To YoshiP, here's what too stress-free: Healer edition

The few times I really enjoyed healing was back in 2.0 and maybe 3.0 (didn't play healer very much in that expansion).

Healing is pretty meh nowadays, and there's little I can add to the discussion that hasn't been said already, but looking back more recently, only times I've ever truly had fun healing has been when the group I'm with is just really bad, which leads to a lot of deaths, a lot of healing, a lot of scrambling about and making quick decisions lol. I actually get to use all of my skills in those instances. It's a bit of a shame that these situations happen so infrequently because they're actually quite fun. You really do get the sense that you can rescue the entire party from a wipe and just eke on through by the skin of your teeth.

The only reason I liked healing in HW was in dungeons and casual content. It was actually fun to me having to manage a semi finite resource (MP) by finding a careful balance between expensive spells like Holy and actually healing the tank/party. It was also compounded by the fact that not all players were equal, and not all gear was either, so I had to adjust and adapt, and some runs were a lot more DPS focused than others depending how much damage had to be healed through or how fast pulls were actually dying. The fact that MP wasn't back fully between pulls was also a big scarcity factor that I appreciated, and made me actually manage resources for the long run.

It's also why the only place I still like healing is during alliance raids where half the alliances die and I can actually feel useful, raise and heal people, and once more, react to the unexpected. Scrappy runs are the best. Scripted steamrolls are boring.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ty_taurus

but they should have a few more options that are unique to each healer.

---

Look, even if the healer's main dps kit remains as simple as it is... there's absolutely ZERO reasons why they should be a [nuke + 30s dot] carbon copy of each other. Even if they want healer dps actions to be this barebones, they can at least have different types of simplicities.

Ideas for tools still making the healer kit remain simple:

- A faster gcd kit with no dot management
- A kit just with time managed dots and no spammable nuke (SCH maybe)
- A simple combo system instead of nuke + dot
- Combust could be a debuff that 'explodes' after a time is off but also can explode earlier for greater damage if caught on Earthly Star
- Afflatus Misery unlocks an elemental combo after you use it

Not that I wouldn't want a more complex thing, but I'm not really holding my breath for that.

IMO the boringification of healers began when they started having every single boss open with a raidwide or tankbuster 5 seconds into the fight. It doesn't matter what your kit is if all the content is the same cookie cutter over and over.

Here's something I'd like to clarify:

Less DPS actions ≠ easier DPS
A while back, I made a thread on the healer forums about how having more DPS actions can actually make a healer's DPS performance easier to maintain rather than harder by comparing EW Scholar to ARR Scholar. You see, in order to keep Scholar's DPS output in line with general healer DPS output, something very important both for single player play and group content, the potency of Broil had to be inflated to justify the removal of Scholar's additional DPS actions. Constantly increasing the potency of a healer's attack spells adds more and more weight on the player to use those spells as often as possible. Let me explain:

During ARR, Scholar's basic attack spell, Ruin (and Ruin II) had a potency of 80. Broil IV on the other hand has a potency of 295. What this means is that every time a Scholar player loses a cast of Broil IV to idling, moving, or casting Physick/Adloquium/Succor/Esuna, they are losing 368.75% of what ARR Scholar lost doing the same thing. There is nearly 4 times the pressure to maintain DPS uptime now then there would be during ARR. On the other hand, ARR Scholar had 5 DOTs they could manage each with different durations to keep track of, and that does sound more daunting and challenging. However, even if you were to simply cast your 5 DOTs every 30 seconds instead of refreshing each of them as they fell off, you would still be doing 79% of the damage your DOTs were capable of.

Let's assume that in both ARR and EW, we have a Scholar who only refreshes their DOTs every 30 seconds and spends the rest of the fight trying to heal or even just idling. ARR Scholar would deal approximately 64% of the damage Scholar can possibly deliver. An EW Scholar that only refreshes their DOT, however, will only deal about 18% of the damage Scholar is capable of dealing. Now, you might say, "well ARR would have to cast 5 DOTs whereas EW Scholar only has 1," which is true. So for the sake of prosperity, let's say the EW Scholar instead casts 1 Biolysis and 4 Broil IVs to match the cast rate. In that case, they would still be doing only about 48% of the damage they could otherwise do.

TLDR, EW Scholar actually requires more DPS effort to put out their DPS than an ARR Scholar needed despite having far less attacks to work with because by erasing variety, we put so much weight on basic attack spell spam. And perhaps that is a greater cause as to why GCD healing is seen so negatively today is because each cast matters so much more than it used to. And adding back more attacks and rerouting potency away from Broil IV into those new attacks can actually make Scholar more forgiving, not less. And this is true for all the healers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ty_taurus

TLDR, EW Scholar actually requires more DPS effort to put out their DPS than an ARR Scholar needed despite having far less attacks to work with because by erasing variety, we put so much weight on basic attack spell spam. And perhaps that is a greater cause as to why GCD healing is seen so negatively today is because each cast matters so much more than it used to. And adding back more attacks and rerouting potency away from Broil IV into those new attacks can actually make Scholar more forgiving, not less. And this is true for all the healers.

---

Honestly, I'm fairly sure that people just look at it in terms of '1 button I press every 30s and 1 button I press all the time' vs 'I have to press all 5 of these buttons in a priority system and make sure none of them fall off', if you put it in those terms, 5 DoTs seem a lot harder to do good damage with.

But if you do the math, you'd see that condensing so much of the healer damage potency into one singular button would not only lead to greater punishment for every dropped cast, but also more unreliable damage output due to damage swings (a problem that used to be unique to DPS jobs and WAR).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aravell

Honestly, I'm fairly sure that people just look at it in terms of '1 button I press every 30s and 1 button I press all the time' vs 'I have to press all 5 of these buttons in a priority system and make sure none of them fall off', if you put it in those terms, 5 DoTs seem a lot harder to do good damage with.

