My thoughts on Healing in FFXIV as a new player

Hi everyone,

I recently started playing FFXIV. I levelled up the conjurer to white mage, and now I am working on finishing the msq. In the short time I've been playing up to lvl 53, I feel perhaps I made a mistake in choosing to heal. I played healer in WoW for a long time, but FFXIV feels different for healing.

1. I feel the mechanics of healing in this game creates a community that doesn't value healing whatsoever.

2. I asked about healing in raids, the first question they asked me was how my DPS was. (my dps? I thought. I'm a healer, not DPS)

3. I feel that healing is a side gig in this game, which makes me feel useless. I feel as though I should be doing DPS first, and healing is just a side thing I should do every now and then casually. I hate this.

4. This makes me frustrated but also sad, because I want to feel valued in the role that I play. I don't want to feel forced to DPS when that is not the class I want to play.

5. I've posted some stuff on Reddit and was just downvoted because the whole community there just said in this game you dps first, heal second. That's just the way it is otherwise you are compleletely useless and lazy. That's the mentality the FFXIV has about healers? But I can understand this because the game mechanics don't seem very good for healers to have fun and play, so far.... IMO


I know I haven't finished the msq, but does healing get better after or is this pretty much the mentality of the game forever?

Unfortunately the game gives you so many oGCD heals to the point it gets silly, you will spend most of your time healing through oGCDs. GCDs will be spent doing dps because with a combination of oGCD abundance and game design you will most likely be spending the majority of your time dpsing in your downtime when you get familiar with content.

Just ask people who do ultimate. Savage and ultimate are heavily scripted so you'll generally always know what attacks are coming and when. Dungeons are no exception either. Dungeon bosses only have like.. 1-2 mechanics and they always happen in the same order. The most variance I usually see is... say breath of the creator savage. Opens up with one of two mechanics but the other mechanic will happen immediately after. So even if they switch up the order it happens in the same spot in the fight.

Edit: And this is usually a starting point on why people are reaching boredom. We have so much downtime to dps but they stripped healers of dps skills for Shadowbringers. There's a good 20-22 pages of threads to sift through on that. I personally have been tanking or playing a red mage more than healing these days.

Hence why we're seeing a shortage of healers.

We are valued for our dps. We are expected to dps.

That in itself is not a bad thing, but if you found dpsing as a healer dull from 1-50 I have bad news for you. It doesn't get better. You will spam the same singlentarget spell while keeping up the same single target DoT even in high level content.

For a game that expect healers to dps, damaging as a healer is incredibly dull and boring.

I just registered in the forums today to talk about this point, but now that I am looking through all the pages, I can see I am definitely not the first person who has mentioned these things Yikes.

Do you think SE is listening to the healing community and may do something to fix these issues, or nah?

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Originally Posted by tazrenoth

I just registered in the forums today to talk about this point, but now that I am looking through all the pages, I can see I am definitely not the first person who has mentioned these things Yikes.

Do you think SE is listening to the healing community and may do something to fix these issues, or nah?

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Who knows. We've been given the same excuse for Stormblood and Shadowbringers of them "needing to balance healers" so there will be quite the riot if they do that for a third. Aside from the AST buffs and them giving SCHs their Energy Drain back for the second time there has been nothing but radio silence from the devs. As far as I am aware even the Japanese side of the game hates the situation too.

The devs probably know but they're just too scared to say anything. Or they intend to do something by 6.0 but won't say anything for over a year when that time comes. They haven't been giving healers the attention they deserve and it's starting to show.

I've played since SB and pretty much an omni healer and raid on them so my opinion will range from the spectrum of casual to hardcore. I'll respond to each of your points with my thoughts and my experience.

1. It doesn't, you're right. The combat philosophy is very scripted therefore making a fight/content pass its first clear much easier as you can plan out all your heals, specifically oGCD heals. SE has had a trouble history with balancing healers to the content they make. They want us to heal more but the incoming damage is so low and spaced out, it makes healing with oGCD heals more optimal and rewarding. It's a problem that lies with how content is designed, not the job itself or the community that optimizes it.

