Healer boycott in 5.0

[dezzmont]

I was basically stating WHY healers focus on DPS in this game, and why it's tightly coiled around how the game functions as a whole.

I definitely don't think healers should be disallowed from DPSing. Honestly its really cool that in FFXIV healers are allowed to just wail on the enemy during downtime, and I think that is an improvement on the role. The issue is that healing in FFXIV has very little in common with healing in other MMOs, and healing in other MMOs is not unpopular by any stretch, so there is a large group of MMO players just not getting what they want.

Seperate healing resources already kinda exist, they just aren't used very well.

Aetherflow, for example, is a highly limited supply of intense healing in theory, but is undone by the fact that scholar heal spells are already low enough mana you can just brute force heal checks with GCD heals, so the resource is used almost exclusively offensively (in a way that also restores the mana you essentially only spend on healing spells as scholar). This is why I am not too sad nor surprised that Energy Drain is gone, energy drain as an aetherflow ability just kinda mucked up what Aetherflow was meant to be doing. You don't really spend mana as a scholar on offensive actions, you can cast offensively literally infinitely even while healing, as offensive spells are a net positive mana by quite a large margin, not even impacting your mana efficiency. This essentially means Scholars have two healing resources, mana and aetherflow.

If Senix wanted to do so, they could make the mana based healing less efficient for scholar, remove some mana regen, and you would have limited healing and unlimited DPS, which probably would be the change that makes healing interesting (especially if more incidental damage hits the team that pressures you to monitor multiple targets and decide between using single target highly mana efficient heals like physic, a mana inefficient aoe heal, and one of three big heal spells you can cast for free every X seconds.

This isn't what they have done (And while I think the changes made healing a bit less braindead it is still pretty braindead), so I am skeptical healing is going to get better, but it is not hard to imagine a system that maintains DPS uptime for healers while also making healing not an afterthought outside of high end content. That is really what is sticking in my craw: This is presented as a dichotomy between SE nerfing healer DPS and healers caring a lot about DPS, but for me as a healer main in literally every MMO besides FFXIV, I don't care about that all that much and more care that healers spend almost no time thinking about healing, how to do it well, when to cast what, how to manage healing resources, ect. But at least Senix is... very slightly moving towards where I want by doing things like nerfing Scholar a bit in terms of how comically trivial its mana situation is, forcing you to consider aetherflow as a healing resource, giving WHMs a reason to care about healing in terms of offensive power via the Black Lilly, ect.

I don't really agree with either side of the debate in this thread.

I like the state Square Enix is pushing the game towards more than people calling for scholar nerfs to be reverted. For real, while I like how scholar has a lot of cool reactive mitigation abilities, most of the people I talk to think its bonkers power level and versatility is just bad for the game, and I super agree, there was NO way Scholar was walking into Shadowbringers without losing some major aspect of its absurd power level. You literally can't make a fourth healer as long as scholar is a mana efficient mitigation healer with instant cast heal nukes it can cast every 60 seconds, pseudo regens in the form of manaless and actionless mantinence healing, and multiple instant manaless mitigation abilities, as well as having the top dps over time vs single target of all 3 healers. Like... it doesn't matter how high the skill ceiling of Scholar is, it just does everything you could want a healer to do besides provide raid DPS. Any time someone comes in and talks about how scholar is ruined and how great it was in SB strikes me as having very little empathy or foresight to the healer situation, and while I know YOU are not saying it, a lot of people here seem to think very disingenuously the status quo is not currently also a problem. At the very least now WHM has justification for existing by having better pDPS and sorta mirroring black mage as 'highest damage healer if you can pull it off but you gotta know the fights to maximize casting uptime' healer. Very nice mirror to its counterpart.

However, as much as I kinda generally like the state of the game Square Enix is pushing towards more than the status quo, I don't like it enough to want to switch to healer, so its sorta moot, and I think if it isn't going to actually change my behavior the fact I like it better doesn't trump the fact it kinda sucks for a lot of people. I would ideally just like healing to be interesting, but if that wasn't the case I would prefer healers to be happy more than things to be slightly more to my tastes despite not being my tastes, and I can definitely see why it is upsetting to focus on reducing DPS over actually making healing good (which would likely involve a NERF to how efficiently you can put out a full heal). Like healers enjoying the game is more important than an incremental change that doesn't actually fix anything, it just makes people happy with the status quo less happy while not making anyone unhappy more happy, if that makes sense.

[supaiku]

How could we give feedback on a job if we don't at least try it?

