks. And usually tank is also the healer. That can really keep you busy. It was a lot of hardcore fun tanking deimos And soulless horror.

Do people genuinely not realize how many damage abilities healers have?

WHM: Glare, Dia, Assize, Misery, Holy
SCH: Broil, Bio, Ruin2, Energy Drain, Art of War
AST: Malific, Combust, Earthly Star, Macrocosmos, Gravity
SGE: Dosis, EuDosis, Plegma, Toxicon, Pneuma, Dyskrasia

It's more how little they are used other than the baseline nuke.

Granted, OP is a baiter, but...yeah.

If you want an ARPG with supports instead of healers, you can try Guild Wars 2. That was their original design. Granted, they eventually decided that didn't work at all and so instituted a trinity in the end anyway. So apparently it's not such a great system/idea after all.

Make healer DPS ???? Okay.... why do you hate healing so much and still try play healer?
If SE does this they should instead delete holy trinity and stop pretending already.

Also not everything is for everybody. With this in mind please make healers just what they are supposed to be: supporter and healer instead of "i like DPS but want healer ques please make healers DPS, so that i can play DPS with fast ques and F all the healer and supporter players because i dont like it. Please stop having things you like. THX" (a proud memeber of the GCBTW)

Sorry for the salt but hell no to make healers DPS. Whats wrong with a healer or a support role ? We have DPS galore... what do you want with my AST as a DPS??? Thats f-ed up....

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

Make healer DPS ???? Okay.... why do you hate healing so much and still try play healer?
If SE does this they should instead delete holy trinity and stop pretending already.

Also not everything is for everybody. With this in mind please make healers just what they are supposed to be: supporter and healer instead of "i like DPS but want healer ques please make healers DPS, so that i can play DPS with fast ques and F all the healer and supporter players because i dont like it. Please stop having things you like. THX" (a proud memeber of the GCBTW)

Sorry for the salt but hell no to make healers DPS. Whats wrong with a healer or a support role ? We have DPS galore... what do you want with my AST as a DPS??? Thats f-ed up....

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Sadly, too many people are saying this.

Go to the healer forum and be amazed as that's what they're asking for in almost every thread.

I'm with you, for the record. I don't get it, either. I like healing and this game used to actually demand it back in ARR and HW when healers WEREN'T just "green DPS". The idea we can't have encounters that require more healing when freakin' Ala Mhigo dungeon requires more healing is just absurd.

Also, if you haven't already, someone put up a survey for this kinda thing. Feel free to put your thoughts in: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ishlist-Survey

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Originally Posted by SquishyPlushie

I guess this is why a newer design like Sage tried to lower annoyance by using a modifier spell that would alter spells after such, to compress the number of keybinds. Pecking at too many keybinds is unfun, so less keybinds, but equivalent combinations possible.

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You mean a severely cut down dark arts - on a caster no less.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Sadly, too many people are saying this.

Go to the healer forum and be amazed as that's what they're asking for in almost every thread.

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I've been there. Heck, I post there with some degree of frequency. But no, what I see people ask is to either bring back the feel of older damage kits, or to at least expand beyond Glaroilificosis + Combiodiasis. That doesn't require the farfetched kit that OP proposed here, and most people over in the healer section are happy with a handful of frequent spells we rotate through.

Heck, you've seen my SCH, you even admitted yourself that it sounded fun to play, even if the DoTs were not to your tastes. What I had didn't require some overly complex DPS rotation, just a handful of abilities that interact with each other in small ways, that's all that most veteran healers I see are asking for. The survey you linked to even says as much in the results for all healers except AST, which instead asks for more buffs to give.

Also we were definitely green DPS back in HW, what with Alexander having strict enrages that forced healers to DPS, as well as SCH just doing absurd damage in dungeons, Holy stun still being a thing that made mincemeat of large groups, etc. We just had a better balance of healing requirements and DPS engagement during downtime.

