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

Skilled healers can heal without using gcds while spamming dps and this gets spammed all over as THE way to play healer. Unskilled healers see this and spam their dps skills without realizing they need to at least be using ogcd heals appropriately leading to lots of unneeded deaths. SE attempts to rectify the issue by making dps easier to do by simplifying it and having more ogcds. Literally the exact same thing happened to tanks from HW to SB with the whole dropping tank stance thing. You ended up having a lot of new or bad tanks losing agro nonstop until SE steps in and kills aggro management. Really, if you think about any of the weird or annoying class decisions they've made since HW, almost all of them stem from people screeching about optimization.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atma

You both know damn well I meant 'that is the role that all of their class abilities are structured around' and also that I'm even being generous giving a number like 8 for how many active abilities that would leave them with. We can have this discussion without resorting to silly things like "what if they reduced all DPS classes to one button, imagine the uproar!"

---

I'm not trying to be facetious with my point, sorry if it came across that way.

Rather I'm trying to make it very clear that there is a fundamental disconnect between the game that the class designers seem to think that we play vs how just about any content in the game actually ends up panning out and the divide has gotten progressively wider with each and every expansion post Heavensward.

We spend the majority of our time in content either standing around doing nothing or DPSing, it took how many expansions before the MSQ would even acknowledge that we could heal? The role has been neglected and underdeveloped pretty much from SB onwards and it's really starting to show now. The class team clearly aren't incompetent, 6.1 Lilies are spot on now and some recent abilities like Macrocosmos have been excellent additions. They just need to learn from these successes and build on them. Tightly integrated synergistic abilities that reward careful use are the way forward, not another round of 30 second ogcd aoe heals for all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raikai

But it would be worse than the status quo? Healing literally can't get more easy as it is. I feel that the easiest way to appeal to both audiences is to just increase dps actions or side activities (like the role cards have for AST) for healers and leave healing as it is, because this way the skill ceiling rises, while the skill floor - which is the healer not letting the party die - remains.

---

Yes, adding dps skills or side activities would be helpful. But it turns the healer role into more of a support dps role. Which is fine. Personally I would prefer to be a good healer for my healing, but I know that would take major changes of the whole system.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

Really, if you think about any of the weird or annoying class decisions they've made since HW, almost all of them stem from people screeching about optimization.

---

Changes to ASTs cards (as an example) likely stem from their desire to simplify calculations that they go into when designing their encounters, to make them as streamlined and predictable, for the purpose of their testing and design, as possible. Or, in other words, to reduce "damage variance." This is supported by other decisions that were also made to reduce "damage variance" (which is likely most of the design choices made to this day).

Who cares about "damage variance" except those people who are seeking optimization?
And who's designing classes in such a way as to reduce "damage variance" based on skill expression, and shifting as much of that variance onto skill uptime as possible?
In other words, this fixation on optimization begins with Squeen.

I do not care about "who is at fault", i care about Yoshidas ignorance and copy cat behavior of WoW mistakes. Healer should get DPS rotation or the battle design needs to change. We dont need more Beginner healer we need quality. Sorry but i see so many WHM or even SGE just spamming their base healing like no tomorrow. I hope thats not SE vision of a player base.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sebazy

Tightly integrated synergistic abilities that reward careful use are the way forward, not another round of 30 second ogcd aoe heals for all.

---

That's one of my major gripes with the current lily system. They don't reward careful use. They reward just blowing them whenever, carefully or not. Overheal? Doesn't matter. Blowing healing resources during downtime for more damage? Yep, then you're DPS positive instead of neutral. They reward playing WHM like a brainless heal ogre just waving their healing club wherever. The biggest reward in the system comes from using the lilies to blow heals on people during boss downtime, when you don't even need their supposed primary effects.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atma

You both know damn well I meant 'that is the role that all of their class abilities are structured around' and also that I'm even being generous giving a number like 8 for how many active abilities that would leave them with. We can have this discussion without resorting to silly things like "what if they reduced all DPS classes to one button, imagine the uproar!"



I know, I was making this argument for about 6 pages of the thread. I fully understand why and how healing is broken in this game, (next to) all of the damage is scripted beats that you press an OGCD to deal with. It's crap design. My position is that them changing the situation regarding DPS will result in them never addressing the fundamental problems with the design and thus, the situation will never improve. It's just kicking the can down the road.

It's just easier for people to assume I'm a simpleton that can only handle a single button for DPS (despite clearly having multiple DPS classes levelled to cap) than accept the fact that I'm on their side but I want the core problem fixed first and not to give them and easy out to hang up a "mission accomplished" banner in the office and call it a day for another two xpacs.