I have been a healer main for the past few years. I have raided as all of the healers, with Ast being my main.
When someone has a lot of experience, they know what they like about the job, and they know what they don't like. I liked healing as little as possible and dealing as much damage as possible while praying for the heart of the cards when playing Ast (Arrow, Spear, Bole and Ewer all have their uses). I also would have liked to heal more, if, you know, there was anything to heal. But when there is no damage incoming or my Earthly Star just fully heals the entire party, there is no reason for me to heal, might as well dps. Considering that even in the Ultimate fights healers can spent a good amount of time dpsing, there is no way SE will address this problem in a way that we have to make use of all our healing spells. And they said that they won't change the content from 1-70, meaning being a healer there is going to be more than boring.
I wished for the healers to become more complex, more interesting and more difficult to play, but the exact opposite happened.
Why are tanks allowed to get dps tools, but healers are not? The new healer design just seems lazy. If balance was too strong, they simple could have removed it instead of making every card a balance. Combust III just costs 100 less mp than Combust II, nothing else changes about the skill when it levels up. Eos and Selene are the exact same now. All healers have more or less the same dps spells. Just to name a few examples.

If other healer mains here enjoy the changes, then I'm happy for you. But I can't see myself being a healer main in Shadowbringers, so I'm switching to being a DD.

[Truen]

If Senix wanted to do so, they could make the mana based healing less efficient for scholar, remove some mana regen, and you would have limited healing and unlimited DPS, which probably would be the change that makes healing interesting (especially if more incidental damage hits the team that pressures you to monitor multiple targets and decide between using single target highly mana efficient heals like physic, a mana inefficient aoe heal, and one of three big heal spells you can cast for free every X seconds.

Yeah right. They basically want the three healing jobs to be clones who's biggest differences are cosmetic, not functional design. They assume people aren't clever enough to understand even moderately difficult rotations, and because of this they've turned the healing role into what you see in 5.0. Bland. Basic, bleh.

[dezzmont]

Yeah right. They basically want the three healing jobs to be clones who's biggest differences are cosmetic, not functional design. They assume people aren't clever enough to understand even moderately difficult rotations, and because of this they've turned the healing role into what you see in 5.0. Bland. Basic, bleh.

To be extraordinarily clear, 5.0 is likely going to be better than SB in that regard, because now WHM has a purpose (Specifically it no longer lags over 1k potency per minute in single target content behind despite having LESS utility. Yes, I did the math, I think the idea of Shadowflare and Energy Drain coming back is.... unlikely to say the least), scholar can't depend as much on auto-healing and will need to devote more casts to healing. Astro always was the thinking man's healer, and the focus increasing on ED and ES sticking about still means it is the 'foresight' healer, which I like a lot.

Will it be good? Eh? Will healers now consistently fail routine healer content? Probably not. It does seem like there are some legitimately good changes (Double Essential Dignity means Astros spend even more time 'healer edging' which is delightful, scholar DPS getting beaten down hard means that WHM is now a mirror of BLM in terms of being 'best DPS if you are really slick and know the fight' which rewards mastery, ect) but nothing that changes the game a lot. Either you are going to have no downtime cuz you are mashing your offensive spells, or no downtime because your mashing basic heals. I don't see either reality actually making healers think about healing, which is very different than them spending TIME healing. You don't think about DPS on a healer now, you spend time doing dps. Likewise, in Shadowbringers, you probably won't think less or more about DPS or healing, you just DPS less and heal more, judging by the dungeon playthroughs. It is just you still hitting basic abilities. Its sorta why I am not mourning the cards changing despite liking astro, you generally don't think about the cards that much outside VERY niche situations, the way old cards worked just made it so there were unilaterally better combos based on party comp and you were mostly hoping RNG gave em to you. Like yeah you could I guess use Spear to help heal but... well... it is FFXIV healing, you don't need spear to help you heal, that was a novelty. Astros won't necessarily be thinking more with these new cards, but at the very least they will be more focused on them (because your needs DO actually change over time), and the fact you can redraw like crazy means the overall experience is less frustrating. I don't want to DPS-splain (I can't stress enough how I don't heal that often in FFXIV and am more giving the perspective of the kinda person Square Enix is likely TRYING to please, the healer from WoW, KOTOR, EvE, GW2, Neverwinter, Champions, take your pick, who is deeply unimpressed with FFXIV healing. I side with you unhappy folk as long as they recognize the fact that the way things are now isn't great for everyone either!) but everything I found interesting about Astro as a longtime MMO healer got more interesting.

Like... I dunno man. Healing in FFXIV never was good, and all this focus on potency decreases and losing offensive spells kinda makes me feel pretty isolated in this debate because I super don't care either way (But totally support your desire to Broil/Stone/Antilixir people instead of having pure downtime, #chemisthealerwhen?) compared to desires neither filled the status quo or the way things will be in HW.

