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

A take on healing and a new healer job in FFXIV at Massively OP: https://massivelyop.com/2020/05/18/w...of-unsolvable/

Seems to summarize some core issues pretty well.

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The thing is, though… well, there’s a problem with that. See, while the acquisition of gear and power makes every job better at its role, healing becomes better at the same rate it becomes less necessary.

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Yep, saw someone say this once and I 100% agree with it. Healers are the only role in the game punished with worse gameplay for playing their role well / efficiently.

I agree with the article insofar that what it says is *a* problem. Definitely. The healer role has a weird Gordian knot of several interconnected problems that reinforce one another, which I suspect is why trying to fix them onesie twosie as *THE* problem hasn't cut it.

That was a painful read.

The tl;dr is healers are boring when there's nothing to heal, which occurs with greater frequency toward the end of a raid tier, and they can't be made more interesting because some people suck at healing.

Yes there will always be times when healing is boring which is why it's important to have something else to do, especially in FFXIV. Different encounters are different, some require less healing, some groups take less damage, and of course with practice and gear you learn and are able to use fewer healing spells. This game in particular is extremely scripted so you always know this amount of damage is coming in at this time and where you need to be and so on, only exacerbating the issue and making the importance of healers having more to do that much greater.

No they should not be trimmed down to the bare minimum for the weakest players. I don't know if that's conjecture or the dev team's thoughts on the matter but I think it's hella wrong. If someone is so bad at their job they get overwhelmed and confused by a couple extra dps buttons and can't keep their group alive, they're not going to be doing difficult content - or at least they really shouldn't. And if they're not doing difficult content there's absolutely no need for a healer to dps, they can safely ignore those abilities until they get used to healing then eventually work them in. Y'know, learning. It's a thing that (some) people do.

So yeah it'd be great if healers had more to do during downtime, whether it's dps or buffing or managing resources or playing with cards or themselves or whatever just something. That's all. :)

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As a result of all this work, each DPS player deals 10% more damage, each tank takes 5% less damage and deals 5% more, and each healer deals 5% more damage and heals for 5% more

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Based on all of these changes, your party-wide DPS has increased by 60%.

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That's.....really not how math works.

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

That's.....really not how math works.

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Thanks. I wanted to say a few things and this was one of them. Also, it's not a new or different take on anything. It's exactly what everyone in this forum has been saying for the past x years. So if you haven't bothered reading the article, you essentially saved yourself some time.

Also, while we're at it. It's only unsolvable if the only solution you accept is healers being pure healers. Which everyone in here at this point understand is not even close to a solution. There are plenty of other solutions that inject uniqueness to jobs and stuff to do during downtime while keeping things balanced. These downtime activities just aren't healing related.

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This problem is compounded by the fact that… well, there are lots of healers who are not very good as healers. You don’t really want to encourage the “I’m green DPS” dude to not pay any attention to actually healing the tank, especially when his assumption is that the tank will last just fine into three-digit HP based on nothing more than thinking it’ll probably work. Better to lean too hard on healing over dealing damage, then.

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This one is iffy. That's partly because to be a good healer, you have to take risks. This applies to DPS and amount of healing required. No other role requires to take risks besides maybe tanks who pull big in order to improve their gameplay. A lot of good healers are made only through the deaths of a lot of party members to figure out their general baseline.

A Green DPS over dpsing is based on multiple reasons. It's a problem with everyone involved. Healers who over DPS is either tunnel visioning to eek out more DPS and assumes the tank is alright for x GCD or so, may it be because they forget about the incoming non-avoidable damage, or assume the tank would avoid the incoming orange AoE spot/mitigate/invuln on the incoming tankbuster. This is not inherently bad because it means the healer is trying to improve their overall contribution to the team. It means they misjudged their baseline for healing, which frankly is not uncommon because healing damage is dependent on multiple factors: gear, knowledge of the run (hurts first-time players and those not knowing the mechanics), the ones who are actively avoiding damage, the ones who failed to dodge damage, and damage that can't be avoided.
Every party in Duty Finder is different - healers adjust to this inherent difference by adjusting their baseline of when they heal and at times, on the fly when players suddenly start dying more often. This is the difference in the mark of a good healer than one who just spam heals at 90%.

However, this baseline technique takes time to get used to for any healer who are starting out because it really becomes developing a sixth sense and paying attention to how well your party does mechanics. Everyone is prone to making some mistakes and for healers - this is the mistake they make if they're trying to maximize efficiency to play better and contribute more by overestimating their team's ability to handle damage. However, people expect healers to be always a 'pro' at healing, or make assumptions that healers are just not doing their job effectively by not topping everyone off every time. Healers are criticized if they don't preform well or cause deaths, which also leads into the factor of responsibility and not wanting to take risks when trying to reach that standard. Only by trial and error and lots of practical experience (and with potential wipes) will a healer figure out where their baseline is and become a 'good healer' who can do both dps and keep everyone alive.

After experiencing the baptism of healing, only real issue is the downtime gameplay and lack of DPS rotations.

I don't have a whole lot to add to that. It states a lot of things myself and others have been saying for quite some time now. However, if that same article was a translated response from Yoshi, my eyes would be glowing with heart emojis.

I think most of us know that they have a total clusterfork to deal with, and it is far easier and safer to leave healing as is. Being complacent and uncommunicative is definitely not the answer though. There's a lot at stake with 6.0's release. I greatly fear that if healing is not addressed properly, there won't be many left to run the high-end content, and that would be disastrous.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I don't have a whole lot to add to that. It states a lot of things myself and others have been saying for quite some time now. However, if that same article was a translated response from Yoshi, my eyes would be glowing with heart emojis.

