[Opinion] Why I'm disappointed by most changes to healers.

[NocturniaUzuki]

Healer A uses his cooldowns exclusively for keeping people alive. Healer B uses smart casting, predicting the encounter and judgement calls to keep people alive while contributing to DPS via cards/buffs. Who was more useful in the end?

Got to go to bed but I'll answer this at least.

If the party doesn't end up getting wrecked, then Healer B was more useful.
If the party gets wrecked, then Healer A was more useful.

I'm not suggesting that it's all or nothing either, by the way. As I have said repeatedly, if the healer feels that a disaster is unlikely (not just in the scope of the entire fight, but within smaller portions of the fight as well), then they can make the call to use cooldowns offensively. All I'm saying is that if the healer makes that call and they ended up being caught without those cooldowns up when they were needed, then it's the healer's fault for taking that risk.

I am generally Healer B. I just play in situations in which I would be an idiot to try to contribute to DPS regularly with my cooldowns because, more often than not, I need all of my cooldowns just to prevent a wipe. If I'm playing in farming parties, that changes. I start to take those risks because the chances of a disaster occurring is low at worst, and negligible at best.

[Tillen]

But since the thread is largely drawing on my previous thread about Spear, and the changes to it in 4.05, it does make sense that I focus on AST.

So why not rename your post something more descriptive or stop using the word "healer" and change it to AST? Saying 99% of healers don't know how to heal but you've never healed as a lvl 70 scholar is a bit presumptive, no? A little egocentric and to be honest quite rude. And then you post that appalling RM run and take credit for everyone's accomplishment by saying this is how you heal, but yet if the tank and 2 DPS weren't on point it wouldn't matter how good of a healer you are. Why are the others dead in the first place? XD, you have earned the troll badge for sure.

[Tillen]

I am generally Healer B. I just play in situations in which I would be an idiot to try to contribute to DPS regularly with my cooldowns because, more often than not, I need all of my cooldowns just to prevent a wipe. If I'm playing in farming parties, that changes. I start to take those risks because the chances of a disaster occurring is low at worst, and negligible at best.

Bruh, you keep using that Healer Word like you know what you're talking about. I think you meant to say "I'm generally AST B". AST plays different than SCH and I can drop all my cooldowns, apply DoTs, and still heal to prevent a wipe....in a PUG. So again, it's probably best not to generalize all healers, especially when you have no idea what you're talking about.

Check out exhibit A and B below. Both solo heals of the Ex primals by a SCH, in which they still weave in their DPS when they can. Also mind you these are done before the balancing changes last patch, 4.05 and at just barely above min ilvl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntiroB4fMT4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwBmLN46wkY&t=87s

I mean watch this AST solo heal Susano Ex and DPS the entire time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_QiLReTOlk

Just saying.

[Fortune_Cookie]

If that's the case, then my response is that the "More DPS = Less Healing" mantra is not true in FF14 in almost all raid circumstances.

I didn't want to reply to this thread again because it's going round in circles, but this warrants a comment.

By your own admission, your ultra-defensive play style is only applicable to parties where things don't go according to plan. Where players take avoidable damage and require additional healing. And it's precisely to deliver that additional healing that you prioritise defensive measures over offensive ones. Therefore you are precisely not in a situation where:

Healers will never run out of MP on a boss as long as they are being smart with their MP regen skills, not overhealing excessively, and their party isn't taking ridiculous amounts of avoidable damage.

On the contrary:

Technically, you don't have to heal as much if the boss dies faster. Maybe you only have to cast 13 AoE heals instead of 18.

This becomes particularly relevant when all the additional damage your party is taking is depleting your mp?

I'm not making a general case here that the defensive value of an AoE balance will always outweigh the benefit of one extra Lucid. I'm just pointing out that your assertion (essentially that the benefit of a shorter kill only manifests itself once the boss is dead) is not true in exactly the sort of situation that you keep going on about. Frankly I don't get why you engage in these mental contortions to justify to yourself that the pursuit of DPS is to blame for all the woes in the world. You obviously enjoy your play style, you don't need anybody else's validation, do you?

[Alisi]

In closing, if you really want a proper healing challenge, hurry up and get stuck into Omega Savage. O4S is legitimately mind blowing from the word go and I genuinely can't think of any healer check in any MMO I've played over the years that is comparable. (I quit WoW after LK tho, the mythic tiers or whatever might have had something on par?)

