Healer dps is unfairly boring

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

How is SCH's niche the fairy. Like, I guess I get it, we have a totem that we can place and it sorta helps us heal but its not exactly a key part of our gameplay. Fairy Gauge barely matters as it is and we could essentially get the fairy skills as regular skills and SCH would not be different gameplay wise from any of the other healers. (Well maybe we'd have less delay on those fairy abilities)

Truly, the only exclusively unique thing that SCH can do that the other two healers can't do are Chain Stratagem, Recitation and Deployment Tactics.

I'd say what made SCH unique were her debuffs. Virus, Eye for and Eye and Chain Stratagem. And I think its a part of its identity that has been forgotten.

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I mean, why not both?

I feel faeries are as much SCH's niche as their former debuffs. Micromanaging them mid cast to try to maximise your efficiency to patch the fact SCH's healing potency was low for me was very much a part of what Scholar was to play, you could AI, sure, but micromanaging was pretty important for efficiency because AI couldn't maximise your potential here. Other jobs don't have and didn't have that kind of micromanagement, but now it feels less important because they're treated more like oGCD's.

Granted these are 2 things that are now lost. But one of my suggestions was to integrate some debuffs into Selene instead and make her more of a utility faerie, as she was intended to be but instead of deleting her, give her more uses. Heck Selene's version of Seraph could be different and themed around it (I suggested 'Libra' in the post I said this in for a system about finding and exploiting weaknesses).

And like Selene, I feel like instead of deleting, they could have improved the debuffs instead.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I mean, why not both?

I feel faeries are as much SCH's niche as their former debuffs. Micromanaging them mid cast to try to maximise your efficiency to patch the fact SCH's healing potency was low for me was very much a part of what Scholar was to play, you could AI, sure, but micromanaging was pretty important for efficiency because AI couldn't maximise your potential here. Other jobs don't have and didn't have that kind of micromanagement, but now it feels less important because they're treated more like oGCD's.

Granted these are 2 things that are now lost. But one of my suggestions was to integrate some debuffs into Selene instead and make her more of a utility faerie, as she was intended to be but instead of deleting her, give her more uses. Heck Selene's version of Seraph could be different and themed around it (I suggested 'Libra' in the post I said this in for a system about finding and exploiting weaknesses).

And like Selene, I feel like instead of deleting, they could have improved the debuffs instead.

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The thing is, given how healing is designed in this game and how often healing downtime occurs, micromanaging a healing fairy while spamming broil and biolysis would essentially be as boring as what we do now. If anything it's exactly what we do now.

Debuff management could fill up those moments with more interesting mechanics especially if revealed debuffs were random (or enemy type dependant) and we had to adapt our damage around it to maximize our potential. Sort of how FFXI SCH used to work but adapted to FFXIV's rigid system.

I agree the fairy could share part of those mechanics, but I'd rather not have to chose between two fairies if that were the case. Leave the healing to the fairy while the SCH focuses on mitigation and debuffing.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

The thing is, given how healing is designed in this game and how often healing downtime occurs, micromanaging a healing fairy while spamming broil and biolysis would essentially be as boring as what we do now. If anything it's exactly what we do now.

Debuff management could fill up those moments with more interesting mechanics especially if revealed debuffs were random (or enemy type dependant) and we had to adapt our damage around it to maximize our potential. Sort of how FFXI SCH used to work but adapted to FFXIV's rigid system.

I agree the fairy could share part of those mechanics, but I'd rather not have to chose between two fairies if that were the case. Leave the healing to the fairy while the SCH focuses on mitigation and debuffing.

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It is boring now, yes. But it didn't used to be. Faerie micromanagement was rewarding because of the handicap Scholar used to have, which is long gone. My suggestions in a way bring some of that handicap back at will as a trade off for other uses.

And sacrificing healing potential for utility was the whole point behind choosing between Eos and Selene. It was also a mark that you were healing competently because you didn't need the extra heals from Eos.

But one thing we love complaining about is how much downtime we get. By reducing our healing potential on demand we can also reduce our downtime at will, bear in mind too once the debuffs are all applied, we're going back to single spell rotations. So to me, doing it this way works twofold. Arguably, if you have the downtime, you don't really need Eos's heals, you already have oGCD's to weave for a start.

But I don't think killing faerie healing potential is enough for many cases, so I also took it one step further with my suggestions to make it so Deployment and Emergency Tactics could be applied to DPS abilities with their own benefits (so you might trade in that healing potential in for DPS potential instead) and the Selene version of Fey Union would be tethered to an enemy as a DoT rather than to an ally as a HoT. Fey Blessing would have its own Selene specific version too.

