This is depressing, please change things

I'm new to the forums and felt that after that dungeon run I just had that I needed to add my voice to this pile. First off I love healers, been playing them for my entire mmo career and always go back to them after a bit of a break.
That being said, I just got out of a Tender Valley run and I can't describe how useless, hated, and over all like a ghost I felt during the run. It's my first time playing in a group for DT content, and I'm in no rush to do it again. No one said anything during the run, death during boss fights did nothing, and over all I just pressed my attack buttons with the occasional heal button.
I'm not angry in any way, just really sad a depressed that my favorite role seems to be getting pushed aside and making it feel more useless in practice than what it is in story. I hope something changes for it, because as it stands we're just here to get picked last in metaphorical "dodge ball" so the other classes can play the game.

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Originally Posted by VoidCanaryy

I'm new to the forums and felt that after that dungeon run I just had that I needed to add my voice to this pile. First off I love healers, been playing them for my entire mmo career and always go back to them after a bit of a break.
That being said, I just got out of a Tender Valley run and I can't describe how useless, hated, and over all like a ghost I felt during the run. It's my first time playing in a group for DT content, and I'm in no rush to do it again. No one said anything during the run, death during boss fights did nothing, and over all I just pressed my attack buttons with the occasional heal button.
I'm not angry in any way, just really sad a depressed that my favorite role seems to be getting pushed aside and making it feel more useless in practice than what it is in story. I hope something changes for it, because as it stands we're just here to get picked last in metaphorical "dodge ball" so the other classes can play the game.

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Hoo boy. I will not say it gets better. There is a healing strike going on. This situation you've experienced has been the norm for 4 years now.

My advice, try a different role or a different game. Progression, as in, experiencing new content alongside new players is the most fun you'll ever have on healers, where everything is chaotic, there are plenty of mistakes (some of which you will actually be able to do something about!) and in general parties desperately need someone to keep them alive and raise them.

Once that period is over (Two to three weeks) its back to feeling useless.

I wonder if we can somehow force at least some of the developers to actually playtest their damn game... Get them to roll a new character, get all the healers from 1 to 100 and play through the entire MSQ. And if they want to further the experience, they could also only do dungeons with Trusts.

Let them experience the gameplay they made, and deemed acceptable.

It should be mandatory for the balance team to play a given amount of time per week on every job.

I love playing healer the first week that content is out. Plenty of people don't know the fights yet, and everyone's mistakes add up to give me plenty of stuff to triage. It's a delight.

But soon enough most people know the fights and stop making a meaningful amount of mistakes, and then healer has very little to do. It's unfortunate.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

It should be mandatory for the balance team to play a given amount of time per week on every job.

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Every Job every week is probably a bit too much, they would still need to actually do other work as well... But definitely should be made to play all roles, maybe even all the teams in charge of designing anything related to combat should be forced to participate with the game. With some rotation on the Jobs, so they don't just play their favorite Jobs.
Make them play the game they designed, and see if it's something they themselves would want to play.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Every Job every week is probably a bit too much, they would still need to actually do other work as well... But definitely should be made to play all roles, maybe even all the teams in charge of designing anything related to combat should be forced to participate with the game. With some rotation on the Jobs, so they don't just play their favorite Jobs.
Make them play the game they designed, and see if it's something they themselves would want to play.

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You misinterpreted, I meant that they should play an amount of time every week and play every job, playing every job for a fixed period every week would indeed be challenging, lol.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

I wonder if we can somehow force at least some of the developers to actually playtest their damn game... Get them to roll a new character, get all the healers from 1 to 100 and play through the entire MSQ. And if they want to further the experience, they could also only do dungeons with Trusts.

Let them experience the gameplay they made, and deemed acceptable.

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There was a thread in general discussion long time ago about wanting yoshi-p to play MSQ as Hrothgar AST from beginning to the end without changing to any other jobs at all for obvious reasons lol

the fact that warrior is the most played tank now is also sad because we do nothing we can literally stop healing they will do it all even clemency pal are annoying the two tanks I love healing are darknight and gunbreaker because I don't feel useless so a healing nerf on everything that isnt a healer would help because not everyone play extreme savage and ultimate so having the balance on those is actually not a good thing

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Originally Posted by Nero-Voidstails

not everyone play extreme savage and ultimate so having the balance on those is actually not a good thing

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I still say that normal content balance and extreme+ balance should not be mutually exclusive. If the content and jobs were designed/balanced properly things would just scale happily from balanced dungeons to balanced ultimate and everyone would be happy. The instanced nature of all duties and level/ilvl caps facilitate this, there is nothing physically stopping them pushing a patch on Tuesday that reduces the ilvl cap for all SB and later content by 5, maybe 10, it wouldn't be huge but it would pull stats more in line with the initial experience.