People were okay with no-DPS healers in casual content in earlier periods of the games life because healing requirements were higher and DPS was harder to maintain. Ironically, making the DPS kit so simple along with lower healing requirements has forced people to take part in damage because there's no excuse not to; there's no Cleric Stance to risk your healing output, there's no multitude of DoTs to watch, very few damage cooldowns to track, every nuke cast now guarantees a weave window and some movement, just press Glare or you're dead weight. It's easier to forgive someones poor play when it's legitimately harder to keep up with what's going on.

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

Make healer DPS ???? Okay.... why do you hate healing so much and still try play healer?
If SE does this they should instead delete holy trinity and stop pretending already.

Also not everything is for everybody. With this in mind please make healers just what they are supposed to be: supporter and healer instead of "i like DPS but want healer ques please make healers DPS, so that i can play DPS with fast ques and F all the healer and supporter players because i dont like it. Please stop having things you like. THX" (a proud memeber of the GCBTW)

Sorry for the salt but hell no to make healers DPS. Whats wrong with a healer or a support role ? We have DPS galore... what do you want with my AST as a DPS??? Thats f-ed up....

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Your comment isn't "salt" however perhaps you could phrase it without accusing others: First of all, you accuse players of "hating healing" - based upon no evidence whatsoever. Secondly, you accuse people being motivated solely on queue times. Are there some players that may do this second point- yes- just as some players may queue on tanks. However job design discussions should not revolve around this.

In this game every job will DPS. That doesn't mean however that every job is a DPS. Here's a fact- AST is due for a rework and neither you nor I can stop it. My expectations are low given AST past reworks. Looking at the results of the survey, that is in accordance in fact with the survey results, which definitely reported that additional attack skills (25%) were required by a high amount of respondents as well as changes to the card system (27%), not buff skills. Reading the comments also confirms this from I see.

Even though there is a low number of respondents, it's definitely a pity that this survey wasn't available to Square before any job redesigns.

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

Make healer DPS ???? Okay.... why do you hate healing so much and still try play healer?
If SE does this they should instead delete holy trinity and stop pretending already.

Also not everything is for everybody. With this in mind please make healers just what they are supposed to be: supporter and healer instead of "i like DPS but want healer ques please make healers DPS, so that i can play DPS with fast ques and F all the healer and supporter players because i dont like it. Please stop having things you like. THX" (a proud memeber of the GCBTW)

Sorry for the salt but hell no to make healers DPS. Whats wrong with a healer or a support role ? We have DPS galore... what do you want with my AST as a DPS??? Thats f-ed up....

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My thoughts are as so, the game system has us as supports regardless of a redesign or not. We already are! We need to do damage on certain fights despite what our kit shows or else enrage will be destined. Now, having us as mostly supports does not disregard the trinity nor does it make for bad job design. Now what does, is not using the bloated healing potency/skills in the kit while also not building the other portion of the support kit (dps,buffs,debuffs) then allocating that to other classes that shouldn't be doing that role in general. That's why the argument of wanting healing skills reduced and other unique skills added comes to light ever so often. People love to use the " What you really want is a support argument", but again we already are sweeties and always have been in ffxiv, so not sure what you're arguing against.

Sorry for unintended sass, but that argument is getting stale to me xD. As I keep seeing it used.

Ahh semantics lets fight on that hilll...... or rather not. Healers have a job, what is pruposed is simple to make the healers redudant even more now and thats in my humble opinion not good. ALso i do not accuse i simple take the fact make healer like DPS at face value with hyperbole to make my point but also you accuse me of not knowing how FF14 works (all classes DPS in a fight). See, beeing mean to Lala player is like feeding a greemlin. Furthermore this survey is not representative for anything besides a tendency and even that is a lot of guesswork. SE never has and will give us real numbers on anything.

If you want to play DPS with healing options please play not FF14 and make use of the trinity. My point is valid, holy trinity should be embraced not disregarded. But thats my opinion. So if you think thats not the way to go, cool. I would like to hear your why because i am curious. What SE will do? I dont know but the cheapest way would be take away options and buff healing OGCDs beyond all reason. We will loose the card system, i guess and we will get a simple button with a flat buff if at all. I was there when you could make an Monk angry with your cards... very angry ^^ good times.