So in effect, we could have a system that: allows us to reduce our healing downtime without raising the skill floor, it gives us more to do in that downtime, it makes faerie choice mean something again (whilst respecting its original purpose) and a Scholar can be tactical in how they enhance their skills with their self buffs and not just with their faerie choice and they get debuffs back. They could do all this and SE would not have to worry about a complex DPS rotation that's harder to balance against other healers.

But I think the out come would be a Scholar that is adaptable to the situation, which I would argue is at its core, Scholar's thing. 2.0 Scholar felt more adaptable than it is today and the whole thing about FFXI SCH was that it was incredibly adaptable, which is why it was so complex, but their theme is that they are strategic mages in both games. It feels more strategic for your choices to have benefits and downfalls, you sacrifice one thing for the benefit of another. And that's exactly what FFXI Scholar was, from having been a Scholar main there too. And I liked that's what faeries used to be and also what Cleric Stance used to be (like swapping from Light Arts to Dark Arts and applying addendum...just without all of the extra complexity FFXI SCH has).

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Originally Posted by DJMau

So you want healers to have to worry about a DPS rotation on top of being responsible for keeping the party alive? Making one of the most stressful roles in a party into one of the most complex to play at a baseline level would not be a good idea design wise.

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Healing in FFXIV is majority DPS downtime.

As to the topic at hand, a return to the more classical style of Scholar is evidently in order. And healers in general, does anyone remember heavensward when Scholar had about seven? Six dots? And also unique utility that could debuff bosses or buff other party members like virus? SE had it right at one point. They just need to push the wheel -back-.

On top of that, a proper DPS rotation for AST (and disable back) would be nice and I want aero 3 back on WHM.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

The thing is, given how healing is designed in this game and how often healing downtime occurs, micromanaging a healing fairy while spamming broil and biolysis would essentially be as boring as what we do now. If anything it's exactly what we do now.

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I find it more worth to look at how the fights and jobs are, what's been constant are the fights, what's changed is what we have available at any moment on the jobs. And it's true, giving back manual embrace and increase it's potency would mean maybe more Broils. But thats because that is just one little thing. Like how Energy Drain was a little thing. And how Miasma 2 was a little thing. But both meant a lot in the grand scheme of playing.

Scholar was a little universe of little things and I couldn't give you one single thing that made or broke the job, only that in it's current form have instead a little group of big things that won't be of much use when healing isn't needed. As almost every change with 4.0 and beyond, we've seen them pick at SCH to reveal the healer beneath, removing pieces by pieces, replacing with cooldowns in the form of Excog, Fey Blessing, Seraph and Sacred Soil after the trait. Cooldowns are powerful, but leaves us with less in the moment to moment decisions after the cooldown is on cooldown.

A debuff management system would be cool something that expanded on what we had in form of Malady, Heavy, Slow, Blind, Virus, E4E, Silence. Idea thats been floating here is stratagmens or plans combo system you mix and match with to produce a debuff or attack.

If the fairies stayed as they were: One healing one support, it wouldn't be more a problem than just settle for Eos to help out healing. This is something can could be reasonably expanded to aswell, not just healing/support but also give various effects to existing skills to expand our repetoire depending if we have our Sun or Moon out without increasing the amount of buttons.

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Originally Posted by Videra

Healing in FFXIV is majority DPS downtime.

As to the topic at hand, a return to the more classical style of Scholar is evidently in order. And healers in general, does anyone remember heavensward when Scholar had about seven? Six dots? And also unique utility that could debuff bosses or buff other party members like virus? SE had it right at one point. They just need to push the wheel -back-.

On top of that, a proper DPS rotation for AST (and disable back) would be nice and I want aero 3 back on WHM.

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SE scans - beep ... fun detected .... beep .. action - terminate -

Those days will never come back:/

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Originally Posted by testname

SE scans - beep ... fun detected .... beep .. action - terminate -

Those days will never come back:/

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I know it's obvious my bias is towards Scholar, but I -want my six dots back dammit-.

I've mained WHM since the game was out in 2013, and i have to admit that DPS has never been more boring than it currently is.
I mean, it was already bland as you like before, but at least we had two DoTs. Now, we only have one ...

Now, i have to say that i find the healing part really fun, so i would hate to lose some of that just to get back a bit of fun on the DPS side. I just think WHM should at least get back their second DoT. There was literally no reason to remove it.

Ultimately, i do think that this is only relevant to solo content and 4-men dungeons.
As soon as you're in an 8-men party, there's almost always enough healing/rezzing to do to keep you somehow busy.

In order for SCH to realistically get more offensive abilities, WHM and AST also need to. Otherwise it just makes SCH the defacto OP healer.

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Originally Posted by deadman1204

In order for SCH to realistically get more offensive abilities, WHM and AST also need to. Otherwise it just makes SCH the defacto OP healer.