2. Unfortunately, this is a game where DPS is very important as the hardest parts of Savage and Ultimates are the dps checks. Helping dps during times where heals are not needed (everyone's topped off and the next mechanic doesn't require a GCD heal) goes a long way. It's this way for tanks too, everyone's a DPS in this game. This isn't to say that healers and tanks shouldn't perform their primary function, there's just a more you can do than that focus. In short, tanks focus on surviving and healers focus on keeping the party alive, but with a layer of dps in between downtime.

3. It truly does suck that we have to hit 2 buttons throughout the encounter for the most part while only half our healing kits is useless aside from oGCD ones. The devs have a massive disconnect from what they want healers to be (GCD focused healing) rather than how they're played (oGCD healing and dps heavy). This is just the devs not being able to find a middle man to all this, thus the never-ending list of healer complaints.

4. SE has made it clear that healers are not required to dps but this is a social game where people tend to respect each other's time. And in Savage raiding, you are expected to dps and heal optimal past progging. I understand the desire to not want to do dps as that's not what healers some are used to, but again, if the dps checks aren't being made, tank and healer dps matters a bit. DPS cannot be expected to have 100% uptime and perfectly either as tanks and healers aren't expected to be perfect.

Healing does get better at the max level but that's a personal opinion, you may not like it since it's still heavily dependent on your party performing well.

If you do wanna play a job that's a bit more support-like (buffing the party and assisting with damage mitigation) then I'd suggest Bard or Dancer as they are more party-focused. But they again are DPS who's main focus will be DPS.

I think that seperating other games' healers from this one would help. The content design is very different than say WoW or GW2.

I am sorry that you can't enjoy healers in this game. If you want to keep going with it, I'd suggest to play with different groups of people to gauge how they view it and if it works for you.

Honestly, in order to fix healing, one of two things need to happen.

1) Embrace the Green DPS meme and make the time you don't have to heal engaging. Since things really only get hectic due to inexperience or lack of skill, this should ideally make getting better feel really rewarding. The problem here is that the casual culture of this game night take a big hit, can and everything I've seen suggests that SE values this culture a lot.

2) Change the design going forward so that the harder encounters cannot be planned out to the letter. The healer fantasy is a reactive one, generally, knowing the tricks makes you a DPS that presses a skill at certain points in order to not wipe. If you don't know when that big raidwide AoE is coming out, then you are incentivised to keep people's health up, rather than let people lay at low health, because you know that they will regen enough before the next big hit. Unfortunately, changing the old content too for this paradigm is a waste of time in my opinion, and I'm not sure how the other roles would feel about not being able to line up buff windows because the boss randomly decided to do a mechanic that forces melee to disengage this run.

Thank you very much for this detailed reply. It was very insightful. :)

Elioaiko summed it up pretty well, it's just a potential thing. Healers have the potential to both sustain parties and deal respectable damage in all content. Full-time healing isn't really required, most players know this, and if they see you just standing around waiting to cast the next cure or medica it's going to trigger someone eventually, because you, as a healer, have the potential to both heal and contribute damage. It'd be the same for a DPS that doesn't AoE in dungeons, or tanks that deal less damage than they're capable of, which causes the instances to take longer than necessary.

That being said, I can't get into the weeds on this since I'm not a healer by any means. But I would suggest to give it some time (if you really want to main healer) and see how it plays out with the knowledge that "pure healer" isn't really a thing in this game. You certainly can play that way if you want, just be prepared for some people to get triggered here and there.

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Originally Posted by tazrenoth

Do you think SE is listening to the healing community and may do something to fix these issues, or nah?

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It's hard to say.

Given that the state of healing in the game has been pretty much the same way forever.

With them regarding the rebalancing of Healers in ShB being things like "People find WHM too hard, so we're making it easier" when at the time, WHM was not only the easiest healer to play (Due to it having even more oGCD than the other 2 healers) but was also considered the weakest because it didn't bring as much damage as the other 2 healers (Due to AST having cards that buffed damage and SCH having Chain Stratagem as a party DPS CD)

The fact that they added more oGCD healing to healers kits in ShB is not a good sign when even before it there was the meme of healers being "Green DPS"

Though, one of the major issues isn't just how they've designed healers (With a plethora of oGCD healing skills that are equal if not stronger than their best GCD heals on top of infinite MP made worse by oGCD's literally having no cost)

But it's the way that they've designed encounters at their core. So, even if you literally deleted all oGCD heals from healers, their gameplay wouldn't really differ. You'd just see people use Cure II instead of Tetragrammaton after the Tank gets hit by the big scary Tankbuster once per minute and would use Medica II instead of Assize when the raid gets hit by the unavoidable AoE damage, once a minute.