---

And my entire disagreement with you boils down to the ridiculous notion that poorly-designed healing gameplay is "the REAL" problem with healers. It's not. It's *a* problem, and deserves addressing. The lack of outgoing damage, the noninteractive kits, the overabundance of resources, the redundancy, those are all problems. If you waved a wand and fixed them tomorrow, the healing role would be less badly designed.

But they would still be badly designed.

Downtime is your reward for healing well. Efficiently. Intelligently. It's the place you get the endorphin rush for a job well done. It's logically impossible to remove it, or even minimize it to "a few GCDs at maximum". Healers are currently rewarded for mastering a preschooler's block puzzle game with pig slop flavorless gruel. I absolutely want more than a baby toy to solve. I also want more than an insulting slap in the face as a reward for that mastery.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Frodnoxx

Personally I would prefer to be a good healer for my healing, but I know that would take major changes of the whole system.

---

That's my take too, but I try to be as realistic as possible. They would have to retroactively change everything in the game, from dungeons to raids, and that's a lot to take on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Semirhage

And my entire disagreement with you boils down to the ridiculous notion that poorly-designed healing gameplay is "the REAL" problem with healers. It's not. It's *a* problem, and deserves addressing. The lack of outgoing damage, the noninteractive kits, the overabundance of resources, the redundancy, those are all problems. If you waved a wand and fixed them tomorrow, the healing role would be less badly designed.

But they would still be badly designed.

Downtime is your reward for healing well. (...).

---

I honestly cannot even understand your position. The way healing works in this game practically guarantees that "endorphin rush" you (and I) so desperately crave cannot exist in the present design. It's impossible. You know well in advance when you're going to need to press some buttons and 90%+ of the time it's an OGCD so you're never interrupted. Downtime isn't a 'reward for healing well or efficiently", it's the normal state. There is *no way* for you to get what is sought without them substantively changing how things work.

I want every encounter to be like the 3am 'WOD savage' I had a week ago when I was up with insomnia queuing for random crap, where it's half an alliance of sprouts so the damage is absolutely flying because they're hitting everything they don't need to, blowing everything I had available to me at the time, and find those exact pockets of 'endorphin rush' DPS time where the whole world feels like "Yeah look at me, I'm keeping all your butts alive through this and STILL DPSing." I get it, ok?

Listen. You're trying to replace the endorphin rush we should be getting from healing well with one you'd get from DPSing well. And if that's what you want and you're willing to settle for that, fine. I can't argue against a personal preference, even if that preference is to perpetuate the cycle that leaves us as trash-tier DPS that keeps the party alive with cooldowns.

But understand if they do that first, you can kiss any notion of ever routinely feeling that endorphin rush goodbye. It will be lost to you forever. Because if they give you this, I assure you they will never address the problems with how healing works in this game.

People are convinced I am opposed to healers ever getting more DPS buttons, I'm just. not. Everyone thinks I'm worried that the minute I'm gonna have to press another button I'm just going to wither and die when it's clearly just a silly position given I do it *all the time* within my group of people when others want to play healer as well.

If you feel like the fight's truly lost, then we can just continue the slow decline trajectory we're on and have been on for 3 expansions into becoming nothing more than second rate DPS classes with healing cooldowns, sitting around hoping we queue into random content with new players and screw-ups just so they get hit by stuff.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atma

snip

---

I'm a former WHM main. That fight is absolutely lost, at least as far as I'm concerned. The development team and at least half the healing community see WHM mains as airheaded bimbos incapable of handling more than two braincells worth of complexity, and (even more obnoxiously) that it's the way things are supposed to be. Adding complexity of any sort to WHM is badwrongevil, and would be distressing to all of the window-lickers who like playing it. Even in the unlikely event that they fix the entire rest of the role, I constantly run into the opinion that WHM being the crayon-eating drooling healer for babies who are too slow to handle anything vaguely interactive in their healing kits or anything more braincell-heating than 1111111111 is the beautiful destiny WHM was always meant to inhabit, and the only issue with the healer role is that the GOOD healers for smart people like SCH and AST aren't overpowered polymaths of superior engagement, strength, utility, and capability that -they- were always destined to be.

If they fixed healing for the rest of the healers, they'd just make Medica 2 have a million potency so Jethro the WHM healing monkey can keep licking the Medica 2 button through content, because everyone's convinced that at least one healer NEEDS to play as horrifically as current healers do for god knows what reason.

Quote:

---

Listen. You're trying to replace the endorphin rush we should be getting from healing well with one you'd get from DPSing well.