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

Ahh semantics lets fight on that hilll...... or rather not. Healers have a job, what is pruposed is simple to make the healers redudant even more now and thats in my humble opinion not good. ALso i do not accuse i simple take the fact make healer like DPS at face value with hyperbole to make my point but also you accuse me of not knowing how FF14 works (all classes DPS in a fight). See, beeing mean to Lala player is like feeding a greemlin. Furthermore this survey is not representative for anything besides a tendency and even that is a lot of guesswork. SE never has and will give us real numbers on anything.

If you want to play DPS with healing options please play not FF14 and make use of the trinity. My point is valid, holy trinity should be embraced not disregarded. But thats my opinion. So if you think thats not the way to go, cool. I would like to hear your why because i am curious. What SE will do? I dont know but the cheapest way would be take away options and buff healing OGCDs beyond all reason. We will loose the card system, i guess and we will get a simple button with a flat buff if at all. I was there when you could make an Monk angry with your cards... very angry ^^ good times.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

There are many reasons why it's difficult to resolve this issue by trying to replace DPS spam with more healing instead.

1. There has been no notable change in the frequency of outgoing damage between ARR content and current content, or if anything, damage is sometimes less frequent than in ARR/HW content. Meanwhile, every expansion has not only added more healing resources to the healers, but every new resource added has been DPS neutral--either OGCD and thus weave-able, meaning it gives healers more DPS uptime, or GCDs that also deal the same damage as the healer's basic spell, or refund that damage via the blood lily. Meanwhile every healer attack spell has been streamlined to a 1.5 second cast time, meaning every GCD gives you room to weave any of these resources. We have more DPS uptime than ever before because of all these reasons.

2. Other roles have received increased levels of sustain, particularly Paladin and Warrior who are able to answer to the already diminished instances of necessary healing. As has been discovered, there's enough non-healer sustain that a healerless party was capable of clearing Ultimate. While that is not a normal expected playthrough, it speaks to the above points about how little healing is needed vs how much healing is available to use.

3. Consider that a player has the ability to cast a new spell every 2.5 seconds. If your goal is to rework healers to heal with their GCD more often than they attack with their GCD, how often do you think damage needs to be delivered to the party in order to sway healer gameplay away from DPS and toward healing? Consider points 1 and 2 as well. You would probably need raidwide damage every 3-7 seconds in all forms of content, even dungeons, to demand healers stop attacking and heal given our current resources.

4. FFXIV healing has vastly more accessible forms of AoE healing than WoW does. Generally, party damage can almost always be resolved in 1-2 GCDs ignoring all of the OGCD healing resources at our disposal. WoW does have AoE healing, but far more often has to rely on single target healing because their AoE healing doesn't have the same power and availability as FFXIV AoE heals.

5. If you want to change the the environment for healers to prioritize healing over damage, you're going to need to make some drastic changes to a combination of both healer kits and fight design. This would inevitably require reworking every single fight in the game to ensure the new model for healing encourages healing over DPS, and is also doable with whatever changes the healers receive to their resources, even if that's just rebalancing HP to account for considerably less healer DPS. It should go without saying that this is a truly monolithic task and would be incredibly time consuming and expensive to accomplish.

The truth is that FFXIV has always been an environment that promoted a very offensive healer playstyle--more combat medic if you will. Whether intentional or not, it has also only ever continued to feed into that environment with every expansion. Constantly providing more and more free healing, incredibly powerful AoE healing, faster DPS cast times that enable weaving, and more non-healer sustain than the game has ever had before. All things that lend themselves to maximizing the time healers get to spend DPSing instead of healing.

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Third time's the charm.

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

Ahh semantics lets fight on that hilll...... or rather not. Healers have a job, what is pruposed is simple to make the healers redudant even more now and thats in my humble opinion not good. ALso i do not accuse i simple take the fact make healer like DPS at face value with hyperbole to make my point but also you accuse me of not knowing how FF14 works (all classes DPS in a fight). See, beeing mean to Lala player is like feeding a greemlin. Furthermore this survey is not representative for anything besides a tendency and even that is a lot of guesswork. SE never has and will give us real numbers on anything.

