The Healer Issue isn't the lack of DPS Tools

It's the lack of certainty about having effective and engaging gameplay.

Basically, all the responses about the changes to Healer DPS skills and the pruning down to a bare minimum of a single DoT and nuke skill is due to the concern from the fact that currently, Healer gameplay is 80-90% just DPSing, thanks to ridiculously overpowered oGCD heals and predictable damage bursts.

In this scenario simplifying DPS rotations means simplifying how a Healer spends 80-90% of their time.

If it happens that damage is increased so that Healers spend more time Healing and less time DPSing, that would help alleviate the issue - However, this comes with caveats, such as if damage is so high that you're forced to spam Cure II/Benefic II/Adloquium on the Tank to keep them up that won't feel engaging as that's just mashing the same heal button ad nauseum (To say nothing about how it would feel for a Tank to be so heavily reliant upon heals) as well as the fact that we've no indication that incoming damage will be increased (If anything, the new Tank trait means that damage is being decreased as far as we know...)

This of course, doesn't mean that Healers necessarily need to be balanced around "Dealing Damage" vs "Healing" or that Healing necessarily needs to devolve into spamming your "Big GCD Heal" over and over.

There are alternative ways to increase interactivity with Healers via alternate means.

Such as creating more interesting Healing skills.
For example, instead of just pressing Regen and applying your HoT, what if you had to use a combination of skills to apply your HoT. What if "Freecure"/"Enhanced Benefic" style traits were made into actual guaranteed gameplay mechanics that promote using your smaller heal to access a larger heal (Or one with additional effects). Etc.

You could also allow Healers to do more buffs and debuffs.
This need not necessarily focus entirely around rDPS buffs. For example, being able to buff a Tank with 10% damage reduction is essentially the same as applying a HoT to them is it not? Maybe you could bring back skills like Apocatastasis *Cough*Shell*Cough* and Palisade *Cough*Protect*Cough* for Healers to use. Maybe Healers could be the ones to get things like Addle, Feint and Dismantle. To protect their allies by reducing enemy damage output.
Also, while it may currently be Dancer's "Thing" to be about buffing allies, why can't Healers still also have interactive rDPS buffs? Like what if Chain Stratagem was needed to be maintained by Scholar via GCD's inbetween their healing? What if Astrologian's Cards where interacted with via GCD's between their heals? What if you actually gave WHM something other than just increased potency numbers?

These are merely examples. But the core problem is that Healers want engaging gameplay.

As the game is currently designed, we have no reason at all to expect that ShB will evolve the current combat systems in such a way where this Healer design with neutered DPS rotations would be anything other than a direct downgrade in healer interactivity.

Which is a problem, given how little interactivity there already is with their current DPS rotations due to the current combat systems, where predictable damage and ridiculous oGCD's effectively restrict the amount of actual input needed for effective healing output.

TL;DR:
While many players are complaining about the neutering of DPS rotations, the actual problem is caused by a concern about a lack of engaging Healer gameplay. Healers need to have a more interactive role in the game other than waiting around playing "Simon Says" by responding to scripted damage via the push of an oGCD button.

PLAYING SIMON SAYS! Im so done. Thats such a great metaphor.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

You could also allow Healers to do more buffs and debuffs.
This need not necessarily focus entirely around rDPS buffs. For example, being able to buff a Tank with 10% damage reduction is essentially the same as applying a HoT to them is it not? Maybe you could bring back skills like Apocatastasis *Cough*Shell*Cough* and Palisade *Cough*Protect*Cough* for Healers to use. Maybe Healers could be the ones to get things like Addle, Feint and Dismantle. To protect their allies by reducing enemy damage output.
Also, while it may currently be Dancer's "Thing" to be about buffing allies, why can't Healers still also have interactive rDPS buffs? Like what if Chain Stratagem was needed to be maintained by Scholar via GCD's inbetween their healing? What if Astrologian's Cards where interacted with via GCD's between their heals? What if you actually gave WHM something other than just increased potency numbers?

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Lol, what is this craziness...a support class using support abilities? Support abilities are for DPS classes.

/s

I largely agree with this, except the part that if content hit harder healers would just crutch on "the same healing button" over and over. I think healing buttons in this game are okay, somewhat diversified, it's just that a huge bulk of them are basically used to...maintenance the tank while you spam damage. Asylum being a cooldown you have to rotate regularly because otherwise you OOM healing, that sort of thing, instead of something you drop because "lol stacking regens = more DPS". Synastry would actually get used sometime this century if we actually had to GCD heal lol. Fey Union would be a great healing supplement in a vacuum except again, it's something you put on the tank so you can ignore the tank and DPS. I think healers actual healing toolkits are fine enough if they were forced to be used more, it's just that the gameplay has you using them not to SUPPLEMENT your regular healing, but to replace it entirely because it's sufficient enough. Just a minor difference of opinion here.