---

My personal preference is against an attrition healing model. I know a lot of people like attrition healing MMOs, and I'm not one of them. I'd be fine with the approximate amount of healing we had to do in Heavensward: you can't just do all of it with free instant cooldowns, but you still get a generous (50%+) amount of downtime if you're good at it. That downtime doesn't necessarily have to be DPS. It can be buffing or debuffing too. I don't think the endorphin rush "should" be from healing. I like playing support jobs. My rush comes from doing my job efficiently, and my job is assisting the party. Healing is only fun as much as I can minimize it. Again, I don't like attrition healing models. I don't get my fun from spamming cure spells. I get my fun from being useful and having a challenge in that being useful.

At the very least, healer DPS used to be more complex. Not much more, it's true. But there's some history there. The healing kits have never been complex in this game. Squeenix has never shown us anything more engaging than disconnected boring Cure spells and free instant oGCDs. I'd love to see more there, but the track record is even worse with the healing kits than it is with the damage ones. It was just less obvious because the split between the two kits was more even, so there wasn't as much time to feel bored with half the kit.

I think most ppl share the sentiment that the healers have good healing skills but in 90% of content, its redundant and you can mostly get away with just a aoe regen and the occasional ogcd aoe heal. Only in Savage and Ultimate will you see their full tool kit being used. A lot of strong tools but no opportunity to use it.

It's really a compounded issue. Making every tank like WAR with the self heals, everything outside of savage/ult hitting like a wet noodle, no more boss auto crits, pre-determined heal checks in savage instead of consistent raid damage, etc. Ultimately I think Yoshi P achieved the desired result of making the healers job easier, albeit reducing them to a single button dps spam.

The only way to make healers interesting is to give them "chores" while healing and dpsing. AST and SCH prior to ShB were good examples of this. AST had RR and SCH had faerie shenanigans. WHM didn't really have much but tbh there should be a minimum of one job in each role that exemplifies a "vanilla" design. Needless to say, I'm not happy with how the tanks turned out either and I'm just curious to see where they will go (though I know where they should go but I doubt they will do it) before I decide to end my sub.

It was a good run but these changes to healers and tanks make me realize this game is no longer for me anymore. I value gameplay above all in a video game and SB was the last time I got that feeling from all 3 roles.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Semirhage

I'm a former WHM main. That fight is absolutely lost, at least as far as I'm concerned. The development team and at least half the healing community see WHM mains as airheaded bimbos incapable of handling more than two braincells worth of complexity, and (even more obnoxiously) that it's the way things are supposed to be. Adding complexity of any sort to WHM is badwrongevil, and would be distressing to all of the window-lickers who like playing it. Even in the unlikely event that they fix the entire rest of the role, I constantly run into the opinion that WHM being the crayon-eating drooling healer for babies who are too slow to handle anything vaguely interactive in their healing kits or anything more braincell-heating than 1111111111 is the beautiful destiny WHM was always meant to inhabit, and the only issue with the healer role is that the GOOD healers for smart people like SCH and AST aren't overpowered polymaths of superior engagement, strength, utility, and capability that -they- were always destined to be.

If they fixed healing for the rest of the healers, they'd just make Medica 2 have a million potency so Jethro the WHM healing monkey can keep licking the Medica 2 button through content, because everyone's convinced that at least one healer NEEDS to play as horrifically as current healers do for god knows what reason.

---

Ok, this absolutely almost made me crack up on my work conference call, well played. For the record, It is a shame that WHM continues to inhabit that place in the design philosophy and they have to keep treating it like babby's first healing class, on that topic we 100% agree. I love the flavor of WHM (though as mentioned I'd have preferred if lore-wise they stuck with the elemental roots as others) but yeah, just making it "MOAR POTENCY EVERYWHEEERE" is so bad.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atma

I want every encounter to be like the 3am 'WOD savage' I had a week ago when I was up with insomnia queuing for random crap, where it's half an alliance of sprouts so the damage is absolutely flying because they're hitting everything they don't need to, blowing everything I had available to me at the time, and find those exact pockets of 'endorphin rush' DPS time where the whole world feels like "Yeah look at me, I'm keeping all your butts alive through this and STILL DPSing." I get it, ok?

---

Unfortunately, with the way the game as a whole is designed, this might be impossible. It is important to me that the easier content is fun, whether I play with good players or bad. I just can't see the above situation happening with good players in content considered easy.

I've been meditating on this thought experiment for awhile. "A healer clears a trial with zero deaths. What joy is there for the better healer, assuming nothing else changes?" Or in other words, is there fun to be found in overachieving?

The reason I love day 1 runs of easier content is that no one knows what to expect, and skill in this game is about 50% knowledge checks. So overachieving is all but impossible, and things are actually dangerous.