I think most of us know that they have a total clusterfork to deal with, and it is far easier and safer to leave healing as is. Being complacent and uncommunicative is definitely not the answer though. There's a lot at stake with 6.0's release. I greatly fear that if healing is not addressed properly, there won't be many left to run the high-end content, and that would be disastrous.

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I'm just glad to see SOME sort of media attention about FFXIV healers because that seems to be the only way to get to the development team. Because their hand picked "influencers" didn't ask more than 3 questions about healers during the lead up to Shadowbringers and most of those questions were waved off.

I am glad they are a media acknowledging there are problems with healers and draw attention to the complaints and in that sense are publicising a problem. But I don't agree with their conclusion and I think there are points they misunderstand or overstate as an issue.

From reading, they dismiss the easiest solution with this:

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The reason I noted this was kind of unsolvable is that… you can move the needle, but the same problems are still there. Increasing incoming damage more to force healers to heal more is not permanent; creating more elaborate DPS rotations takes the focus off of healing and encourages worse healers to cause larger problems. You nudge things, but you always are nudging things.

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This I feel is a non-argument. A few points:

• Was it ever *THAT* big of a problem? In my experience, it never has been. You once in a while got unlucky, big deal, people are new, are learning, make mistakes and so on. It's a learning experience. And sometimes people just aren't very good, which is gonna happen, but we should focus on helping them instead of sucking the fun out of things to make them too easy
• Risk/Reward can be a part of the fun
• It hasn't solved the problem
• Sometimes healers just make mistakes. Still happens, I've done it with our super dumbed down rotation, but the complexity of the rotation wasn't the issue, it was misjudging how much DPS I could get in. EG: your tank might be undergear or not using cooldowns and you've misjudged how quickly their HP is dropping. No matter how dumbed down your DPS is, it's not going to prevent that from happening.
• If there is a problem, making it easier for people to overcome the problem is surely better than dumbing it down (as evidenced, the complexity of a DPS rotation is not the only reason it happens). Expand the Hall of the Novice if they must, training on managing healing & DPS and prioritising healing. I also put forth the idea of a Training Log, mixing the two, could be good way of going "this is what you should practice" and "here's a dungeon to queue to practice it".
• If there are people who find this aspect too hard to deal with, a 4th healer with a dumbed down DPS would have accommodated for those people

The premise of the article I think is wrong, it is solvable. Just something will have to 'give' in order to solve it.

A more complex (and not even a heavily complex) DPS rotation in their downtime is the easiest and least offensive solution that causes the least disruption whilst respecting this game's design.

However that paragraph is followed by this:

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We were told at the start of Shadowbringers that, functionally, healer changes were aiming at healers being meant to heal. That makes sense because it helps bring all three of the healers into the same basic space in terms of how they are designed. Before diversifying further, you want to bring basic efficiency into a comprehensible baseline and get everyone accustomed to what the “core” toolkit is meant to be.

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This is a fallacy. Whilst I can maybe understand to a degree a more complex rotation might have some players focusing on completing their rotation and mistakenly miss their heal trying to squeeze it out.

But it is here I think they show they misunderstand the problem, in RE to the aim of making healers being meant to heal and people becoming accustomed to that core kit. Scrapping or keeping a DPS kit affects nothing about how they design our healing kit.

Shadowbringers does nothing to bring more of a healing focus. This is a misconception I keep seeing thrown around. I can explain why it is wrong.

For demonstration purposes, let's make a few assumptions (all numbers are made up for the sake of illustration of the principle of how it works and not accuracy and it's late, so not gonna be a pedant):
For a typical dungeon:
60% of my downtime is filled with: 8 DPS spells I have some rotation on, such as Broil, Miasma, Miasma II, Bio, Bio II, Ruin II, Shadowflare, Bane
40% of my downtime is filled with: 8 healing spells, such as Adlo, Indom, Lustrate, Succor, Physick, Whispering Dawn, Excog, Fey Union

We look at the problem and think, "there's too much of a DPS focus" here. What number should we focus on?

We'd want to lower the 60% and increase the 40%. To then tip the scales to be less of a DPS focus and more of a healing focus. What affects it? Two things. What the content requires in terms of healing and the tools you have to manage it. Your DPS rotation is not a part of that equation, why? Because your primary focus is healing.

However, what ShB did was more like this:
Reduce the 8 DPS spells down to 3.
Increase the 8 healing spells to 15

And then it looks like "we now have much less of a DPS focus." But if we assumed that then we're looking at the wrong numbers.

What it actually means is:
60% of our downtime is: Broil, Ruin II, Biolysis
40% of our downtime is: those 15 healing spells

Therefore it did nothing to address this balance.
The change means there's more at our disposal at the 40%, but the 60% is a lot less interesting.

But taking that one step further. By adding more healing spells and thus increasing healing efficiency, there is another knock-on effect here. Actually, there are two:

The 60% is now 70% and the 40% is now 30%. Meaning, we have more of a DPS focus and less of a healing one.

This is because very little of the content out there has been adjusted to accommodate for the fact we have this extra healing efficiency.

It also means, that much of those 15 healing spells end up as bloat and are under-used for a lot of content, because you have plenty at your disposal to accommodate that 30% up time without any need to use them to their potential. Because it's not like a DPS rotation where you're rotation through your different abilities but using only what's needed to get health up. So what does that mean? It means that 30% doesn't feel so engaging either.

