Adding more Healer responsibility: Yay or Nay?

So we have Repose as a role action--a currently useless ability.

Repose gives us a streamlined, interesting debuff with little-to-no application for its use outside of, at most, early-game shenanigans. It doesn't need to stay this way, though.

In the BLU carnival, there's a fight with an enemy that starts the fight by giving themselves a massive damage up buff. An acceptable strategy to combatting this foe is by putting him to sleep and waiting out the buff's duration.

This is one example of how Sleep can be useful in certain fights. There are other possibilities too, such as someone leading an add to a hotspot of some kind (like a switch or a trap), and the healer needs to put that add to sleep.

As healers, we're always on the lookout for more things to do when we're not healing. In many cases, it can feel like a DPS spam with some occasional healing for mechanics or when someone messes up, but if we're going to keep Repose, why not make it something useful?

This topic is really debatable mainly because of where healers fall on the healing spectrum in efficiency. I've seen healers who quit healing because they were told to do more things, and I've seen healers quit because there isn't much for them to do gameplay wise.

Personally, I would say no because of how putting more healer responsibility would make it seem intimidating like a tank's responsibility. With the limited number of healers that are already in the game, I would not try to discourage people from healing any further while juggling their member's HP bars and maintaining DPS. I rather see their DPS rotation to be adjusted instead to encourage DPS as a healer and adjust their skills to be more engaging in a battle.

Yaaaaay for more to do, but not just for healers for everyone pls. :3

I would say "yes !" particularly if it could extend the way of playing for the healers.
Obviously, it could be the case with Repose.
To not frutrate players because of the reponsabilities, missing Repose should not be too punishing, depending of the difficulty.
For example, we have 6 sec to sleep the add. If we miss it :
For a normal trial, it could result on a AOE damage.
For an extreme trial, it could result on a stronger AOE damage.
For a savage battle, it could result on a stronger AOE damage + 1 stack of vulnerability (which would increase if we miss every Repose)

I like the idea of any role having more interesting things to do.

I also think Repose could be a skill that opens up more diverse options in battle than just ‘deal damage’ or ‘use heal oGCD’.

One example I can think of is that it can take the place of Stun. If you’re doing a random expert dungeon and you know the enemy is doing an annoying attack that won’t be stunned for whatever reason, generally you can just throw Repose at it to interrupt the attack, regardless of whether it could be stunned in the first place (unless it’s a boss of course).

Maybe things like this could be implemented to open up more options to use it? Like an enemy that does a big attack that can’t be stunned, but can be interrupted by putting it to sleep? Though it’d have to be strong enough to warrant losing a dps GCD but not strong enough that it could kill the party because that would be too much for general content, especially if we’re just talking trash mobs.

But then if it’s in a high-tier raid, either people will be like ‘why do I have to sleep this enemy that won’t kill me instead of just dealing damage’, or ‘this enemy is too strong because if I don’t sleep it quick enough the party could die’. So it’s like, I think my idea sounds nice in theory, but I don’t know how something like Repose (or any debuff in general) could be implemented in a way that would be accepted by players

My own opinion is that I like the idea of having more responsibilities for healers, especially in regards to things that would make the healer role feel like more of it’s own thing than a variant of another role. But the idea that healers deal damage when not healing is still the main impetus behind the healing role, so I can’t imagine any further responsibilities beyond the damage/healing balancing act would be well-received on the whole. If not purely because of the difficulty with balancing around things like debuffs and the fact that the game’s design doesn’t really support these kinds of gameplay.

There is also the argument that there’s no point in fixing what isn’t really broken. Healers don’t need more responsibilities because if/when they get more involved damage rotations they’ll already have more than enough responsibility. So it’s like, they’d have to put a lot of development effort into balancing something out that might not be enjoyable, even though players already have something they could enjoy that’s much easier for the game to be developed around. Having healers focus more on things that already exist like the heal/damage balancing does seem more practical than trying to implement entirely different things

I'm all for more things to do. Not necessarily DPSing, tho. CC would be cool. It's just a shame that the game doesn't support that. Enemies are too weak to bother and bosses are immune to most effects. That's why I'm hoping we get a new Eureka (I know, I know lol) with a threatening overworld to make these spells viable again. Lord knows I've given up on Yoshi and team making the actual overworld threatening.

I'm torn on this.

Healers already have the most responsibility in the game.

They're expected to heal the tanks, fix everyone's stupidity, heal normal raid wide damage, and provide dps all at the same time.

How much more should they be burdened with?

Another anti repose thread?

It is one of the best abilities in the healer kit. It's just not for raids.