They would need to completely rework how they design encounters from the very base in order to create a situation where healing was needed more than once per Raid/Tank"Buster" that happens at set intervals during a fight. Which would also necessitate them having to address how Tanks would then play because they're currently also balanced as mostly "Blue DPS" and simply press a defensive CD once per minute as a Tankbuster comes in.

I would recommend you give the other two healers a try at some point. White Mage is rather infamously burdened with the reputation of being the simplest and most straightforward of the three.

While all 3 do have similar dps rotations and priorities in healing, the other two healers do have other tricks and gimmicks that may help offset how you feel about healing in this game. Scholar has the pet and a secondary set of resources it manages in order to access its cooldowns.

Astrologian, while hated by it veterans for how the card mechanic was changed, still gives the feeling of playing more indirect support, not to mention it's by far the most flexible of the three in optimizing its ogcd toolkit.

However, if trying them fail to rekindle your interests. Then I'm deeply sorry and hope you do find another element in this game that keeps you playing.

It's the mentality pretty much up to high end content. Outside of high end content some people won't care if you don't do it though. If you don't like DPSing you might be able to play as you like in non high end content if you find a group of players to play with who don't care. Otherwise you might end up with some friction in DF. Some care, some don't.

I've played since ARR and it has been like this since at least HW. In Coil, GCD healing and preventative healing were more prominent. Many of the high powered oGCDs didn't exist yet other than Lustrate which was OP since it bypassed Cleric Stance.

After HW, healers received several powerful oGCD abilities and it has pretty much been like that since. The high checks in Gordias pretty much cemented the play style at that point.

Since then they've only made it easier to contribute DPS as a healer so unless a radical shift happens I don't see it changing much from what it is now. I think a lot of people have given up asking for higher incoming damage or nerfing healing potencies and now just want more interesting dps rotations/utility design instead.

Yes. I would even like soemthing that uses my heals to do damage. Like a spell that takes any healing done on a member of your party after 100% of their health and converts the surplus healing into damage somehow.

WHM is definitely the simplest, but in the game overall your performance regardless of job is determined by rDPS but fortunately, not everybody is going to trip you up on it. But if you're looking to push your contribution, it will mean learning to keep people alive whilst maximising DPS. And sadly the DPS side leaves a lot to be desired at the moment, it didn't used to.

IMO the healers all have a great healing kit and are nicely designed. I'd love to be able to say "healing becomes great once you start..." but I feel they're not getting their justice because the majority of the content doesn't push you to really utilise it much. But when you do get to, they're nice kits to work with, they're not without their flaws, but are fun to play when you are being pushed more. If you're not, then healing can get boring.

Sometimes you'll find a group that pushes you because things aren't going well, and carrying a part can be a reward. And one thing healers do in dungeon is ask the tank to do a ful pulll, that's one way to push your healing more. And trying harder content once you get to it.

I echo what Branded says in that it's also worth giving others ago. IMO SCH isn't that much more complicated, but I was a SCH main since BETA right around until Shadowbringers, so my judgement might be biased.

AST out of the three is the one I've been finding the most interesting to play this time around,simply because it has to do more to do versus the other two and has to juggle card buffs, which can detract from your DPS phases because you're contributing to rDPS through support and not just DPS.

With Noct and Diurnal Sects you essentially get WHM and SCH modes as it can switch between regen healing and shield healing (when out of combat, except with Neutral Sect, which temporarily gives you both). The down side is that it doesn't flow as well as WHM or SCH (I'd argue WHM flows best) and the actual card system is a divisive topic because there's those who like it and those who hate it, but as somebody vanilla to it, you may not find yourself with the same complaints as others. I don't mind it and I am of the opinion the old system was better.