This is a total aside. I play both. No offense meant but WoW is the King of Raid design and boss mechanics. FFXIV doesn't touch that. Not even close. Blizz designs encounters for all three roles. Healers can't DPS until you're overgeared or you heal by DPS. Some tops guilds even brought DPS with some healing abilities because the healing check was so high. This is the thing about WoW that I wish FFXIV will copy. They're kind of/ sort of moving in that direction but it's not close yet.

Now, before everyone jumps me, I think it should be said that WoW has to be that way because of addons. Things like extreme primals and omega savage would be a walk in the park with a boss meter (that tells you in big bold letters what's coming up next, with some providing arrows of where you need to run.) FFXIV doesn't have to be that complex in the game design. Indeed, it would be overwhelming. I don't think there would be a way to do heroic Lei Shen or mythic blackhand without addons when they were current content. That's not taking into account all the restrictions placed on pots and battle rez's, and the like.

So I'm not sure it's fair to compare the two. xD Sorry. Tired and rambling. I need to sleep.

[Sebazy]

So I'm not sure it's fair to compare the two. xD Sorry. Tired and rambling. I need to sleep.

I suspected as much, I had heard things moved on quite significantly from when I played. In fairness though, I suspect the rigid 2+2+4 structure SE enforces upon it's raids will always hamstring the options they can through at the player vs the additional flexibility WoW offers here.

I doubt they will ever have the guts to put in a hardcore 24man raid given the work it entails for them =(

[MoroMurasaki]

Nocturnia I have to be honest; I feel like at this point you are playing Devil's Advocate here and inciting controversy for it's own sake. Between the previous thread about Spear in it's old iteration you are aware of the views of your opposition because this is, at it's core, the same thread. The only difference I see is that in the time between the two the judgement call that myself and many others wished for was made by the devs and we recieved an AST card that actually has a place in the current game.

If we take a few basic truths about FFXIV content together we can see why the current Spear is the more useful card by far.

Number one - this game is easy. I'm not saying Savage is easy, I'm not saying ilvl appropriate EX primals are easy, I'm not saying 4 man RM is easy. The game that is played by most of the playerbase is not challenging to heal through, that's why the healer DPS debate exists at all. We need something to do. In content of this caliber (which, again, is the largest chunk of FFXIV both in terms of available content and played content) DPS means killing the boss faster.

You aren't generally worried about your ability to complete a random 4man dungeon or a Trial Roulette but when you take "gee, I hope we can clear" out of the equation it turns into "I wonder how fast we can clear". This is the birth of speedruns, the growth of healer DPS and the very reason DPS buff skills exist for most players.

Lets take the second truth on now - in challenging content phase skips and hard enrages are a thing to worry about. There still is not a ton of content out there but when you're in it (I had a PF party hit enrage on Lak EX a few days ago, our MNK thought it smart to only hit her from the front for some reason) DPS still matters more than mitigation because all you need for your party to still be going full tilt damage is for them to be alive. Assuming they have run the encounter multiple times and are not dying to simple, avoidable mechanics you are required to keep their HP anywhere between full and 1. That is all. That does not require a 96 second cooldown on LD and on the incredibly rare chance it does you have so many bigger problems coming that this should not be your comcern.

Also in those clutch situations the crit bump you gain from an expanded Spear now could up your HPS from wipe to clear. Is this probably the case most of the time? No, of course not, but it is certainly at least as viable an argument as you have for the CD reduction iteration of Spear being useful.

Lastly we have to look at card utility. The old Spear was (mildly) useful in a very few specific situations, it was virtually never the cornerstone of any specific run or fight. The new Spear is literally never without use. Any DPS benefits from crits, Tanks benefit from them and healers benefit from them on both our offensive and defensive sides of the toolkit. Critlo is AMAZING for a reason. Whether this is a 4man run of Haukke Manor NM or OS4 no one is mad at more crit and everyone can make good use of it. The same can not be said about the old Spear card.

Also, as an aside, I feel lile your attitude towards healers and party reaponsibilty needs a real check. It is not my job to keep stupid players alive. Do people make mistakes sometimes and need a hand? Yes. If someone refuses to perform mechanics that are explained to them (and frankly are quite intuitive in most situations) and dies the responsibility for their death is 100% on them. Hell, Mizzteq has a guide on virtually any fight in the game, if people die to avoidable things even when they arent explained it is their fault! We can and should be a buffer for newbies/bads/whatever but eventually it is easier to leave them on the floor and there is nothing wrong with that. We are already extra DPS, the default off-off-tanks and the lifeblood of the party; we can't also be their mom.