If you want to play DPS with healing options please play not FF14 and make use of the trinity. My point is valid, holy trinity should be embraced not disregarded. But thats my opinion. So if you think thats not the way to go, cool. I would like to hear your why because i am curious. What SE will do? I dont know but the cheapest way would be take away options and buff healing OGCDs beyond all reason. We will loose the card system, i guess and we will get a simple button with a flat buff if at all. I was there when you could make an Monk angry with your cards... very angry ^^ good times.

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Same lel. I have been since ps3 support was a thing...that's gone. Healing dpsing was always required but you were required to heal more back in the day, and although that may be,does not disregard the fact you were basically still support cause just because you healed didn't mean you could just sit there. See the argument? I'm not being mean I just hate that particular argument because it doesn't even stand up regardless of what time period we are speaking. FFXIV always had you do damage or contribute to it in some way, not sure when it didn't (because it always did when I started). So in that regard, healers have always been a support...it's just the fact they moved most of their job to other jobs which basically reduced the value of being the "healer". Note healer being support...but what is true, no matter what portion of the job you take into regard the entire job has been diminished... because of the people that wanted to only heal. This sentiment has had the opposite effect on direction because they couldn't keep up the demand for it when they embraced that model a little more, dps skills were removed and the healers that couldn't keep up with the healing inspired them to move the healing skills to other jobs. Which in turn, has left the healer trinity in a poor state.

Personally, I’d rather see healers having to use a wider array of healing abilities, have the game throw more punishing debuffs and dots that require actions from the healers, even in casual content. For example, Esuna has very few mandatory uses and some healers have never developed the reflex of using it and just let people die when it’s needed to survive. They also never bother to watch and cleanse dots and debuffs and just ignore them till they expire even when they have long timers.

It shouldn’t be possible to heal a lvl 70 AR or dungeon and keep everyone’s HP topped by pretty much just spamming Medica 2 and putting regen on the main tank, ignoring other spells and single target actions even if they are more efficient. Unless several people start dying instantly to mechanics and have to be rezzed, managing MP is also not really a thing. Edit: atm we have bloated kits and no reason to use several abilities.

I’d also like to see more varied damage application and variations of pacing requiring some management of abilities and spells. When it comes to casual content, newer dungeons and normal raids, if you have a competent group, damage is essentially just an occasional tank buster that comes with an advance visual warning and spaced aoes affecting the group uniformly…zzz.

Not to muddy the waters, but I still think a healer job that predominantly buffs/debuffs through gcds would be super fun. I’d rather have limited healing options but lots of buffs/debuff, than a job that was a powerful healer or had powerful dps skills

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Originally Posted by Toutatis

Personally, I’d rather see healers having to use a wider array of healing abilities, have the game throw more punishing debuffs and dots that require actions from the healers, even in casual content. For example, Esuna has very few mandatory uses and some healers have never developed the reflex of using it and just let people die when it’s needed to survive. They also never bother to watch and cleanse dots and debuffs and just ignore them till they expire even when they have long timers. It shouldn’t be possible to heal a lvl 70 AR or dungeon and keep everyone’s HP topped by pretty much just spamming Medica 2 and putting regen on the main tank, ignoring other spells and single target actions even if they are more efficient. Unless several people start dying instantly to mechanics and have to be rezzed, managing MP is also not really a thing.

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I would like this too minus the new healing abilities (they don't add to anything), the kit is bloated as it is. Regardless that does not seem the direction they are taking and would require the whole game basically be redesigned to support such a system of high healing...which would have the opposite effect on garnering new healers (I personally believe). Also, it would remove the accomplishment of balancing between contributing to the fight and aiding your allies (which seems to be the image for FFXIV on what a healer means to be), which would further make the role stale maybe(?) if they don't entirely embrace no down time that is. I would rather not speak in theories as such a system is not FFXIV's lel.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Not to muddy the waters, but I still think a healer job that predominantly buffs/debuffs through gcds would be super fun. I’d rather have limited healing options but lots of buffs/debuff, than a job that was a powerful healer or had powerful dps skills

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I also would like to explore different possibilities and not have much of the same as well...whatever that may be. Personally would have each healer fulfill a different niche the other one can't.