This particular semantic aside, I wouldn't be opposed to seeing more general healer gameplay variety outside of "push button, receive heal". Nearly every healer in WoW has some sort of "gimmick" or concept they have to play around to effectively maximize HPS output (beacons on pally, Holy Word CDR on priest, Tidal Waves on shaman, Gust of Mists procs and Vivify cleave from Renewing Mist on monk, the entire Atonement mechanic on disc priest is probably one of the more interesting and complex healer designs I've seen and kudos to the dev team for that). Aetherflow stacks are a good example of this in XIV, but AST has nothing like this (Sect-weaving if they wanted to keep the janky Sect concept in Shadowbringers would have been a neat concept, or changing Noct from a barrier stance to a more card-enhancing stance could have also worked) and WHM lilies were implemented poorly and had a bizarre function (CDR) that just doesn't really work with the scripted fights in this game (seriously why didn't lilies just boost the potency of your lily-costing move? jeez SE).

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

I largely agree with this, except the part that if content hit harder healers would just crutch on "the same healing button" over and over. I think healing buttons in this game are okay, somewhat diversified, it's just that a huge bulk of them are basically used to...maintenance the tank while you spam damage. Asylum being a cooldown you have to rotate regularly because otherwise you OOM healing, that sort of thing, instead of something you drop because "lol stacking regens = more DPS". Synastry would actually get used sometime this century if we actually had to GCD heal lol. Fey Union would be a great healing supplement in a vacuum except again, it's something you put on the tank so you can ignore the tank and DPS. I think healers actual healing toolkits are fine enough if they were forced to be used more, it's just that the gameplay has you using them not to SUPPLEMENT your regular healing, but to replace it entirely because it's sufficient enough. Just a minor difference of opinion here.

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The general idea is that, if Healing was necessary to be spammed anywhere near as much as DPS gets spammed then it would just come down to spamming healing GCD. But given that the only Healing GCD's are: Smol heal (Cure, Benefic, Physick), Big heal (Cure II, Benefic II, Adloquium), HoT (Regen, Aspected Benefic) and AoE Heal(s) (Medica, Medica II, Helios, Aspected Helios, Succor) then making GCD healing a major point would usually devolve into spamming the most efficient heal skill available. This being something like Cure/Benefic/Physick is MP efficiency is required and incoming damage isn't too great or Cure II/Benefic II/Adloquium if MP efficiency is not necessary and/or if incoming damage is very high.

There just doesn't exist alternate GCD healing buttons to spam. The majority of Healers actual healing buttons are oGCD's, which is part of the reason why this notion of spamming DPS 90% of the time is a thing, because like 90% of your healing skills are oGCD anyway. If a shift was made towards GCD healing, it would quickly become just spamming 1 skill a majority of the time, because that's all that exists, 2 spammable ST heals, 1 HoT you use once every X seconds to refresh and then a bunch of AoE heals that you only use during AoE damage (2 of them being HoTs you only use to maintain the HoT and 1 being a wierd shield skill that can only become a normal heal once per 20s with use of a CD)

So basically just replace one spam spell with another? Ok.

This. It's not about doing damage, it's about making healing something fun. Healing classes in general needs more gimmicks and be more engaging.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

So basically just replace one spam spell with another? Ok.

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Uhh... No?

Replace "Spam spell" with some more dynamic gameplay. Where there is more than 1 optimal button to press for "Filler" between healing skills (Without making healing skills just the "Spam skill")

Dancer rotation looks, imo, very dynamic. A shame that a DPS got a dynamic rotation full with buffs while we got... well.

I agree that WoW had much more complex healing, coupled with faster gameplay, and don't disagree with any of your points. In fact, I found healing too stressful to attempt seriously in that game. I was much better at being a bear tank, but my main time playing was the end of BC - mid Cata.

There are many reasons that I don't think FFXIV will ever quite reach the pace and intricacy of WoW's mechanics. One being that while the game is played by many on PC, there remains a huge number of console players. Because of the limitations of controllers, as well as less capable hardware, things will always be just a little slower mechanically, and a bit simplified with inputs.