I felt exactly the same when I started FFXIV.
I came from games like WoW, Rift etc. where healing was generally a full-time job which required managing your healing cooldowns and resources besides thinking about which healing spell is most efficient for the current situation. Where a bit of support was baked into every healer, ranging from regular buffs to things like stuns and interrupts and chosing your cheap heals for their efficiency was common practice. I loved shaman with my totems, elemental shields, interrupts, stuns, wide selection of heals, okayish dps choices during my few downtimes and active mana management.
Naturally, when I tried FFXIV and found out there is only very little to heal and I could take care of almost all the healing without even having to actually cast anything, it felt completely off and frustrated me to no end because it seemed all I was ever doing was dpsing.
Many players feel the same. A lot were hoping for an actual healer with the priorities being healing > resource management > support > dps.

You will not get pushed into pushing big deeps in casual content (=anything you can do via DF plus open world stuff). So if you don't like it, you don't have to do it. Many players will silently frown and roll their eyes at it but most will keep silent. But if you step into endgame you will definitely have to push your dps.
Which means you will plan out your skills in a way that you have to do as little healing as possible and have more time for pushing one button over and over again. It may sound unneccessarily pessimistic at first but unfortunately, that's really how it is. Optimization on healer means trying to spent more time pushing the same button; it feels like you're doing less the better you get instead of more.

Try yourself at SCH and AST, maybe one of them will be more to your liking. AST in particular feels more busy thanks to the cards but also other skills that require a bit of micro management like the star, stance dancing between pulls or horoscope.
To give you a fair warning though: the toolkits of healers don't start to feel at least somewhat interesting and varied until reaching 60+. While many dps already have some really nice toolkits or even their rotation save for maybe a finisher, healers take really long to diverge from either spamming Benefic II/ Cure II/ Adlo or Malefic/ Gravity/ Stone/ Holy/ Ruin/ Art of War.
Maybe you'll grow into your green dps role. I'd give it a chance; some healers turned from "I want to be a pure healer" into "Let's see if I can out-dps that dps over there" over time.

Try astrologian whenever you can.
He has a "different" healing kit and can boost party damage, very good mobility.
Busier job to play, and some healing abilities a bit more interesting to use (planning earthly star/horoscope for example).

Or even scholar.
Many ressources, very versatile, some shielding, some regen, some mitigation, a small crit increase.
More to think about than whm.

WHM didn't get back any of its dps spells removed.

As for SCH, it was not so much about the "dps focused" thing.
It was needeed to burn the extra stack remaining on something actually useful.
Aetherflow is also a mana managment tool. Something you want to press whenever it's ready. Doing while sitting on 1-2 stacks felt wrong. It felt like a waste.
So there's that, but also, solo content. Mostly sitting at full charge all the time. Besides, Energy drain is also good for mana, not only dps.

It's just the design of this game. Healers have many oGCD heals and because of the way damage goes out to the group there's a lot of downtime between heals needed, so the GCDs are usually used for dps spells.

No matter the content, you will never not be able to not dps at all as healer (unless people are new/undergeared and things go horribly wrong). And while SCH and especially AST are much busier than WHM, you will still use most GCDs to dps. It even gets easier to dps the higher lvl you get.

While I personally like that you have to dps as a healer (usually the healers in FF games had some attacks that you used when healing isn't needed, actually almost all JRPGs I played are like this, so for me it's normal and the "right" way), I have to admit that it's gotten a little simple and boring ever since we only got one direct attack spell and one DoT. I would like it if we had a combo or something else to make it more engaging, but I would also really like it if we would need to use our GCD heals a little more, not only for emergencies. So that there's some kind of balance between dpsing and healing maybe.

If you are totally against dpsing as a healer because you want it to be like it's in the games you came from, then maybe FFXIV just isn't the right game for you. Usually the people who hate to do more than just healing came from WoW. But FFXIV is a different game.

..Don't know why I always gotta be the one that likes what everyone else hates..

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Hence why we're seeing a shortage of healers.

We are valued for our dps. We are expected to dps.

That in itself is not a bad thing, but if you found dpsing as a healer dull from 1-50 I have bad news for you. It doesn't get better. You will spam the same singlentarget spell while keeping up the same single target DoT even in high level content.

For a game that expect healers to dps, damaging as a healer is incredibly dull and boring.

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Very much this!

As someone who played healers in other MMOs (since 1999), I was a bit surprised that it's such a minor role in FFXIV -- especially since the game *requires* the role to be filled in group and raid content.