That's not to say that reducing healing on tanks (WAR being the most egregious) is not part of the answer, it most certainly is, I just don't think it alone is the answer. It has to come in conjunction with adjustments to content balance and design that better includes all roles.

‘But we can’t make healing fun or enjoyable or the min-Ilvl healers with one arm won’t be able to handle normal content!!!’
- Yoshi P, probably

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

That's not to say that reducing healing on tanks (WAR being the most egregious) is not part of the answer, it most certainly is, I just don't think it alone is the answer. It has to come in conjunction with adjustments to content balance and design that better includes all roles.

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Personally, I don't think reducing the tanks healing is solution at all... They've always seemed to have the mentality that Healers aren't just healing 100% of the time of the fight, that downtime for healers exists. But they adamantly refuse to fill this downtime with anything at all, because it might scare the beginners away if they have to actually play the game.
Which has lead to healers being in their current state for the past several years.

There's a significant difference between 'healing and doing dps in your downtime' and 'dpsing and then healing in your downtime'. Good healer design is the former, what we have is the latter, I may only have two or three years experience here but when I levelled WHM through ARR and HW doing dps was my reward for being good at my job and having a good tank, as of ShB/EW healing is my reward for people doing stupid things. The system is broken.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

There's a significant difference between 'healing and doing dps in your downtime' and 'dpsing and then healing in your downtime'. Good healer design is the former, what we have is the latter, I may only have two or three years experience here but when I levelled WHM through ARR and HW doing dps was my reward for being good at my job and having a good tank, as of ShB/EW healing is my reward for people doing stupid things. The system is broken.

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What I feel like they're trying to go for, and completely failing at, is a system where as a Healer you'd be a DPS until boss mechanics start happening and you need to start healing.
But they forgot to make boss mechanics that particularly require healing, and they forgot to add the DPS part to healers.

But that's the thing; if I want to play dps, I'll play a dps class, I won't play a healer.

I would more point to the many single player FF games of the past and what they've done with their Healer jobs and characters where applicable... Where when you don't need to cast Cure, or other healing spells, they're still either slightly less effective melee fighters, or mages... Or in the games with changeable jobs, you can attach whatever you want onto their side so they can still do things when not healing.

The healer part should be the center, you have a healer because you expect to need heals. But it's that you very much don't always need to heal every second of every fight, and because of that they should have something else going on for those times.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

I still say that normal content balance and extreme+ balance should not be mutually exclusive. If the content and jobs were designed/balanced properly things would just scale happily from balanced dungeons to balanced ultimate and everyone would be happy. The instanced nature of all duties and level/ilvl caps facilitate this, there is nothing physically stopping them pushing a patch on Tuesday that reduces the ilvl cap for all SB and later content by 5, maybe 10, it wouldn't be huge but it would pull stats more in line with the initial experience.

That's not to say that reducing healing on tanks (WAR being the most egregious) is not part of the answer, it most certainly is, I just don't think it alone is the answer. It has to come in conjunction with adjustments to content balance and design that better includes all roles.

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I do think making warrior more warrior feel would help tho like yes it's a tank but it work with rage and willpower so there is I think a solution that can be done to make warrior stronger DPS wise while keeping all healing but taking more damage I need to explain more in detail about on that eventually in the tank tab

They won't make healing more heavily weighted in time spent healing and casting heals for the same reason they've started making tanks impossible to kill, notably in dungeon/casual content, because this community constantly says "it feels bad dying because the healer didn't heal me" or "it feels bad dying because the tank didn't use mitigation". Which tends to boil down to "it feels bad dying because of others".

Don't worry soon Healer will be a primary dps job they're going to have to do something like that or make it a secondary tank job its the only way moving forward.

Only thing I can really think about is seeing if we can get the developers to flip the ideas than and give healers off tanking powers as well. They decided that tanks should be healers to leave healers as one button dpsers with 25% damage of a real dps. If they are in the mood to merge roles than might as well go full on with the concept.

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Originally Posted by Vladmiere

Only thing I can really think about is seeing if we can get the developers to flip the ideas than and give healers off tanking powers as well. They decided that tanks should be healers to leave healers as one button dpsers with 25% damage of a real dps. If they are in the mood to merge roles than might as well go full on with the concept.

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It will be okay (Off Tank Healers)
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gttNC9UyMUs/maxresdefault.jpg

My boyfriend bullied me into playing again. I'm back, healer gang.

