Final Fantasy XIV’s healer problem and how it’s kind of unsolvable

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

While I completely understand this position, I also don't trust encounter design with current approaches to tune this in a way that feels more fun. I've heard people around here say that the "simple" solution is just deleting oGCD heals and forcing healers to GCD more because it's "better".
These GCD healing kits are puddle deep. Lean too hard on them, and you'll start to see Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure. Maybe that's "more satisfying" to some people, but it's pretty much identical to Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare as far as I'm concerned.

While a balancing act between two sleep-inducing halves of a kit might make them more interesting, I don't exactly trust our benevolent class design team to nail that balance.

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I just had a nightmare vision in which the devs were tired of the player base basically ignoring tier 1 healing spells (cure, physic, benefic) so they gated the tier 2 stuff to only be available after a tier 1 is cast.

i.e. Cure II can't be used until Cure is cast.

They wouldn't do that unless they bump up tier 1's potency to account for the fact that it's largely both inefficient and insufficient past 65.

Edit: I say 65, because that was the level where I discovered that tier 1's start to scale poorly with HP and incoming damage.

In SB, WHM needed to cast Cure 1 or Cure 2 to generate lilies. And Divine Benison required a lily. Since it's the only shield WHM have, they had to cast cure 1 or cure 2 in SB or they couldnt shield.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I just had a nightmare vision in which the devs were tired of the player base basically ignoring tier 1 healing spells (cure, physic, benefic) so they gated the tier 2 stuff to only be available after a tier 1 is cast.

i.e. Cure II can't be used until Cure is cast.

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I feel like they should just make the tier II an upgrade of tier I, because I've removed tier I from my crossbars...and then healed Sastasha yesterday for a member of my FC who is super new and was like "oh yeah, I need Benefic". It's just bloat except at lower levels.

Honestly agreeing with that. I have so many healing options in general I'm not sure I ever felt like using just straight Cure. And unless I'm going absolutely nuts MP management isn't a huge problem between Lucid Dreaming and... drawing a blank of the other MP recovery for some reason. Assize I think is the name. So the Cure to Cure II is kind of... moot. I do still sometimes use it, but honestly in dungeons I usually don't need to heal that little of damage, just toss a Regen or some such to fix it, and I'm always drowning in lilies. While in raids I usually need more healing, also plenty of AoE stuff.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I feel like they should just make the tier II an upgrade of tier I, because I've removed tier I from my crossbars...and then healed Sastasha yesterday for a member of my FC who is super new and was like "oh yeah, I need Benefic". It's just bloat except at lower levels.

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100% agree. Just upgrade it via trait so it's there in synced content and upgraded in later content. Adjust mana accordingly.

The 5.0 vision of healing has actually pushed me into playing other games. It's just too boring to force myself to log in and press 1 button over, and over, and over again. Completely lame.
5.0 ruined healing.

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Originally Posted by Truen

The 5.0 vision of healing has actually pushed me into playing other games. It's just too boring to force myself to log in and press 1 button over, and over, and over again. Completely lame.
5.0 ruined healing.

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The fact that my heart rate and overall cortisol levels only rise a little bit when I'm playing with absolute window lickers is testament to this.

I'm sure this has been said before but healers don't really need some revolutionary fix to their healing kits. What they really need to focus on is making it active and enjoyable between heals. The common complaint I see is Malefic/Glare/Broil spam. Well, just give healers things to manage between their heals to have a good upkeep of damage, whether it be through buffs are raw dps. At the end of the day, DPS is king and that's just how this game works. Make that part more enjoyable for healers instead of trying to fix the core healing systems which are pretty much fixed now thanks to all prior content existing.

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Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

At the end of the day, DPS is king and that's just how this game works. Make that part more enjoyable for healers instead of trying to fix the core healing systems which are pretty much fixed now thanks to all prior content existing.

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I don't think most healers would mind having less dps if they were given tools to increase the party's total dps (Read: Proper SUPPORT skills). You know, like the AST cards that were taken away. . .

Perhaps instead of taking away that interesting gameplay from AST, it should have been expanded to the other two.