Why healing is broken and terrible, and how to fix it...

[RichardButte]

Isn't healing ALWAYS a guessing game, no matter what game you're playing?

Not at all.

XIV is the only MMO I've ever played where players can take either TONS of damage, or next to nothing, all depending upon who gets hit and when.

Even Wildstar, an MMO that was BUILT around telegraphs, had more predictable damage than XIV did, but the damage was also steadier, meaning no one was going to chew out a healer for not doing damage.

And more to the point, healers in XIV are capable of putting out a lot more damage than healers in most other MMOs, so they're leaned on even harder to make the choice.

Out these times how many healers actually speak up? I play all roles and to be honest it can become predictable based on the group you have.

In my experience, the only thing that matters when it comes to avoiding damage is individual player skill. I've had plenty of DRGs who never get hit but BRDs who needed constant healing.

And you can't really gauge player skill in the span of a dungeon. I remember one specific run where the two DPS took no damage the entire run, making me feel as though it was safe to DPS, and then we wiped on the last boss because they suddenly started getting hit by EVERYTHING.

This is why I feel they should simply remove the guesswork from healing: if there was any meaningful metric (other than being with a premade group that expects you to DPS anyway) we could use to say "It's definitely not/safe to DPS", then it would be fine, but there really isn't.

I didn't roll a healer to stand around waiting for my mana to regen most of the time due to fear of people screwing up (I also didn't roll a healer to DPS, but I doubt THAT will be going away any time soon).

SE is also shooting themselves in the foot here because of just how badly healer DPS is throwing off raid balancing. They SAY they don't balance raid encounters around it, but the better the raid group, the less damage they'll take, meaning the more time healers will have to DPS, which just widens the rift between how mid and hardcore players experience the content.

[ManuelBravo]

Not at all.

In my experience, the only thing that matters when it comes to avoiding damage is individual player skill. I've had plenty of DRGs who never get hit but BRDs who needed constant healing.

And you can't really gauge player skill in the span of a dungeon. I remember one specific run where the two DPS took no damage the entire run, making me feel as though it was safe to DPS, and then we wiped on the last boss because they suddenly started getting hit by EVERYTHING.

This is why I feel they should simply remove the guesswork from healing...

This seems more like a player skill problem than the healing system. If you wanted to go that route it would be old school turn base system. Can't blame SE if player lack practice or common sense. It's a risk you take unless you make your own group with players you can trust. As for gauging I'm referring to gear, sprout status, how they react to large pulls ect.

[RichardButte]

This seems more like a player skill problem than the healing system. If you wanted to go that route it would be old school turn base system. Can't blame SE if player lack practice or common sense.

But yes, you CAN blame them. They craft the game in a certain way and the entire reason I've posted this is because they've designed encounters and abilities in such a way that healers spend most of their time standing there having to decide whether to DPS or conserve mana instead of healing because there's no healing to do.

If your sole reasoning for wanting change is 'I don't like getting chastised by people when they think I should have done it differently', I can assure you with confidence that people will always find something to whine at the healer for. Even if the damage model was changed so that healers became turrets like the WoW model, and they were literally doing nothing but casting heals to keep patching up the incoming damage, there would be people that would complain.

Yes, but it would also be more fun and engaging if part of being a healer wasn't just standing around, allowing mana to regen.

Hell, DRKs have abilities to restore their mana through dealing damage. I'd LOVE to have something like that as a healer...

Don't trivialize the other roles.

I'm not trivializing them: I'm ENVYING them. I've leveled a tank to cap in HW and I would've preferred to tank but my static didn't need one.

I usually heal in MMOs, but I prefer tanking/DPSing because it's dramatically more engaging than healing is.

No. It's a memorization game.

You can memorize when DPS are going to screw up and stand in an AoE? Lucky you! :P

I thought you wanted to be an AST. /trollface

I C wut U did thar.

Having played healer in this game since 1.0 (as my main job until just now), I have never been complained to about DPSing.

There are literally, right now, two threads in the healer forum front page: one complaining that healers don't DPS, and the other complaining that healers DPS too much.

[Taika]

they've designed encounters and abilities in such a way that healers spend most of their time standing there having to decide whether to DPS or conserve mana instead of healing because there's no healing to do.

The way you're describing healer play in raiding doesn't seem any familiar to me as a person who's actually raided in this game as a healer. And when I'm not raiding as a healer myself, I don't really see my healers standing there pondering things either.

[Mirateski]

The way you're describing healer play in raiding doesn't seem any familiar to me as a person who's actually raided in this game as a healer. And when I'm not raiding as a healer myself, I don't really see my healers standing there pondering things either.

I had a run of v2s with a whm who didn't seem comfortable dpsing, the sch (a friend of mine) still had to heal during heavy damage periods but also got to spend about 75% of his time dpsing when the SAM wasn't eating every single mechanic and dying. Certainly no pondering - if nobody is taking damage right that second, use a dps spell. If someone messes up and takes damage healers have enough oGCDs, or (often) time before the next outgoing raidwide to fix that problem.

Unless you're pressing AspHelios/medica/succor every time someone gets a scratch, you're not gonna have mp problems, really. I only have mp problems when I have to rez people because they ate all four fire orbs in 1n and got deleted.

[RichardButte]

The way you're describing healer play in raiding doesn't seem any familiar to me as a person who's actually raided in this game as a healer.

I'm not just talking about raiding: I want healer play to be engaging across the board, not only when doing the most challenging content in the game (like I said in the OP).

Doing omega has been more fun for healing than any content prior, true, but there's still an awful lot of standing around.

Never been the case in all the time I have been playing this game.

Good for you.

In other news, I'm cold, so global warming is clearly a hoax. :P

[Kazrah]

And more to the point, healers in XIV are capable of putting out a lot more damage than healers in most other MMOs, so they're leaned on even harder to make the choice.

That's why I like healing in this game more than other MMORPGs, because you actually have to manage your main resource under random and chaotic circumstances (some not as much though), with higher reward for players that know how to adequately manage it under more extreme conditions. It's also how much damage healers do that is why I prefer healers in this game over other games because I don't have to wait five minutes to kill one thing soloing as a healer like I have to in every other game, and actually contribute to a kill when I'm in a group instead of spamming heals and the occasional one damage skill and going "yay, i iz helpink".

Also, if you think healing is broken, then maybe you're just a bad healer? Admitting is the first step ya know, and it's okay not to be that good of a healer. I love healing in this game, but I don't blame the system because I'm not the absolute best at it. There are a couple of issues, yes, but resource management is anything but an issue.