You would THINK that if the game is going to require -- and the community is going to expect -- DPS to be a primary part of the healer's responsibility, Squeenix would make more of an effort to create a comprehensive and engaging DPS toolkit for every healer job. But instead, they seem hell bent on making the DPS kit less engaging as time goes on.

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Originally Posted by tazrenoth

I know I haven't finished the msq, but does healing get better after or is this pretty much the mentality of the game forever?

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The closer you get to endgame/max level, the stronger the mentality becomes and the more you will be resented if you don't DPS. Outside of the FF14 communities, FF14's healing role is often described as a DPS/Support hybrid role.

If you ever progress to what we call "Savage" raids (basically hard core/high end raid content), the healing requirements do get higher. But even up to and including the very hardest content in the game ("Ultimate", as it's called), even with the high healing requirements, there is an expectation that healers will balance that with DPS. Even more than 'just DPS when you can', and more like 'Hit X minimum DPS', as it's expected that these players can balance healing needs and DPSing better than those that, for example, just run dungeons.

This is not likely to ever change because of a number of issues that are fundamental to FF14's encounter design that would take thorough overhauls, and of course, those that don't like it don't tend to stay.

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Personally, not that I don't have fun with FF14's healing, but I'm also keeping an eye out for that MMO that might, some day, have a stronger trinity/healing role - where healing isn't just a 'side gig' as you put it, yeah. Not sure it'll ever come along, but who knows, perhaps someday.

I just recently started playing healer and i like it, its more proactive role in comparison to any other healers in other games i used to heal in (neverwinter, ESO).

On my low lvl WHM i try to apply dots to all mobs around the tank and heals him along with taking off debuffs from him with esuna and actually i find it more engaging than playing a tank.

You may not value the DPS you are able to dish out as a healer or think its unnecessary, BUT I DO see its importance and i could see now the difference between groups in which healer does dps and does not, healers do bring a lot of value to the party with their DPS making the run much easier and cleaner that i will tell you.
It feels several levels better than healing in ESO where you could meet people with no idea how to play at all, it could make your dungeon as long as 1 hour in that game if you play with wrong people which is frustrating beyond anything you will ever experience in ffxiv.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

You may not value the DPS you are able to dish out as a healer or think its unnecessary, BUT I DO see its importance and i could see now the difference between groups in which healer does dps and does not, healers do bring a lot of value to the party with their DPS making the run much easier and cleaner that i will tell you.

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Healer dps makes dungeon runs quicker. Obviously.

FFXIV healer charm comes from the target switching, from enemy to ally. The constant juggling of dots, hots and awareness of healthbars and enemy telegraphs.

Problem is once you get to a certain practitioned point, you will see that you essentially spend most of your duties pressing either your AoE button several times in a row or your single target Spell several times in a row all the while throwing some eventual instant cast on the tank to sustain him/her.

And this won't change from 50 to 80. You will spend every encounter spamming your slightly differently coloured single target spell and refreshing your DoT forever.

And you can forget about dispelling debuffs. Dispellable debuffs at 80 happen so rarely it barely warrants having esuna on your Action bars.

Esuna is such a good example too. The only dispellable debuffs that will end up in a raid wipe, like TEA and Shiva, are even worth it more than the glare/holy that that esuna could have been. Maybe if a caster gets esunable paralyze in some dungeon packs. But basically every dot you can just let run and then slap a tetra on the player afterwards. If you will even need to heal them, that is.
Modern dungeons are a real disapointment in that you can run experts with 3 dps and a warrior, and the warrior doesn't even have hard time solohealing it.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

And you can forget about dispelling debuffs. Dispellable debuffs at 80 happen so rarely it barely warrants having esuna on your Action bars.

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Even if they happen, it's often better to wait it out (throw out an oGCD heal if you have to) than to dispel it.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

FFXIV healer charm comes from the target switching, from enemy to ally.

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I have to disagree with this. AST's amount of target juggling is one of the most infuriating things of ShB and has made me play the job less than any previous expansion.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I have to disagree with this. AST's amount of target juggling is one of the most infuriating things of ShB and has made me play the job less than any previous expansion.