To me that's what the healing changes mean and feel like in a nutshell. I feel like I have less of a healer focus than I used to whilst also having much less to do when I am not healing.

By a weird twist of fate, the healing job I found with the highest healing focus is Blue Mage (with a healer stance) with ~4 healing spells and a butt load of DPS ones, because Blue Mage is less efficient at healing...and Blue Mage tanks are also less efficient at mitigating damage than real ones.

[Edit]

And taking one step further. Those of us advocating more of a complex DPS rotation would be proposing this:
Accept that the downtime is a thing and the steps needed to address it would be too complicated.
So they would be saying the 60%/40% balance is just what it is for much of the game's content.
Then for newer content (possibly higher content if they want to keep progression beginner friendly), if more healing focus is wanted, then use the challenge of the content to push that balance in favour of healing, eg: 30% DPS, 70% heal. Encounter design would be what'd drive that.
But people get better, get better gear etc. and that 30/70 weighs more in favour of DPS, or for content when DPS is already more heavily weighted.
For during that time of DPS focus, bring our DPS skills back up to 8 again, or heck, be adventurous, make it 10.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

What it actually means is:
60% of our downtime is: Broil, Ruin II, Biolysis
40% of our downtime is: those 15 healing spells

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Except it's not actually 15 healing spells, it's the same 3 healing spells SCH has always had (Physick, Adloquium, Succor) and a dozen healing abilities. I think that's an important distinction to make, because under most circumstances you're not really spending time healing so much as just dropping a bit of damage potency to swap from Broil to Ruin II. If we were actually spending time healing, it'd feel a lot more meaningful than playing whack-a-mole with available oGCD heals between Ruin II casts.

Fundamentally, it's a lot less interesting to have a shiny new healing ability you can use once every couple minutes compared to a core spell you use every 15-30 seconds.

I think this subject is unsolvable on the whole as it’s the healer player base that’s essentially split.

You have the one side that wants the role of a pure support/healing class and though this game has healing roles that certainly appear to play like that it’s the attitude of the player base that dictates otherwise. It has been said from a long time ago that all content in this game, bar ultimate, isn’t tuned to account for healer dps levels. Now yes it makes the fight go faster, but ultimately that doesn’t make it more fun does it? It’s the attitude of the party doing the content. And this actual argument is one of the core issues that has now accounted for the current healer hotbar, less dps spells and more healing spells.
If players were a little more patient in general dungeons and allowed healers to learn at their own pace to heal and mix dps rather than, in a lot of what I saw, bark and complain of they didn’t reach their parse we prob wouldn’t be at this point.

You also have the other side of the argument that wants more of a pure dps rotation put into the healers because as they have less to heal they wanna dps more, or be the Uber combat mage that can do it all! Effectively a rdm with a few more healing spells and that quicker queue time.

So in essence SE can only really go one way and ultimately alienate half their healer player base, and essentially what the article was getting at.

The only other way I can see it for 6.0 is now they have a core healing and dps kit of all the jobs they should branch out one in each direction for 6.0.

Make Sch a higher dos healer that can utilise more of smn toolkit. And maybe make Selene a dps fairy.

Make ast your support healer that goes a bit further than it does already.

Make whm your pure healer as it already is. Maybe with banish as well cos I kiss that spell from xi

And then finally make a melee healer that uses auras and aoe healing so aid battle, so geomancer with a hammer.

Essentially with this they can allow the healer community to gravitate to what specific one they want and then SE can tweak and adjust as necessary. I essentially think it would balance out in the long run as not all healers, like everyone else wants to play the same exact way forever do they?.

On top of this they seriously need to change the fight and level design. Lower the item level caps for all the dungeons to make healing a little more proactive and maybe start adding enfeebles and such that healers need to account for and sort. We all have Esuna but who seriously uses it in most content.

My suggestion is open for constructive debate, but let’s keep it civil peeps.

getting rid of dps tools "because pure healers" is moot because pure healers are not going to use the abilities wether its broil spam or wether its the 5 dots scholar used to have

as long as healers have at least 1 dps ability people will still expect healers to contribute to damage instead of standing around doing nothing

While I do agree with parts of this article, there's a couple of things I disagree with.

Let's start with the agreements. I agree that healing is the only role in the game where you get punished for getting better with skill and gear. Once you gear up and you understand your job, you're DPSing most of the time.

I agree that the design of content prevents traditional healing is the biggest truth of them all but it is one that SE cannot change because the whole game would change and it would take a lot of time to completely change.

I also liked how they mentioned that increasing damage is not the way to make healing better. It only serves to cause more wipes and while you spam DPS spells, having to spam heals is basically doing the same thing except you're running into MP problems much faster.

I disagree that ShB has done anything to make healers more like pure healers. In fact it fees more of the same except our uniqueness and DPS spells got cut for basically no reason other than to make healers have "less" to worry about. Now it's boring since we only spam one button with a DoT every 30s.

I don't like that the whole thing about a "bad" healer. There are plenty of moments where people will tunnel vision on DPS, it happens to every healer at some point. Personally a bad healer is one that doesn't contribute to anything other than stand there and over heal and spam the same GCD heal. They're wasting others' time and like the writer said, you're supposed to make use of your DPS spells as well as your kit.

