The game does a terrible job to teach new players how to heal.

I am doing mentor roulettes, and i ever so often get healers in my dungeon group that do no damage at all, they just stand around and do nothing or keep producing overheal despite no one taking damage.

I don't understand how it is not obvious that a healer also has to do damage if there is nothing to heal, especially on dungeon bosses.

And yes i have tried over and over to tell them, most of the time there is no reaction from people or they don't speak English.
There was one instance though where a german player actually listened to me when i told him to not use Adloquium all the time and to damage instead, (it was on lvl 80).

So either make the game teach players how to play a healer properly or change how MP generation works, increase the MP costs of heals but let attack spells generate MP instead of costing MP, that will force even the most learning resistant person to cast damage spells or they will run out of MP very quickl.
As a trade of, basic healing spells like Cure and Physik could be free.

I think it would help by expanding the kit where dps is concerned...one or two spells doesn't make it intuituous that your job is mostly dps... lel

Sounds to me like they know how to heal.

Did you mean the game does a horrible job at teaching healers they won't get to do the thing they probably thought they were signing up for? That it does a horrible job teaching healers that they're not really needed? Because that would be accurate.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

As a trade of, basic healing spells like Cure and Physik could be free.

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You've just guaranteed more Curebots, not fewer.

"Oh, I better use two free Cures instead of one 2000MP Cure 2 because there'll be more damage coming in and I'll run out of MP if I use Cure 2 too much." <-- expert roulette healer thought process

Using DPS skills is at like the bottom of the barrel for things I wish the game explained. As a Healer you need to play every single tank to really understand what their cooldowns look like and do. Trying to read the description on the buff icon in the party list mid fight is not ideal to realize the difference between Hallowed Ground, Rampart, Living Dead, Walking Dead, Sheltron etc. I come across so many healers that think you can only revive a person if Swiftcast is ready. Hard casting multiple people when a fight allows can make all the difference in the world. Understanding that a Swiftcast Cure 2 or Cure 3 can prevent a death from happening is mind-blowing to so many new players too. Saving Swiftcast for a death means you lose so many incredible ways to use the skill over the course of a duty especially if no one ever dies to begin with. Managing MP is also a lost art. I see Healers get revived with basically no MP and immediately start to dps when the smart move is literally to do nothing and wait to have enough for the skills they actually need to save the party. If I got a dollar for every time a healer refused to acknowledge a regen existed I wouldn't need to work again either. Why spam healing when the party has quadruple layers of regens going and no incoming damage for more than a minute? Lots of new players have this confusion that oGCD skills are for "emergencies" too. The game never explicitly states that lustrate is your primary healing tool on Scholar or that Essential Dignity is your first choice in much the same way on Astro for single target healing. Lucid Dreaming still doesn't have a tooltip that screams 'this is for MP'. Still waiting for any kind of tutorial that says 'read the enemy cast bar to learn when an AOE or Tank buster is coming.' So many little things that players have to actively seek out to learn.

Post 2.0, this game's always done a pretty bad job of correctly tutoring the game. It expects people to actually bother to read the tooltips, but when you can face roll a random ability and usually scrape by just fine, what's the incentive?

ARR's release nailed it by making leveling dungeons progressively stern enough at the right sort of point. Now leveling dungeons are a complete coin toss and I'm of the understanding that the old difficulty spikes have all but been nerfed into mindless oblivion at this point anyhow?

I'm not really sure what can be done at this point, there's just too long a chain of dungeons, wildly erratic job performance sub cap and not enough manpower within CBU3 to get a return to progressive difficulty in leveling dungeons themselves.

Adding FFXIV's answer to Maat would be one answer, but I'm not sure that would go down too well and again, how do you implement that for healers with the current game systems and in a way that actually reflects proper game content? A Triage style test would be neat but in what way is it relevant? A cooldown rolling test would be neat but would need to be tuned per job and almost certainly need revisiting every time a job get's it's leveling kit adjusted.