If you don't do content where it's used... just take it off your hotbar. Jeez.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Another anti repose thread?

It is one of the best abilities in the healer kit. It's just not for raids.

If you don't do content where it's used... just take it off your hotbar. Jeez.

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If you bothered to actually read the post, it wasn't an anti repose thread. It talked about making it better for all content and giving healers more to do.


Personally,OP, I wouldn't mind it, but I'm not the biggest fan. Would prefer the DPS aspect to be made more interesting, since I actually like the idea of "combat medics" and that's what the healers in this game are. Just wish the "combat" part wasn't broil x 100000

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

. I rather see their DPS rotation to be adjusted instead to encourage DPS as a healer and adjust their skills to be more engaging in a battle.

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This needs to be done because I'm falling asleep with the role. Most of the 'fun' with healing is finding a balance between weaving dps and managing heals...FF14 has all but ruined that aspect of the game though, sadly.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

If you bothered to actually read the post, it wasn't an anti repose thread. It talked about making it better for all content and giving healers more to do.


Personally,OP, I wouldn't mind it, but I'm not the biggest fan. Would prefer the DPS aspect to be made more interesting, since I actually like the idea of "combat medics" and that's what the healers in this game are. Just wish the "combat" part wasn't broil x 100000

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I read it through and through, thank you very much.

One more oGCD ability (which it would probably become if it were to take this responsibility out of tank/dps hands) that occasionally gets used in a fight like shiva savage isn't going to make healing more interesting. You'd remember "Oh, push that button when the earth elementals spawn" and forget it for virtually everything else, including other entire fights. Entire tiers, even.

There isn't some wealth of interruptable abilities, just waiting to break up the monotony of being a glare/broil/malefic bot for the first 3 minutes of shiva, and this is a fight with higher-than-average interruptables.

This is a thinly veiled anti-repose thread.

Because it's become some weird thing certain people like to campaign against because it's... useful for non raid content and we can't have that, I guess? Pretty well puzzles me but the FF14 forums are the FF14 forums, I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I read it through and through, thank you very much.

One more oGCD ability (which it would probably become if it were to take this responsibility out of tank/dps hands) that occasionally gets used in a fight like shiva savage isn't going to make healing more interesting. You'd remember "Oh, push that button when the earth elementals spawn" and forget it for virtually everything else, including other entire fights. Entire tiers, even.

There isn't some wealth of interruptable abilities, just waiting to break up the monotony of being a glare/broil/malefic bot for the first 3 minutes of shiva, and this is a fight with higher-than-average interruptables.

This is a thinly veiled anti-repose thread.

Because it's become some weird thing certain people like to campaign against because it's... useful for non raid content and we can't have that, I guess? Pretty well puzzles me but the FF14 forums are the FF14 forums, I suppose.

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I don't see how needing to use repose in a raid suddenly makes it useless in the like, 2 places it's also currently useful? I don't see how this is "anti-repose" when it's literally suggesting to make it more useful in all content.

Not saying it'd help current healer problems, chances are it'd just be another esuna, use it when you absolutely need to and forget about it the rest of the time. How that is "anti-repose" is beyond me, in that situation it'd be exactly the same, except maybe you'd be forced to use it once in a blue moon.

It doesnt work passed lvl 50, like sleep, etc.

Reading this thread just makes me think back on how we used to have more status afflicting responsibilities (a3s being the last notable fight to ask for them) with heavies (Stone, Miasma, shadowflare), stun (CO), silence(fairy), bind (Stella), knockback (fluid aura).

The devs have taken away quite a lot of CC over the years from healers and unless they do a 180 and give them back, I doubt they would make repose mandatory for anything other than that 1 quest, just look at physical ranged having bind/heavy since role actions became a thing yet to incorporate them into a fight.

CC skills are useful solo and get less useful in group content nothing wrong with trying to make the CC skills more useful in group content so I think someone needs to chill on the anti-resposers hate.

Yay, I don’t remember the last time I used Esuna in 80s roulette and Raids. They’re minor enough to not mess with their initial responsibilities but still makes a difference

Frankly I’d give DPS a bone in terms of consequential actions like killing a mob before it does hard aoe damage, or stun it before it casts final sting or somthing similar or silence. Since DPS is the most mindless job atm even more so in dungeons

Nay. Not because that's what I want though. It's just that you're average pug healer can barely do the job they are required to do. Changes to healing throughout the years in FFXIV can all be summed up by the two role skills of Repose and Fluid Aura, and the history surrounding the two abilities.

Perhaps I'm a pessimist though, and a shift in perspective is in order? Another way to look at things is healer DPS, and/or lack thereof exacerbates the healer sleepy mode, and giving them more to do would make them more attentive, and their heals, cleanses, and rezzes will come faster. Yeah, that's a big shift.