[RichardButte]

Like many things in life, compromise is king really, Savage (and coil before it) is full of examples where it was always to the groups advantage if there was a way for DPS to flat out ignore mechanics where possible. A11S was a good recent example of this where stacked barriers and a cooldown allowed BLMs to outright ignore major movement mechanics during their opener at the start of the encounter. Stuff like this was a big part of SE's growing disdain for stoneskin and it's eventual removal IMHO.

While this is true, these are situations where the group has decided ahead of time exactly which mechanics the DPS are going to get hit by so the healers know to anticipate it.

There's a huge difference between that and DPS deciding on their own to stand in the bad in dungeons/raids and saying "healers adjust".

Also, as an aside, I feel lile your attitude towards healers and party reaponsibilty needs a real check. It is not my job to keep stupid players alive. Do people make mistakes sometimes and need a hand? Yes. If someone refuses to perform mechanics that are explained to them (and frankly are quite intuitive in most situations) and dies the responsibility for their death is 100% on them. Hell, Mizzteq has a guide on virtually any fight in the game, if people die to avoidable things even when they arent explained it is their fault! We can and should be a buffer for newbies/bads/whatever but eventually it is easier to leave them on the floor and there is nothing wrong with that. We are already extra DPS, the default off-off-tanks and the lifeblood of the party; we can't also be their mom.

This cannot be restated enough, seriously...

And if we were their "mom", we'd be setting a terrible example by healing them while they refuse to follow mechanics, which is the in-game equivalent of picking up after your children instead of teaching them to put things back from where they got them.

[HPDelron]

Getting hit by avoidable mechanics is part and parcel of learning an encounter. Making errors is just a basic part of being human. Being ready and able to heal through those problems enables seeing more mechanics and learning. Being ready and able to heal through those problems helps to otherwise wipes into clears.

While this is especially true at the extreme/savage+ tier, it should be kept in mind at all levels of play. Every encounter in the game is designed around the idea there will be some degree of error in execution and that a large part of healer contribution will come in correcting for those errors.

There is a reason why the game calls for two healers when with exceptional execution almost everything can be solo healed: The baseline assumption even for the toughest content is not perfect or even great execution. All other issues aside, the idea that healers should only heal avoidable damage and that doing otherwise somehow constitutes coddling or poor play is farcical to the point of bordering on self-parody.

[MoroMurasaki]

Getting hit by avoidable mechanics is part and parcel of learning an encounter. Making errors is just a basic part of being human. Being ready and able to heal through those problems enables seeing more mechanics and learning. Being ready and able to heal through those problems helps to otherwise wipes into clears.

While this is especially true at the extreme/savage+ tier, it should be kept in mind at all levels of play. Every encounter in the game is designed around the idea there will be some degree of error in execution and that a large part of healer contribution will come in correcting for those errors.

There is a reason why the game calls for two healers when with exceptional execution almost everything can be solo healed: The baseline assumption even for the toughest content is not perfect or even great execution. All other issues aside, the idea that healers should only heal avoidable damage and that doing otherwise somehow constitutes coddling or poor play is farcical to the point of bordering on self-parody.

I'm going to address this as if it was aimed at me, my apologies if I am wrong.


I have never said healers should only heal avoidable damage, I've said the only damage healers should have to heal is unavoidable damage. Also in the rest of my post it was restated to the point of redundancy that my entire view was trying to come from where the majority of the playerbase plays which is certainly not in Savage.

Yes, in any normal dungeon I should not be having to break out Medica II on every boss because the vast majoroty of the time there is not that much unavoidable damage going out. In a perfect world no one (healer included) should be eating AoE. Do we clean up small mistakes? Yes, but always in the interest of killing the boss faster. Once I discover that a player is an mp sink becauss they are not performing any mechanics if I think I am going to need that MP for healing roomwide AoE, tankbusters, etc. I am not going to throw it on that suicidal DPS who did not take the time to watch a 4 minute guide before queueing.

The job of a healing, at base level, is no different than any other party member. Kill the boss before it kills us. The only difference is how we get there. Yes, some of it should be our personal DPS but the rest is keeping people alive who are going to do that damage for us (DPS) and keeping people alive who are going to eat the majority of the damage so it is easier to heal (tanks). Once you stray outside of this (say, taking tons of damage while not being the tank) you are not always cost effective for me to be raising and healing.

I have both been carried through things (my first couple titan ex clears) and carried people through things (most of my RM runs) and I am not saying that is intrinsically bad but at the end of the day if people have a healer that is really great at keeping people up through huge mistakes that just coddles them into being okay with making those mistakes. We are harming the growth of the playerbase if we always raise them up despite them making stupid choices that get them killed.