I actually do think a step was taken in the right direction, but there still needs to be some serious work. So.

CREATIVE UNIT 3!

MAKE BANEFUL IMPACTION AN AETHERFLOW SPENDER THAT SPREADS YOUR CURRENT DOT(S), GIVE SCHOLAR A SECOND ST DOT, MAKE ART OF WAR A DOT AND GIVE SELENE UNIQUE ABILITIES! AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!

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Originally Posted by Videra

My boyfriend bullied me into playing again. I'm back, healer gang.

I actually do think a step was taken in the right direction, but there still needs to be some serious work. So.

CREATIVE UNIT 3!

MAKE BANEFUL IMPACTION AN AETHERFLOW SPENDER THAT SPREADS YOUR CURRENT DOT(S), GIVE SCHOLAR A SECOND ST DOT, MAKE ART OF WAR A DOT AND GIVE SELENE UNIQUE ABILITIES! AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!

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I was actually thinking about that. Make Healer a few abilities with DOTs attached, not sure how I'd do it but I think that might help with the boredom of pressing one button to attack.

It doesn't exactly help with the Healing side of thigs though unfortunately :/

It's more harm for the healing side imo since most healing is just done through abilities nowadays. It also doesn't reduce the amount of glare/broil/malefic/dosis cast.

Also I personally don't really want to be juggling DoTs with every healer and think it should be SCH's thing specifically.

Healer has been like this for 4-5 years, it will never change and I doubt 8.0 will fix it - the developers do not care because none of them are active healer mains and recognise healing is the least played role and has the biggest potential of gatekeeping everyone else if you're bad at it, so they intentionally make it worthless in casual content to please the other two roles.

If you want to feel needed and have fun on healer, go do content on day - week 1 where people will fuck up consistently and gear won't outpace fights yet, otherwise just accept this role is glorified insurance policy for dps/tanks if they somehow fuck up.

That's pretty much how I've made my peace with it, accepted healing is just a prog job for high end content, nothing more.

Nothing has and will change. You might as well pick up pld at this point bc tanks have been doing healers jobs for like 3 xpacs now?

Please someone make an appealing and steady online game with a healing model somewhere between WoW's overdesigned, hyper sweaty nonsense and FFXIV's filler button, fiction healer design.

There's a lot of ups and downs.

Most of the dungeons and also EX1 and 2 of the 4 normal raids feel exactly like I had hoped healing would be: There's actually a lot of it to do, to the point where a fair few of my GCDs are hard-casted heals instead of damage.

Of course, EX2 and the new savage raids then induce whiplash by being the usual rote heal-via-oGCD-then-back-to-nuking fare we had for years now.

What we need IMO is a move towards using the GCDs for healing. Basically, if nothing else, invert the current design:

* Something like Celestial Opposition is a 1,5s casting GCD.
* Malefic is an instant cast with a 2,5s CD.

Conceptually I'd feel much better then because I spend my actual GCDs on healing, damage is just some garnish on top.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

What I feel like they're trying to go for, and completely failing at, is a system where as a Healer you'd be a DPS until boss mechanics start happening and you need to start healing.
But they forgot to make boss mechanics that particularly require healing, and they forgot to add the DPS part to healers.

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Tanks have been DPS who press mitigations for mechanics for a few expansions, now, too, since aggro management got lobotomized. Role balance in general has been rough for a hot minute.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

Also I personally don't really want to be juggling DoTs with every healer and think it should be SCH's thing specifically.

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It should only be SCH, the fact a lot of your regen healing comes from your fairy makes the dot mage play style work on it.

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Originally Posted by Erit

Tanks have been DPS who press mitigations for mechanics for a few expansions, now, too, since aggro management got lobotomized. Role balance in general has been rough for a hot minute.

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Yeah, and it goes even further than that.

But just for tanks, while you could argue "But in particular Paladin and Warrior are so strong", they still don't play like tanks. It's really not fun if you want to play a tank and don't actually play one beyond the boss being turned a particular way.

And beyond tanks, melee DPS in Endwalker barely were melee insofar that most bosses had a hitbox reaching all the way to Sharlayan. One caster has essentially no cast bars. Stuff is all over the place!

As for healers in particular, while more damage buttons would be ... "nice" (in the most grandma-commenting-on-stuff way), the real fix IMO is to actually deal damage that requires healing. I got SO MANY healing buttons. I'd have more than enough complexity and variety in my button presses if there were any damage to heal!

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Originally Posted by Carighan

As for healers in particular, while more damage buttons would be ... "nice" (in the most grandma-commenting-on-stuff way), the real fix IMO is to actually deal damage that requires healing. I got SO MANY healing buttons. I'd have more than enough complexity and variety in my button presses if there were any damage to heal!