Danger. Chaos. If you don't go down the combat medic route, this is where the fun in healing lies. Your WoD run was chaotic and unpredictable, I'm sure you would agree. And that is fun. But can you get that in a group of good players, while not gatekeeping the lesser ones? Only a small percentage of content actively limits you, and it's harder to get the gear that helps your attempts to overachieve if you abstain from the casual stuff.

As it stands, the game is designed such that I was punished for helping my friends farm Titania back in 5.2. "Farm" parties and "Trap" parties. Perhaps the playerbase as a whole wants consistency and rejects excess chaos, even though that is what is required for exciting healing.

I don't know, this was just a ramble. I just want to have fun on WHM or SGE when I help my friends, whether it is to clear or to farm stuff. I don't want to be punished because my party is too skilled.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Irenia

Unfortunately, with the way the game as a whole is designed, this might be impossible. It is important to me that the easier content is fun, whether I play with good players or bad. I just can't see the above situation happening with good players in content considered easy.

---

You're right, it can't in the current design. Fight knowledge allows you to avoid or drastically reduce a large amount of damage in this game.

Quote:

---

And that is fun. But can you get that in a group of good players, while not gatekeeping the lesser ones?

---

I think you can, yes. The key is more damage flowing, and much more randomly, but also lesser amounts in one go. We have to get away, to an extent, from these heavily scripted entire room unavoidable AOEs that nuke 50-60% of player HP being the norm, and replace them with things that do more like 20-25% but are in the midst of 5-10%'s here or there, spread randomly amongst the party, some non-tank targets, etc. More damage on the whole, but more inconsistent, and spread over a longer period of time. That still gives people some time to react, but if you continually make poor decisions people will die. Will healers, in general, need to get better. Yes, absolutely. But not to the level, necessarily, of gatekeeping.

Quote:

---

As it stands, the game is designed such that I was punished for helping my friends farm Titania back in 5.2. "Farm" parties and "Trap" parties. Perhaps the playerbase as a whole wants consistency and rejects excess chaos, even though that is what is required for exciting healing.

---

The game places far too much emphasis right now on fight knowledge. Every fight is developed as basically a delicate ballet of moving through the mechanics. Now inherently, there's not anything wrong with that and I don't even necessarily want that to change. The fundamental issue, in my eyes, is simply how the damage is spread (and the volume of it) while executing on that. I think in that situation you described, what the players 'want' is just easy clears and minimal effort to do it. I think there's a difference between exciting healing and engaging healing. Healing should 100% be engaging, it doesn't have to be 'exciting' every single moment. DPSing isn't exciting every single moment, tanking isn't exciting every single moment - but both are at least engaging. Healing well... isn't.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

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

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by QooEr

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

---

Early Savage definitely needs GCD heals. And you're exaggerating if you say you don't need GCD heals at all in Ultimate.
Even in Savage, you need optimised mitigation to not do GCD heals.
It's your reward for doing all the work perfectly. Or do you still want to be forced to use GCD even when you're having a perfect run?

And is a perfect run a good representative of all fights in general?
What about the non-top-5%? Do you want all these fights to do so much damage that even intermediate healers can't catch up?
I smell elitism here.

In 2.x healers actually needed to use GCD heals a lot. With Cleric Stance and accuracy stat a lot of healers didn't even participate much in dealing damage.
And most people hated it.
That's why they changed the direction and nowadays GCD heals serve more as a crutch when you're out of free tools, in case someone dies or people don't pop mitigation properly.

Are you actually asking SE to crawl back to the state where people actually demanded to move out of?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sebazy

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

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

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

In reality I used:

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

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

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

---

Were you wearing Min IL stuff when you took this log? Do you remember if you used GCDs in your first clear when you were still at IL580?
It'll be laughable if you're wearing IL600 and say healing is too easy because things are actually balanced around Min IL.
Don't make weekly repeats more difficult than it should be. The challenge is only the first clear.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

If you're going to start down the road with a comparison to another game, I seriously doubt that healers in WOW have such a pitiful selection of DPS skills. I won't comment because I lasted only 2 weeks in WOW.

Regarding 1- there could be multiple reasons, there has been discussion of updating the hall of the novice - I would recommend that. Or, those people could start out with trusts. Otherwise healing in this game shouldn't intimidate anyone. for some of those people it's just not the right fit for them - so - do something else? There are 16 other jobs- pick one..

Regarding 2 - I don't see SE has making dramatic changes to damage, however I really do think that various debuffs and some occasional heal check should be put in. If player do die then so what? Unlike some other games, the bosses here don't vanish. You raise someone and then keep going. If the whole party wipes, you lose a few minutes (again, more difficult content is an exception to this). I want to get away from a role being so utterly superfluous that people start to think that it's fine to leave them out, or leave half the party dead on the floor to finish a boss. It's not.