Like... not to be mean... but SB healing was pretty bland and basic too... People talk a lot about healers 'afking' in WoW when they top folks off... but they aren't, despite the fact they aren't casting. There is something truly amazing about the act of dedicating all of your focus to the non-trivial task of managing everyone's health and zappy magic bars, including your own, that I can't easily describe. Where you are constantly watching and anticipating and in the split second something happens you need to quickly figure out what it was and how to react because no spell in your kit is a one size fits all bandaid, and choosing wrong has significant long term costs, while in FFXIV using the biggest heal spell you have is rarely the wrong choice.

[Campi]

If other healer mains here enjoy the changes, then I'm happy for you. But I can't see myself being a healer main in Shadowbringers, so I'm switching to being a DD.

I switched from Tank to Healer Main at the End of SB now.
I rly enjoy playing SCH in the Ultimate Fights

So for the changes:
I think they are ok
It was clearly easier for SE to balance the Healers, if all 3 get the "same" DPS Spells^^

Sure i would also like a more complex Healer DPS Rotation, but as long as there are ppl who don't want to dps as a healer, it needs a change of the mindset in first place.
Not to forget, that most ppl don't play that well and can't even handle that little Dmg that is coming in in Dungeons etc. How should they do a DPS Rotation, when they can't even heal right?^^

So before SE give us a better DPS Rota, ppl need to get better. The difference between good and bad players is too big. SE has to create better Job Quests and lock more content behind them.

[dezzmont]

Sure i would also like a more complex Healer DPS Rotation, but as long as there are ppl who don't want to dps as a healer, it needs a change of the mindset in first place..

While I am sure there are people who sincerely believe this, I suspect this is mischaracterizing people who are upset that healers don't focus at all on healing and mostly view it as a distraction from DPS in FFXIV.

Like if that really was the entire issue, it would be trivial to make a viable healer to make those players happy: Just bake DPS into a basic heal weak combo targeting the enemy an ally targets, and frame it as buffing the ally's next attack, so that said healer 'doesn't dps' but still contributes to overall DPS.

I am sure many people would love that job, it probably should exist! But as one of the people who really loves healer in any game besides FFXIV, it doesn't address why I think healer is uninteresting to so many people who heal in other games and why this desire for a healer focused healer to exist.

(While we are at it, we should also get a super awesome complicated DPS rotation healer who has a ton of healing baked into the rotation and mostly heals through that and oGCDs, sorta a Cat Healer Druid ala WoW that one time they accidently gave healer tier healing to a DPS spec. I don't main those classes, but they sure are fun!)

[Roric_Candor]

I switched from Tank to Healer Main at the End of SB now.
I rly enjoy playing SCH in the Ultimate Fights

So for the changes:
I think they are ok
It was clearly easier for SE to balance the Healers, if all 3 get the "same" DPS Spells^^

Sure i would also like a more complex Healer DPS Rotation, but as long as there are ppl who don't want to dps as a healer, it needs a change of the mindset in first place.
Not to forget, that most ppl don't play that well and can't even handle that little Dmg that is coming in in Dungeons etc. How should they do a DPS Rotation, when they can't even heal right?^^

So before SE give us a better DPS Rota, ppl need to get better. The difference between good and bad players is too big. SE has to create better Job Quests and lock more content behind them.

Let's not pretend you can count upon the vast majority of players to devote enough time to master any class if they don't feel like it. Even if they gave the healers two buttons, one for heal and the other for hurt, you can bet your average healer in a dungeon would still struggle to juggle those options, if they even tried to begin with. Don't kneecap design in the vain hope of helping out the uninterested, all you get is some very angry devotees while your casual base doesn't even notice the change. Every time they try to force the playerbase to improve, all they get is complaints.

[Rufalus]

Haven't read all the replies here but a raider friend in my FC who has mained SCH for 5+ years is furious about the changes and doesn't see a way that she can still enjoy playing. Optimising DPS is what many people enjoy about the game, not just on dps and tank roles but the healers too. The only way that the highest skilled healer players won't feel bored with simplified dps rotations is if they are pressured so much by high healing requirements that there's almost no time to dps, which wouldn't be a healthy difficulty for the wider community. The top tier healers will always be trying to keep their healing output at the minimum needed to survive while maximising dps time, as this is undoubtably the most efficient way to play and the most rewarding.