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Yeah, I honestly wish that FFXIV would take on the modern tab targetting system wherein you can have selected 1 enemy and 1 ally at the same time.

That would help not only healers, when they need to be weaving attacks and heals, but also Tanks too (As switching target to do things like Shirk or pop an ally defensive CD can be annoying, especially given how janktacular FFXIV's macros are). With also minor benefit for various DPS jobs (DRG putting their shiny red chain thing on someone, RDM/SMN using Raise or even BLM teleporting to an ally)

Especially when actual tab targetting is also janky af, where you need to see a bosses nameplate to tab target them (Which, even with fully zoomed out camera, isn't always the case when looking in a way to see mechanics)

I'm SCH main, and I do not have an issue with "green dps". I just wish SE would embrace it and give us back the full breadth of our DPS skill set, barring that and I'm supposed to be a full healer I'd like to see damage or defensive stats re balanced to see us healers utilized more. The amount of healing downtime is outrageous to the point where I enjoy getting that meme worthy noob under geared tank in DF just for kicks. No idea if SE is listening, and even if they are it'll just all wrong again..

Play the game that you like to play.

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." - Soren Johnson (2011), source: https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=369

How much you need to heal and how much you get to DPS as a healer really depends on the group. If your tank pulls a lot, they'll need more healing. If they pull more than they can handle, they'll need more healing. If they pull more than the DPS can handle, they may need full-time healing with cooldown-usage on your side. I once got called out that I had to 'focus less on DPS' when a tank died after pulling way too much, the DPS couldn't handle it and I was out of healing cooldowns without being able to even contribute to DPS. This goes to show that how you approach any given situation depends on the dynamic of the party and the current situation.

In general, I'd personally recommend to keep healing as your top priority. When there's nothing to heal for a bit, fill up the time with some DoTs and damaging spells. "Everyone" (read: sarcasm) may want you to put DPS first, but that's purely because of the quote I put above.

At the start of the game, you'll be eased into the game's mechanics and approach at a comfortable pace, but this ramps up with noticeable difficulty as you go on. With Shadowbringers and its (instanced) content, the game has shifted to a more healing-focused approach for healers. You'll be DPS'ing when you get some downtime, but as a healer I find that a vast majority of my time is spent healing (partly for making up for mistakes in the party. They simply happen).

What I would advice you is simple: try the various healers, find one with a toolkit that suits your gameplay, keep healing as your primary concern and keep DPS a secondary priority. You are, after all, a healer.

I don't think anyone actually says to put DPS above healing. Obviously keeping people up is the #1 priority. When people say to make DPS a bigger priority, step 1 of that is to work on healing more effectively: Not tossing out big heals when only a little bit of healing is necessary, letting regens do their job, and using your free oGCd abilities early and often rather than saving them for emergencies that likely never come (and won't fix the emergency anyway.) It's just that healers often either stand around idle when no healing is required, or heal in super inefficient ways, and need to be told that they can do more than just keep people upright to nudge them into improving. Better still, these changes often make for better healing as well (staying active means a better reaction time, and knowing how to use your kit effectively means when emergencies DO happen they can turn what would have been an opening for DPS into more healing.)

I think the DPS priority perception exists because 1) your rDPS measures your performance in this game and 2) good healers will DPS more than they heal because they game doesn't challenge their healing enough for it to be a big chunk of their uptime.

To add, a healer's contribution to DPS isn't only affected by their personal DPS (or their DPS buffs) but their ability to keep people alive, a dead person is not contributing to DPS. So technically speaking, keeping people alive, even if you're a DPS obsessed healer, is still your biggest priority. A dead DPS is a big cut to overall DPS and you as a healer aren't going to be pulling that dead guy's weight.

So healing remains a greater priority over DPS even if you are obsessed over DPS.

Content and how your healing spells are equipped for it, that's what determines how heal or DPS focused something is. Unless your healer opts for standing around doing nothing in between heals.

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Originally Posted by LalaLuna

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." - Soren Johnson (2011), source: https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=369

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This right here. Something I've certainly noticed a long time ago. Most complaints about the game only exist because people try to optimize the heck out of everything. If they would stop doing that, their issues would immediately stop being issues.

I don't try to optimize anything since I don't care. I'm here to play Final Fantasy 14, not Spreadsheet Simulator 2020.

