An interview with Yoshida and his thoughts on healers in 5.0

[ForgottenScholar]

Funny thing is most people have been arguing that healers are balanced so y didnt they get a new job?, and then the next several pages of threads like this is you all prooving your roles are unbalanced. Though I do feel for the healers as a new job is always nice, it cant come at the expense of balance and noone happy with their own jobs to begin with, hence y i think the community it particularly annoyed with the no new job. I hope the rework comes to most peoples liking, and they sort out this cross role abilities mistake they made, all jobs lose their identity when you can all have the 10 same abilities on each of the the jobs int he same role.

The tanks got a new job because they want to move in the direction of off tank/main tank identity to hopefully allow more people to play tanks as it is the most demanded role in any DF and PF, with healers coming second. Healers need identity and hopefully more demand to actually heal when doing content rather than just dps and throw a few emergency heals when hp gets low. A healer should always feel the need to prioritise healing and most content that isnt the case, then we lead to issues where the appeal of healing is so low because the demand to dps is high that it just makes sense for the community to just go dps, like i did during HW. trying to dps to such high levels whilst healing never sat with me right as a healer, as surely if thats the case just make all jobs like rdm and give them healing and raising and then all jobs can just be dps.

Ranged physical got another job because in order to balance that role you need three jobs minimum, that is the reason, for the whole of SB, MCH has been broken somewhat. Same happened when their was only 2 magical dps.

All the community of healers can do is help SE identify constructive ways to move forward with healing and hope if that gets sorted in a short time there is room to possibly start working on a new healer role (possibly meelee ranged healer) that could be introduced mid patch rather than at the beginning.

[Hustensaft]

Ranged physical got another job because in order to balance that role you need three jobs minimum, that is the reason, for the whole of SB, MCH has been broken somewhat. Same happened when their was only 2 magical dps.

That statement is simply wrong. DPS is balanced around only one measure: DPS.

If BRD would deal 20% less personal DPS - you wouldn't take a BRD. You always take BRD because it provides overall one of the highest and most consistent DPS of all 9 current DPS jobs. Adding DNC will change absolutely nothing about this.

Ranged physical is a gameplay choice - DNC balances the number of gameplay options of ranged physical vs. melee/caster.

[technole]

I still remember the state SCH was in when SB came out. We had trouble healing most dungeons due to our reduced potency and I very much felt like a burden to my FC whenever we would do content together on the road to 70. Hell the person who taught me SCH outright quit the class and moved to AST/WHM in the aftermath of it and still hasn't come back due to how badly SCH started the 4.0 patch cycle. Which is to say nothing of the fact that they then buffed us and then OVER buffed us over the course of the expansion because they once again just fundamentally don't understand how to balance the healers in this game.

The fairy only got nerfed this expansion. Dungeons being harder leveling up was mainly gear scaling. Every new expansion leveling up Scholar will feel the brunt of the fairy not feeling top-tier until they get end-game gear.

The biggest change in 4.05 was the quick Aetherflow trait going to 100% which absolutely encouraged being aggressive with stacks for MP economy. I remember having candid conversations whom were not good at playing the job here at 4.05 that they needed to stop sitting on stacks to see the fruits of the buff relief. Whereas they were still whining about Adlo and Succor "costing too much", and of course that didn't change at all.

The Indom potency buff to 500 basically still made it the best healing oGCD in the game.

So if anything Scholar did pretty well in SB.

[Mhiro]

Technically they're adding three new healer jobs because of the expected full scale class overhauls for every class including WHM, SCH and AST. So rather than losing your collective minds on the issue, calm down, take a break and wait until May when we are sure to get the final ability reveals during that pre-expansion fanletter stream. If it's still crap and no different, THEN you can go ahead and start throwing a tantrum and shoving petitions down YoshiP's throat for more healers. No matter what you say, this late in the game, the fact that there's no healer is not going to change. It is finalized and done, and the team needs to focus on completing and preparing for the implementation of future battle content such as the 8-man raid in the middle of 5.0 (which is still in design phase) and the 24-man raid in 5.1 (same hat).

