Healer & Tank DPS (WoW vs FFXIV)

[Newmanxeno]

Can someone explain how healing in WoW is? Is it like literally just spamming some sort of cure button?
I really like the challenge of trying to dps and heal, it makes things feel faster.

[loreleidiangelo]

Can someone explain how healing in WoW is? Is it like literally just spamming some sort of cure button?
I really like the challenge of trying to dps and heal, it makes things feel faster.

I'll give you an example using one of WoW's best-designed healing classes, IMO - the Restoration Druid.

Restoration Druids are basically a pure healing-over-time healer with only one "burst" AOE heal on a whopping 3-minute CD. They are 100% the epitome of "World of Warcraft" healing in a lot of ways - unadulterated sustain heals with very little room for screw-ups and tons of ways to run your mana into the dirt if you're not careful.

Their basic kit consists of:

-Rejuvenation: Their bread and butter, a basic HoT of decent strength. Think WHM's Regen, but that's about as derp as the similarities between jobs go. This HoT should be rolling on everyone in your assigned heal group any time they take damage.

Regrowth: Another HoT that stacks with Rejuv, but has a small front-loaded heal attached to it. Aspected Benefic is similar in design. You will want this maintained on the main tank as much as you can, but its a bit expensive to use on DPS/in an AOE scenario.

Lifebloom: A fun and unique spell. Lifebloom is another small HoT, but when the duration on it expires it "blooms" for a moderate burst of HP. This is another "main tank" HoT, as you can only have one Lifebloom up at a time. It's a powerful heal, but pretty costly and it's very easy to overheal with if you don't have a good sense of the timing. XIV could use more "skill cap" heals like that, IMO.

Wild Growth: Very mana-intensive HoT that hits in a small area. The HoT starts out initially very strong but tapers down over time. Druid's best "answer" to AOE burst healing, but isn't nearly as good as what some other healers can do.

Efflorescence: A ground HoT a la Asylum, but on a short CD so intended to be used frequently. Only affects 8 people of your 20-man raid so the Druid will need to prioritize dropping it in a spot where it will be most effective.

Healing Touch: Resto Druid's only direct heal outside of Tranq. No CD, so can be spammed, but relatively weak and nowhere near as efficient as good HoT upkeep.

Tranquility: About as good as Indom, but on a 3-minute cooldown instead of 30 seconds (it's also a channel and also costs mana). In WoW terms though, it's actually one of the most powerful healer CDs in the game, so let that sink in lol.


So yes, a typical raid in WoW would play out with your healers mostly being assigned "groups" (since AOE heals don't just hit everyone in range, they have caps from anywhere to 5-8 players) and utilizing their basic heals to sustain said groups, while sometimes pitching in with healing the MT (or OT if he has adds). Cooldowns like Tranquility DO hit the entire raid, so they're coordinated and alternated between healers as responses to heavy damage phases, kinda like how healers do in XIV now. You have to be SUPER careful not to spam, because you only get 1 mana pot to use per raid attempt and it restores something like a tenth of your mana at most levels.

So say the raid takes some pretty moderate damage. You have to decide "how" to heal those players up from it. Is there a threat of more damage following, or is your group at critical levels of HP? You can't just blitz with Tranq because you're assigned to use it in 60 seconds and the whole raid is counting on you. So do you have time to put Rejuvenations on your team and have them stack for Efflorescence? Or do they need HP fast (or can't stack because of mechs), so you're forced to sack Wild Growth, Efflorescence on as many people as CAN stack AND targeted Regrowths on the rest, costing a good chunk of mana? Will you still need to spot-heal with Healing Touch after that? Don't forget to keep Rejuv and Lifebloom up on the MT while this is all happening, too! It's not like he magically stops taking damage while the boss lets you take a tea break.

This same scenario in XIV? Just Indom it, Med II it or Helios it, it's fine. Your HP can be dangerously low cuz you know the boss won't raid buster for another 30 seconds, and the tank just used Hallowed to give you some breathing room. It's entirely different in this game compared to WoW: mana is near infinite, your cooldowns are super powerful and short, and instead of regens being an entire class's gimmick like it is in Warcraft pretty much every healer has access to them here, as WELL AS big burst heals and "oh crap" buttons.

You might find it boring - there are some on these forums who have played WoW and say that they do. But I think the skill floor for healing is way higher there, it's way more engaging even at the casual level, and you're penalized for overhealing/being a spammy hog unlike here where the best you get for overhealing is a gentle chide from your team to please do DPS in downtime. They also somehow manage to maintain this level of balance while still having their healing jobs feel unique, which honestly isn't something I can say about FFXIV sadly.

[RichardButte]

They also somehow manage to maintain this level of balance while still having their healing jobs feel unique, which honestly isn't something I can say about FFXIV sadly.

Quoted for emphasis.

XIV's healers all feel like the same basic healer but with a gimmick added on (fairy pet, cards).

[Freyyy]

XIV's healers all feel like the same basic healer but with a gimmick added on (fairy pet, cards).