I liked when we had things like Virus/Addle, slow or heavy. I never really liked Repose, as it's always been very niche. It's ok that it exists for what little content it's useful for, but I wouldn't mind if they removed it, like they did with most healer crowd control. Instead of a sleep effect I'd rather have things like slow back which were useful in almost every dungeon. Heavy was very situational, like in A3 (or which one was it?), knockback as well, but I thought they were fun to use, because it gave us some variety.
I also liked when healers had things like Disable. It was in my own hand to weaken the enemy for a raid-wide AoE so that I had to heal less instead of hoping the dps/tanks do it. I like to have it as tank/dps, but I miss it as healer.

So, I would like more responsibility, but rather in form of sone of the old crowd control abilities we had (and maybe interesting new ones), instead of sleeping enemies.

Regarding the level of responsibility healers are willing to put into a fight, I imagine if this did become a thing, then consequences would be fairly minor in dungeons, light in normal raids, moderate in extreme, and punishing on Savage.

If you're doing a random dungeon, probably the worst that happens is an add spawns because you didn't sleep the add. It's a simple tank and spank, but you lose a little momentum in the battle. In normal raids, the same could be true as well as maybe some minor raid damage depending on the circumstances. The raid damage is higher in extreme, and in Savage you have adds that are very difficult to deal with, may kill 1 or more party members, and/or have damage that gives everyone vulnerability. Savage is the tier for players who are trying to be on top of their game after all.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

CC skills are useful solo and get less useful in group content nothing wrong with trying to make the CC skills more useful in group content so I think someone needs to chill on the anti-resposers hate.

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The sleep could work like that:
* The debuff has a 30 seconds duration - 15 on bosses
* When asleep, it will pause everything he's doing. The cast won't be cancelled, but just paused.
* During the debuff, every tick the monster has the chance to wake up. If he doesn't, next tick he'll have more chance to wake up.
* He won't wake up if being hit (for me, is this aspect what makes sleep very situational at best, useless at worst)
* If he wake up, the debuff falls off and the monster resumes the casting from where it stopped.

Due to that, sleep skills (mainly Repose) would be a 120-seconds cooldown

At the moment SE seems to have decided to walk away from their design philosophy that healers should do damage during their downtime, despite the fact that this is how it's been since the game began. To that end I'd like to see healers take more support responsibilities outside the health pool. Casting buffs and other status effects when healing isn't needed. Gods know that Final Fantasy has a near limitless amount of ideas to pull from.

Hells maybe we bring TP back and make MP something people have to manage. Maybe the healers could be responsible for not just keeping the health pools up but also MP and TP. What about aggro reducing abilities as well? Make threat something that could actually be a problem if healers aren't casting threat reduction abilities.

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Originally Posted by Vitreus

At the moment SE seems to have decided to walk away from their design philosophy that healers should do damage during their downtime, despite the fact that this is how it's been since the game began. To that end I'd like to see healers take more support responsibilities outside the health pool. Casting buffs and other status effects when healing isn't needed. Gods know that Final Fantasy has a near limitless amount of ideas to pull from.

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I'm 100% on board with this. Healers should be the buffers/debuffers of FFXIV.

Apocastatis (sp)? Should be a role action for healers and renamed Shell. Buffs the group to take reduced spell damage.
Put Protect back in like pvp action. Buffs the target to take reduced damage for a short time.
Feint? Give it to healers as a mob damage debuff.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I'm 100% on board with this. Healers should be the buffers/debuffers of FFXIV.

Apocastatis (sp)? Should be a role action for healers and renamed Shell. Buffs the group to take reduced spell damage.
Put Protect back in like pvp action. Buffs the target to take reduced damage for a short time.
Feint? Give it to healers as a mob damage debuff.

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I think this is a great idea also and I’d love to see them take healers down a more support-oriented route, but I’m curious what people think about the form of support abilities this could/should take?

Personally I think they’d be better as GCDs, if not just so that they’re readily available and not used at pre-determined parts of a fight because of cooldowns. But then I understand most healers would want them to be oGCDs so that they don’t overlap with damage rotations.

I guess what I want to ask is, whether healers would prefer GCD support spells that use more actively in place of damage spells (placing healer responsibility more towards support) , or would they prefer healers to be focused purely on balancing between damage and healing (placing healer responsibility more on maximising damage output). Or maybe they’d like to see all of the above? A mix of healing, complex damage rotations and some support responsibilities?