I don't think excluding a healer this patch was a good move due to community anticipation and expectations, but honestly I'd rather they sit down and try their best to satisfy the current trinity first before pushing a 4th in. There are still a lot of unhappy WHMs out there and thanks to the community (not the devs), WHM and AST pull the short stick compared to SCH despite the fact that every class in this game as it is has the ability to clear all content at all levels. That is how this game is designed. They do not want a repeat of FFXI where, during it's golden age, half of the 15+ classes available were EXCLUDED by the community from high end content because they were effectively useless. Sucks to be you if you only mained BST. Good luck being a WHM in Treasures of Aht Urghan because RDM stole your job and it won't get better in Wings of the Goddess because Scholar stole it, too. Hope you don't like Paladin because literally every other class with high damage and sub WAR can tank and do more DPS than you, especially Ninja. Actually, screw being a main tank. Thief stole your job 2 years ago. We don't need this in FFXIV, but unfortunately with the amount of classes we're bound to get for each role, it's inevitable and that's more worrisome than having no healer class in 5.0.

On a different note, if we were to get another healer style, I think splash healing would be the best option. Something similar to PLD's splash shield. I also like the idea of a true DPS healer, but the problem with that is with the game as it is now (and possibly in ShB), it can't be balanced. Everyone would want to have that DPS healer because of the damage it does. You'd be better off making another support class. Like Dancer. /wink

[Ceasaria]

Mrhappy Fan Fest interview :
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...vPw4uI/preview

Yoshida :
"When looking at this history of healing jobs. Making strong balance between three jobs it has been tough. With three its been tough, so with a 4th the balance might get even worse. Instead of doing this, we want to prioritize balancing them better this expansion so we didn’t want to add a new healer at 4.0 or 5.0. We really think we need to restructure the way healers are handled. We can’t keep this strict division between pure healer and barrier healer. Something needs to change here so we can maintain good balance. Thats the main reason we didn’t have a healer. First priority was to add a 3rd ranged, then a 4th tank while we balance the healers better."

The question is : it is a good thing to have this (supposed) homogenization ?

[Nathanial]

I need to see these Scholar buffs cause the potency is still the same on all the skills since i left 6 months ago. not to mention fairy potency is not equal to scholars. embrace and adlo say they have nearly the same potency but embrace heals for less than 50% that of adlo. 250 potency is not half of 300. someone really need to check this math thoroughly.

[Risvertasashi]

The question is : it is a good thing to have this (supposed) homogenization ?

I don't know that it's homogenization. But I do agree the healers need more distinct identities. So if this is a step in that direction... I hope it'll actually be for the better, this time around.

[EaMett]

The question is : it is a good thing to have this (supposed) homogenization ?

I'm also concerned about this. I suspect that whm will be getting shields + utility and SCH better heals. Given that the pet has been a sticking point I suspect it's use to be significantly reduced or simply turned into a buff instrument that no longer heals.

If the homogenizing removes too much class identity I don't know how I'll feel about it.

[AutumnsHollow]

I think this is such a sorry state of affairs. I was so sad about dancer not being announced as healer because I wanted a new healing job to force them to get out of their comfort zone and shake things up. I wanted it because it has a different aesthetic compared to our current healers. Our current healers are very static animation wise, and a bit boring. I did not want it to be a melee healer like some other people did, but I wanted to bring something unique fresh and new like astro's cards were at the start of Heavensward. I'm glad it's in the game at all and I expected it to be a melee bard even though I desired a healer personally, but it's still very disappointing. Because that means no new healers. And the reasoning they used is the same one they used in Stormblood.

I just have zero confidence in the development team at this point. They released astro as a hot mess and it took half an expansion for it be usable by higher skilled players (Midas), and until the end to be usable by the masses (Creator). But willingly doing so pushed white mage out of the meta and it has been out of the meta now for a whole expansion and the end of the last expansion.