Honestly tanks feel quite like that too in XIV. All the same basic tank with a gimmick added, every tank has % damage reduction CDs, a tank stance that is virtually the same (25% max HP roughly equals 20% mitigation), an agro combo, damage combos, a ranged agro move, some AoE damage/agro moves, some damaging oGCDs, damage steroids (Zerk, IR, FoF, Requiescat, Blood Weapon, Delirium), an invuln, a big "nuke" skill (Fell Cleave, Holy Spirit, Bloodspiller), some kind of self-healing, and some kind of on-demand short mitigation (TBN, IB, Sheltron). They only differ by their gimmicky mechanics which are mostly about the way they are DPSing (WAR having very bursty phases once every 2mins, PLD alterning between magical nuke phase and regular physical damage combos, DRK using MP and Blood to basically manually increase their potency-per-GCD instead of having steroids). They don't really feel unique when compared to each other. They could honestly all branch off from the same starting class. SE doesn't really like to take risks in order to create something truly unique, whether it be new content, or new jobs.

But I still really like tanking in this game, and I really like the tank/healer DPS meta. I've tanked in every trinity-based MMO I've played, and I really enjoy being able to dish out respectable damage while tanking efficiently. I don't want it to change.

[zipzo]

Honestly tanks feel quite like that too in XIV. All the same basic tank with a gimmick added, every tank has % damage reduction CDs, a tank stance that is virtually the same (25% max HP roughly equals 20% mitigation), an agro combo, damage combos, a ranged agro move, some AoE damage/agro moves, some damaging oGCDs, damage steroids (Zerk, IR, FoF, Requiescat, Blood Weapon, Delirium), an invuln, a big "nuke" skill (Fell Cleave, Holy Spirit, Bloodspiller), some kind of self-healing, and some kind of on-demand short mitigation (TBN, IB, Sheltron). They only differ by their gimmicky mechanics which are mostly about the way they are DPSing (WAR having very bursty phases once every 2mins, PLD alterning between magical nuke phase and regular physical damage combos, DRK using MP and Blood to basically manually increase their potency-per-GCD instead of having steroids). They don't really feel unique when compared to each other. They could honestly all branch off from the same starting class. SE doesn't really like to take risks in order to create something truly unique, whether it be new content, or new jobs.

But I still really like tanking in this game, and I really like the tank/healer DPS meta. I've tanked in every trinity-based MMO I've played, and I really enjoy being able to dish out respectable damage while tanking efficiently. I don't want it to change.

While I won't speak for healing, I think the trade-off of unique-ness in order to slightly homogenize the tanks ultimately is still a more enjoyable circumstance in FFXIV due to other factors, namely, enmity management, and the introduced element of being required to put out respectable "tank dps". It is this expectation for tanks to do relatively good damage that has led to that homogenization because they want the tanks to be relatively close to one another in damage output. In this sense, you could say that FFXIV's current design is a bit lazy...it's not as if it's impossible to have balanced DPS numbers among 3 tanks while also at the same time keeping a unique identity to all 3 in terms of their play style, it's also a very difficult undertaking that it seems square seems unwilling to approach. Additionally, it's worth noting that tank DPS balance is completely ignored in WoW. The difference in damage numbers between the tanks in WoW, if existent here, would make the community cry.

The conversation starts to tip over in to WoW though, and my opinion changes. Even when the tanks differ wildly in terms of their playstyle, the act of tanking in itself sans the ever-present pressure to provide competitive tank dps, nor the need to care about enmity (threat, in WoW), is vapid and boring. Tanking is downright brain dead in it's current form in WoW. Keeping aggro is a non-factor, and the only responsibilities that press you is the need to position the boss properly and avoid the same things the rest of the raid DPS (any kind of AOE or mechanics-based damage) does.

There's a very clear balancing act here that I think both games are failing to walk, in that sense, for tanking.

Now, for healing, I think a design where the healers feel compelled to moderate healing spells from start to finish seems more fitting in terms of what you imagine a healer does...which IMO makes the WoW model seem slightly superior.

So it's give and take for me. I think tanking is massive orders of amounts more fun in FFXIV, but at the same time I find the healing dynamics of WoW to be slightly more engaging in the sense that you are actively doing your chosen role of choice for the entirety of a given encounter, making healing feel much more interactive as a role. This as opposed to FFXIV where it feels like you are only a healer intermittently, and then the rest of the time you're trying to play catch up to the bottom of the meter (or maybe even higher, who knows).

In the end, I main a tank, so the rest is history...

[loreleidiangelo]

[...]

In the end, I main a tank, so the rest is history...

I'm not a tank main, but out of curiosity - what responsibilities do you think tanks have in this game that isn't just "hold aggro and position the boss correctly, use cooldowns when appropriate"? I think the things you listed in WoW as being vapid and without depth are pretty much a non-entity here in XIV too, but I suppose if your caveat is that you can at least maintain decent numbers here DPS-wise then that's fair enough. Just curious to get a tank's perspective on how the two games differ, especially since tanking design in WoW is sometimes praised on the tank subforums here.