Also adding a more diverse DPS kit isn't going to cause more tunnel vision. Having something else to do instead of Broil/Glare/Malefic spam would be far more interesting. Like someone else mentioned, its the LEAST offensive way to add more to the healers without breaking their balance. I feel that SE is better at making unique DPS kit than anything else.

Finally, the problem can be solved, it's just SE is stubborn and trying to make their current healing philosophy work rather than step back, take in feedback, get some fresh ideas and minds to really tackle the issue.

So overall, decent write-up, I just hope SE does something cause 6.0 will likely either push more veteran healers or meet us halfway.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

This I feel is a non-argument. A few points: [LIST][*]Was it ever *THAT* big of a problem? In my experience, it never has been. You once in a while got unlucky, big deal, people are new, are learning, make mistakes and so on. It's a learning experience. And sometimes people just aren't very good, which is gonna happen, but we should focus on helping them instead of sucking the fun out of things to make them too easy

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Tunnel visioning was a big enough problem that it was one of the few things towards healing that Yoshi specifically stated in I believe was his interview with Mr. Happy back in 2019. I should mention though that he didn't even bring it up himself, it was only when asked about the state of healing in FFXIV.

Personally, I know it is an issue as well. I can't speak for savage/ultimate since I am not a participant, but I found it happening in all content outside of those. This was really bad back with pre SB Cleric Stance that gimped your healing in order to boost your damage.

Seeing a healer with full MP and not healing, not rezzing, and is not in a dodge fest with mechanics while just sitting there spamming their DPS skill(s) when someone is in critical HP or down is definitely a thing in my experience, and in my opinion is just as bad as the heals only healer who only acts when heals are needed. Like you though, I am one person. The dev team however, very likely has tons of data that shows them how much this was happening.

If you are a dev and you are comparing these two fundamental errors in the healer mentality (the first being a tunnel visioned healer, and the second a heals only healer), it is only the former that leads to player KOs. Healer damage for the most part is not factored into any DPS checks the game has, so not only does the heals only healer fulfill the bare minimum of their role, but should the raid not meet the DPS requirement, they are technically not at fault. Due to this, if there is a 'needle' of sorts as the article points out, it's a pretty easy decision which way to nudge it.

Now please don't misinterpret what I am saying here. I am well aware that this is also an issue. It is an issue that stems from the early days of this game's development, and this team made the decision to keep the demand from healers low. Because of this early decision, they cemented all encounter design going forward as to demand more from healers now would undoubtedly change encounter design across the board (from ARR to ShB). Context is a thing too, because when I say it like that; it gives the impression that there is no solution. What I honestly should say is...

... Because of this early decision, they cemented all encounter design going forward as to demand more from healers now would undoubtedly change encounter design across the board (from ARR to ShB). However, this might not be a bad thing.

See what I mean?

I know it is difficult to accept the devs decision to remove DPS skills from healers, especially if your experiences in game shows that this choice really hasn't made an improvement. And I will also agree to disagree that the solution is insolvable. Gigantic problems often have a swift and simple solution. It just eludes the convoluted mind.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Healer damage for the most part is not factored into any DPS checks the game has

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I realize that you stated you don't do savage content and couldn't speak on it, and even stated "for the most part" here... but end-game content like savage raids/etc. can't really be overlooked when stating something like this. Because I'm fairly certain healer damage is factored in when it comes to high-end content.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

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I can appreciate what you're saying with regards to tunnel vision. I guess I just feel a problem like that should be solved with helping people improve in this regard rather than just remove something entirely.

Some of the tunnel vision issues also happened more with relation to Cleric Stance, which they also got rid of. The phrase I've ended up adopting is, "improve don't remove".

And again, in my experience I never really found it to be a huge issue, when it was an issue, the healer most of the time would adjust or we just put it down to a bad healer. As we still get.

I don't think it was a bad decision in ARR to make healing work in encounter design in the way it did because I thought it appropriate for an FF title, a series where healer characters/jobs aren't tunnelled into a single purpose and for me, it is an extra element to make them interesting. But I think people from other MMO's (except maybe FFXI) come to expect healers to do a lot more healing.

With regards to finding it difficult to accept really stems from being bored out of my mind playing my favourite job and my preferred role in an any MMO, because I'm at heart a healer. I am generally quite open minded and unafraid of change, hence I didn't even complain in SB because I had stuff to enjoy. It feels like the changes we got did not resolve the problems they set out to resolve (and if anything worsened a couple of them) and just made the experience dull and uninspiring.

And with regards to data, sadly sometimes the data doesn't always reflect reality, whilst we don't have the liberty sadly of knowing their data. But I know they go to places like the forum for feedback and well, shooting myself in the foot, it's not the most reliable place, as much as I try to be fair in my own posts. Because it rarely tells you what is working or why. When people were complaining in ARR and HW, I was content in playing my role and never communicated anywhere that I was loving it and what I loved about it. And this is one of the biggest challenges in measuring satisfaction, people don't really go out of their way to give feedback that something is going great but will when it isn't.

And in fairness, our data isn't completely reliable, as much of what we have ourselves is anecdotal but at least gives insight to user experience and the problems, which I think anecdotal evidence is good for. We do have some measurable data from the community too, but it only tells so much and much of it is circled around the Reddit community (as the satisfaction polls to go out are from Reddit), but it is still useful data.

However, there is something I've suggested before, if the devs were to put out a well constructed survey, they could obtain better data. They could map what people like and don't like, what is working and what isn't working, what they'd prefer to see or prefer gone and so on. And I don't think there is any shame in putting one out either. Though emphasis on "well-constructed", of course. Maybe give an in game item for completing the survey as an incentive to give feedback.

