#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

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Originally Posted by EusisLandale

That's what Red Mage and Summoner are for.

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See, even their (currently) one redeeming quality isn't even unique to them lol

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Originally Posted by Allegor

See, even their (currently) one redeeming quality isn't even unique to them lol

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Summoner has had Resurrection since ARR, it was never Healer Unique.

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Originally Posted by Kayokane

Summoner has had Resurrection since ARR, it was never Healer Unique.

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Never said it was? the point is that healers are so redundant that raising is the only thing they're "useful" for nowadays, and even that isn't exclusive to the role.

*edit* even if raising was exclusive to healers, it's a "just in case" button, not something that will inevitably happen all the time.

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Originally Posted by Kayokane

Summoner has had Resurrection since ARR, it was never Healer Unique.

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That's kind of the point there.

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Originally Posted by Bun_Vivant

I doubt it. For one thing, every job has to be able to clear the solo content of the MSQ in a reasonable amount of time and with only a modest level of skill. So "tanks" and "healers" need to have decent DPS, and DPS needs some survivability. Unless you want the kit for a job to change radically when you enter multi-player content, this inescapably leads to the roles of the trinity becoming less distinct.

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This post is several pages back now, but I wanted to point out that FFXI had a solo instance to break the level cap at lv 70 against the NPC Maat. This fight, the tactics used, and requirements to win changed based on the job you faced him with. This is not an argument against you, but rather an expression on how fight design in solo instances could be made to exemplify and distinguish the roles from each other. The dev team wouldn't even have to make the solo instances different for each job, but rather based on the role. They could do this if they really wanted to. This would have been fantastic when facing Zenos at the end of EW.

Now, this was present in the form of job specific questlines prior to ShB, and they went away from it in favor of role quests, but this happens only once per expansion. I am not saying the dev team has to do this for every solo instance in the game, but it would be nice to see it used more often like once per patch, or even every other patch as a show of good faith that they care about the longevity and integrity of the trinity. This would go a long way towards showing healers that they are valued.

Oh neat more Youtuber coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0w0gQjIFUY

And some written coverage too: https://www.thegamer.com/final-fanta...trail-changes/

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Originally Posted by Allegor

Raise those that somehow manage to die, full stop.

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No need too be fancy just call it what it is...duty finder.

Honestly, they could rather easily tune the story duties to be role specific by just making the incoming damage higher for healers/tanks so you actually have to use your abilities to survive.

At present though, doing them on healer/tank just feels more boring but faster because you have virtually no risk of death and less buttons to push but the boss has less HP and will likely die faster.

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Originally Posted by Kayokane

Oh neat more Youtuber coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0w0gQjIFUY

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All coverage is good coverage but it really does seem like this guy was extremely quick to narrow the entire scope down to “world 1 ranked WAR cleared the dungeon is this the hill you want to stake your claim on” when that’s really not the point of the problem

First, please understand that my English is that of a translator.
With the combination of instant skills that healers have and the abundance of skills that other professions have, it is unnatural to rate a healer who has sealed GCD recovery magic as superior. However, the result is correct.
Also, even if we consider the above direction, the offensive skills are too monotonous.
Also, although I would like to contribute as a healer by using GCD recovery magic a lot, the more healer-like things I do, the less excellent I am considered.
The reason for the dissatisfaction is probably that they are all half-baked.

Indeed, I think the recent idea that a healer who doesn't use a lot of GCD heals = a good healer is wrong for an RPG. *This game is not OW.
In ver 3.0, MP management and hate management were very severe and near perfect, but very difficult for the average solo player.
As a result of avoiding difficulty, 6.x became a game of well-timed skills with the same % cut at key points, rather than a series of difficult 10-minute battles.

1. fundamentally, the immediate recovery of skills is too high.
Furthermore, most bosses require little recovery in the intermediate time between the first gimmick and the next.
There are few factors that reduce recovery resources outside of the gimmick, resulting in a surplus of recovery skills that can be brought into the gimmick.
Since removing the HP barrier before use is problematic, it is desirable to add an element that reduces pure player HP itself, not including the additional barrier.

2. % damage reduction skills that non-healers have are too versatile and powerful.
However, as we can see from feints and addles, dividing the skills that each profession has into physical and magical barriers only creates an inflexible stress factor.
For example, suppose the only buffs that range occupations grant are HOT and enhanced HP barrier.
The composition can be replaced with the following: range occupations use buffs -> healers do their best with the help of range occupations.
Or replace the buffs that range professions have with simple, powerful skills that make PT members faster on their feet.

3. too many opportunities for tanks to heal themselves.
Having a recovery skill is not a bad thing, but it should not be something that can be completed by the tank alone.

4. there are too many patterns of using single shot total magic damage in the current environment.
There should be more intermittent attacks like Neo Exdeath Armagest, continuous attacks on the tank, and other jobs that can only be done by the healer as a whole.

How about incorporating a secondary element to certain attacks so that the PT as a whole has an advantage?
For example, zero knockback damage would allow players to keep hitting without moving.
Instead, there would be fewer barrier resources available for the next series of attacks, which would require GCD recovery magic.

Possibly my last post, Vive la Resistance!

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Possibly my last post, Vive la Resistance!

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You'll be baaaaack!!

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Possibly my last post, Vive la Resistance!

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Insert obligatory "Can I have your stuff?" comment.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Possibly my last post, Vive la Resistance!

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Don’t forget the discord is still available! ;;

Hello.

Of course, I support this. Playing a support, tank or healer, in this game is absolutely dreadful for me.

I find it pretty inspiring that even when so many of us have been shouted down, ignored, marginalized, there are still people, casual and hardcore who are willing to put aside their differences to push this forward and fight against the tide of apathy for this.

I will be honest. It has actually gotten to the point where if Yoshida says something, I am more inclined to disbelieve him. Remember during the 6.5 patch note readings where he said that "a large number of jobs will have new rotations in DT"? Sure, technically true. But, it was akin to saying the upcoming drizzle is going to be "quite the downpour."