Regarding 3- from what I've heard, there are ways to get around this so that it's manageable.

---

In wow, healers aren't expected to DPS outside like, higher end keystones and *maybe* mythic raids. The damage output is consistent enough that there's not downtime, and you WANT everyone to be at 100% HP because the raidwides can and will kill you if you're not.

Healing with a controller isn't too bad, spot healing isn't hard. Just scrolling through players is annoying more than anything.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TakumiHarada

Were you wearing Min IL stuff when you took this log? Do you remember if you used GCDs in your first clear when you were still at IL580?
It'll be laughable if you're wearing IL600 and say healing is too easy because things are actually balanced around Min IL.
Don't make weekly repeats more difficult than it should be. The challenge is only the first clear.

---

I had my first clear of P1S as an AST in my static back in January, about few hours before the first weekly reset happens since the raid was first implemented. Meaning i600 was out of reach at that moment for us. It was an encounter of 09:35 duration.

The bulk of healing from my side was largely handled by the 2 Macro, 9 Earthly Stars, 5 Collectives, 6 Oppositions, and 3 timely Lady of Crowns. To handle the oopsies and helping tankbusters, I threw out a total of 5 Essential Dignities, 4 Intercession, and 4 Exaltations. GCD heals? Yeah, I did used them a total of... 3 (Three) Aspected Helioses out of 219 casted GCDs in the span of entire encounter. The majority of my overheal's culprit stems from the healing over time ticks when party's mostly at full health.

At this point one may brought up the question: "But what about your co-healer?
My cohealer was a SGE. The bulk of healing coming from their side stems from their 24 use of E.Prognosis, Kerachole regen ticks, 11 Ixocholes, 4 Panhaima(niton), and 5 Physis II. Before one may think "Hold up! That's a lot of GCD needed, isn't it?!", I'll have them know that at the moment of upload they are ranked in #95 percentile in HPS with majority of overheals stems from their direct heals, in addition to Kardion constant regen (with 0 use of Soteria), & untimely 4 uses of Pneuma (with 0 use of Zoe). They were a WHM main coming from ShB wanting to give SGE a try for this tier, but that's beside the point. Any decent healers knows that such magnitude of healing is not needed to answer the required HPS of that encounter. And this is my co-healer, who was still probing about and learning their new toy.

So no, the challenge (if there's any at all from fighting a boss that is widely considered as an attacking striking dummy) most definitely not coming from the healing portion.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TakumiHarada

Were you wearing Min IL stuff when you took this log? Do you remember if you used GCDs in your first clear when you were still at IL580?
It'll be laughable if you're wearing IL600 and say healing is too easy because things are actually balanced around Min IL.
Don't make weekly repeats more difficult than it should be. The challenge is only the first clear.

---

My first weeks were on AST and uh, I'm a pretty crummy AST at that, wasted oGCDs were more on me dropping the ball and reverting to type than any fault of the encounter so a direct comparison with that wouldn't really work beyond highlighting that I'm not great ;)

IL inflation is an important detail that gets overlooked though, although I'm inclined to say it has more of a negative effect on casual content than the likes of P1S. I'm pretty sure I was BiS by the time I did the run in the log mentioned, but I was quite happily passing on everything up until that point because not once in this tier did I find myself actually needing more healing as AST (In part thanks to Macrocosmos on P3S I'll note). The lack of regen uptime is the best confirmation of that really.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TakumiHarada

Were you wearing Min IL stuff when you took this log? Do you remember if you used GCDs in your first clear when you were still at IL580?

---

I had a glance back and on my first P1s and P2s kills we had 3 GCD heals total each fight between both healers. P3s was about 6-7 GCD's (any logs my group took are unlisted) and P4s admittedly had a few for Act4 and Curtain Call but nothing crazy.

Single digit GCD heals at 580 is next to nothing. And that's prog and first clears.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TakumiHarada

It's your reward for doing all the work perfectly. Or do you still want to be forced to use GCD even when you're having a perfect run?

---

It would be a reward if there was something engaging to do. Spamming 1 button is not a reward.

I still think people focus too much on the DPS rotation.
I think Healers should heal more, that's the primary concern of mine.
Tanks have too much self-healing and Healers rely too much on ogcd's and cd's, imo Healers should have to hardcast heals more.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I still think people focus too much on the DPS rotation.
I think Healers should heal more, that's the primary concern of mine.
Tanks have too much self-healing and Healers rely too much on ogcd's and cd's, imo Healers should have to hardcast heals more.

---

They’d have to massively pump up both tank damage and raid damage, there just isn’t close to enough damage going out to even justify one healers oGCD’s let alone both healers having the wealth of oGCD’s they do

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

They’d have to massively pump up both tank damage and raid damage,

---

Yes.