In the new actions stormblood trailer meant to hype us up they used 2-3 healer role skills (lucid, largess and rescue if I remember correctly..) instead of actual white mage skills. The game developers who work for SE are very smart people. How in the world did they think it was okay to showcase "role" actions for a job because they didn't have enough new skills to actually showcase. We got told to calm down by Yoshi P after the press told us their opinion's from playing with Stormblood classes. In the end...the playerbase was right about everything.

We didn't get a healer back then because they were trying to "fix" healer balance. Instead they gutted white mage, spread it's skills in the healer role actions, and never gave it anything back to compensate for it's loss. A useless job gauge, removed our only form of mitigation below 60. Got it handed back to us as divine bension (which is so much more useful and beautiful then stoneskin), but we literately just got our old tool reskinned and buffed as part of the expansion except now we can't use it in below 60 content. I wouldn't really call that a "new" skill. Oh and Plenary Indulgence, I don't feel like I have to say anything about that. Scholar got horrible MP costs and lost their aoe skills (blizzard 2 & miasma 2) and damage potential (bane) which made dungeons a pain and a hassle. It made scholar not fun. Astro still had ridiculous 20% balance at the launch of Stormblood until 4.05 and a useless but pretty job gauge as well.

Throughout this whole expansion the only fight I felt white mage was better than astro was exdeath savage because of the white hole mechanic. And that was only because no one was comfortable with the fight at the start so human error could make earthly star not be primed for it so cure 3 would be better. Once astro's got comfortable with the fight and memorized the timings (or some PC players let ACT call it out for them so they didn't even have to think) astro ended up being better for that fight too.

I don't know how they expect us to be satisfied or happy with their actions when they've done nothing to instill confidence in us. Since we're not getting a healer job I expect them to finally separate scholar from arcanist so they can balance summoner/scholar better.

Give astro an identity outside of cards. Some sort of mechanic unique to them that works with their job gauge and get rid of diurnal/nocturnal stance We kept track of cards in 3.0 just fine, we don't need a job gauge just to keep track of cards. Let the job gauge interact with this new mechanic. Make them their own unique healer. Because we're in this situation partially because they didn't want to break the synergy between scholar and white mage, but it ended up breaking other things because of their decision.

To rework white mage to make it competitive in end game, the "black mage" of healers isn't working. This is the bare minimum imo.

I just don't think anyone on the development team actually plays healer at a high level. They don't seem to understand the problems, or find suitable solutions. There's other inherent problems with healers too such as fight design not actually requiring GCD healing and using OGCD's for almost everything or medica 2/aspected helios. It's a bit sad when I see some healers just having medica 2/aspected helios up nonstop and that's "healing" and enough healing for some fights. Maybe we need to go back to Twintania days and give bosses their own plummet they use nonstop alongside a tank buster (death sentence in this case), and infirmity that effects OGCD healing as well, but that's a matter of perspective and I'm sure some will disagree with me. But it's quite contradictory for them to say they don't encourage healer DPS when they have such low healing requirements for most fights. Do they just want us to stand there twiddling our thumbs? I find stormblood healing just not as fun compared to A Realm Reborn, and Heavensward. Maybe it's the changes to cleric stance, homogenization of the healers, or the lack of healing requirements. I'm not sure.

I want to get to the point where I think about all the healers currently available to me and compare/contrast their toolkits and decide which would be best for which fight. Adjust and be flexible because all three healers bring something unique and are fun to play and have their own weaknesses as well. Not just default to astro/scholar.

I'm just really sad about the current state of things.

[Selova]

snip.

FFXIV does not have a HoT healer, they have healers with HoTs attached to a few abilities which is a big difference. The only 2 healing play styles in this game are shield healer and pure/direct healer. I imagine they are trying to figure out how to introduce a new kind of healer that wouldn't completely break the game, with the way combat is designed and damage is dished out a Resto Druid-esque healer would be completely broken.

It's obvious how much work coming up with a brand new type of healer that doesn't fall into the pure healer or shield healer category and they would honestly rather focus on trying to balance the current roster of healers rather than adding another one into the mix. Let's at least hope it doesn't take them another entire expansion to figure out how to balance the current three.