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

In light of your recent interview, I'd like to provide feedback on what regarding healer design is too "stress-free" based on the many healer-related conversations that have appeared since most prominently Shadowbringers.

Healing
In order to heal, the party must first sustain damage. The balance between the healing resources we have and the damage we take is a delicate balance, one that has felt lopsided for a long time. We have too many free, accessible ways to heal in an environment that does not deal damage enough to warrant those resources. Every expansion has given us more and more ways to heal and DPS rather than heal instead of DPS. Additionally, many fights sometimes go an entire minute or longer without dealing any unavoidable damage to the party. Try introducing more frequent examples of manageable damage, more spontaneous aspects that can result in damage, and curate a selection of healing resources for each healer that don't feel like too much or too little for those environments.

DPS
Healers have far too few DPS abilities for how much time we spend DPSing in FFXIV. Healers do not need to have as many ways to attack as DPS jobs like Black Mage or Red Mage, but they should have a few more options that are unique to each healer. Look at the tanks for example; tanks are not DPS, yet they each have a larger variety of attacks that help make their offensive gameplay feel dynamic. Additionally, different tanks approach DPS with different levels of complexity, and the same can be done with healers. Much like how Warrior is a more simple tank, you can also have a more simple healer, but on the flip side, we should also have something like Gunbreaker, a more aggressive and fast-paced offensive healer. Before the release of Endwalker, you mentioned how during Sage's development, your team had looked at feedback of healers wanting more attack options and tried to explore those options with Sage, but the end result was far too timid of an approach. Why not be bold with Sage? Take a risk with a more aggressive healer design while approaching the other healers with more caution and see how it's received.

MP Management
MP is supposed to be a resource that presents the player with a choice on what tools they want to use to address different challenges, but MP management has become so automated that it may as well not exist, not unlike TP form pre-Shadowbringers. We need more options that allow us to spend larger amounts of MP for greater value. At the same time, we should also make MP regeneration something that the player has control over--not something restricted by cooldowns. If I overspend on MP, I should have a way to get it back, such as spending certain resources. Additionally, if we still want there to be a base level of safety when playing as healer, we can make very basic core abilities, like Glare, Cure/Cure II, and Medica, have no MP cost. This ensures the player can never lock themselves out of healing or basic attacking, but allows you to be more ambitious when designing new ways for healers to spend their MP.

More Utility
While Endwalker healer design has been under scrutiny, Scholar's expedient was a genuinely great idea and addition to Scholar's action list, and honestly is one of the best new abilities added to any healer in a very long time. Having a way to influence fights other than healing or doing damage is something a lot of people look for in support and healer roles. It could be really exciting to see each healer offer their own unique approaches to utility that allows them to approach fights in different ways.So how can we explore that idea more thoroughly? I know it can be a challenging task to come up with new ideas like this, but I think it's well worth the effort to do so.

Overall, there's been a lot of tension in regards to healer design, and DT is going to be a pivotal moment for a lot of people. Of the players who have not been satisfied with healer design since Stormblood, many of us aren't going to stick around for a third expansion of the same approach. Something needs to change, and I sincerely hope the coming benchmark trailer, job actions trailer, and media tour reveal a lot more than a new basic attack animation with 10 more potency and another heal that we really don't need.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

In light of your recent interview, I'd like to provide feedback on what regarding healer design is too "stress-free" based on the many healer-related conversations that have appeared since most prominently Shadowbringers.

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People have been complaining about how healing works in this game since 2.0 "Not enough DPS, Too many ways to heal without not enough damage", yet players seem to think they are playing a different game. A healer should be healing, but when they removed the Cleric Stance debuff to make DPS more opportunistic, instead what we got was every healer trying to be a Green DPS rather than a healer. Whoops, maybe dial that back. I'm not saying don't make healing less fun, but don't make healing DPS necessary in any fight. If a fight is designed around X damage in, Y healing out, then the healer should be able to do that with the kit they have, and have to press every button.

As it is, all savage content becomes facerolling as soon as the next expansion comes out, so people stop trying to do the mechanics and just try to heal through all damage rather than avoid all of it.

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Healing
In order to heal, the party must first sustain damage. The balance between the healing resources we have and the damage we take is a delicate balance, one that has felt lopsided for a long time. We have too many free, accessible ways to heal in an environment that does not deal damage enough to warrant those resources. Every expansion has given us more and more ways to heal and DPS rather than heal instead of DPS. Additionally, many fights sometimes go an entire minute or longer without dealing any unavoidable damage to the party. Try introducing more frequent examples of manageable damage, more spontaneous aspects that can result in damage, and curate a selection of healing resources for each healer that don't feel like too much or too little for those environments.