Or rework the kits and reduce the amount of ogcd heals.
My overall point tho is that yes I think the DPS rotations could be a bit more interesting, but in the end of the day I still want Healers to be well.
Healers xD...
I'd like more of an emphasis on healing it's a bigger priority for me, more buttons pressed should be healing imo.
I don't think the biggest fundamental issue with healing is the 1 1 1 1 spam it's lack of healing necessary.

Like I dunno but I think Tanks being able to solo dungeons or not needing any heals outside of Tank Busters if even that is a bigger problem.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TakumiHarada

Were you wearing Min IL stuff when you took this log? Do you remember if you used GCDs in your first clear when you were still at IL580?
It'll be laughable if you're wearing IL600 and say healing is too easy because things are actually balanced around Min IL.
Don't make weekly repeats more difficult than it should be. The challenge is only the first clear.

---

First clear p1s, 05/01, everyone 580, SGE/ WHM, 4 deaths and 15 damage down:
0 GCD from me
4 from my co heal with one 100% overheal

First clear p2s 09/01, everyone 580, SGE/ WHM, 7 deaths and 1 damage down:
2 GCD heals from me
0 GCD heals from my co heal

These are not clean runs, we were not overgeared by any means, it was months before the Lily change.
So what are healer supposed to do once they get their first clear which also doesn't force them to regularly dip into GCD heals? And don't you think it's poor design that healers only have fun for one clear during an entire tier (maybe)?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Yes.


Or rework the kits and reduce the amount of ogcd heals.
My overall point tho is that yes I think the DPS rotations could be a bit more interesting, but in the end of the day I still want Healers to be well.
Healers xD...
I'd like more of an emphasis on healing it's a bigger priority for me, more buttons pressed should be healing imo.
I don't think the biggest fundamental issue with healing is the 1 1 1 1 spam it's lack of healing necessary.

Like I dunno but I think Tanks being able to solo dungeons or not needing any heals outside of Tank Busters if even that is a bigger problem.

---

But it is.
Because you can't increase the amount of healing to a point where a decently accomplished healer (not elite top highend pro raider) will not spend signifcant amounts of time on 1111 without overwhelming a good part of the playerbase. You can't avoid downtime. Period. It's impossible, it will always be there and in FFXIV significantly more than in any other game because
1) our comps in DF are fixed by the game itself
2) our comps in PF are mostly fixed by game itself through invisible healer targetting mechanics
3) damage is scripted
4) healing is binary, damage is always useful and FFXIV is heavily dps focused
You can't ignore downtime. Boring downtime is a problem, you can't just increase healing and call it a day.
"Healers are healers so they should heal, just nerf their healing by 50% and suddenly they'll not be able to spam 1111, win!"
It probably aounds like the easiest solution, right? But if an average healer or even below average (and let's be honest: SE aims far lower than average with their design) has to be able to complete all mSQ content without signifcant issues, what is a healer to do that has more practice? Exactly, 111111.
And then there's still the elephant in the room that is Yosho-P's statement ...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I still think people focus too much on the DPS rotation.
I think Healers should heal more, that's the primary concern of mine.
Tanks have too much self-healing and Healers rely too much on ogcd's and cd's, imo Healers should have to hardcast heals more.

---

Can't have moderate healing requirements, healers would be stressed.
Can't have moderate dps abilities, healers would be stressed.

The FFXIV devs seem to think that healers are some delicate flower and conveniently forget that that we've killed literal Gods.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deceptus

Can't have moderate healing requirements, healers would be stressed.
Can't have moderate dps abilities, healers would be stressed.

The FFXIV devs seem to think that healers are some delicate flower and conveniently forget that that we've killed literal Gods.

---

Well I mean a good chunk of the playerbase hasn’t because they sit there an curebot the people actually doing the damage to kill these enemies

Square aims low but damn if the community doesn’t dive to meet those expectations more often than not

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I'd like more of an emphasis on healing it's a bigger priority for me, more buttons pressed should be healing imo.
I don't think the biggest fundamental issue with healing is the 1 1 1 1 spam it's lack of healing necessary.

---

It absolutely is the biggest fundamental issue with healers because a majority of all content in this game will never get an increase in healing because they want all MSQ content to be easily cleared and accessible. While I completely agree that Extreme, Savage, etc needs to require more healing and it would be nice if GCD heals were useful or even necessary even as we start gearing, the problem of this awful boredom will remain. Healing reqs should be increased, but DPS kits should be expanded by about 2-4 buttons (depending on jobs, I can't speak for all of them) too so all content is more entertaining on these jobs regardless of the difficulty.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I still think people focus too much on the DPS rotation.
I think Healers should heal more, that's the primary concern of mine.
Tanks have too much self-healing and Healers rely too much on ogcd's and cd's, imo Healers should have to hardcast heals more.