My faith is nonexistent. How many years have some of these complaints gone unanswered or just handwaved by the "content creators" that are invited to Media Tours? How many times has Yoshida just not been aware of an issue that is obviously affecting a sizable chunk of players? That bitter taste in my mouth for CBU3 will probably always remain.

Gemina, I know I have butted heads with you in the past. But I have a legitimate suggestion. Recon's posts "A Summary of Healer Issues" is what I consider to be the outright definitive source for everything that is wrong. You can literally look at someone's poorly researched, kneejerk reaction to this thread, point them to a bullet point made in that thread years ago, and not have to debate any further. It's incredibly well-researched, and I consider it to be one of best posts made on this forum.

I propose that instead of linking to it, for more visibility for the inevitable eyes that will come across this post, it should be lifted from the healer board entirely and appended to the bottom of the post in an hb tag that can be opened by anyone who wants to read it. This will link this topic to that one instrinsically, and it means that if the post is being read by anyone, Recon's post WILL show, specifically to the JP people who come over here, and developers/community managers. That post should be the face of this, not bickering. It would look like this.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

There's been many threads here and around the internet with legitimate criticism of the way Healers have been destroyed in shadowbringers and endwalker has not improved things despite sage's introduction. It is clear that the dev philosophy isn't working and healers are becoming increasingly rare.
There are many problems, some worse than others.

So I thought I'd summarise them.


Edit: Added number 10 after browsing some old patch notes
Edit 2: Fixed some spelling mistakes
Edit 3: Added the what healers want section
Edit 4: Updated Astrologian's section given SE have decided to delete another chunk of its identity

EW edit 1: rewording and cutting down the size a bit
EW edit 2: grammar, p8s correction from p7s, updated about ultimates all being solo healed
EW edit 3: spelling error, added links to TOP and P12s cleared without healers


Terminology
Dot: short for Damage Over Time. Spells like combust and dia.
GCD: short for Spells on the global cooldown
oGCD: Short for Abilities

First things first
"Go Play Ultimate" was surprisingly rude Yoshida and does not address the massive problems the healer role has. But you told us to provide feedback and we've been doing so for years so here we go again.


1. Lack of engaging gameplay from constant Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis spam. There is no skill ceiling or depth
Healing is designed with most of the healing being done by abilities. So most healers will spend their time dealing damage and using abilities to heal between attack spells
What spells do we have to deal damage with? Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis and a single Dot on each healer. From level 4 to 90 all we do is constant spamming of a single offensive button no matter what content we do. Main story duties, fates, raids... it is always Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis and every 30 seconds a single press of a damage over time spell Try black mage with just blizzard and thunder, thats how boring it is.

-Due to removal of crowd control and no gcd utility the only thing left to do is dealing damage.
-We spam the basic attack spell with a dot every 30 seconds. I had more things to press during downtime back as a level 16 conjurer in 2.0 when I first entered Sastacha at 6 attacks (stone, aero, fluid aura, thunder, blizzard 2) and 4 conjurer spells (Cure, Medica, Protect, raise)
-Sage is even worse in this regard as it heals with its damage spells and has even less need to heal via spells. Its dot and basic attack is the same button and so its a constant spam as Toxikon is a dps loss and the added mobility is not needed. Pneuma is a healing tool.
-The devs stated they removed attacking spells to make healers focus on healing at shb launch and to improve accessibility. This was a monumental mistake that caused many to quit the role and did not address the actual reasons for low healing and low take up of healers.

(those being: lack of engaging gameplay especially below extreme difficulty and during solo gameplay like story duties, fates etc. Lack of choice of healers early on as only conjurer is available at the start, lack of general tutorials for healing. Perpetually last in the loot queue in savage raiding due to the focus on dps requirements, general redundancy in game play making it demoralising to play)

Solution
-restore and add damage buttons that were removed in Shadowbringers and Stormblood
-Return Aero 3 and add a water attack to round out the elements of whm. Also add seraph strike and make it upgrade stone/aero/water to Quake/Tornado and Flood for a burst phase
-Return miasma, miasma 2, shadowflare and bane to sch
-Return Stella as an attack with % chance after casting malefic or gravity for Astro and if possible more attacks
-Add another single target attack and an aoe dot to sage. Double toxikon's potency, or buff it slightly and add more addersting generators.
-provide more utility to all healers. Make plenary give bravery/faith, return Ast's cards, give eye for an eye back to sch, give sage something.

2. The level of damage needed to heal in all content is far too low, avoidable, infrequent and scripted
Ffxiv's battle design is scripted so damage comes in spikes at 30s, 60s or 90s. Most enemies do not deal autoattack damage when casting mechanics. Together with the low damage this means that little damage is done and what heavy spikes of damage there is can be topped off instantly with abilities if not evaded all together. Unavoidable damage just isn't frequent enough to require healers.

Many so called harder to heal duties did not hit harder. The "healing checks" mentioned turned out in practice to be mitigation checks not healing.

-Tank busters such as Zodiark's Ania either hit much weaker now or tanks are just that strong. Either way they used to either kill or significantly wound tanks when unmitigated, and were usually followed by a mini tankbuster swiftly to finish off an unprepared tank if the healer wasnt paying attention. For example Alexander always follows up Punishing heat with Divine spear. Damage strong enough to kill a tank if not healed or the tank forgot to use mitigation. Contrast that with Ania which barely hits 50% of a tanks hp even at minimum ilvl
-Dungeons are currently cleared with 1 tank and 3 dps when farmed.
-Very few fights in the game need two healers even at minimum item level
-Ultimate coil of bahamut was cleared without a healer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzD6-VBCtYg
-Omega protocol was cleared WITHOUT A HEALER THE SAME PATCH IT CAME OUT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k65bhdogQKw
-The weapon's refrain, Epic of Alexander, Dragonsong Reprise have been solo healed
-Eden's gate 4 (savage) was cleared without a healer when it was current content. https://youtu.be/zdDxjXMMWgU
-The 6.0 extreme trials have also been cleared without healers and with increasing frequency.
-Pandaemonium 1 normal was completed SOLO by 3 of the 4 tanks https://youtu.be/fFcZCEny4x4
-Pandaemonium 1 and 2 SAVAGE was completed WITHOUT healers when current https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRbvZJ-EU0U
-Pandaemonium 12 SAVAGE was completed WITHOUT healers when current https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etKYa3K70ek