Do I dps every chance I get when I'm healing? Of course I do because I enjoy doing it. I do not and will not try to squeeze out every possible bit of damage however as that isn't fun.

Have I done savage content in the past? Yes I have. Got clears? Yep. The obsession with optimization is what drove me out of it.

FF14 isn't a job, it's a game and that's how I'm going to treat it.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

This right here. Something I've certainly noticed a long time ago. Most complaints about the game only exist because people try to optimize the heck out of everything. If they would stop doing that, their issues would immediately stop being issues.

I don't try to optimize anything since I don't care. I'm here to play Final Fantasy 14, not Spreadsheet Simulator 2020.

Do I dps every chance I get when I'm healing? Of course I do because I enjoy doing it. I do not and will not try to squeeze out every possible bit of damage however as that isn't fun.

Have I done savage content in the past? Yes I have. Got clears? Yep. The obsession with optimization is what drove me out of it.

FF14 isn't a job, it's a game and that's how I'm going to treat it.

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This I also agree with. It's how the word "balance" has become a dirty word for me. Balance IMO should only go as far as "can this job be used to do this content competently?"

I don't care if it means one job it's harder to do the content competently, if anything that gives options for players who want more challenge....this to me has always been the advantage of multiple jobs fulfilling the same role, some can be more beginner friendly, whereas others can be more complex. Thus how enjoyable a job is should take importance.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

It's just that healers often either stand around idle when no healing is required, or heal in super inefficient ways, and need to be told that they can do more than just keep people upright to nudge them into improving. Better still, these changes often make for better healing as well (staying active means a better reaction time, and knowing how to use your kit effectively means when emergencies DO happen they can turn what would have been an opening for DPS into more healing.)

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I couldn't agree more. I don't know how often I've been in duties with (not new) heal-only healers who were completely overwhelmed with healing when people messed up mechanics and they had to do more than just randomly cast a Cure or Medica. Those healers often don't use their toolkit at all. Like when they are WHM they use 2 Afflatus heals at max and one Tetragrammaton, and the rest of their casts are Cure I, and for AoE either Medica II followed by Medica or even another Medica II. So if people now mess up and two players need healing very fast before the next raid-wide AoE goes out, they just cast Medica somewhere in the back, unable to save them. I've seen situations like this SO OFTEN. Because in normal situations it's enough to spam Cure I on the tank and randomly cast Medica II, they don't even know their other spells and abilities.

So it's not only that they don't know how to heal efficiently though, a lot of them don't know how to properly heal at all.

And I just don't understand why. After all this time I know that there are healers who refuse to dps for various reasons. But why do they also ignore like 90% of their healing actions, only to be unable to keep up when needed? Is it really because they aren't needed if everything goes right in easy content?

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

This right here. Something I've certainly noticed a long time ago. Most complaints about the game only exist because people try to optimize the heck out of everything. If they would stop doing that, their issues would immediately stop being issues.

I don't try to optimize anything since I don't care. I'm here to play Final Fantasy 14, not Spreadsheet Simulator 2020.

Do I dps every chance I get when I'm healing? Of course I do because I enjoy doing it. I do not and will not try to squeeze out every possible bit of damage however as that isn't fun.

Have I done savage content in the past? Yes I have. Got clears? Yep. The obsession with optimization is what drove me out of it.

FF14 isn't a job, it's a game and that's how I'm going to treat it.

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Note that in context that quote does not blame the players for optimizing, rather this is something that the developers need to keep in mind when designing their games. Some players have fun optimizing, and you should never take that from them.

There was a GDC talk by one of the people who work on Magic the Gathering where he says that it is the dev's job to ensure that the most optimal, and the most fun options are the same. He likens it to the shot clock in basketball iirc (Before it was implemented, players would get the lead, and just kind of hold on to the ball. Boring, but optimal). Honestly, I'd imagine this train of thought was the reason why AST cards were changed, because many people had fun using all the cards, while it was optimal for sufficiently skilled groups to fish for the damage increases. So they brought the two inline to... mixed results.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

Note that in context that quote does not blame the players for optimizing, rather this is something that the developers need to keep in mind when designing their games. Some players have fun optimizing, and you should never take that from them.