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This, literally this.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Yeah, and it goes even further than that.

But just for tanks, while you could argue "But in particular Paladin and Warrior are so strong", they still don't play like tanks. It's really not fun if you want to play a tank and don't actually play one beyond the boss being turned a particular way.

And beyond tanks, melee DPS in Endwalker barely were melee insofar that most bosses had a hitbox reaching all the way to Sharlayan. One caster has essentially no cast bars. Stuff is all over the place!

As for healers in particular, while more damage buttons would be ... "nice" (in the most grandma-commenting-on-stuff way), the real fix IMO is to actually deal damage that requires healing. I got SO MANY healing buttons. I'd have more than enough complexity and variety in my button presses if there were any damage to heal!

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I've been running Scholar through the DT dungeons a lot lately—and cursing a blue streak over the game dropping nothing but Fending gear when my GNB is already capped—and let me tell you, I press all my buttons a lot. Not because the mechanics hit particularly hard, but because people keep trying to die to them regardless.

I think that's what the goal is with current healer design: Absolute Babysitter Mode. That's why when everyone's playing well, the role feels unfulfilling in standard content; half your kit is intended for course-correction in some capacity. It's a bit different in high-end, but I don't know much beyond hearsay.

And you can't really buff standard content to require Savage or Ultimate level play, because then the majority of the playerbase who aren't interested in those things will up stakes and fuck off. I don't think XIV could survive hemorrhaging players like that when CBU3 seems to have been hit with the "Bigger And Bigger" bug and cannot seem to stop trying to spend more and more on each expansion.

The answer, then, is to lean more into the support aspect of the role. Give us tools that let us influence encounters beyond "Hit it 'til it dies" and "un-hit target ally." Scholar can outright invalidate mechanics, Astro if played masterfully can force skips, lean into that sort of play. The "holy trinity" used to be a quadrangle, but at some point people decided mezzing was lame when it's some of the funniest shit you can do in a game. I remember when Paladin mass-blinded as part of its AoE threat management, it was always a nice treat to get the most out of that. Give us back things like Disable, or let White Mage throw out Faith or Bravery every 30s so you have to mind other people's rotations, slap it on the Black Mage right as they hit Flare Star and dump their Xenoglossy stacks.

But perhaps these are simply the ramblings of an old man lost in his ways.

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Originally Posted by Erit

I've been running Scholar through the DT dungeons a lot lately—and cursing a blue streak over the game dropping nothing but Fending gear when my GNB is already capped—and let me tell you, I press all my buttons a lot. Not because the mechanics hit particularly hard, but because people keep trying to die to them regardless.

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Ah, I should also say: When I complain about a lack of healing requirement, I near-always mean Extremes/Savages.

Dungeons are moooostly fine. While I wish there were more ranged enemies that randomly (not telegraphed) target non-tanks for a certain amount of damage frequently (forcing me to split attention!), the tank does take significant damage, albeit from having 2 packs of mobs on them. Older dungeons are even between when pulling wall-to-wall.

But in raid content, the fights are designed to mostly deal no damage. Then every 20s-60s, a huge 80%-115% designed-max-HP AoE is fired off, sometimes broken into multiple hits or so. But since we have so many oGCD tools, virtually all of those we cover with them while continously spamming nukes.

That's the problem. If raids did as much and as constant damage to the tanks as 2 packs of trashmobs in a dungeon did, daaaaaang would healing be ecstatic. And fun!

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Originally Posted by Erit

The answer, then, is to lean more into the support aspect of the role. Give us tools that let us influence encounters beyond "Hit it 'til it dies" and "un-hit target ally." Scholar can outright invalidate mechanics, Astro if played masterfully can force skips, lean into that sort of play. The "holy trinity" used to be a quadrangle, but at some point people decided mezzing was lame when it's some of the funniest shit you can do in a game. I remember when Paladin mass-blinded as part of its AoE threat management, it was always a nice treat to get the most out of that. Give us back things like Disable, or let White Mage throw out Faith or Bravery every 30s so you have to mind other people's rotations, slap it on the Black Mage right as they hit Flare Star and dump their Xenoglossy stacks.

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6 roles in fact. Not 4 (or 3).

The classic CRPG design has 6 roles: Tank, Healer, Damage, Crowd Control, Debuffing, Buffing. WoW was the cataclyst that mostly eliminated the later three, even though at release they still leaned into them (beta 4 billed Priest as CC and Warlock as Debuffer, for example!). Compare EQ1 with its Enchanter and Shaman and so on.