Solutions
-Significantly increase the amount of unavoidable incoming damage across all content
-Readd random crits to boss auto attacks
-Increase the frequency of damage players need to heal. The battle design team needs to spread the healing required over a fight rather than in specific intervals.
Example: byregot drops his first room wide damage 3 minutes into the encounter. The rest of his damage can be avoided outside of the main tank taking auto attack damage. Make that 12s, 33s, 54s etc for incoming damage to heal to the party. Make us use different tools!
-Lower the Item level sync limits so that gear doesn't outstrip healing as much.
-Aim to make healing closer to 50/50 casting healing spells and casting damage spells rather than the current 20 (If even that!)/80 ratio
-Make bosses do more single target damage to dps and healers.

Barbaricca extreme's knuckle drum and Pandemonium 8 savage's aionopyr/aionagonia were a welcome surprise and an excellent baseline for healing requirements. You have had several healers tell you in game they liked having healing to do. Sustained frequent damage rather than spikes (Though dont remove spikes completely)


3. The level of healing output in both healers and other roles is far too strong for most encounters
As of 6.0 every job has some form of self healing. Some are better than others and no healer would want them taken away from the other job, but the problem is that collectively the overall mitigation and healing from none healers is enough to negate healers entirely.

-Warrior, paladin and gunbreaker all have enough sustain that they literally don't need healers and can keep other party members alive at the same time
-Tanks also have access to mitigation that can be shared frequently
-dancer can stack its healing with its partner to heal sufficiently every 60s for most normal encounters providing the party dodges mechanics
-Red mage can take over healing duties given its decent vercure, magick barrier and verraise
-healers have so many healing tools that many become obsolete or unused because they are designed for higher damage that doesn't exist.

Solutions:
-Decrease the strength of healing available to dps and tanks
-reintroduce random crits to encourage healing
-Introduce random damage spikes to random members in full party duties so healers have more to do
-Design future fights so the healing/dpsing split is closer to 50/50 as opposed to 20/80[/U]

4. The healers are too homogenised and have lost what made them unique with nothing in return. The pure/barrier split is meaningless.
All healers have access to shields and healing over time. This means the distinction is not only meaningless but has limited Ast and Sage's design. Astrologian lost nocturnal sect and any good Sage player avoids using their shields because Ixochole, physis etc are simply better. So Ast lost one of its two playstyles for nothing.
Every healer has the same 1 basic attack, 1 dot, 1 aoe skill from level 4-90. This was the biggest complaint across the role in shadowbringers and endwalker yet it has not been rolled back.
All 4 healers have almost the exact same healing style too with many 1-1 equivalents. Despite the advertisement, Sage did not bring anything new to the healer role and is mostly identical to scholar played with the common macro for single target embrace

-Sch still does not have selene returned or its dots
-Ast is now missing noct sect, time magic like time dilation, its stun and its beloved cards
-Whm has lost its self buffing from 2.0 and 3.0, aero 3, cleric stance and unique healing style
-Sage can heal while doing damage. Beyond that it is identical to sch almost button for button.

pvp has proven that healers can be both unique in playstyle and fun. Bring that design philosophy back to pve!

Solutions
-Scholar gets Selene back, Eye for an Eye and leeches
-Ast regains its sects combined to 1 button to switch between them. Return its cards with royal road spread and Minor arcana, time dilation, give disable as a silence. Restore celestial opposition to a stun/buff extension, exalted detriment and luminiferous aether
-Whm lillies get expanded to buff the whm. Return shroud of saints and revert the thin air nerf
-Sage needs some attacks, debuffs and more addersting generators.

5. Healers have no decision making and very little synergy within their own jobs
Because healing has such a low skill floor AND ceiling, little to no effort is needed to successfully keep the party alive. You just use healing tools in the order of ogcds first, gcds second. The healers are also punished for healing with lower damage, wasted mp and being locked out of parts of their kit. Most of the healer's buttons are use and forget. There is little interactivity between the buttons

-Sch is the worst of the bunch. Dissipation kills the fairy preventing fairy actions, Fae union locks other fae buttons and Seraph does something similar.
-Whm and Astrologian have the "enhanced freecure/benefic" trait which is a trap. Cure 1 and Benefic 1 are too weak to use the moment level 50 is reached. They encourage spamming these buttons to new players instead of more appropriate healing and damage options
-Sage's adderstings are used solely for Toxikon. Toxikon however is a dps loss to earn by generating addersting and it does not work as a movement tool either when Sage has the free Icarus jump

Solutions
-Move freecure and enhanced benefic to stone and malefic respectively
-Stop dissipation killing the fairy, fae union locking out the fairy and seraph from other skills
-Add effects to all healers that reward or refund healing with buffs, dps, resources and more
-Make mana and meter management more impactful.

6. Healer's actions are bloated with dependant, outdated or functionally useless buttons that have survived pruning when other more valuable skills have been lost
We all know button limits are a thing. Ideally the jobs should top out at 30 ish buttons since anymore than that tends to make pc players grumble (controller players have easy access to 48 buttons at any time)
A common complaint is that some actions have been removed for no worthwhile reason while other buttons that should have gone years ago are still around.
Many buttons have also had their functions changed with no thought given to how fun or useful they are to the job

Solution
-Merge the following
>Cure 1 into Cure 2, add a trait so Cure 2 automatically changes to Afflatus Solace upon gaining a lily, likewise Medica into Afflatus Rapture, Divine benison upgrade to Aquaveil
>Benefic 1 into Benerfic 2, Draw and play, Minor arcana and crown play (if not make MA work directly from Draw), Celestial intersection and Exaltation
>Physick into Adloquium, Eos and Selene (rotate it between the two) Aetherflow and Energy drain, Excogitation and protraction