I honestly don't think there is a good solution that ticks every box for this at this point, the rot goes deep =/

I think they missed the ship to rectify it honestly. This recent period of touching up all the old dungeons was the opportunity to have a long look at how they wanted the levelling experience to go and to "set" an appropriate power level for each expansion cap. All they've done is lower everything to their current standard of tupac/wall and homing bosses. I don't really think an expansion cap learnset would have been a practical solution, but at least giving everything a once-over, putting dark mind back to lv42 so you can learn that mitigating magic damage is worthwhile with those stone vigil sprites and actually playing a damn healer for once and realising what they've subjected 25% of a dungeon party to since shadowbringers.

They should also take a leaf from their own book and make dungeons where you can LoS ranged mobs to make them cluster (Dzemael, stone vigil and aurum teaching this quite well), bosses that aren't magnetically attached to the centre of an arena, ground hazards (aurum puddles, brayflox poison dragon), trying out gimmicks for variety (copperbell slime, copperbell spriggan rush, bosses with soft enrages sastasha/copperbell), untelegraphed attacks (coincounter, stone vigil hard's hunchback dragons) - even sewer crocodile's leftright smash in delubrum reginae could have been leveraged recently; myths of the realm has been nothing but waiting around for the god to keel over from boredom. But no, now the earlygame is subject to the same tedium as the level cap experience. I suppose I should give them credit for not slapping instant heals on early cnj/whm though, at least that can lead to some engagement.

What particular MMORPGs have you all played recently that provides anything beyond the basics of any single job? World of Warcraft was no different. Guild Wars 2 didn't provide anything, nor Rift, nor TESO, nor SW:TOR, nor ...

You are all writing from a level of experience that those new to the game do not yet have, complaining about players with an unknown background in the MMORPG genre.

If you really want to help, provide links to solid materials in the instance chat. Say "Nice job. If you'd like to learn more, check this out." Follow this with a link such as this: [https://www.icy-veins.com/ffxiv/white-mage-guide]

Barring that, provide the information in the forums and point them here. Note that complaining about healers who only heal and don't DPS isn't providing information. It's complaining.

I have learned most of this game through youtube and internet,
as i did with any other mmo..

Anyway:
You have - Hall of the Novice training (quests).
But i guess a lot of new player skips it or dosnt know of it..
It teach you the most basic of your role.

Note:
Also you have the type of players who just refuse to learn
or want to be told what to do..ect

Hall of the Novice is actively detrimental in what it teaches you.

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Originally Posted by Emitans

Hall of the Novice is actively detrimental in what it teaches you.

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Not that I expect them to, but man Hall of the Novice could desperately use an update.

It needs to be updated and new players need to be led to it before they enter group content so they can get a better grasp on what their role does at an introductory level alongside giving the upgraded armor and exp ring it does now.

It's not just bad at teaching new players how to heal, it's pretty bad at teaching you how to play the game at all, regardless of role. I don't think it at any point even explains the difference between a GCD and oGCD, which is a majorly important core part of the mechanics...

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Originally Posted by Arohk

I am doing mentor roulettes, and i ever so often get healers in my dungeon group that do no damage at all, they just stand around and do nothing or keep producing overheal despite no one taking damage.

I don't understand how it is not obvious that a healer also has to do damage if there is nothing to heal, especially on dungeon bosses.

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That's exactly how they want the role played lmao, even in Endwalker Yoshida has said they don't see them ever adding more DPS abilities to healers because they don't want new healers to see more than 2 buttons and go "oh do i have to do damage while healing?"

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

That's exactly how they want the role played lmao, even in Endwalker Yoshida has said they don't see them ever adding more DPS abilities to healers because they don't want new healers to see more than 2 buttons and go "oh do i have to do damage while healing?"