There was a GDC talk by one of the people who work on Magic the Gathering where he says that it is the dev's job to ensure that the most optimal, and the most fun options are the same. He likens it to the shot clock in basketball iirc (Before it was implemented, players would get the lead, and just kind of hold on to the ball. Boring, but optimal). Honestly, I'd imagine this train of thought was the reason why AST cards were changed, because many people had fun using all the cards, while it was optimal for sufficiently skilled groups to fish for the damage increases. So they brought the two inline to... mixed results.

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Optimization and minmaxing will happen whether devs want it or not. There will always be a rotation that maximises damage for each class.

That being said, you can optimize around anything any rotation or gameplay, so why not just design classes with an engaging set of skills and forget about what players will optimize around.

1 button spell spam is not engaging.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Optimization and minmaxing will happen whether devs want it or not. There will always be a rotation that maximises damage for each class.

That being said, you can optimize around anything any rotation or gameplay, so why not just design classes with an engaging set of skills and forget about what players will optimize around.

1 button spell spam is not engaging.

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I agree, but while they may have been thinking of this concept when working on AST cards, I think the 1Dot/1Filler design comes from another desire entirely.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

I agree, but while they may have been thinking of this concept when working on AST cards, I think the 1Dot/1Filler design comes from another desire entirely.

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They wanted to streamline the process of alternating between damage and healing. While the process is boring from an optimization standpoint. It was not a decision with the higher tier players in mind, but the lower tier players who are responsible for all the feedback about bad scholars who think their fairy can handle everything without actually using cooldowns to facilitate that. Yes good scholars look like they're just dpsing the whole time, but so do bad ones.

I'm aware that my example focuses on scholars but the sentiment does apply to whm and ast as well.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

They wanted to streamline the process of alternating between damage and healing. While the process is boring from an optimization standpoint. It was not a decision with the higher tier players in mind, but the lower tier players who are responsible for all the feedback about bad scholars who think their fairy can handle everything without actually using cooldowns to facilitate that. Yes good scholars look like they're just dpsing the whole time, but so do bad ones.

I'm aware that my example focuses on scholars but the sentiment does apply to whm and ast as well.

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A a healer that heals all the time would probably end up grossly overhealing/not using his kit to its full extent. That would also be an example of a bad healer.

The fact that most fights have long stretches of healing downtime doesn't help either.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

A a healer that heals all the time would probably end up grossly overhealing/not using his kit to its full extent. That would also be an example of a bad healer.

The fact that most fights have long stretches of healing downtime doesn't help either.

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Yes I'm aware of this. My understanding of the situation is more of a theory then truth tbh. But even talking to some of my friends, I find they complain that healers never heal or res or the like gives me the impression that was the kind of feedback the devs where getting, scholar was too busy dpsing and putting the work on the other healer, so they simplified the dps toolkit in an attempt to reduce the distraction and gave them more heals in the hopes that scholar picks up the slack.

Ast only fished for balance was the feedback they likely received, therefore all cards are balance and the rng is placed in its potency as opposed to whether or not you got it off.

Whm is the trickier one for me to speculate on. My guess is that the Lilies where an attempt to answer the feed back of Lilies being useless and whm having poor mobility and weaving options. So they did both while keeping their desired fantasy of making whm the big powerful gcd healer. Misery was probably a way to motivate people to actually take part in the mechanic by giving then an award.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Yes I'm aware of this. My understanding of the situation is more of a theory then truth tbh. But even talking to some of my friends, I find they complain that healers never heal or res or the like gives me the impression that was the kind of feedback the devs where getting, scholar was too busy dpsing and putting the work on the other healer, so they simplified the dps toolkit in an attempt to reduce the distraction and gave them more heals in the hopes that scholar picks up the slack.

Ast only fished for balance was the feedback they likely received, therefore all cards are balance and the rng is placed in its potency as opposed to whether or not you got it off.

Whm is the trickier one for me to speculate on. My guess is that the Lilies where an attempt to answer the feed back of Lilies being useless and whm having poor mobility and weaving options. So they did both while keeping their desired fantasy of making whm the big powerful gcd healer. Misery was probably a way to motivate people to actually take part in the mechanic by giving then an award.

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In other words, when looking for healer feedback, SE listened to tanks and DPS. Not healers.