-Delete the following
>Undraw, Neutral sect

-Buff or change the effect of the following
>Plenary indulgence to provide damage buff in faith/bravery, Reduce cure 3's mp cost, revert thin air nerf, improve liturgy of the bell, revert dia/aero to 18s, buff tetragrammaton to give the whm a damage buff for the next cast of glare/stone
>Make Synastry affect ALL healing, change celestial opposition back to stun/time buff, change cards back to being 6 different buffs, buff divination to compensate or make minor arcana lord/lady, change astrodyne
>Change sch's healing to work off of the fairy gauge only. Make fey union an instant cost based benediction (eg 5% missing health costs 5 gauge, 90% costs 90 gauge), change dissipation to consume fae gauge to gain aetherflow OR buff the scholar with access to free uses of fae gauge and aetherflow actions while giving movement speed buff. Change recitation to repeat each action at 50% potency for its duration (think double or astro's pvp thing)
>Make Toxikon 1 either dps neutral, split Toxikon 2 from it and change it to leave a damage over time. Make Rhizomata give 1 addersting and change Zoe so Kardion affects the party for its duration

7. Levelling healers is terrible with missing rewards in job quests and skills learned later in spite of previous versions being at lower levels.
Lower levels on healers have large gaps between getting anything new and meaningful due to the continuous removal of skills only to have them replaced at higher levels by new ones that have a new coat of paint. The removal of core skills such as time dilation make many job quests feel unrewarding with the npcs giving or teaching you...nothing!
In addition, it makes lower levels on healers extremely boring as you have no tools or fancy buttons.

-Temperance and Neutral Sect are literally the level 40 Whm skill Divine seal at level 80 and with a 10% mitigation buff/Sect buff respectively
-Summon Seraph looks very flashy...but its just Rouse with the disadvantage of locking the sch out of other parts of their kit and on an extended cooldown
-Divine benison is Stoneskin but an ogcd instead of a gcd spell
-Astrologian's quests are very interesting, you get gravity, time dilation, spread, royal road taught to you by npcs. Not anymore.
-When scholar is unlocked, the hotbar is emptied immediately due to the lack of buttons. This should not happen

Solutions
-Return older versions of skills to lower levels to front load the levelling. This makes them feel more complete and makes later levels upgrades
-Move energy drain and aetherflow back to level 10 and readd miasma 1 and 2. If neccessary change Arcanist to be a healer to balance out healers at low levels
-Add or return new buttons to job quests to make them feel rewarding

8. There are clear signs of nobody with anything more than minimal healer experience designing or testing the healing role and this is causing damage
There was a famitsu interview recently that stated (paraphrasing)
"We replaced our dungeon tester for healers because they were getting too good...this person had started learning normal raids and extreme"
There is so much content now between level 1 and level 90 that even the most casual or new healer will have enough experience to learn the basics of being a healer- do damage when you don't need to heal, don't overheal where possible, ogcds first, the job is to keep people alive rather than topped off.

But if the healer tester was getting too good for taking their first steps into optional content, then nobody on the testing team is experienced enough with healers to tell how bad some of the changes have been over the years

Case 1: Energy drain. This is a core function of scholar's entire job, yet 3 times now it has been removed and 3 times it has had to be put back
Case 2: "We want healers to focus on healing so we removed damage buttons". The causes of low healing is because healers barely need to do any healing. Damage is low, avoidable and predictable and healing power is cheap and strong. Removing the damage buttons has simply caused many veteran healers to quit the role and does not address the low healing requirements at all.
Case 3: The entire stormblood lily system. The fact this got off the drawing board in the first place says a lot. Healers as a rule do not use their gcds to heal unless its an emergency or they have no ogcds to use. Even when it got revamped in shadowbringers, it still took years before it finally became dps neutral. Everyone was shocked because it was the first time in years that a positive change had happened on healers that wasn't to fix a gamebreaking issue like Ast's controller problems or energy drain breaking sch
Case 4: Sage being a "dps healer" designed for veteran healers that does not address a single issue veteran players have. It took far longer for sage to be designed than reaper


-Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis spam
-low healing required in all content to the point healers are entirely optional
-constant dismissiveness towards healers by devs
-Lack of skill ceiling or depth to the jobs
-Homogenised to an appalling degree
-perpetually last in the loot queue in savage
-Only robes and coats, no plate armour
-gameplay penalises improving at healing with boredom

Case 5: Medica 2 according to patch 6.4 is better at healing a single target than Cure 2. Dia was a downgrade from aero 2 for a while doing same potency while having worse mana. Ruin 2 and Toxikon existing while cast times are 1.5s meaning they are redundant. Lots of odd decisions in adjustments like these.

Solution
There are 4 job designers. Have one of them REQUIRED to main healer and gain plenty of experience with it or hire/transfer someone who does. Have someone testing healers who knows what they are doing at level 90 like anyone should with at least extreme experience.

The playerbase understands that testing should happen so new players can get through duties. However the severe lack of challenge in this game between normal content and savage is excessive and the floor needs to be raised in casual content to match the majority of players at 90.
Thus testing should ALSO be required for high level and mid level party.

Someone without the experience to match the job will naturally not understand what are fun parts of the job (such as Ast's cards) and core components (such as energy drain).
The kaiten fiasco? Healers have already been through it unfortunately.

9. Healer glamour options are far too biased in favour of robes and feminine styles.
12 years now healers have had had nothing but cloth. Where's the armour that looks like it belongs on the battlefield?
Why is everything a damn dress?

You couldn't even leave judge Drace's armour alone, no you just HAD to make it a damn frilly dress instead of a cape.

10. The "Pure Healer" concept that was explored in Stormblood and forced upon all healers now is extremely unpopular and is unsuitable for FF14's combat system, lore and community
The pure healer concept is as follows: Healers in all content are supposed to heal only using their tools in order to account for frequent and or heavy damage and do not have opportunity or need to do damage. Damage tools are just enough for solo duties if any are available. If not a separate role is given for solo content
We saw an exploration of this concept in White mage in stormblood. Devs thought it would be a good entry to healing but instead many white mages quit the role and very few new healers took it up.
White mage was utterly detested by the community for several reasons: losing critical abilities only to require using 7 role skills in order to reacquire what it had lost; having no utility and being unfun to play.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...eedback-Thread if anybody wants more information
Yoshi P even said that they were wanting to encourage people to play healer and tweak the balance so that its less stressful and he said much the same thing again this expansion.
Well SE needs a dictionary as tweaking means small adjustments to make things work properly, not strip everything out and burn it to the ground.