But if you do the math, you'd see that condensing so much of the healer damage potency into one singular button would not only lead to greater punishment for every dropped cast, but also more unreliable damage output due to damage swings (a problem that used to be unique to DPS jobs and WAR).

---

Right, but that's why I bring that up. Because that line of thinking is misleading. Refreshing all your DOTs when the longest one falls off is something I remember seeing a lot of during ARR and HW--something I did many times as well. And by doing the math, it's clear that offers a higher overall performance value than doing the equivalent amount of effort today, which is what I wanted to express.

In reality, old Scholar was far more forgiving with the one major exception that is old Cleric Stance, which is I would argue the single most punishing tool on a job that we've ever seen in this game. Doing it correctly really wasn't that hard, especially if all you did was that basic effort of reapplying all DOTs at once, but if ARR had been released without old Cleric Stance ever existing, ARR Scholar would be the most forgiving iteration of Scholar in regards to DPS across all expansions, even Heavensward. Because Heavensward introduced Broil which was a significant jump in potency, and also ignored Ruin II.

Personally, I don’t think that more DPS-actions will be the solution that we should ask for. I won’t deny that it could help, but I think that down the line we’ll come back to the same issue. I like healing, it’s a fantasy that I personally enjoy, however here in XIV I feel like a glorified Caster with some healing spells added to it. I don’t feel like a Healer, especially in normal content.

I think we should ask for the core gameplay of Healers to be changed: Force us to actually heal.

I know people will loathe this comparison, but over in WoW I enjoy healing a lot more because it’s way more present and active. I have 2-3 damage buttons a few utility buttons and the rest are all healing buttons, and I have to use them to keep everyone alive, which to me, feels great. If I’m slacking off people die. I’m also not able to cover all the time for people when they fail a mechanic. Sure, their normal content is easier and this won’t apply much. But their end-game content even on the more casual level, this will apply. Is it perfect? No. WoW’s Yoyo-healthbar is not something that fits XIV or is something that we should try to achieve, however there are other ways to make things more interesting: Mechanics.

If I look at most raids in WoW (no matter the difficulty), Healers are being kept on their toes. There’s a good amount of incoming damage and a few random spikes here and there. This is something that XIV unfortunately lacks. WoW also has Healer-specific mechanics where they have to… Heal. And not healing the party, but a 3rd party. An object that needs to be restored to full health, sometimes even multiple objects. This could be to either survive the next big attack or even keeping the platform “alive” or fall down and wipe if you don’t. XIV really lacks heal checks. Sure, we have the occasional raidwide and mechanic that can be a bit painful, but we lack dedicated heal checks in dungeons & raids.

I also think that SE should make a bold move and change all the Healers to give them their own identity. Instead of worrying about balance, make it balanced because it’s imbalanced. Give every Healer a unique way to heal. If a Healer is weaker in a tier, but can still clear it, that should be the base requirement. As for what examples on how I’d personally separate the Healers:

- White Mage:

Pure Healing. It should be the basic Healer and easy to pick up. Remove the regens and perhaps focus on giving party members “Healing received increased”-buffs.

- Astrologian:

Regen/Channelling focussed. I think Astro would lend itself good to a regen playstyle. Reduce the amount of pure healing it has and distribute it to regens. Perhaps a unique combination that it is allowed to cast supportive/buff spells whilst channelling.

- Scholar:

Should focus on shielding and mitigation. Pretty much how it is now, I think Scholar has a decent enough identity. Could use some more focus on the Fairy, but I’m not too fussed over it.

- Sage:

I think Sage should lean more into the “harm to heal” fantasy it has. Remove Sage’s shields and most of its mitigation, allow Sage to apply a debuff to an enemy, which, upon hit by a spell or weapon attack, heals the player. Focus more on Kardia: Allow it to spread temporarily to the entire party, etc. There’s so much they could have done with Sage but to me it’s 80% “Scholar, but with lasers.”

I think by having all Healers be different would already help a lot, as to me, Scholar and Sage are too much of the same (down to the potency), whereas White Mage and Astrologian also share kits when it comes to their base-spells, they do have enough differences to make up for it, I feel.

Although I don’t expect anything to change really. I’m not getting my hopes up for the Astrologian rework. But I do think that “Healer stress” should be invoked by having to heal more rather than having to handle more dps buttons and/or dps rotations. Imho Healers should be Healers. Not glorified Casters.

But again, that’s my opinion.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kinazu

I think we should ask for the core gameplay of Healers to be changed: Force us to actually heal.

---

Devs tried that a savage cycle ago. The results were . . . a slaughter.

Casuals just don't care enough to put in the proper time to learn how to actually heal. It also showed just how shallow modern casual groups are.

There is three problems with the WOW comparison

1) WOW runs on an extremely quick GCD and as such if someone suddenly gets hits with spike damage you can be healing them in less than second, for 14 it can be almost 5 seconds before you can actually hit them with a heal. The spike damage reactive whack a me healing struggles in 14 especially in single target which leads to point 2

2) targeting job party members like NPC’s and having a very short time to heal party members can make controller players struggle, this is most noticeable in AST currently but it’s also noticeable when you try to heal people in the other 2 alliances, it’s not great on console

3) in 14 the WOL is incredibly powerful, arguably the single most powerful person on etheryis, in WOW the adventurer if functionally a stand in for any old semi competent adventurer, making the WOL functionally unable to fight without a party breaks the power fantasy of the WOL

I’m not opposed to more healing but it has to work within 14’s unique situation, not that you are suggesting a 1 to 1 comparison with WOW but it’s also not like it can be implemented in a roughly similar form either even if it was tried