Also, naturally I think when discussing stuff that’s purely conceptual that we should put the game’s design to one side for the moment, since the game design doesn’t really accommodate much of anything besides just damage, so there’s not much to actually discuss. So let’s assume that whichever responsibility healers preferred causes game design to magically adjust itself to whatever it was chosen.

Tl;dr is would healers rather healer responsibility fell more towards support, damage, or both, given the assumption that the game design would somehow magically conform its design to match this

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Originally Posted by Connor

I think this is a great idea also and I’d love to see them take healers down a more support-oriented route, but I’m curious what people think about the form of support abilities this could/should take?

Personally I think they’d be better as GCDs, if not just so that they’re readily available and not used at pre-determined parts of a fight because of cooldowns. But then I understand most healers would want them to be oGCDs so that they don’t overlap with damage rotations.

I guess what I want to ask is, whether healers would prefer GCD support spells that use more actively in place of damage spells (placing healer responsibility more towards support) , or would they prefer healers to be focused purely on balancing between damage and healing (placing healer responsibility more on maximising damage output). Or maybe they’d like to see all of the above? A mix of healing, complex damage rotations and some support responsibilities?

Also, naturally I think when discussing stuff that’s purely conceptual that we should put the game’s design to one side for the moment, since the game design doesn’t really accommodate much of anything besides just damage, so there’s not much to actually discuss. So let’s assume that whichever responsibility healers preferred causes game design to magically adjust itself to whatever it was chosen.

Tl;dr is would healers rather healer responsibility fell more towards support, damage, or both, given the assumption that the game design would somehow magically conform its design to match this

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I like that healers are designed to be capable of contributing to rDPS in this game. It makes a lot of sense, but I do think one thing we need to help revive some of each job's individuality is different ways of contributing to it.

Scholar, for example, used to be the "Green DPS" healer who tried to maximize their personal DPS by shielding allies and utilizing their faerie to heal as much as possible so they don't have to. This works perfectly for the players who want to maximize their DPS as healers, but there are players who don't want this at all. There are the "Support Only" healers who don't want pressure to DPS while healing.

This is where Astrologian could use some reworking. They already have the identity of the buff healer who has the lowest personal DPS. I think Astrologian should get GCD support tools that buff the damage of other players while also protecting and/or healing them--tools that should outweigh the DPS you get from Malefic. Maybe in this build, keeping Combust up is the only real DPS AST should be doing in dungeons or raids. These buffs could also be placed on the AST themselves for soloing, of course. They would just be more beneficial on a DPS who is attacking 100% of the time and doesn't need to stop to heal.

rDPS contribution from healers is a part of FFXIV, but that doesn't mean we can't have healers designed to cater to the players with different wants from the healing role. If we had something like this, with perhaps WHM and/or Healer 4 being a mix of the two, that would make more players happy, right?

I don't want "more responsabilities".
I want some of the old flavour gameplay back.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I think this is a great idea also and I’d love to see them take healers down a more support-oriented route, but I’m curious what people think about the form of support abilities this could/should take?

Personally I think they’d be better as GCDs, if not just so that they’re readily available and not used at pre-determined parts of a fight because of cooldowns. But then I understand most healers would want them to be oGCDs so that they don’t overlap with damage rotations.

I guess what I want to ask is, whether healers would prefer GCD support spells that use more actively in place of damage spells (placing healer responsibility more towards support) , or would they prefer healers to be focused purely on balancing between damage and healing (placing healer responsibility more on maximising damage output). Or maybe they’d like to see all of the above? A mix of healing, complex damage rotations and some support responsibilities?

Also, naturally I think when discussing stuff that’s purely conceptual that we should put the game’s design to one side for the moment, since the game design doesn’t really accommodate much of anything besides just damage, so there’s not much to actually discuss. So let’s assume that whichever responsibility healers preferred causes game design to magically adjust itself to whatever it was chosen.

Tl;dr is would healers rather healer responsibility fell more towards support, damage, or both, given the assumption that the game design would somehow magically conform its design to match this

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I'd much rather use GCD's on support abilities rather than damage if the damage kit I am working with is the current one in Shadowbringers. If I'm still going to be spamming 1 - 1 - 1 - ... - 1 - 2 - 1- 1 - ... etc. in the next expansion PLEASE give me GCD support abilities.

Sleep only works if everyone stops attacking. Good luck with that.

I honestly wouldn't mind if they made Esuna important in dungeon boss fights again.

These days it pretty much only needs to be used as a consequence of people being hit by avoidable mechanics outside of savage and EX trials.

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Originally Posted by rxantos

Sleep only works if everyone stops attacking. Good luck with that.

