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

[Draxis_Fallspear]

Even the best players in the world have lag spikes from time to time (especially with all the DDoS attacks lately). The game is effectively asking healers to predict the future, and that really shouldn't be how healing plays out.

I thought you wanted to be an AST. /trollface

[Taika]

TL;DR: Healers can and will be chastised for both choosing to DPS, or choosing NOT to DPS.

Having played healer in this game since 1.0 (as my main job until just now), I have never been complained to about DPSing. It's like being complained to for DPS-stancing as a tank: some people may do that but you can just ignore them because they obviously don't understand it's the most efficient way to play the role. I also don't recognise the MP fears you're talking about.

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.

As someone who's healed on that more 'standard' healing model at the highest tiers of content, I find the FF14 model to be a breath of fresh air. I get to use more of my toolkit than the things that make health bars go back up. And it involves some decision making on my part of what kind of heal I should be using and when; as well as deciding how much of my mana I want to use up dealing damage. As opposed to just mashing the big single target healing button or the big aoe healing button depending on what sort of damage is going out.

Sure the way it's set up also encourages poor play from people who have the misconception that healers are only supposed to heal and never do damage (as well as poor play from people who have decided that they don't need to heal and the tanks can magically do all the work themselves), but there would still be poor play from healers even in a 'spam your healing buttons' model. Trust me, I've seen enough healers come and go from my old WoW mythic team to understand that there's still room for mistakes and valid reasons to chew healers out in that healing model as well as here.

+1

[KalinOrthos]

If I may make a suggestion:

Reduce/alter effectiveness and cost of healing spells in dungeons and raids. Make it so you can't bring the entire party back up in 2 GCDs. Make it take effort to bring your party back up to a decent level before the next round of raid AoE comes out. But also make it so one Adlo doesn't cost 1/8 of your MP, that's stupid, that's penalizing for doing your job. Give healers longevity to take care of mechanics while having them put more effort into pumping out delicious green numbers.

[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.

[Gun-Cat]

-Healers getting yelled at for doing damage
Never been the case in all the time I have been playing this game. As a matter of fact I can reliably get 2-3 comms if I actually DPS to the maximum. As for going no damage: I'd rather speed things up than staring at a full mana bar.

-Healing in dungeons and non savage content is too easy
Depends heavily on the tank and the group. Also, if 8 man stuff is too easy for your likings, ask the other healer to go full DPS and solo heal the content.

-DPSing sucks because I run OOM
Mana management is a thing. You can comfortably DPS and not run out if you use a little foresight. Also, if you have a halfways competent tank, even AST can heal up to 3 pack pulls completely with ogcd while spamming Gravity all the way, doing the same damage numbers than DPS during AoEs. You might want to give things like that a try if you feel bored.

-I want the system to change because my feelings might get hurt by random people in the game.
People really need to stop giving a f*ck and grow some thicker skin.

[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.

[cgbspender]

Click like if you're still reading this in 2024

[Avatre]

-Healers getting yelled at for doing damage
Never been the case in all the time I have been playing this game. As a matter of fact I can reliably get 2-3 comms if I actually DPS to the maximum. As for going no damage: I'd rather speed things up than staring at a full mana bar.

I was (sort of) yelled at for DPSing as a WHM. Was spamming Holy on a the second pull(the 6-7 enemies before that path opens) of Keeper a while back, and the tank(who wasn't anywhere NEAR close to death) said "rly?". Decided not to DPS for a while...they didn't like that and got frustrated until I started DPSing again.

[KalinOrthos]

Snark snip

You're right, it IS easy to win an argument when you misrepresent the other person's position.

[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.