---

Amongst any games that I’ve played in the past, be it MMO or single player RPG, even the most quintessential healer character/build existing in those game has always have something to do other than just healing. They have wealth of buff, debuff, debilitating, resources management (MP and the party’s health bar), aggro management, and finally: damage in their arsenals. This, in other words: multi-tasking. SE axed out our utilities and damage buttons to gave us 1 button rotation in addition to overbloated, superfluous new healy buttons. Okay, fine. Now we need the opportunities to use those new buttons, and surely we're going to heal more right? Well turns out, big nope.

The reason why we seem to focus at damage rotation so much is because that’s really the only department that SE has allowed us to possess at current iteration of the green role. We are not allowed to have i.e. Virus, but hey let's give them to the DPSes in form of Addle/Feint instead, who apparently also have to do their rotation properly as well. No more buffs that forces us to think because that's a detriment to the healer's happiness of not getting stressed.

In addition to that, less experienced players exists. It's impossible to not alienate the lower end of spectrum should they raise the healing requirement drastically. Healing is binary and has always been. We have nothing else to do after we healed enough other than 1 button spam. One could even argue that our healing portions of arsenal are also boring because majority of them also functions the same, so pumping up the incoming damage frequency would only change our button press from Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare to Cure II Cure II Cure II Cure II Cure II Cure II. That doesn’t seem like any more interesting either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Yes.


Or rework the kits and reduce the amount of ogcd heals.
My overall point tho is that yes I think the DPS rotations could be a bit more interesting, but in the end of the day I still want Healers to be well.
Healers xD...
I'd like more of an emphasis on healing it's a bigger priority for me, more buttons pressed should be healing imo.
I don't think the biggest fundamental issue with healing is the 1 1 1 1 spam it's lack of healing necessary.

Like I dunno but I think Tanks being able to solo dungeons or not needing any heals outside of Tank Busters if even that is a bigger problem.

---

Tell me you don't main a healer without telling me that you don't main a healer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nizzi

I'd argue it hit the wall in ShB and as long as they're afraid to get rid of oGCD healing bloat their healing design is never going to get any better. Reduce some oGCD bloat, tune fights to not be so healer DPS intensive, make healers use their GCDs again, just do something. The current design direction is not sustainable.

---

Or just give them more damage buttons to use during downtimes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Yes.


Or rework the kits and reduce the amount of ogcd heals.
My overall point tho is that yes I think the DPS rotations could be a bit more interesting, but in the end of the day I still want Healers to be well.
Healers xD...
I'd like more of an emphasis on healing it's a bigger priority for me, more buttons pressed should be healing imo.
I don't think the biggest fundamental issue with healing is the 1 1 1 1 spam it's lack of healing necessary.

Like I dunno but I think Tanks being able to solo dungeons or not needing any heals outside of Tank Busters if even that is a bigger problem.

---

Saying that healers should only have to heal is like saying that tanks should only have to soak damage and press buttons that reduce damage. It's incredibly shallow thinking.
There's room for different kinds of abilities. Preferably some damage options, but utility would be fine too. All other games that feature healers allow the healer to make use of some utility or damage tools.
Look at Overwatch for example, even the purest healer in the game (Mercy) gets damage boost, which she applies to team mates and it's something she can micromanage. Truth is, healing is binary. You either need it to prevent deaths or you don't, and you want to be doing literally anything else. Otherwise you're just rushing to top someone off who doesn't need it and you're wasting resources. Effectively doing nothing of value.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

It's incredibly shallow thinking.

---

I think there's value in holding a discussion without resorting to insults or positioning yourself as the holder of truth.

When people ask for more emphasis on healing, they are probably talking about installing a proper triage system where damage is more unpredictable. Current encounter design has a very strict timeline with no deviation, and the only damage that requires the presence of a half-awake healer are raid-wides and tank busters (and even then, not always). Since everything else is avoidable, focusing on DPS and optimizing movement are realistically the only thing left for us to do.

So there's two schools of thoughts to address the issue: make the encounters more random and less predictable (thus increasing the healing requirement), or make our DPS toolkit more engaging than just spamming one spell and refreshing our DoT.

I think a lot of people understand that SE has no interest in increasing the encounter difficulty, and it's the reason why there seems to be a much bigger push in adding more complexity to our DPS tools. SE probably wants to avoid a situation where the whole party crumbles if the healer doesn't do a mechanic correctly, and is likely why they designed the role as mind-numbing as it is. It's also why casual content has no DPS checks (or are incredibly lax), or why tanks don't have to worry about aggro anymore. The difference being is that those roles' dps rotation is a lot more engaging.