I really do feel like it would at least placate people if SE hit the 'Fuck Go Back' button to 3.X or 4.X. Beggars can't be choosers, and I'd take either. The game, in general, had a higher skill ceiling back then, but they keep removing mechanics and dumbing everything down - which is why I'm pessimistic about healers improving ever, basically.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Tunnel visioning was a big enough problem that it was one of the few things towards healing that Yoshi specifically stated in I believe was his interview with Mr. Happy back in 2019. I should mention though that he didn't even bring it up himself, it was only when asked about the state of healing in FFXIV.

Personally, I know it is an issue as well. I can't speak for savage/ultimate since I am not a participant, but I found it happening in all content outside of those. This was really bad back with pre SB Cleric Stance that gimped your healing in order to boost your damage.

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Tunnel vision is not a design issue, it's a player issue. It happens to everyone and it doesn't mean that jobs need to be simplified, only that the player needs more practice. If the devs really want to do something about it they could increase how far we can zoom out but don't take fun out of the game because people who don't even need to worry about the full complexity of their job can't handle it.

It's no different from a dps staring too long at their bars to see what they can use next or focusing so hard on your one little part of the screen you don't see trouble coming from somewhere else. Should all dps and raids be dumbed down to account for these player mistakes? Of course not, and neither should healers. You practice and improve and feel good for it, that's what gaming (life, really) is all about.

Tbh, this isn't so much a problem as proof that the pure healer concept is not fit for the game. This is why healer downtime is just as important as healing and tis time the devs recognised it


Its not an unsolvable problem as ff14 has combat medic healers. The problem is the lack of will to accept the solution on the dev team

Tunnel vision in healer dps is not much of a problem and never was on account of the basic fact that healers can only get downtime by doing their job in the first place or the tank doing their job effectively as well. A healer will naturally get more downtime as they become more skilled because they can afford to compensate for more damage before taking action given how scripted things are

hell blm's have the worst tunnel vision cases given how many people complain about having to rescue them out of aoe's and then the idiots teleport back after to get illed anyway >>

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Originally Posted by ForgottenScholar

I think this subject is unsolvable on the whole as it’s the healer player base that’s essentially split.

You have the one side that wants the role of a pure support/healing class and though this game has healing roles that certainly appear to play like that it’s the attitude of the player base that dictates otherwise. It has been said from a long time ago that all content in this game, bar ultimate, isn’t tuned to account for healer dps levels. Now yes it makes the fight go faster, but ultimately that doesn’t make it more fun does it? It’s the attitude of the party doing the content. And this actual argument is one of the core issues that has now accounted for the current healer hotbar, less dps spells and more healing spells.
If players were a little more patient in general dungeons and allowed healers to learn at their own pace to heal and mix dps rather than, in a lot of what I saw, bark and complain of they didn’t reach their parse we prob wouldn’t be at this point.

You also have the other side of the argument that wants more of a pure dps rotation put into the healers because as they have less to heal they wanna dps more, or be the Uber combat mage that can do it all! Effectively a rdm with a few more healing spells and that quicker queue time.

So in essence SE can only really go one way and ultimately alienate half their healer player base, and essentially what the article was getting at.

The only other way I can see it for 6.0 is now they have a core healing and dps kit of all the jobs they should branch out one in each direction for 6.0.

Make Sch a higher dos healer that can utilise more of smn toolkit. And maybe make Selene a dps fairy.

Make ast your support healer that goes a bit further than it does already.

Make whm your pure healer as it already is. Maybe with banish as well cos I kiss that spell from xi

And then finally make a melee healer that uses auras and aoe healing so aid battle, so geomancer with a hammer.

Essentially with this they can allow the healer community to gravitate to what specific one they want and then SE can tweak and adjust as necessary. I essentially think it would balance out in the long run as not all healers, like everyone else wants to play the same exact way forever do they?.

On top of this they seriously need to change the fight and level design. Lower the item level caps for all the dungeons to make healing a little more proactive and maybe start adding enfeebles and such that healers need to account for and sort. We all have Esuna but who seriously uses it in most content.

My suggestion is open for constructive debate, but let’s keep it civil peeps.

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I certainly agree that the issue is that the healer base isn't terribly unified on the matter. I would certainly rather see more healing happen, not less. I think a not insignificant amount of people see healing as more of a side thing than the main focus of the job, and would rather minimize the amount of time they spend healing to do more damage, and so long as that kind of split focus is there I don't think they can really fix the issue.

As far as the proposed solution, the issue with that is you just wind up seeing certain healers alienated in favor of others. In that setup you'd probably see Scholar and one of Geomancer or Astrologian being the preferred model, and White Mages would be dropped. Unrelated but not really wanting to see a melee Geomancer healer with a hammer, just seems kind of clunky/weird. The solution though isn't super workable to me. If you leave the difference up to each model of healer then all that will happen is pushing for a specific subsection of healers (this already happened previously after all).

This article misses the point. Every role becomes easier when you have more gear. That's part of the design of this game, to pitch the same content to a variety of skill levels. At any given gear level, only a set proportion of the playerbase can clear. That proportion increases as the average gear level goes up. Ultimate fights have a fixed gear level for that reason.