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The easiest way to solve that is to remove telegraphs, which would require the players to memorize the actions of the bosses, but that's not fair to how players have already been trained to deal with the game. We can't go back to ARR coincounter where you had to watch what it does and stand well outside the AOE since it had no telegraphs. Perhaps the compromise there is to let healers and tanks see the ground telegraph at the beginning of all casts if they cast the buff for it, and DPS can only see it if the healer or tank sees it with the buff. If you want to speed run, or know the mechanics already, you can skip buffing the party for it and heal through it. Raid-wide AOE's like bombs behave like before. Not a fantastic fix, but it's a way to make people decide between wanting faster play or easier play. The server also has to explicitly not tell the game clients if the buff isn't present which is what makes this unlikely.

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DPS
Healers have far too few DPS abilities for how much time we spend DPSing in FFXIV. Healers do not need to have as many ways to attack as DPS jobs like Black Mage or Red Mage, but they should have a few more options that are unique to each healer. Look at the tanks for example; tanks are not DPS, yet they each have a larger variety of attacks that help make their offensive gameplay feel dynamic. Additionally, different tanks approach DPS with different levels of complexity, and the same can be done with healers. Much like how Warrior is a more simple tank, you can also have a more simple healer, but on the flip side, we should also have something like Gunbreaker, a more aggressive and fast-paced offensive healer. Before the release of Endwalker, you mentioned how during Sage's development, your team had looked at feedback of healers wanting more attack options and tried to explore those options with Sage, but the end result was far too timid of an approach. Why not be bold with Sage? Take a risk with a more aggressive healer design while approaching the other healers with more caution and see how it's received.

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I still wish people would stop promoting this idea that healers should have a toolbox full of DPS options. They are not monks, and the one healer we do have right now, Sage, does work this way, and it's not what people wanted, apparently. And if they do too much DPS, then they will be the only option allowed in raid statics.

All the healers used to have more options, but unless we're going back to class-craft, with taking skills from other jobs, that's not happening. Scholar and Summoner are now completely unrecognizable from where they started. And you still don't need half the healer toolbox for most fights. Once people know the fight, good DPS stop stepping in bad, and you, the healer, just end up topping up the tank.

Maybe healers are boring, but adding more DPS options just doesn't change anything, it just makes people gnash their teeth that you don't contribute more DPS when a knocked DPS costs more DPS than any DPS you can ever contribute to the fight. Keep the DPS alive is more valuable than trying to spam DPS, and I still see people play healers like they're a DPS.

Heck, go into any of the level 70/80 content with the Trust party as a healer, and see how many fights you can just sit down and watch. Your DPS as a healer, does not matter and does not speed up the fight unless the DPS can completely avoid AOE's 100% of the time, like the NPC's do. Adding more DPS options will not change that. Really what I would rather have are more DoT's than GCD DPS skills. But we keep losing them because the game can't tick more than two DoT's per player and not cover half the screen (see Eureka, and other FATE's where there's more than 8 players)

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MP Management
MP is supposed to be a resource that presents the player with a choice on what tools they want to use to address different challenges, but MP management has become so automated that it may as well not exist, not unlike TP form pre-Shadowbringers. We need more options that allow us to spend larger amounts of MP for greater value. At the same time, we should also make MP regeneration something that the player has control over--not something restricted by cooldowns. If I overspend on MP, I should have a way to get it back, such as spending certain resources. Additionally, if we still want there to be a base level of safety when playing as healer, we can make very basic core abilities, like Glare, Cure/Cure II, and Medica, have no MP cost. This ensures the player can never lock themselves out of healing or basic attacking, but allows you to be more ambitious when designing new ways for healers to spend their MP.

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Sorry what? I can't think of any fight where MP runs out, on any healer. Even when knocked out, unless you spent your MP recovery skills already, you still are only out like 3 seconds before you can do something. WHM even has a "Free" 0-MP use skill. I can't think of time in recent memory that MP management still mattered. It pretty much hasn't mattered since 2.x

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More Utility
While Endwalker healer design has been under scrutiny, Scholar's expedient was a genuinely great idea and addition to Scholar's action list, and honestly is one of the best new abilities added to any healer in a very long time. Having a way to influence fights other than healing or doing damage is something a lot of people look for in support and healer roles. It could be really exciting to see each healer offer their own unique approaches to utility that allows them to approach fights in different ways.So how can we explore that idea more thoroughly? I know it can be a challenging task to come up with new ideas like this, but I think it's well worth the effort to do so.

Overall, there's been a lot of tension in regards to healer design, and DT is going to be a pivotal moment for a lot of people. Of the players who have not been satisfied with healer design since Stormblood, many of us aren't going to stick around for a third expansion of the same approach. Something needs to change, and I sincerely hope the coming benchmark trailer, job actions trailer, and media tour reveal a lot more than a new basic attack animation with 10 more potency and another heal that we really don't need.