Also, there is a cultural difference between the core audiences that I've noticed over the years. WoW has been around so long that it has a lot of really hard-core raiders and people who are very trained at their classes. FFXIV is quite a bit more tame at the higher level of gameplay, at least as far as what I've seen. I haven't done any raids this expansion, so I can't speak to the top level of play.

Personally, I enjoy healing in FFXIV more than the more difficult rotations of WoW, but I'm also pretty casual these days. I used to play on PC, but have switched over to mouse and keyboard on PS4 Pro, which plays identically. I'm all for anything that makes a job more fun, but I don't think the devs will ever make healing too complex. It's possible that healing is intentionally made to be easier to grasp in order to bring in more healers, though at the cost of interesting interactivity for the more skilled players.

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Originally Posted by Stol

Personally, I enjoy healing in FFXIV more than the more difficult rotations of WoW, but I'm also pretty casual these days. I used to play on PC, but have switched over to mouse and keyboard on PS4 Pro, which plays identically. I'm all for anything that makes a job more fun, but I don't think the devs will ever make healing too complex. It's possible that healing is intentionally made to be easier to grasp in order to bring in more healers, though at the cost of interesting interactivity for the more skilled players.

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Well, engagement and fun doesn't really mean something hard to understand. For example, the way that astrologian deals (or used to... anyway) with cards is not hard to understand. It's not extremely dynamic either. But it's a decision making and it's fun. It's simple, but fun. Creative systems aren't necessarily hard or complex things.
But even so, I think that healers should be given at least an option. At least one class should be more complex and eventually rewarding to play. It's not wrong to have an acessible and easy class for a role. But if it's the only option, then that's a problem.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

The general idea is that, if Healing was necessary to be spammed anywhere near as much as DPS gets spammed then it would just come down to spamming healing GCD. But given that the only Healing GCD's are: Smol heal (Cure, Benefic, Physick), Big heal (Cure II, Benefic II, Adloquium), HoT (Regen, Aspected Benefic) and AoE Heal(s) (Medica, Medica II, Helios, Aspected Helios, Succor) then making GCD healing a major point would usually devolve into spamming the most efficient heal skill available. This being something like Cure/Benefic/Physick is MP efficiency is required and incoming damage isn't too great or Cure II/Benefic II/Adloquium if MP efficiency is not necessary and/or if incoming damage is very high.

There just doesn't exist alternate GCD healing buttons to spam. The majority of Healers actual healing buttons are oGCD's, which is part of the reason why this notion of spamming DPS 90% of the time is a thing, because like 90% of your healing skills are oGCD anyway. If a shift was made towards GCD healing, it would quickly become just spamming 1 skill a majority of the time, because that's all that exists, 2 spammable ST heals, 1 HoT you use once every X seconds to refresh and then a bunch of AoE heals that you only use during AoE damage (2 of them being HoTs you only use to maintain the HoT and 1 being a wierd shield skill that can only become a normal heal once per 20s with use of a CD)

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Except you aren't accounting for the fact DPS spells would still be utilized. Let's saying optimized healing at the Savage level reached a 70/30 split in favor of healing. This means healers have to GCD heal, oGCD and DPS, which gives them better variety simply because they now have to weave in GCD healing on top of everything else they have. The whole idea is an illusion of complexity. If you dissect every job in this game, they are all rather basic in their execution. But how they achieve their goal differs. Tank mitigation is essentially press x button to live; press y button to help the party live. But that combined with their DPS rotation keeps the job interesting. DPS are similar albeit with more flashy combos and damaging abilities. Healers lack in both this regard. Unlike tanks, they don't have super special awesome, flash DPS moves but they still spend the majority of their time DPSing. In that sense, it's no different than tanks spamming their 1-2-3 combo. Which would cause a LOT of complaints if they were every dumbed down that significantly.

But putting all the above aside. Plenty of healers don't necessarily care if they're "spamming" their healing GCDs instead of their DPS kit because that fulfills their job fantasy. The issue many have is they want to feel like healers not glorified DPS with better versions of Vercure.

I mean in Stormblood I moved over to scholar because it was the more complex healer because I was bored of whm, but in 5.0 I might as well go back since I can weave Assize into my rotation and Holy seems much better than Art of War.

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Originally Posted by Freerider

I mean in Stormblood I moved over to scholar because it was the more complex healer because I was bored of whm, but in 5.0 I might as well go back since I can weave Assize into my rotation and Holy seems much better than Art of War.

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But WHM still can't move freely while dpsing.
Not sure if it's a good choice (+ look at all the new healing actions/traits gained by SCH despite some nerfs).

That's true, but honestly I'm just all over the place with the healer changes. It concerns me.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

So basically just replace one spam spell with another? Ok.