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The funny thing is from some of my typical experiences with healers that only know healing, is this has had the opposite effect in terms of survivability. Since the healer is only healing, the monsters in a trash pull last longer thus require even more healing to be done which then translates to less mana for the healer just spamming healing...and eventually resulting in a wipe if the tank is not self-sufficient (or are new to tanking) because the healer had been mismanaging mana and the monsters lingering had continuously continued their onslaught. (So not only does it take longer for the dps to slim the mob down, it isn't free from the consequence of wiping lel.)

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

What particular MMORPGs have you all played recently that provides anything beyond the basics of any single job? World of Warcraft was no different. Guild Wars 2 didn't provide anything, nor Rift, nor TESO, nor SW:TOR, nor ...

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I'd argue that WoW and SW:Tor pressured the player to pay attention to their kit with the PvP focus as well as mainstream dungeon content that wasn't a complete faceroll. Whilst not everyone played to a high standard, I don't remember seeing anything like as poor a baseline standard in WoW or SW:TOR as I routinely encounter in FFXIV. FFXIV actively rewards players who do little beyond mopping the floor with their face. Neither WoW nor SW:TOR tolerated that kind of dead weight beyond the first few zones at least back when I played them.

Honestly, watching my boyfriend try to get into the game made me realize that they do a terrible job explaining everything that is related to advanced combat.

We still don't see an explanation that abilities are not considered healing magic (for healers) thus they don't benefit from some effects

The concept of weaving and clipping won't come naturally for some people

The job structure relies on the 2minute meta, and there's nothing ingame that indicates the importance of this

The game is terrible at explanations but honestly what is the point

I just got out of a run of MONASTERY where my cohealer would walk into the arena pick a random spot in the arena and spam succor, succor succor succor nothing but succor even when nobody was in range to get hit by it, they moved around enough and erratically enough that you could tell they weren’t a bot

This person was actively getting white knighted by our party because they could see succor casts going out so they assumed I was the one not helping even though at TGC they were standing with alliance a when we were c

If you can get away with this kinda stuff and hey actively supported by the party what incentive to people have to bother to interact with any learning system, no matter how well designed it is, and this is entirely squares fault for making content clearable by straight leaches like this

Until square reverses the decision to make everything pre WOL clearable with half the party actually being asleep (which they never will) attempting to make people learn beyond what they themselves feel is a skill level they are happy with is completely pointless

In-game explanation is terrible, yes. But it’s not the only playing factor. Look no further than RDM whose starting job quest literally screams “Here’s how you play the job!” but occasionally we still see Jolt Mages, Hardcaster RDMs, or heavens forfend the fake melee RDMs running around.

The game doesn’t wall these healers for playing badly. Fail a solo duty? No worries! We got the Very Easy Mode for you!

Insecure of playing together with other player in MMO? No worries! We got duty support/trust system!

Cannot use duty support cause the trial doesn’t support it? No worries! Second healer, WAR, & PLD will carry you… hopefully! You can warm the floor to your heart’s content!

Not to mention the general fear of getting strike to your account—when was the last time we read somebody in party say something like “Hey <player>, do you know that using X is less beneficial vs using Y?”, and how many times that went well, ignored, or worse being seen as an ‘attack against the poor sprout’?

The beginner experience is also not very friendly with the healer role either. White Mage is the only healer the player can choose during character creation since Arcanist is a DPS, and White Mage has a miserable selection of actions early on and is painfully shallow for an incredibly long time. It does not offer tools that are helpful for a new player to get comfortable until said new players would likely have already finished developing whatever habits they get comfortable with. Scholar will give a new player whiplash since the transition from Arcanist to Scholar doesn't make any sense anymore. And both Astrologian and Sage can't be accessed for a very long time.

I can't even imagine playing it from scratch in today's age where you're stuck with Stone, Aero, Cure, Medica and Raise until level 30.