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They could just fold all the healing skills down into like what we've seen in the roleplay MSQ stuff. One button activates a heal, pressing it again activates the next oGCD heal that does the same thing. I'd argue it would be more interesting if the game did a charge state for what to cast. Full 2.5s cast Glare, 2sec, cast Stone 4, 1.5 sec cast stone 3, 1 sec stone 2, etc. So if you want the full damage, you can't simply mash the button, but you could still fire off something as they should cost less MP. The problem isn't so much they "removed" DPS, but they folded all the healer DPS into one button and didn't give us anything else to cast. If the game had stuck to it's 2.0 elemental weakness system that could have been interesting to fire off stone, water, aero and leave a DoT if it's weak to it. But I guess we'll never see that either.

After catching up on the latest interview, I'm feeling more hopeful about the game's future. I hope they go through with their plan and add some real fail-states back into the game. Especially in terms of job design. Victory feels meaningless if it's all but guaranteed.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

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Dont have much time to elaborate so I'll be quick:

-Changing telegraphs woudnt change anything, players learn and fights are scripted, everything would still be planned and optimized anyway, besides the main healing mechanics are usually raidwide damage so the no telegraph woudnt have any effect.

-Healers dealt more dps than tanks in Shb and none of that "then they will be the only option allowed in raid statics" happened, is a point with no ground on reality. If you mean that one job shines over the rest the solution is simple, increase the options for all and balance accordingly."

-"it just makes people gnash their teeth that you don't contribute more DPS when a knocked DPS costs more DPS than any DPS you can ever contribute to the fight. Keep the DPS alive is more valuable than trying to spam DPS, and I still see people play healers like they're a DPS" ...just do both? Any half decent healer knows that keeping an offensive presence does not mean that they have to let their team die, on top of that we had more dps actions in the past and people healed just fine. Glarebots are going to happen no matter if the job has 1 or 1000 buttons, we should stop designing healers focusing only on the lowest common denominator

-Adding more Dps DOES change things. Right now the main issue is how frequently we press 1 button with no constraint or interaction with our kit, how our whole rotation is filler. With more dps options a lesser % of those actions become filler and the job experience become better.

-" Your DPS as a healer, does not matter and does not speed up the fight unless the DPS can completely avoid AOE's 100% of the time, like the NPC's do" False a healer can go above 50% of the output of a dps's dps on a single target fight, even more if its aoe, their dps DOES matter.

-"Really what I would rather have are more DoT's than GCD DPS skills" ... DOT's were DPS GCD skills. They dealt damage and they triggered the GCD.

Gonna say this again, but WHM, SCH, AST, and SGE need to be good mages before they can be good healers. Like yeah, they do need healing tools to keep their party alive, and fix mistakes, but they need to do be able to do other cool things as well. So they should have their own caster mechanics to play with, more dps spells to fall back on when healing isn't needed, and more non healing, and mitigation tools so they can feel more like proper mages instead of just healers with different skins.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

I still wish people would stop promoting this idea that healers should have a toolbox full of DPS options. They are not monks...

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Healers do not need to have as many ways to attack as DPS jobs like Black Mage or Red Mage, but they should have a few more options that are unique to each healer. Look at the tanks for example; tanks are not DPS, yet they each have a larger variety of attacks that help make their offensive gameplay feel dynamic. Additionally, different tanks approach DPS with different levels of complexity, and the same can be done with healers.

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Have you tried reading the post you're responding to? It might be easier to understand what someone is saying if you do.

I think everyone who says "We don't need dps buttons, we just need more GCD healing so we don't need to dps!" needs to do a little bit of research into how much healing we're able to output and how much damage would have to go out per minute to remotely stress our healing kit, and also doing it in a way where shield healers aren't straight up better than pure healers.

On the other hand, if we're talking about reducing healing OGCDs to put more emphasis on using GCD heals, then why completely limit the evolution of the damage side of the kit? What are you even planning to replace the OGCD heals you want cut with? Do you want all healers to have a barebones kit where both healing and doing damage are extremely easy?

Also, people need to start reading what the healer mains are suggesting instead of immediately jumping to "You want healers to have a MNK damage kit!?", because it's getting tiresome to debunk it over and over again.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Have you tried reading the post you're responding to? It might be easier to understand what someone is saying if you do.

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It's really hard for (seemingly) most people to visualize something that isn't a black or white approach. I really, REALLY hope we get healer representation for Q&A in the future. Push Yoshi-P hard into thinking beyond the bare minimum for healer design.

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Originally Posted by Niroken

It's really hard for (seemingly) most people to visualize something that isn't a black or white approach. I really, REALLY hope we get healer representation for Q&A in the future. Push Yoshi-P hard into thinking beyond the bare minimum for healer design.

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It's truly mind boggling for me why it's so challenging for people to understand, especially when it existed for the first 6 years of this game's lifespan.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

It's truly mind boggling for me why it's so challenging for people to understand, especially when it existed for the first 6 years of this game's lifespan.

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It's even more strange that we're seeing so many more "I only want to heal and I don't want to contribute dps at all" healers in the one expansion where you need to heal the least.