I'd say the core of the issue lies more on the battle design in general, and that healers are just a symptom of a much bigger issue. Adding too much variation tarnishes the balance of speedclears, farming and world-firsts, but making things too predictable leads us to where we are right now. It's also in SE's best interest to maintain things as formulaic and predictable as possible, since the Trust system heavily depends on it.

I'm personally of the mindset that things should be a lot more erratic and unpredictable, but I also understand why people don't want that. Relying too much on a role increases tension if people can't live up to said expectation.

As a side note, I find it incredibly funny that Nabriales' Triple Cast in ARR is a more deadly Tank Buster than anything we see in Endwalker's casual content.

Healers need a full rework in 7.0. It's so bad that if I knew Japanese and knew how to code I'd email the devs and tell them i'd redo healers for them for free.

This is not an issue simply due to encounter design (low damage) or just about healer (too many oGCD heal), but also an across the board design flaw. By that I mean the idea of spreading the tool around all roles. Just like how tanks and healers are expected to contribute a lot of DPS, they also want other roles to handle what traditionally a healer job.

What this sound good on paper, and clearly the intention here is to make it easier for casual group to carry one another (each pair of decent tank/healer can carry one DPS) which something SE clearly said it's their vision. But it poses a problem for healers:

- Even as tank and healer do more DPS, they don't take way the DPS of the DPS.
- No one gonna compete with the tank for their emnity (not after the neft in 5.0).
- But everyone gonna compete with the healer for their job.

And by that I mean healing and party-wide mitigation. Try this, go into savage and tell your group not to use any party-wide mitigation, and tank stay away from their self-sustaining. So no Addle, feint, reprisal, shake, missionary, bloodwhetting, Nascent, no healing on holy spirit, no shield samba ...etc... Then you'll see a lot more be putting on the plate of the healers even if the encounters are the same.

But as of now, a well coordinated party almost negate the role of a shield healers, and tanks have so much self-healing that you don't really even have to heal them outside some very specific instance in Ultimate. The reason healers have so little on our plate not only because there weren't enough food, but also compounded by the fact everyone took a bite out of it.

Just give me an honest to gods, low dps, super super high utility job akin to eq's bard/enchanter and I'd be happy to leave healing for good.

Buffs, debuffs, mana regen, crowd control. Give.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Imora

Just give me an honest to gods, low dps, super super high utility job akin to eq's bard/enchanter and I'd be happy to leave healing for good.

Buffs, debuffs, mana regen, crowd control. Give.

---

The problem with that is you are either meta or entirely useless based on what you offer and who’s position in the static raid design you are taking

Interesting seeing the announcement of postponed AST changes to 7.0... I kinda thought they would do it.

And makes me think if they are actually gauging the whole healing aspect of healers being revised somehow in 7.0... Becuase if that's correct, it would be really wasteful to do an overhaul mid expansion just to re-do it a year later. And I honestly think the ShB Monk experience - stripping a job of main core mechanics to 'pave the way' right in the middle of an expansion - is not something they would repeat.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raikai

Interesting seeing the announcement of postponed AST changes to 7.0... I kinda thought they would do it.

And makes me think if they are actually gauging the whole healing aspect of healers being revised somehow in 7.0... Becuase if that's correct, it would be really wasteful to do an overhaul mid expansion just to re-do it a year later. And I honestly think the ShB Monk experience - stripping a job of main core mechanics to 'pave the way' right in the middle of an expansion - is not something they would repeat.

---

Isn't that exactly what they did with SAM and NIN this expansion?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Isn't that exactly what they did with SAM and NIN this expansion?

---

Kind of, but they didn't put the level of effort in that MNK got.

As frustrating as Kaiten, Trick Mug, and the AoE changes are, they probably thought that changing that was an easy way to make the jobs "better" - basically no different than a numbers game. I disagree, and believe that small changes like this can have a big impact, and hope that since DRG and AST are pushed back, they take a second look at whether or not these changes actually had the effect on the playerbase that they wanted.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raikai

Interesting seeing the announcement of postponed AST changes to 7.0... I kinda thought they would do it.

And makes me think if they are actually gauging the whole healing aspect of healers being revised somehow in 7.0... Becuase if that's correct, it would be really wasteful to do an overhaul mid expansion just to re-do it a year later. And I honestly think the ShB Monk experience - stripping a job of main core mechanics to 'pave the way' right in the middle of an expansion - is not something they would repeat.

---

Which is ironic considering of the large changes and redesigns we have gotten since the Omni combat change between SB and ShB monk is about the only one that is universally well regarded