Ideally they'd have split SMN off to be it's own job that you unlock at level 30, and reworked ACN into a healer that evolves up into SCH. That way, there's two healers to choose from at the start of the game instead of just one, the Carbuncle would offer newer healers a bit of a safety net (being as it'd be attached to a healer class it'd have 'embrace but weaker' as it's 'autoattack'), makes more sense to me that ACN, a class about using maths to create magic effects, would evolve into 'Sun Tzu style battle tactics healer', rather than 'bind the essence of a primal into a smaller, more controllable form'. Plus, SCH job quests are in La Noscea like ACN is, SMN goes off to Gridania

Of course, that (reworking ACN to be a healer) is more effort than what they did, so instead they did what they did.

Unrelated, while the Hall of the Novice tells you some basic stuff, A: it's not exactly kept up to date with how the game's evolved, and B: IIRC it's actually entirely skippable. Oh and C: the majority of this playerbase does not like being told they're 'wrong' or 'bad' so they never want to accept any advice, even from the game itself. I wonder, does SE have data on 'how many times have people failed a solo instance because they didn't do what the NPCs told them to do, multiple times', like when Alisaie is going 'give me aether for my stupid flashy finisher move' and the player just carries on hitting stuff (3.4 solo instance vs the WODs comes to mind)

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Ideally they'd have split SMN off to be it's own job that you unlock at level 30, and reworked ACN into a healer that evolves up into SCH. That way, there's two healers to choose from at the start of the game instead of just one, the Carbuncle would offer newer healers a bit of a safety net (being as it'd be attached to a healer class it'd have 'embrace but weaker' as it's 'autoattack'), makes more sense to me that ACN, a class about using maths to create magic effects, would evolve into 'Sun Tzu style battle tactics healer', rather than 'bind the essence of a primal into a smaller, more controllable form'. Plus, SCH job quests are in La Noscea like ACN is, SMN goes off to Gridania

Of course, that (reworking ACN to be a healer) is more effort than what they did, so instead they did what they did.

Unrelated, while the Hall of the Novice tells you some basic stuff, A: it's not exactly kept up to date with how the game's evolved, and B: IIRC it's actually entirely skippable. Oh and C: the majority of this playerbase does not like being told they're 'wrong' or 'bad' so they never want to accept any advice, even from the game itself. I wonder, does SE have data on 'how many times have people failed a solo instance because they didn't do what the NPCs told them to do, multiple times', like when Alisaie is going 'give me aether for my stupid flashy finisher move' and the player just carries on hitting stuff (3.4 solo instance vs the WODs comes to mind)

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On a practical level I think it would be better to create a brand new class for SCH (Academician maybe? Old Aphy class), just because it's less work since ACN already uses a lot of SMN assets, plus there are the quests with egi and everything that would need to be rewritten.

But then I get to think if they even care about classes to that extent nowadays, especially because they have plans of making a new 'starting point' at Endwalker patches. If they ever separate SCH and SMN, what I'd predict they would do is just letting SCH be a standalone job that anyone can pick up at 30 like AST.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

what I'd predict they would do is just letting SCH be a standalone job that anyone can pick up at 30 like AST.

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Yes, before the EW rework to ACN/SMN's gameplay I'd have said that SMN should be the standalone, and ACN>SCH be the 'upgrade path', because it makes more sense to me for the reasons I previously gave. Now that SE has reworked ACN gameplay to be 150% tied to SMN's gameplay, this is no longer feasible, and SCH would make more sense (from a 'how the job/classes play' perspective) to be the 'standalone' option

In which case though, I'd rather they drop SCH's 'you can pick this job up' level down to 10 (same as Rogue), starting at level 1 (like Rogue), and just have it say that 'the job quests for this class will continue at 30 because Alka Zolka needs time to translate the old scripts' or something. The fairy is a level 4 skill, so the player would, even starting at level 1, get the 'core identity' aspect of the job almost immediately. If that's not good enough, it can start at level 10 and nothing really changes, just they'd have immediate access to the fairy. Then people can pick up this second healer option super quickly (not immediately unfortunately, but best we can do in this situation), and the 1-30 job abilities would be learned by levelling anyway