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The post is basically some five ways of saying "replace spam with... not spam". So... the exact opposite?

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@OP

Agreed on all points, Kalise. I'd still like my full damage spell repertoire, even if healing were so intensive I rarely go to use it, but the trimming of our DPS spells does indeed only scratch the surface of the problem.

I also wonder how much of it (though certainly not all, or likely even half) comes down to how power-creep for healers has been rather one-sided.

mean, consider an ARR SCH. They deal 100 potency of damage or a minimum of 400 potency of healing. That... makes healing look rather enticing by comparison, if it means keeping your tank in DPS stance, which was already about as significant an advantage back then. In T1, 4, and 5 there was actually significant enough damage required, and so GCD healing often felt like a viable choice. Flash forward to Shadowbringers and Physick is still the same 400 potency, but we have Broil III providing so much more relative cost to any given GCD spent not damage-spamming and we have so many more abilities to sequence off and by which to avoid GCD healing... Why, exactly?

OP I feel is spot on.

Heck, we had the groundwork for it already with Scholar. In 2.0 their DPS moves had debuffs attached to them, if they evolved and were expanded upon as the game progresses, Scholar’s mitigation tool kit would be interesting to play with, don’t just shield and heal, but manage debuffs on enemies. If you don’t then it will be harder to keep allies alive. To achieve this, nerf SCH heals, return their debuffs and make the debuffs more meaningful. This would be one way of making Scholar more engaging as a healer without relying on DPS (they could remove the potencies from the spells that debuffed before). I used to play Scholar like this in the early days because I figured it’d help with mitigation. I’d be okay with nerfs to SCH heals if their role as a healer was dynamic and interesting and evolution on what I liked about they job when I first played it.

I gave your post a thumb's up OP because more-or-less, you're right. Most of us like juggling the gimmicks we have into the gameplay and being useful beyond healz. We're a support class. We want to support our team in every way we can. Don't take away our abilities to support our team. I think it's a little funny that they first took away Stoneskin and now they took away prot (and bole).

The healing class I've enjoyed the most in an MMO so far has been Rift's Chloromancer. For those that don't know it, it's a mage job that heals the tank/party via dealing damage, with some direct healing abilities for when no enemy is targetable. I've always thought a job like that could be pretty fun in XIV. For example, using WHM abilities. Casting Cure + Stone would result in an AoE heal around the target. Casting Regen + Aero III would result in a Medica II effect around the boss. A Synastry effect that heals a party member based on how much damage you deal.
In short, rather than having DPS/healing be mutually exclusive you'd weave both seamlessly into the healing kit.

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Originally Posted by Addicted

The healing class I've enjoyed the most in an MMO so far has been Rift's Chloromancer. For those that don't know it, it's a mage job that heals the tank/party via dealing damage, with some direct healing abilities for when no enemy is targetable. I've always thought a job like that could be pretty fun in XIV. For example, using WHM abilities. Casting Cure + Stone would result in an AoE heal around the target. Casting Regen + Aero III would result in a Medica II effect around the boss. A Synastry effect that heals a party member based on how much damage you deal.
In short, rather than having DPS/healing be mutually exclusive you'd weave both seamlessly into the healing kit.

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I believe this is the sort of thing people were hoping a healer based Dancer class would be, something that could fight in melee (or range, I suppose, but we're trying to make the job interesting) and heal off the attacks they were doing. Obviously, that route wasn't taken.

I really like a lot of these ideas tbh. I had been thinking about many similar ways to make healers more fun and one of the BIG ones was to make healing combos, have skills proc other skills more and such. It would make healing feel more interactive and fun. Like I don't mind if healers shifted to not really doing DPS but if that is the case I want us to have a FUN TIME healing, rather than just using the same single heals over and over with the occasional variation. Though working on DPS skills for healers and making it more fun could also work? I feel kind of split on that tbh. Buffs for allies would be cool too, and while Dancer has that kind of thing already, it might be cool to give actions to healers with similar effects. I'd have to think as to anything further but I would really enjoy a lot of these ideas if implemented well.

I agree with this, I miss having the attack slow from shadow flare, virus and soon to be fey covenant and fey glow, silent dusk and fey wind etc. On WHM, they should have the protect they have in pvp and other noteable spells like haste, brave, faith. And Ast needs spells like Disable back etc which were great for tank busters.

I'm really sad we're becoming heal throughputs only and less about damage reduction and being proactive outside of shielding.

in short I want to be a HEALER not a HEALBOT! #Healernothealbot maybe???