Word.
But thats still not my point i want a healer support. BTW.: Why do any of you assume i dont want to DPS? Thats a hot take, i am a Lala i need some damage numbers in my fights even it means freindly fire.

The proposed changes will kill the support role and make healers to DPS without any responsibility.... Thats not changing healers for the better. As if adding DPS buttons would solve AST problems or any healer problem. Thats absolute nonsense.

I did early EW savage and oh boii i had a lot of parses, yeah i am evil... lala you know, with way over 80% Malefic... thats not supporting thats mind numbing hitting one button and giving more buttons means something else has to go - should that be healing and the little buffing we have ?
Healers need more of support aka buffing/debuffing and a reason for these heal-nukes, aka the OGCD collection we have at the moment, to exist. Healing feels bad at the moment. When i hit the button to hardcast it feels not good at all but hitting OGCD and spamming Malefic is not better in any way and giving AST or any healer for that matter, more DPS buttons will not changes these points. It will reinforce them to the point we can give up an the holy trinity. I like the holy trinity so give me more stuff to do in my down time.

But we will get a DPS increase for the healer because people will not understand that when healers are gone everybody has to do this stuff and probably then people will understand. So yeah you folks are probably right in your prediction but my opionion is thats damn boring and i will complain until its happening probably Dawntrail release or the expansion after that. So bear with me and my complaints until then, when the healer job is killed of FF14 ^^.

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

Word.
But thats still not my point i want a healer support. BTW.: Why do any of you assume i dont want to DPS? Thats a hot take, i am a Lala i need some damage numbers in my fights even it means freindly fire.

The proposed changes will kill the support role and make healers to DPS without any responsibility.... Thats not changing healers for the better. As if adding DPS buttons would solve AST problems or any healer problem. Thats absolute nonsense.

I did early EW savage and oh boii i had a lot of parses, yeah i am evil... lala you know, with way over 80% Malefic... thats not supporting thats mind numbing hitting one button and giving more buttons means something else has to go - should that be healing and the little buffing we have ?
Healers need more of support aka buffing/debuffing and a reason for these heal-nukes, aka the OGCD collection we have at the moment, to exist. Healing feels bad at the moment. When i hit the button to hardcast it feels not good at all but hitting OGCD and spamming Malefic is not better in any way and giving AST or any healer for that matter, more DPS buttons will not changes these points. It will reinforce them to the point we can give up an the holy trinity. I like the holy trinity so give me more stuff to do in my down time.

But we will get a DPS increase for the healer because people will not understand that when healers are gone everybody has to do this stuff and probably then people will understand. So yeah you folks are probably right in your prediction but my opionion is thats damn boring and i will complain until its happening probably Dawntrail release or the expansion after that. So bear with me and my complaints until then, when the healer job is killed of FF14 ^^.

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I didn't assume you didn't want DPS skills I was hinting the healers could do good with adding more and that role the healers fulfill isn't one or the other it's both healing and dps. As for killing the support role, I highly doubt it given I haven't said remove damage buffs from the true supports such as dnc and brd, but I do believe that some should be removed from classes that don't need them...(looking at the melee DPS especially lel). More so with mitigation...They could be more inspired by making new things that replace these things they remove...but I'm unsure if they can do that properly given the state of SMN and the fear on the horizon for DRG and AST.

But the point I'm trying to make is you can still support/dps without replacing them. Honkai Star Rail introduced Fu Xuan...she is both a support and can fulfill the want of a healer/tank, she brings critical damage buffs but not enough to replace an entire support on your team as they still fulfill different niches.

As for Dawntrail, I agree in wanting to see the healer role be entirely replaceable, as they add more healing/mit skills to other jobs that don't need them. It will showcase the issues with the job by having other jobs take/reduce usage of their healing kit and finally make them do something about it. Then maybe, they'll also redesign the down time for dps skills by adding new ones ( which they have been adamant against ). Basically looking at the job from every direction rather than just a beginner's perspective.