Healer ennui in particular comes from predictable damage, coupled with an overly powerful oGCD healing kit and an overly powerful mitigation kit on the part of tanks. Your tanks mostly take care of themselves, aside from the four times per fight that a *gasp* tankbuster shows up and someone uses an invuln to completely ignore it. And if they mess it up, the replacement tank just vokes and one of your five party members with a near endless supply of instant cast raises sorts out the issue with minimal consequence. The thing that will cause wipes are raid wides and team jumprope mechanic fails, but it's more the former that's your problem.

But the solution isn't more whack-a-mole, which is quite possibly the only thing more boring than having nothing to heal. I find healing most enjoyable as a concept in PvP games, where damage is extremely unpredictable (and when everyone else is trying to kill you). That's really what you want here. That and maybe make resource management more of a thing.

Can't say I agree with the article, but it is a very difficult issue to solve because Enix have compounded it by following the same formula of low damage intake in predictable bursts for multiple expansions now.

Making healing more engaging would require reworking the entire game from the ground up. Stronger auto attacks, more frequent raid-wide damage, less aoe tools that can put 8 people from 10% to 100% in 5 seconds. I can't see them doing something major like that. It's not as simple as just nerfing healing or ripping oGcd's from us because we'd still have that same pattern of damage spike then 30 seconds downtime and filling it by spamming Medica 6 times or endless Cure II on the tank for wet noodle heals is going to feel just as tedious.

The other issue is player skill. This varies so widely and for multiple expansions now the game has been designed so that all content below Savage can be cleared even if you play your class completely wrong. Tank busters can just about be taken with no cd's, bosses can be killed with half of max dps and spamming random heals will probably work fine. Enix have ingrained bad habits into the playerbase so deeply that suddenly changing it would result in uproar. Even the fabled pure healers often are terrible at healing efficiently and couldn't handle actual consistent damage intake.

About the best we can get is reverting to HW or SB healing. Anything further than that probably isn't realistic in this game.

The solution is to make healers more engaging in other ways. They don't need hugely complex DPS toolkits but something as simple as more DoT management or maybe a tank-esque rotation would certainly go a long way. If the dev didn't want to go the damage route, then healers ought to be shifted into a more "Support" styled role. Let them buff, debuff or whatever else to help space out the monotony of Glare/Broil/Malefic spam. Abilities or Spells like Virus, Trick Attack or what have you aren't gamebreaker if absent or poorly managed. So if you do have bad healers that don't manage the whole Support aspect well, it wouldn't be world ending. It would, however, reward more skillful play in a manner suiting the role itself.

It may be a nudge, as the article puts it, but there comes a point where you need to make that nudge because what they're doing now just isn't working.

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Originally Posted by Rivinhal

I realize that you stated you don't do savage content and couldn't speak on it, and even stated "for the most part" here... but end-game content like savage raids/etc. can't really be overlooked when stating something like this. Because I'm fairly certain healer damage is factored in when it comes to high-end content.

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Healer DPS is not factored into DPS checks. Never has been in any content up to savage. Ultimate encounters came out after this statement was made from the dev team, so for those specific instances I am not sure. However, I am quite sure that all DPS from all jobs is factored into raid clears, especially when determining how much HP to give to the boss.

Healer DPS in high-end content is a requirement because we made it so; not because it was designed to be that way. This does not excuse healers going idle, but it is what it is.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Healer DPS is not factored into DPS checks. Never has been in any content up to savage. Ultimate encounters came out after this statement was made from the dev team, so for those specific instances I am not sure. However, I am quite sure that all DPS from all jobs is factored into raid clears, especially when determining how much HP to give to the boss.

Healer DPS in high-end content is a requirement because we made it so; not because it was designed to be that way. This does not excuse healers going idle, but it is what it is.

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Week one Shiva Savage was literally impossible to clear without healer DPS, among plenty of other fights. So saying that healer DPS isn't factored into content is objectively a lie. Please, stop flagging around a statement that was made years ago by a man who thought Diadem RNG weapons would be BiS. I love Yoshi-P, but he can and has been very wrong.

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Originally Posted by Tulzscha

Tunnel vision is not a design issue, it's a player issue. It happens to everyone and it doesn't mean that jobs need to be simplified, only that the player needs more practice. If the devs really want to do something about it they could increase how far we can zoom out but don't take fun out of the game because people who don't even need to worry about the full complexity of their job can't handle it.

It's no different from a dps staring too long at their bars to see what they can use next or focusing so hard on your one little part of the screen you don't see trouble coming from somewhere else. Should all dps and raids be dumbed down to account for these player mistakes? Of course not, and neither should healers. You practice and improve and feel good for it, that's what gaming (life, really) is all about.

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I never said tunnel vision is a design issue. Read my posts again, and if I need to clear something up, I am more than happy to. But stop twisting my words around to make your own point. There is no strawman here my friend. If you don't think this is an issue then I invite you to talk to tanks who are still around from 2.x to SB, and ask them how crazy their healers drove them. It's not as bad now, and the removal of Stance Dancing for healers is a big reason why.

Also don't compare tunnel visioning to brain farts from a DPS role. Players don't die when a DPS misses or uses the wrong GCD.

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Originally Posted by Videra

Week one Shiva Savage was literally impossible to clear without healer DPS, among plenty of other fights. So saying that healer DPS isn't factored into content is objectively a lie. Please, stop flagging around a statement that was made years ago by a man who thought Diadem RNG weapons would be BiS. I love Yoshi-P, but he can and has been very wrong.