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I imagine if they made adds that were meant to be put to sleep, it would be treated as a raid mechanic and people would know to leave the add alone. The tricky part would be introducing sleep mechanics as a semi-regular thing.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I honestly wouldn't mind if they made Esuna important in dungeon boss fights again.

These days it pretty much only needs to be used as a consequence of people being hit by avoidable mechanics outside of savage and EX trials.

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Yeah, more need to Esuna things like Doom off allies would be nice too, or Paralysis which can really screw up DPS players if you don't remove it.

FF14 needs more croud control oportunities in general.
In other games there are supporter classes specialized on cc and there are a lot of encounters where e.g. enemies need to be sleeped / mezzed and other classes have to watch their AOEs not waking them up, etc.
FF14 has removed a lot of cc options from bigger encounters over time until there is no cc needed at all.

I think, especially in 8-player raids, cc skills (repose) should get a come back, especially since you can guarantee that all helaers have the leep skill and it is available.
Imagine an encounter where you have to keep one or two adds asleep while doing mechanics and heal the tanks, and the DDs have to watch their AOEs not to wake them up - this can be a lot fun, if done right.

I don't have an opinion of it.. I can see why people have issues with the healer either doing too much, or not doing enough.. Overall I think its important to remember those who are playing on the PS4, if you give healers too much to do, it can be hard to play. I'm a PC player, but I recently started leveling my character on my PS4 when I'm away from home. I can't imagine how stressful it would be if you gave PS4 players too much to do. I think SE trying to please both platforms is essentially what people have problems with. The game is not as challenging as a PC-only mmo. I do somewhat wish we had more buffs/debuffs, though at the same time, in other FF games, that wasn't entirely what healers were. The buffs/debuffs were spread evenly across all classes and not all stacked as the healer's responsibility..

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I honestly wouldn't mind if they made Esuna important in dungeon boss fights again.

These days it pretty much only needs to be used as a consequence of people being hit by avoidable mechanics outside of savage and EX trials.

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Would like this now that they made esuna part of the kit rather than 'optional' like at start of Stormblood, so bad they made that cross role then add a boss like Ex death who gives Doom too many times in 1st few weeks had double healers with no esuna slotted on. >_>

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Originally Posted by Vitreus

At the moment SE seems to have decided to walk away from their design philosophy that healers should do damage during their downtime, despite the fact that this is how it's been since the game began. To that end I'd like to see healers take more support responsibilities outside the health pool. Casting buffs and other status effects when healing isn't needed. Gods know that Final Fantasy has a near limitless amount of ideas to pull from.

Hells maybe we bring TP back and make MP something people have to manage. Maybe the healers could be responsible for not just keeping the health pools up but also MP and TP. What about aggro reducing abilities as well? Make threat something that could actually be a problem if healers aren't casting threat reduction abilities.

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The biggest change would have to start with the way boss fights work. There are no "surprise" aoe's or "surprise" tank-busters, everything is scripted and we know when everything happens and what time it happens. For example, It's like we know most of Eden savage starts off with an AOE so as a SCH I pre-shield. To allow for more variety in healers doing more or less largely depends on how they (SE) structure the encounters in dungeons and raids. In dungeons, there are no special mobs we have to watch out for (like to put to sleep), everything is tank and spank and burn it all down in AOEs. In raids, it really depends on how much of the fight you already memorized before the boss dies.

I would love to see more variety of things for healers to do besides 1-2 button spam our DPS button while only healing on off GCD, but not to stress us out as long as our party members do their roles too. It's like someone said earlier, not every healer wants to be the dps healer, and not every healer wants to just be support heal. But if a healer is bored that is because the encounter isn't engaging enough, and that is totally on SE.

I mean better having a decent dmg rotation and yes for more healer responsibility in at least savage and ultimates.

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Originally Posted by Yuletide

Overall I think its important to remember those who are playing on the PS4, if you give healers too much to do, it can be hard to play.

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I'm on PC but play with a controller (and played on PS3/PS4 in the past). As long as you don't have to switch between hotbars too often it's totally fine.

I actually prefer having two full hotbars with all the important stuff, and then a third one that you fill with less important stuff you don't often need during battle (like AST sects, repose, summons).

So as long as we don't again get 10 more skills on top of what we have now, but instead of some more useless skills (like repose, or combined Cure + Cure II / Benefic + Benefic II), they could give us more dps and support/debuff skills without any problem for controller users.

Right now we have next to no debuffs as healers. Repose and bind are totally useless in regular play. WHM has Holy, which is great, and SCH has Chain Stratagem, and that's it. Things like Virus or slow (Shadow Flare) were really nice to have as healers and it wasn't too much.