Pure healing only works if there is high incoming damage with dps checks and enrage timers that do not require any healer damage to clear consistently. The sheer fact that almost every extreme, savage and ultimate are adjusted to take into account healer dps to even clear at minimum ilvl means that SE is lying and has been for years
Pure healing does not work either in a game with large amounts of solo battle content such as ff14 either as it makes the solo duties a chore and unfun to play through which distracts from any story or interesting mechanics
Finally, higher skilled healers need to heal less, and have more downtime. So of course they need something to do in the downtime. But we don't have anything now except spam Broil/Glare/Malefic

FF14 healers started out as the combat medic concept: The healer heals up unavoidable damage and contributes to fighting when they do not need to heal either by protection or by helping defeat enemies and by and large the community and the very battle design is of this concept what with the hardest fights barely requiring 1/3 healing casts in the entire 20 minute battles. It is also suitable as healers still have to do solo content and as such they need something interesting in order to have fun during the solo battles.

Healers enjoy getting more skilled same as anybody else. That means they enjoy having more downtime and the best way to make downtime fun is by having healers be combat medics and support their allies or doing damage themselves.
Many veteran healers have quit- there's a 50 page thread about healers quitting for goodness sake. But new players clearly aren't filling the gaps as its constant healer in need and they have nothing to look forward to when levelling that's any different from more heals and nothing to do when they don't need to heal which as stated earlier is on average 70-80% of ANY duty.

Look at the all the complaints about boring downtime and anybody can see that ff14 healers, are combat medics first and foremost.


Lore wise this also plays into the healers themselves. White mages have a big theme in the 50-60 that WHM must do more than just heal to protect. SCH are all about creating openings, debilitating and manipulating enemies into their demise. Astrologians attune their magicks as needed for their allies and choose favourable fates and bear temporal magics to ensure victory

Hell the Hall of the novice itself outright states when no healing needs to be done, throw in damage spells


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What do we healers want for our jobs?

1. Return of unique playstyles and iconic/fun abilities such as aero 3, varied cards, selene and so forth. End this horrible Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis spam!
2. More frequent amounts of healing required at all levels of gameplay. Make the potency boosts from expansion changes happen on level caps+1 (51, 61, 71, 81) so previous content isn't trivialised
3a White mage to stop being treated as baby's first healer and made into a strong elementalist that can stand on top
3b Scholar gets its dots and selene back with no more infighting between healing and damage
3c Astro have its cards, time magic and sects returned with slight tweaks so its shields stop fighting with sch and drk
3d Sage to get the dps actions it was promised
4. Better communication with the dev team regarding how the jobs will evolve. If the devs aren't sure how to expand healers, there's a wide range of players they could turn to for suggestions and ideas



We don't hate you Square enix, but the last 5 years have been horrific for healers and we want this to end.

Your attitude of "Go play ultimate" is utterly tone deaf and rude and you need to change this course if you want to stop bleeding healers. "We can't think of anything to do with scholar" was also incredibly dismissive when we spent years giving you feedback.

Yes healers get quite heated. You would be too if your role got treated with such disdain for years on end.

We're grateful for the odd scrap that gets thrown our way like dps neutral lillies. But we deserve better. We're a core part of the game alongside the dps and tanks. We don't want to be the 3rd role, we want to be healers.


My sub runs out in a few days after this update so I won't be able to update it after that. But I sure hope we find SE reversing course in the run up to 7.0 starting with astrologian's rework.
Keep the feedback alive guys.

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I know he isn't here anymore to advocate for this, but I think he would if he was. He was the only one to even get a Healer question answered in a Q&A years ago...

Thank you for doing this, everyone. Even from a jaded pessimist on his way out, I'm more happy about this than I am about DT being released in a few weeks.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

This post is several pages back now, but I wanted to point out that FFXI had a solo instance to break the level cap at lv 70 against the NPC Maat. This fight, the tactics used, and requirements to win changed based on the job you faced him with. This is not an argument against you, but rather an expression on how fight design in solo instances could be made to exemplify and distinguish the roles from each other. The dev team wouldn't even have to make the solo instances different for each job, but rather based on the role. They could do this if they really wanted to. This would have been fantastic when facing Zenos at the end of EW.

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They could definitely design instanced fights to be role-specific, they did it for the carriage ghosts in O5S.

For DPS, Zenos could mostly do avoidable damage but have a ton of HP and an enrage burn phase.

For tanks, Zenos could have tankbusters and if you mitigate them properly, he gets a vuln up.

For healers, Zenos could consume his own HP to boost his attacks and rarely use avoidable attacks, so you'd have to heal a lot.

But then again, that's probably extra effort that they don't want to spend.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

All coverage is good coverage but it really does seem like this guy was extremely quick to narrow the entire scope down to “world 1 ranked WAR cleared the dungeon is this the hill you want to stake your claim on” when that’s really not the point of the problem

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Indeed, you almost have to have surgeon level precision with your points so that people can't misconstrue your position and that is with people who don't go out of their way to ignore the actual discussion in favor of their own headcanon.

Adding my name, though I've been on strike since 5.0, the first time CBU3 took a chainsaw to AST. I've not put a single XP into any of my healers since the launch of Shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Possibly my last post, Vive la Resistance!

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We shall prevail.

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Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

I know he isn't here anymore to advocate for this, but I think he would if he was. He was the only one to even get a Healer question answered in a Q&A years ago...

Thank you for doing this, everyone. Even from a jaded pessimist on his way out, I'm more happy about this than I am about DT being released in a few weeks.

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this is probably the best response to everyone saying how if we posted reasonably and responsibly and did things "the right way" and put things in a better format... we wouldnt have to be so "silly"

that post was the most reasoned one I have seen, and it laid out examples, and options. 4 years ago.

four years.

this post started a thread, it wasnt buried 50 pages in to a thread. four years ago.