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Oh god. Ok. here you go:

Addressed in this thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/236992

Link to actual interiew: https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...-Event-5-19%29

For those who are lazy:

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Yoshida: Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers. Then when those publish clear videos and other people see the healers DPSing, they might think that healers need to be DPSing even though its a situation that only arose because their clear would have otherwise been impossible. While we could take this into account, and assume a different item level in the next update which would then make it impossible to clear even with the healer DPS, we'd eliminate this type of play for highly skilled players who use communication, items, and a high level of understanding to come up with those last second clears. That would be a tough decision to make, so I still think it should be up to each party's own plans.

This is also one of the reasons we decided to implement both a normal and savage version of Alexander. Once again, healer DPS was not included in the development team's calculation as it was for other jobs, so you should just think of healer DPS as a last way to get your overall party's DPS up to where it needs to be.

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So, unless you want to post official link for a rebuttal that state this has changed, I firmly stand by my statements. Don't EVER call me a liar. You're arguing against a man who is established and proven in his field. You're just a subscriber like the rest of us.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Oh god. Ok. here you go:

Addressed in this thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/236992

Link to actual interiew: https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...-Event-5-19%29

For those who are lazy:


So, unless you want to post official link for a rebuttal that state this has changed, I firmly stand by my statements. Don't EVER call me a liar. You're arguing against a man who is established and proven in his field. You're just a subscriber like the rest of us.

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You're allowed to criticize an artist even if you cannot make the same art he does. Also, you cannot take a statement made in 2015 which has been PROVEN wrong into account for this. Things have changed, and you can quite easily see the fact that healer DPS is factored into content by simply looking at FFLogs. Check any week one Shiva log, and you will plainly see a wealth of information pointing to the simple fact that healer DPS was required. End of.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Oh god. Ok. here you go:

Addressed in this thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/236992

Link to actual interiew: https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...-Event-5-19%29

For those who are lazy:


So, unless you want to post official link for a rebuttal that state this has changed, I firmly stand by my statements. Don't EVER call me a liar. You're arguing against a man who is established and proven in his field. You're just a subscriber like the rest of us.

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I'm aware of the quote, but actual statistics prove it wrong. Maybe back when the quote came out, 5 years ago, it was correct, but it is literally no longer the case. Even in current Shiva, you need around 85-86k rDPS to clear e8s, running with the 4 best DPS and 2 best tanks in the world, all bis, all playing perfectly, you'd be just shy of making that check, you would hit enraged if healers did not DPS. Maybe you would make it if you got super lucky on crits/direct hits/crit direct hits, you might be able to JUST squeak by. There is no conceivable way that the fight was not intended to have healers DPS, regardless of what Yoshi-P says

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I'm aware of the quote, but actual statistics prove it wrong. Maybe back when the quote came out, 5 years ago, it was correct, but it is literally no longer the case. Even in current Shiva, you need around 85-86k rDPS to clear e8s, running with the 4 best DPS and 2 best tanks in the world, all bis, all playing perfectly, you'd be just shy of making that check, you would hit enraged if healers did not DPS. Maybe you would make it if you got super lucky on crits/direct hits/crit direct hits, you might be able to JUST squeak by. There is no conceivable way that the fight was not intended to have healers DPS, regardless of what Yoshi-P says

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Also this. I love your signature, by the way.

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Originally Posted by Videra

Also this. I love your signature, by the way.

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Thank you!

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

Snip...

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I assure you, your feedback is appreciated.

As you are undoubtedly aware, this role is difficult for the devs to address to say the least. Something I will address from your post is where data does not reflect reality. This is partially true, as data can only be as accurate as the sources that provide for it. You and I are of a similar mindset, and usually when data is thrown in my face, my response echos yours and I will often say that data is but one of several sources to ascertain what is truly going on in the game.

A big problem is there are just too many voices. You know when there is a large gathering of players in the game, it tosses in some crowd audio to mimic a bunch of conversations all going on at once? You can't tell what anyone is saying, but you know people are talking. This is what the devs hear. I feel a big part of the problem for SE is I don't think they have anyone on the inside that can truly represent the healer community. Someone to process all the feedback and present in a way that is constructive for the dev team. It wouldn't even surprise me if it is a task that intimidates anyone who gets anywhere close to it.

I admire your open mind in your approach to the matter. Always remember that these are discussion forums first. You can always trust a forum to be a forum.

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Originally Posted by Videra

You're allowed to criticize an artist even if you cannot make the same art he does. Also, you cannot take a statement made in 2015 which has been PROVEN wrong into account for this. Things have changed, and you can quite easily see the fact that healer DPS is factored into content by simply looking at FFLogs. Check any week one Shiva log, and you will plainly see a wealth of information pointing to the simple fact that healer DPS was required. End of.

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Sure I can. I can continue to do this until someone provides a link to a source where the devs made the decision to change this. You can post fflogs all day. None of them are an official statement from the dev team that they have reversed their decision. As I said before, it is what it is. You lot need to understand, my agrument isn't that healer DPS isn't required to clear savage, so you can honestly miss me with that nonsense. My argument is that the devs stated that healer DPS is not factored into DPS checks. This is a fact, not an opinion, and I provided the source. It could have been made in 2011 and it still would be true.

Now, if this is no longer the case, and the devs did indeed start factoring healer DPS into the DPS checks, feel free to provide the source link. If you can do so, then it will effectively invalidate the previous links. Quite honestly though, I grew sick of this argument back in 2015; it actually doesn't have a whole lot of relevance anymore because healers actively DPS now, and the problem back then was them not doing it. Your precious fflogs should be a testament to that, if a testament to anything. Do the devs even use that data for anything?