That dps time won't be enjoyable if it consists mostly of spamming a single button with no interesting considerations to make about optimisation. I'm more of a casual healer myself but I can understand the raiders' frustration over this. I also understand Yoshida saying a healer's focus should be healing, but I see that more as a reason that categorising jobs into roles isn't a good starting point for a game. The tank and healer roles are where the most homogenisation is apparent in order to balance them and align them to the burden of being responsible for group survival in all possible fight scenarios, while dps jobs get to be much more diverse in their abilities and tempo since less responsibility weighs on their design.

That said these changes aren't a big deal for me personally; I didn't think SCH having more DoTs from ACN class was very exciting in the first place. All healer's dps toolkits were always poor. Across the board in 5.0 I'm more excited about the things we've gained than I am peeved about what's been removed. Whm gets to enjoy slightly more resource management; Sch gets fairy QoL and a force crit button; Ast... gets to use both sects together is cool I guess but nothing else different outside of cards being messed with. At least the balance has been improved between the three.

[MOZZYSTAR]

I love FF, I love FFXIV, and I think the dev team have done a great job up until this point. They were starting to fizz out around SB, but with each letter released about the upcoming expansion, there has been at least one "catastrophic" bit of news and it gets worse with every release. If they think "solving" the issue with healers is by completely giving up on them, stripping them of their original intents and purposes by unifying them, is "balancing" them then they're burnt out... Personally, FF healers were my favourite healer classes in every MMO I've played. I loved that SE gave us more tasks to do than the average healer in the average MMO.

I've watched Mr. Happy videos and while he seemed OK with the results, we can see right in the gameplay where certain skills (like Astrologian's bole or ewer) would be useful (along with prot, hello? First Stoneskin, now prot???) definitely would've been useful in aiding the healer to do their job.

I remember when 2.0 first came out. People described White Mage as the easy/more straight forward "big healing" class to start out with, and Scholar was the difficult "micromanaging healing class." (DPS and tank classes also had these hardnesses. Dragoon used to be [not sure if it still is] considered as one of the more difficult DPS class to "get right.") So, Scholar was meant to be difficult. It wasn't meant to be streamlined, straightforward, and easy. It was also meant to be the more DPS-healing class because of its fairy and more DoT/shadowflare options. I would probably put AST in between the two. (edit/note: these hardnesses were not "officially" input, like B&S 5 star ranking of hardness, but it's what the playerbase at the time considered.) And, AST, to me, is meant to be the most adaptive healing class with its cards and stances. Sure, there's rng, but I can make every card useful even if it's not a card I need in a crisis.

Personally, I like the multitasking and the juggling of AST and SCH (I play SCH on my alt). I find regular DPS classes boring. I play bard as my only DPS class because its songs and other support skills give me a semi-sense of juggling/multitasking, though it's not nearly as much as AST (so, I prefer AST). I half wonder if they basically muted the usefulness of AST's cards because they really want to push the synergism in dancer.

So, I'm all for the healing boycott. I'm getting a little tired of SE shitting on us healers. First no healer class in 4-6 years because "balance." Now this? /Shakes head/ It's not gonna fly.

I think this "newb friendly" business is a crock of BS (just like the rest of the excuses we've been given this entire pre-expansion) because we were all new to our classes at one point. If we could handle it, so can other newbs.

[Roy_M]

I play since ARR to SB I mained as it follows:
ARR: Brd back then due the movement + able to buff party members + very nice dps.
HW: Hated the casting brd so leveled it through lvling roulettes xD pre 52. But I loved Astro since it was a different healer from the other 2.
SB: I loved Rdm a lot as soon I saw the trailer.
SBh: Dancer really caught my eye.
But no matter wich job I play I ALWAYS end playing Smn/sch so I guess those are my mains.
I personally play the 3 roles with friends so we sync our jobs/roles accordly I already told them I'm not playing healer or tank until I get at least 2 80s (dnc/nin) xD and since I heal most of the time they are OK with it.
More than boycott I say people will do it directly or indirectly.
1. Due new content people are more afraid to test stuff with responsability roles = tank/healer.
2. Since we will get 4 tanks and 1 starting at 60 people will be more into tanking than healing.
3. It's always better to use MSQ exp boost to dps than healers.
4. Dislike the changes of healers overall (except whm and I even see whms complaining so...).
5. With the "trust" system even if it is 71+ dungeons + palace of the dead/high above people will go mostly for their dps.
The bottleneck will happend on endgame content 5.0-5.1 that it will be to hard to find healers since most of us will play dps xD
so my advice would be:
Coordinate with your friends/mates for role rotations and play together than go forever alone (unless you are a healer/tank) because
THE LONG QUEUES ARE COMMING! xD