I think things have been tried the right way, the non silly way, many many times.

It feels like a lot of posts just went missing, guess the mods are following up on reports for the more... aggressive folk who were posting in here

Whole heartedly support this cause, count me in

Edit: it's pretty mental how people are against wanting a role to stop being so damn boring,

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Originally Posted by JuicyHeals

Edit: it's pretty mental how people are against wanting a role to stop being so damn boring,

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Some people don't think the role is boring.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

They could definitely design instanced fights to be role-specific, they did it for the carriage ghosts in O5S.

For DPS, Zenos could mostly do avoidable damage but have a ton of HP and an enrage burn phase.

For tanks, Zenos could have tankbusters and if you mitigate them properly, he gets a vuln up.

For healers, Zenos could consume his own HP to boost his attacks and rarely use avoidable attacks, so you'd have to heal a lot.

But then again, that's probably extra effort that they don't want to spend.

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Which is unfortunate because it was such a good opportunity to utilize the trinity system and add some creativity to their solo instances. Plus, if players knew that the fight with Zenos was different depending on your role, that would incentivize and fuel NG+, which would buy them time between patches to keep players busy.

These dev team really needs to learn to capitalize on such opportunities. I get that there are deadlines, they have a limited staff and resources, among other constraints so I don't want to sound unforgiving. But I also have to continue to hold them to their promise of providing a fulfilling and enjoyable experience for the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Kayokane

Some people don't think the role is boring.

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I enjoy my WHM I have enough characters who main it. I'll be focusing on story when xpac hits leveling WHM and RDM and personally I like to use Trusts when doing story dungeons. The real work for me will start when i have to do raids and begin the gearing process.

I think more then anything I just want healing to be less of a flowchart with more randomly distributed damage/dispellable debuffs you have to actually react to instead of just seeing the mechanic/cast bar, popping your cooldowns, then calling it a day.

Making boss auto-attacks non-trivial and consistently active during mechanics would also further put stress on both the healer and tank alike. There's just way too many breaks where you're at the leisure to top everyone off and/or pre-shield before the next instance of damage occurs.

I feel that, as far as the DPS role is concerned, what makes any given job within it interesting is the HOW they arrive at the damage number. I feel like with healers, there's an added layer, where what is interesting has to come from both the HOW damage is healed, and WHAT TYPE of damage you're dealing with. Only way for the devs to make healing truly interesting, from my perspective at least, would require and upending/overhaul of how damage is dealt/received in this game... And I think that's most likely why they'll never do it. It is a fundamental change which would require a ridiculous amount of content retuning and outright restructuring in a good number of cases.

I think it's pretty sad that a lot of the arguments made towards "fixing" healers have to do with adding damage options. It really drives the point that roles in this game are, at their root "DPS + [something else]." At the same time, I can't outright dismiss said arguments because with the way things currently work, they're entirely logical considerations to make. It's in the line of thought that goes "healing is boring, so GIVE THEM MORE STUFF TO DO" and that [STUFF] could just well be more buttons with which to deal damage.

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Originally Posted by Rehayem

[…]

Do JP feel satisfied with the upcoming BLM changes? Here on EN forums, plenty are disagreeing with it.

In a way if you look at benchmark feedback, had it not been for JP community complaining, SE most likely would have moved on with the bad, botched benchmark.

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In regards on the BLM changes, there are A LOT of discussion going on over on JP forum, no need to worry about that at least

As for the subject of wanting more dps buttons or a more engaging dps rotation in general on healers, I feel that it is a shame that many of the EN players whom have been posting on JP forum seems to be looking for a way complex rotation for healers and not considering a middle ground, while also without bringing up any actual specific suggestions, which makes it hard to have a good discussion on those subjects.

One important thing to note for whom going over is that, translator only does direct translation, please be aware that players on JP forum usually communicate in a more polite manner.

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Originally Posted by Hazama999

I feel that, as far as the DPS role is concerned, what makes any given job within it interesting is the HOW they arrive at the damage number. I feel like with healers, there's an added layer, where what is interesting has to come from both the HOW damage is healed, and WHAT TYPE of damage you're dealing with. Only way for the devs to make healing truly interesting, from my perspective at least, would require and upending/overhaul of how damage is dealt/received in this game... And I think that's most likely why they'll never do it. It is a fundamental change which would require a ridiculous amount of content retuning and outright restructuring in a good number of cases.

I think it's pretty sad that a lot of the arguments made towards "fixing" healers have to do with adding damage options. It really drives the point that roles in this game are, at their root "DPS + [something else]." At the same time, I can't outright dismiss said arguments because with the way things currently work, they're entirely logical considerations to make. It's in the line of thought that goes "healing is boring, so GIVE THEM MORE STUFF TO DO" and that [STUFF] could just well be more buttons with which to deal damage.

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It stems from how much more difficult and unrealistic it is to transform the environment for healing into one that allows healer gameplay to thrive in all types of environments while still having basically no real attack options. Because you need healing to take the spotlight for most of the entire fight, which is so drastically unlike how FFXIV is that we'd basically be changing the game entirely. And given how much they want to keep the game very easy for anyone to get through at least the MSQ and other story related forms of content, it just doesn't seem possible to make healers shine on their healing and nothing else. Because even if we can accomplish such a monumental shift to make the healing the star of the show almost always, what do we do about the 10 years of content we already have that doesn't accomplish that?

A part of the reason why DPS tools are discussed is because having a more dynamic set of attacks to cycle through ensures that no matter how easy the content gets, there's always something for you to interact with rather than be stuck glaring things to death for such long periods of time.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I think more then anything I just want healing to be less of a flowchart with more randomly distributed damage/dispellable debuffs you have to actually react to instead of just seeing the mechanic/cast bar, popping your cooldowns, then calling it a day.

Making boss auto-attacks non-trivial and consistently active during mechanics would also further put stress on both the healer and tank alike. There's just way too many breaks where you're at the leisure to top everyone off and/or pre-shield before the next instance of damage occurs.