I would much rather get back to the crux of the healer problem which is our downtime. Anyone else?

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I assure you, your feedback is appreciated.

As you are undoubtedly aware, this role is difficult for the devs to address to say the least. Something I will address from your post is where data does not reflect reality. This is partially true, as data can only be as accurate as the sources that provide for it. You and I are of a similar mindset, and usually when data is thrown in my face, my response echos yours and I will often say that data is but one of several sources to ascertain what is truly going on in the game.

A big problem is there are just too many voices. You know when there is a large gathering of players in the game, it tosses in some crowd audio to mimic a bunch of conversations all going on at once? You can't tell what anyone is saying, but you know people are talking. This is what the devs hear. I feel a big part of the problem for SE is I don't think they have anyone on the inside that can truly represent the healer community. Someone to process all the feedback and present in a way that is constructive for the dev team. It wouldn't even surprise me if it is a task that intimidates anyone who gets anywhere close to it.

I admire your open mind in your approach to the matter. Always remember that these are discussion forums first. You can always trust a forum to be a forum.

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I forget the exact number but a while ago a poster named Sebazy looked at the credits and postulated that there are only 4 people responsible for class design (and one manager).

As for the too many voices: There have been countless threads offering feedback that got into the HUNDREDS of pages and not a single response from the development team.

They simply don't come here (hardly) as far as I can see.

4.0 WHM Feedback 356 pages

My own healer DPS thread from way back in 2017 111 pages

And that's just a sampling.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Yep, saw someone say this once and I 100% agree with it. Healers are the only role in the game punished with worse gameplay for playing their role well / efficiently.

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Healers 100% need something besides healing to do in order to scale properly with content. I wouldn't mind the role taking on more of a support role, where we cast buffs on our allies during our downtime, but the most important thing is for it to be fun. As it stands now the stronger we get the more downtime we have and, since our dps kit was simplified to an absurd degree, the more boring it becomes. Repeatedly casting a single spell except for a dot twice a minute is mind numbing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I forget the exact number but a while ago a poster named Sebazy looked at the credits and postulated that there are only 4 people responsible for class design (and one manager).

As for the too many voices: There have been countless threads offering feedback that got into the HUNDREDS of pages and not a single response from the development team.

They simply don't come here (hardly) as far as I can see.

4.0 WHM Feedback 356 pages

My own healer DPS thread from way back in 2017 111 pages

And that's just a sampling.

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I remember commenting on this as well. Sebazzy is correct, there are only 4 people on the battle team, which would explain the hubris and unwillingness to change the healer role. It's very clear which roles and jobs they themselves actually play, as those are the most finely tuned and well recieved.

Maybe healers should get OCDs that boost DPS like what Bards had, I know my healing noob is showing, I'm currently leveling White Mage as my first healing job after years of avoiding healing due to the toxicity from bads, but I wish we had a little more something we can use in eight man content.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I forget the exact number but a while ago a poster named Sebazy looked at the credits and postulated that there are only 4 people responsible for class design (and one manager).

As for the too many voices: There have been countless threads offering feedback that got into the HUNDREDS of pages and not a single response from the development team.

They simply don't come here (hardly) as far as I can see.

4.0 WHM Feedback 356 pages

My own healer DPS thread from way back in 2017 111 pages

And that's just a sampling.

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You are indeed correct. However, it reiterates what I've already been saying: Whether it is three, four, or twenty, there isn't anyone on the dev team to represent the healer community. Many of us, myself included, feel neglected when it comes to our healer woes. It is one of the few commonalities shared among a divided healer community.

I do remember those threads, and I believe I participated in them. If you were a dev who couldn't read or speak English, would you have 467 pages translated and wade through it all? I doubt the devs have time for that. We also recently learned that the Japanese community is discontent with healer design and changes as well, and it is also highly unlikely that those threads reach the devs ears either. For all we know, their attitude could be complacent, or highly concerned, but it is a very safe assumption that they know many of us are not happy.

I know that if I was a dev, I wouldn't go to the forums looking for feedback. I would want it to come from a reliable and trusted source who does go to the forums, reddit, and everywhere to and fro to ascertain data directly from the community. And that's IF I wanted it. However, in the case of healing, I feel we are at a point where this information is necessitated in order to move forward with PvE design for 6.0 and how those changes affect the previous expansions. As the more expansions that are released, the less likely this will ever be addressed properly.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I never said tunnel vision is a design issue. Read my posts again, and if I need to clear something up, I am more than happy to. But stop twisting my words around to make your own point. There is no strawman here my friend. If you don't think this is an issue then I invite you to talk to tanks who are still around from 2.x to SB, and ask them how crazy their healers drove them. It's not as bad now, and the removal of Stance Dancing for healers is a big reason why.

Also don't compare tunnel visioning to brain farts from a DPS role. Players don't die when a DPS misses or uses the wrong GCD.

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So hostile. You said it is an issue, I said it's not one that should affect job design by dumbing them down, that's all. It's an issue that players can overcome on their own. Unless the job mechanics are messy and confusing for no reason; there's an extremely blurry line between streamlining and dumbing something down, and of course different players have different opinions, can't please everyone. But if as you say healer dps isn't taken into account for encounter design then from a balance standpoint it shouldn't matter how complex healer dps is so long as it doesn't get in the way of healing (like stances did).

Also players do die when mechanics are missed due to tunnel vision regardless of role. Same problem, many different possible outcomes, same solution (practice).