PSA - Cleric Stance and vote kicking

[Belhi]

Personally I don't find the dd skills used by healers being "tacked on". However for the sake of argument, can you give detailed, plausible, and workable examples of ways you would rework healers, so all their skills feel "whole"?

Furthermore, even if we buy your premise of the healers' dd skills feel "tacked on", it is still far from being a valid reason for some "healers" to stubbornly refuse to contribute to the party's overall damage output whatsoever.

Cheers,
D.

There are two issues and frankly at their core is the question of what healers are supposed to be in FF14. For example, are healers supposed to be true healers in the MMO sense with their focus on Healer gameplay ie. countering the onslaught of damage given by the boss? Or are they supposed to be more along the lines of healing support dps, were they provide group support and sustaining while dealing out as much damage as possible. The design seems to indicate that the devs are shooting for the first option but the mechanics and balance of the game push the reality more towards the second option.

With the first option, healers exist as a distinctly different gameplay to dpsing. Their dpsing is a very minor feature of the Job and often not used in group content. Downtimes between healing is a lot shorter and healers have less long duration automated healing they can depend on. Simply put, the fight mechanics and group damage are often too low or too bursty in fights and healing spells are way too overpowered in FF14. I haven't played another MMO were I require so little direct casting to actually heal. You can with almost trivial ease heal a group from almost dead to max health in only a couple of GCDs in this game. At its core, that is why the healing mechanics in this game fall short. The issue is the healing Jobs are designed for this type of gameplay.

With the second option, Healing is a monitored thing and dpsing mechanics and heal mechanics interact. Prior to Stormblood, Cleric stance creates a risk/reward situation which means healers have to be attentive when it comes to when damage is coming and be able to plan and adapt quickly if things went wrong. It wasn't great but it was something. The removal of Cleric stance removes this sole mechanic and replaces it with nothing. Healing dps is, for pretty much all the healing classes, maintaining a couple of dots and spamming one button. That's it. There is no mechanical interaction between your dps and heals. If they wanted to go for the second option they could make it that using particular dps spells makes certain healing spells cast faster or for less mana or for more healing. They could have spells that apply a leech effect to the target which allows allies attacking it to get hp back each time they use an ability on the boss. They could create actual rotation where you play of say the differences with water and earth elements in WHM. There are a myriad of possibilities. However all we have is a couple of dps dots and a single button spam with literally no interaction with the rest of the Job's abilities. Certainly none with their support/healing. DPS isn't part of the core design of the Job and more an addition so they aren't completely rekt when having to solo something. So, tacked on.

AST is the only one to escape this partially and that is due to the fact their cards create an additional mechanic to the Job. Its very RNG based and that turns people off but it does add an extra layer. For Jobs like WHM and to a lesser extent SCH, there is no real secondary support gameplay. Its just 'how can I minimise my healing time so I can spam my crappy dps rotation'.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Snip.

This really is why playing healer really does suck in this game. At least IMHO.