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I would say more dispellable debuffs would be nice, especially stuff like Pallas Athena and T.G. Cid's Crush helm, where you have to time the dispel for maximum effect. The increased use of bleeds and poisons making basic regen more useful was also pretty nice in the 2nd raid tier this expac.

As for randomly distributed damage, as long as it didn't feel like arbitrary damage for the sake of busy work, I guess it would work.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I shared an interesting example of something like that before with the level 76 instance battle where you're fighting sin eaters in lakeland.

You start with Alphinaud and Alisaie by your side. If you're a healer, Alphinaud runs off, and you have to heal up the injured soldiers to save them from sin eaters. If you're a tank or DPS, Alisaie runs off, and you defeat the sin eater while Alphinaud heals the NPCs. Later, when you fight against the large sin eater, if you're a DPS or healer, Thancred and Minfillia show up with him tanking the boss, and you help take it down. If you're a tank, Y'shtola and Urianger show up and you have to tank the boss.

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I remember that now. See, it shows they are capable of flexing this kind of creativity and it really goes a long way. Hopefully we will see more of this in near future.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

A part of the reason why DPS tools are discussed is because having a more dynamic set of attacks to cycle through ensures that no matter how easy the content gets, there's always something for you to interact with rather than be stuck glaring things to death for such long periods of time.

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I am aware of the fundamental change it would require, and that's precisely why I lamented that.

I understand that giving healers more damage options is the more logical, accessible way of dealing with this, but at the end of the day, it's... just not healing, so ultimately it will never sit quite right with me.

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Originally Posted by xbahax92

There will be 2 new DPS jobs, I'm pretty sure we have seen the same issue during Stormblood (RDM&SAM). DPS ques were actually horrible!
Honestly, this situation could play into the cards for the strike. And I slowly understand why some people seem overly scared.

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I don't think the "strike" really accomplishes anything except unnecessary drama.
Yes, Stormblood was a dream for me. As a tank and healer, i always got in instantly everywhere. But we also have the option of going in with an ai, and even if the content takes longer, people still get in and can play normally.
i have 4 healers and tanks that i can level up. Since i don't play DDs, the 2 new jobs don't bother me and i don't know why anyone should be worried about this supposed "strike".

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Originally Posted by Aword3213

Don't worry. Nothing will happen to your queue time. A wise fella once said:

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you say that to a healer. i mean, i know my queue time will be fine. thanks anyways.

Do harder content.

The vast majority of you are calling healing in this game easy because you're comparing it to tanks and DPS in content where enrages don't exist for the DPS to fail and tanks have to go out of their way to die. Yes, healing is boring when you don't have to think. You don't get to practice doing difficult content in alliance raids the way DPS do because your difficulty comes from the content

So let's talk about each of the points in your manifesto:

Self-sustain and healing abilities given to other roles:
- The basic personal healing abilities are necessary to make DPS and tank roles function at all in solo content
- Yes, Warrior does a very good job replacing the role of a healer in basic dungeons because it's designed to be casual content. Instead of complaining that Warrior can do it, try getting three friends who want to DPS and being the healer for them
- RDM and SMN having raise has been a contentious topic for as long as we can remember. I won't address it here

Over simplified DPS rotation:
- In general, we don't get to have a complex DPS rotation on healers because the complexity comes from healing. You are encouraged to optimize your healing to increase your damage. If you can get away with only ever using those oGCDs mentioned later, you have optimized well, and you are rewarded just like a Ninja who pulls off the perfect burst window
- Astrologian's DPS complexity is on par with that of some of the most difficult DPS classes because of the impact of cards and the decision-making that comes from randomness
- White Mage benefits from optimizing lily usage, and getting the perfect timing to use rapture as a cure, a burst movement, a double oGCD window, and an effective mana regen is a very rewarding feeling

All of these classes have much higher complexity scaling as your content gets harder, so do harder content

Homogenization of healer jobs:
- White Mage is still the best at pure healing, and yes, it matters in harder content
- Astrologian played optimally makes you feel like a setup god. Getting to plan something in advance by 20 seconds just to watch everyone's HP bars immediately refill to full is wonderful. And yes, I miss Nocturnal Sect. If you wanted a strike to get that back, I'd be there.
- Scholar has the best shielding bar none, and that shielding is something necessary to pull of very unique strategies in harder content, often letting you cheese huge amounts of LB meter or ignore mechanics altogether. UWU LB cheese is beautiful. e10s Updog is adorable. Any time you see one of those mechanics that sets everyone's HP to 1, spam out a couple succors for huge LB generation
- I don't play Sage, but people seem to like it

Excessive oGCD heals:
- I just disagree. These are important for making DPS enjoyable as mentioned above

Lack of threat level in nearly all forms of content
- Do harder content

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

this is probably the best response to everyone saying how if we posted reasonably and responsibly and did things "the right way" and put things in a better format... we wouldnt have to be so "silly"

that post was the most reasoned one I have seen, and it laid out examples, and options. 4 years ago.

four years.

this post started a thread, it wasnt buried 50 pages in to a thread. four years ago.

I think things have been tried the right way, the non silly way, many many times.

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I think that's why I'm pushing to have the entire text placed into the subfield below the opening post. I can only hope that I can catch Gemina at some point to see what they think about what I said. Something I noticed from JP is anger that we are not proposing solutions to the problem, when we really have proposed serious solutions to problems. But after awhile, you get tired of trying of being an armchair game designer, especially when the developers are as silent as they are for the support role. Like I said earlier, I think putting the entire post in hb tags would alleviate this complaint significantly, as Recon does propose many fixes for our current problems within the post, while explaining why it has come to this point. I really want it to have maximum visibility, that news article I read only mentioned the first few posts, and I fear context will be lost without it being shoved in people's faces. HB tags are really useful for stuff like that.