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You can increase DPS options without increasing damage. They could literally split Bio's damage in half and put the other half on another dot. Easy, now you have more to do AND your DPS is relatively the same.

That's not to say I'm against the other healers getting more damage options, but the idea of "you can't have more DPS buttons without having more DPS" is dumb.

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Originally Posted by deadman1204

In order for SCH to realistically get more offensive abilities, WHM and AST also need to. Otherwise it just makes SCH the defacto OP healer.

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And I'm all for WHM and AST to get more. I like to think we're all in the same boat here. WHM lost DPS moves and whilst they've gained one in their losses, it's used very infrequently and they have had their DPS nerfed many times and AST had their card system stripped down to feel less impactful and less varied.

We can’t deny that the healers are boring as hell. The healer are as close as ever with dmg and effectiveness, we saw that in this world race that all healer combos can do kill the fight. No massive need for sch. Whm/astro did the world first with red mage as caster.

Healers have always been in this awkward spot.

Primarily due to how encounters work alongside the throughput on oGCD healing skills. I.e. Since outside of leveling dungeons where people can pull 5-10 packs of trash at a time, damage output from enemies comes in the form of periodic, telegraphed bursts. To which, a simple oGCD will fully counter.

This leads to the Healer gameplay being 99% DPS and 1% press an oGCD button.

But in order to stop the meta being 2 tanks and 6 healers, green DPS get crap damage numbers on their offensive skills. Leaving healers with a boring af rotation, which kills really slowly in any kind of solo content (Such as MSQ... Though at least MSQ required enemies are often like 40% squishier than overworld enemies of equal level)

The answer to this particular conundrum is not very straightforward either, since each potential avenue has its own drawbacks. For example:

Increasing sustained damage output to require more healing on tanks outside of Tank/Raidbusters simply causes healers to spam 2222222 instead of 1111111 where 2 is your weak heal GCD instead of your filler damage skill.

Increasing the complexity of healer damage rotations can have adverse effects in difficult content, where they have to deal with mechanics AND watch out for allies who might mess up and need healing.

Shifting healer damage towards party damage buffs that use GCD's to maintain, continues to make solo content as a healer feel like absolute trash.

Honestly, at best, I can maybe think something like increasing the sustained damage from enemies, in combination with mechanics similar to WHM's Blood Lily, whereby comboing together healing skills can allow healers to perform some nice damage skill(s), perhaps also with the reverse too having offensive skills combo together to access some nice utility/healing skills (Such as getting a thicc shield to apply, or an extra long Regen). Allowing for some small manner of complexity and DPS increase without going overrboard.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

Healers have always been in this awkward spot.

Primarily due to how encounters work alongside the throughput on oGCD healing skills. I.e. Since outside of leveling dungeons where people can pull 5-10 packs of trash at a time, damage output from enemies comes in the form of periodic, telegraphed bursts. To which, a simple oGCD will fully counter.


Increasing the complexity of healer damage rotations can have adverse effects in difficult content, where they have to deal with mechanics AND watch out for allies who might mess up and need healing.

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Also, messing up in this game more often than not leads up to being 1 shoted. So essentially you don't get to fix mistakes by healing. The only thing you can "fix", if you can call it that, is unavoidable damage which happens very rarely.

Heavy healing in this game will not allow players to stand in the red and maximize their dps. You must follow mechanics or die.
There is no benefit to "healing more" . You must heal just enough and then be idle if you intent to "only heal".

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Also, messing up in this game more often than not leads up to being 1 shoted. So essentially you don't get to fix mistakes by healing. The only thing you can "fix", if you can call it that, is unavoidable damage which happens very rarely.

Heavy healing in this game will not allow players to stand in the red and maximize their dps. You must follow mechanics or die.
There is no benefit to "healing more" . You must heal just enough and then be idle if you intent to "only heal".

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Too right, it was first when SE went overboard with divorcing Arcanist from SCH the veil was lifted and I saw that every fight was simply move our of red markers, this is unavoidable damage and sometimes stand here or you all wipe. It's what's put me off doing Extreme or above with anyone but friends because I just don't find them fun otherwise: Like in Hades Extreme: One DPS stands slightly off and gives the tank the debuff during meteors and you all wipe. There are several others where you don't immediately wipe, like if a dps dies, then we are blessed from wearing out our Broil III key and can throw a ress. Hooray. But then we don't meet the dps requirement, hit enrage and just wipe two minutes later.