[zipzo]

I'm not a tank main, but out of curiosity - what responsibilities do you think tanks have in this game that isn't just "hold aggro and position the boss correctly, use cooldowns when appropriate"? I think the things you listed in WoW as being vapid and without depth are pretty much a non-entity here in XIV too, but I suppose if your caveat is that you can at least maintain decent numbers here DPS-wise then that's fair enough. Just curious to get a tank's perspective on how the two games differ, especially since tanking design in WoW is sometimes praised on the tank subforums here.

It's the added responsibility of maintaining respectable DPS and (probably the bigger one) threat/enmity management.

Tanking lost it's soul in WoW the moment threat management stopped being a factor in tanking (in my opinion, which many will disagree with I'm sure). To me, threat management was the entire bread and butter of tanking gameplay. You could easily separate the wheat from the chaff based on which tanks could hold threat on a boss through whatever type of open burst your raid could put out, or the tank that could manage to keep aggro on a group pull, while picking up stragglers or patrols without losing party members in the process.

The way it is now, CC is unnecessary so it's simply a matter of AOE tanking everything, and since all tanks possess some form of mass AOE and threat is a literal non-factor anymore, it takes the entire element of managing threat out of the equation. In WoW, the only way to gauge a good tank from a bad one is basically how quickly they can move through a dungeon I.E. do they know the pulls and pack skips. That, to me, is vapid.

BTW FFXIV in this comparison is for tanking in DPS stance. Tanking in tank stance makes enmity pretty simple, while still not nearly as brain dead as it is for WoW, it's rather ignorable to a degree.

Tank damage is probably the secondary factor. Just the sheer presence of that responsibility, makes the role more demanding in terms of what your peers expect of you, thus, properly executing your role's responsibilities comes with a higher accomplishment factor (in FFXIV).

This is how I, personally, would evaluate the tanking situation between the two games.

[RichardButte]

So it's give and take for me. I think tanking is massive orders of amounts more fun in FFXIV, but at the same time I find the healing dynamics of WoW to be slightly more engaging in the sense that you are actively doing your chosen role of choice for the entirety of a given encounter, making healing feel much more interactive as a role. This as opposed to FFXIV where it feels like you are only a healer intermittently, and then the rest of the time you're trying to play catch up to the bottom of the meter (or maybe even higher, who knows).

This is fairly spot-on.

I honestly wouldn't even mind the huge chunks of healing downtime if healers had some interesting methods of doing damage instead of just usually one DoT and one damaging spell.

I wanted to main AST because I wanted the cards as an added complexity to healing (just to have SOMETHING else to do), but I've actually grown bored with that as well.

[Shurrikhan]

You might find it boring - there are some on these forums who have played WoW and say that they do. But I think the skill floor for healing is way higher there, it's way more engaging even at the casual level, and you're penalized for overhealing/being a spammy hog unlike here where the best you get for overhealing is a gentle chide from your team to please do DPS in downtime. They also somehow manage to maintain this level of balance while still having their healing jobs feel unique, which honestly isn't something I can say about FFXIV sadly.

Tangential:
My favorite fight I'd ever healed was actually T1 when first released, and not just because of how much damage was going out, but the varying rates to self, party, and tanks. I was on WHM, and of course mana was a fair bit tighter back then. Not to mention my Bard was rarely standing in range, and my SCH was panicking and contributing little more than the occasional Physic and Adloquiem before one of the tank's TBs... This left me with barely enough time to DoT, certainly no real time to fill with Stone II. I'm trying my best to proc Freecures in preparation for the TBs, with Regen ticking to top off while I Stoneskin, timing those to within the Overcure window so I can blow the raid back to full HP in one go, rolling Medica IIs out to catch the full raid minus the far side tank (all melee on my side), trying to keep the tanks alive while squeezing in enough healing to keep the poison-squatters up, etc., etc. There was a plethora of windows and rates to the damage taken, and the general intensity was enough to make each feel urgent.

I've rarely had that feeling since, apart from a min ilvl solo heal on Titan Ex. Even Savage modes just haven't quite had that kind of spread of damage rates and overall intensity. I really miss that.

Specific:
I actually feel like many WoW healers have homogenized further, however. With the exception of Discipline, the trimming of less raid effective tools has left many healers there feeling same-ish. Consider when Holy Light was actually the more expensive option, for its ridiculously massive healing, for a simplest example. Now it just works in the same basic heal Option A triple-cost-for-double-speed Option B has any other. Others used to be intended not only for more sustained damage, but for more sustained (longer) fights in general, with some gearing towards Spirit and others towards Intellect. That was problematic in its own right, but disappearance of that kind of variance is too.

As a collective, they're still head and shoulders above our own diversity, but even the best extant examples may not be any pinnacles of the concept at this point. I do wish SE would look at both sides of that progression, then, noting what more pragmatic changes occurred and why, along with the classes' original promise.