I'm not going to base my entire enjoyment of a battle system on the encounters. Job design lasts for multiple years of an expansion for it's players, while encounters are progged, farmed, and killed within weeks, if not days. If we have a failed fight, or god forbid, a failure of a tier, that's too much at risk for combat enjoyment. Square Enix has gone out of their way in harder content to increase the amount of things that will instantly wipe the entire party when even a single thing goes wrong, leading to healers and to a lesser extent, tanks, being unable to salvage or learn how to crisis manage as the party is instantly vaporized. As long as supports are disproportionally affected compared to DPS by the fact that learning the game and playing competently actively makes it less fun, we will never escape from this mess. If the job isn't inherently fun without being propped up superficially by encounter complexity, the design is flawed. We had this in Stormblood, it's not unheard of even in this game.

I have also been considering what I can do after DT's release, and I was thinking about booting up my recording software again and recording some dungeon runs. In Shadowbringers, I was getting a bit tilted that people were dumping on DRK sustain during boss fights, when someone said it couldn't solo a boss from 10% if everyone died. So I recorded gameplay of myself on Quezalcoatl, killing it solo, from 100% to 0%, without the need of healers or DPS, mainly to prove a point about hyperbole. I know that's a minor thing, but I was thinking, with DRK now having a fixed LD and Excog on Shadowed Vigil, perhaps I can do something similar. Take the tank with the "worst sustain" through every DT dungeon at launch with 1T3DPS, so it can be proven that it isn't just WAR being broken. The fundamental foundations of the content just makes healers irrelevant. I'm not good at the game, I'm a washed up ex-raider, but maybe a playlist of videos like this a little after launch would be useful to someone.

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Originally Posted by BattleBunnyQuinn

snip

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Why should a job only be semi tolerable in the hardest content in the game, only about 30% of people attempt savage, why is the healer role just “not for those people”

As for all of your savage points they continue to whittle down the difficulty and the optimisation of these every single expansion leaving us nothing to do.

WHM IS UNMATCHED IN PURE HEALING- yeah but where do you even use it, WHM is last in useful throughput healing, even SCH is near twice as strong as it

AST IS EQUAL TO THE MOST COMPLEX DPS- yeah that’s why they are ripping all its complexity out

USING A LILY AS ALL THREE THINGS IS AMAZING- yeah when we didn’t have weave windows on glare and didn’t generate them faster than we could ever realistically spend them

SPAMMING GLARE MORE HECAUSE YOU OPTIMISED YOUR GCD HEALING AWAY IS LIKE A NIN DOING ITS BURST WINDOW PERFECTLY- no it’s not because my reward is more glare spam

The classes aren’t fun in casual content and all our avenues to optimise in savage are getting whittled away, why does SCH need more recitations, why does it need a WHM mode.

Nothing makes sense in the design of healers

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Originally Posted by BattleBunnyQuinn

Do harder content.

The vast majority of you are calling healing in this game easy because you're comparing it to tanks and DPS in content where enrages don't exist for the DPS to fail and tanks have to go out of their way to die. Yes, healing is boring when you don't have to think. You don't get to practice doing difficult content in alliance raids the way DPS do because your difficulty comes from the content

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Done Ultimates as a healer. There is no 'harder content' I can try, so don't try that line. Tying the difficulty entirely to the content means that jobs are 'boring' in lower level content that we're still 'required' to do. For example, I'm relatively attuned to the amount of damage a Savage fight does Week 1. As such, an EX roulette isn't going to threaten me or my party. But I still have to do the EX roulette to cap my tomes. I and others are simply asking for the jobs to have more optional complexity, such that if the content falls flat, the Job is fun enough on its own to 'carry' the bland encounter. As it stands right now, if the fight sucks (eg P6S, P7S, most of P11S), the job can't carry it. P7S was awful to prog because it was 6 minutes of absolutely sod all, then suddenly Inviolate Purgation throws 4 debuffs on everyone and you all die. Now do 6 minutes of sod all again, to try and practice more of the debuff vomit mechanic. And as a healer, that's 6 minutes of 'press Broil/Glare/Dosis/the other one'. Having an extra DOT to juggle isn't going to suddenly break the healer role, we had it before in SB. Potencies can be balanced to make any gain from this complexity 'so low that it's effectively optional'. I've previously posted maths that shows ways for these 'optional complexity' methods to be less than a single filler spell worth of potency gained, per minute. We can drop so many GCDs already as a healer and still clear, my first clear of P11S had me using 32 Succors IIRC.

It could equally be argued that Tanks should have a one-button-spam fiesta rotation, 'because the complexity comes from mitigating damage'. Have all of the mitigation tools have bonus effects when timed correctly, as with the 25s CDs. After all, it's not the Tank's role to deal damage, that's the DPS's role. Healers are somehow unique in the disdain the developers show for the role, and it needs to change

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Originally Posted by Hazama999

I am aware of the fundamental change it would require, and that's precisely why I lamented that.

I understand that giving healers more damage options is the more logical, accessible way of dealing with this, but at the end of the day, it's... just not healing, so ultimately it will never sit quite right with me.

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I've always been a healer who favors needing to heal over needing to do damage. Obviously, current requirements are so low that it is a moot argument at this point. However, even with increased healing requirements, I have come to realize that such a simplistic healer rotation is too far at this end of the extreme. They need something more. It needs to be on the GCD, and not locked behind other abilities with long CDs.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I definitely think there's some leeway in the damage profiles, and tricks that could allow for more healing without actually increasing difficulty, but I'm doubtful of how far that envelope will ever get pushed. That's also why i like content like field ops most. There's a lot more chaos and its easier for people to take damage from things. Red Choctober is a great example.

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There are many mechanics that could be taken from the Bozja critical engagements. The Hunt for Red Choctober being one of them. Even dungeon bosses should be allowed to be capable of winning. Right now this is a ridiculously rare occurrence, and almost requires players to make an effort to actually lose. There are multiple reasons why this is the case. Many of which emphasize the current issues with our healers feeling needless in duties. Another issue is the long trek that is required to get back to a boss that defeats the party. The shortcut/check point should be located just outside the boss's quarters. This would go a long way to making wipes not be so bad.

Encounters don't have to be TOP level of difficulty to warrant a healer either. They just have to be innovative enough to place mechanics that warrant a healer's attention. Giving bosses Zeromus' Abyssal Nox mechanic is a perfect example of something they could do.