I haven't counted but when I knew I everyone else knew the fight I found I didn't even have to heal after the second shadowspread: Everyone dodges the second, the double spikes and the tank just Hallows the double tankbuster. That was close to minute with nothing for me to do until Nabriales shows up. A full minute just pressing Broil III and refreshing Biolysis. Nothing that needed healing, no debuffs to apply, buffs to help out, no tea party with Lily while we waited. If it wasn't prevelant before, these fights now just seems to have healer for rudimentary traditional reasons. Even if we manage to save a dps who got overconfident they either die again because of vuln or the debuffs makes their damage so low not even all the Broils in the world will make us clear.

This is the kind of fights that would better served with a no-job roles system: Where everyone is their own dps, tank, healer, debuffer, buffer and so on. But they insist on having two spots for jobs with green icons, yet refuse to give them anything meaningful beyond straight healing cooldowns. Just imagine what could've been if AST and WHM had had the same attention to their groundwork and had a dps class' shoulders to stand on like Scholar had.

And then imagined if SE had put the same kind of effort to have a maserfully crafted learning curve and quests that gradually introcuded you to the class and job's new skills with trainers talking about it's lore, demonstrated it and then you had to put it to use in a quest that with the same amount of enthusiasm they show about tweaking numbers in <skill_potency.xml>

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Originally Posted by Mortex

We can’t deny that the healers are boring as hell.

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I didn't know all of you were part of some hive mind. I guess I'm 7 of 9. Still connected, still need my regeneration pod, but I've learned to think for myself and have my own likes, dislikes and opinions.

I am always gonna clash with you healers here. I just do not think the way of you do.

Since it's something of an uncommon perspective on these forums and if you don't mind me asking...
Those of you who enjoy about the current iteration and direction of healing in FFXIV, what do enjoy about it? Do you simply enjoy it as is, or was there something you didn't enjoy in the past that changed with this expansion?

We've had plenty of space to lay out the thoughts of those that aren't satisfied, so I'd like to see more specific answers from those who do enjoy it.

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Originally Posted by Synaesthesia

I agree. Doesn't anyone remember Stormblood, when Scholar was statistically unable to clear even simple dungeons because they'd get hung up on the rotation and go into a trance? I remember.

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Also this post from page 1 is such a "Lmao what" thing to read. SCH trivialized dungeons in stormblood while doing significantly more DPS than other healers. Just pointing this weirdness out.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

I didn't know all of you were part of some hive mind. I guess I'm 7 of 9. Still connected, still need my regeneration pod, but I've learned to think for myself and have my own likes, dislikes and opinions.

I am always gonna clash with you healers here. I just do not think the way of you do.

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For most of us here, I think we've not had an issue with people who like the current iteration of healers. I don't think there has to be a clash, clash only exists when people take the "my way or highway" attitude and not believe in compromise.

But arguably a middle ground should be found, because we have people who get something different from the healing experience and what you may like about it is perfectly valid...and this is where I'd have thought multiple healing jobs would tailor to that. EG. what you might like about WHM & current healer design could have been made into a 4th healer like Devout (a Sharlayan themed healer like Krile) whilst WHM remains closer to its original design.

And the thing that people are asking for most is a middle ground to the current healer design. Fill our downtime, preferably with DPS rotations. It's not drastic, it's what we've had before and will not mean a heavier DPS focus (as focus is based on how much you're having to heal and not how many DPS skills you have). Healing and encounter design would remain exactly the same.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

And the thing that people are asking for most is a middle ground to the current healer design. Fill our downtime, preferably with DPS rotations. It's not drastic, it's what we've had before and will not mean a heavier DPS focus (as focus is based on how much you're having to heal and not how many DPS skills you have). Healing and encounter design would remain exactly the same.

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This is where devs were really kinda off-base in their thinking. If they wanted healers to heal more, the CONTENT needed its core design changed. Instead, they took DPS tools from healers and didn't fundamentally change the need for healing.

If they had created or revamped content to require more healing, the number of DPS tools could've stayed exactly the same --- players simply would have been using them less. (And after players had geared up and learned boss fights, they'd have healed a little less and still had something interesting to fill the time.)

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

This is where devs were really kinda off-base in their thinking. If they wanted healers to heal more, the CONTENT needed its core design changed. Instead, they took DPS tools from healers and didn't fundamentally change the need for healing.

If they had created or revamped content to require more healing, the number of DPS tools could've stayed exactly the same --- players simply would have been using them less. (And after players had geared up and learned boss fights, they'd have healed a little less and still had something interesting to fill the time.)

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Yep. I feel like I have more of a DPS focus than I've ever had in this game. Partly down to gradual improvements as a healer and getting more and more experienced and also in that healing is easier than it has ever been because we have more tools at our disposal to handle it. The latter I don't mind so much as it can make them more accessible to newer, less confident and less experienced healers and just have content that pushes us on the higher end to push our full use of kit. Then give us something else for the rest of us, reward good healing with having more to do.