The state of healers is affecting everyone

[KadaRemnant]

Nothing wrong with the healing jobs and queues. Everything is fine for me.
No idea about all this topic.
I enjoy all the healing jobs.

[Sloprano]

Healers are the most rushed and poorly developed jobs in the game and this is why so many have stopped playing them. Just look at WHM's level 80 ability Temperence, it's just Largesse with a dmg down buff and an animation from a Firework item. Look at SCH's Art of War, it's just the Aura Blast animation from PVP. Then look at new MCH, look at all the lovingly crafted brand new abilities and animations that span it's entire kit. Healers didn't really get anything new this expansion, they lost things, had things reskinned as their new abilities, and all play exactly the same now.

This really struck me. Because I don't think anyone at the dev team is malicious against healers, they just made them balanced for one thing and that was probably the order they got. Seeing Scholar go from 3.0 to 5.0 has gotten me more passionate than I thought possible for a mmo job.

More than ever I wish for them to go back redesign Scholar, all jobs preferably, completely in a vacuum just thinking what would fit it's lore, theme and asthetic. Just go away with Roles and labels. Don't wanna play a "Healer", want to play a Scholar. The battlefield tactician with wide and cool arsenal that also happens to have shields, buffs and a healing fairy that one can just naturally assume can handle the healing role. Unlike what we got where Scholar (and maybe all healers) was forced into a Healer shaped hole. Want the job to have so many skills that you can't possibly use them all in one fight so the joy is trying to. Hell, let warriors heal the party with angry shouting, monk tank with abs of steel and samurai tank an active parry minigame in it's skills. Don't think it's easy but they did it once, and I believe they can do it again.

Filibuster was the first gear set I ever farmed for in this game. To this day I can remember every pack, boss and corner of Sohm Al HM and Baelsar's Wall, and never did I grow bored. I chalk this up to whoever genius designed Scholar back then, it's potential was greater than anything regular fights could offer so I started squeezing more and more out of the runs. What point during pulls I could put which dots, when to shield, put on Virus, where and when to use Eos and Selene back to back for healing, silence, aoe esuna, fey wind, where to stand to stoneskin the tank while running to next pack, Shadowflare casting placement, when it was safe to run in for a Miasma 2 twirl, Emergency Tactics if I spent all AF stacks, Deployment Tactics when I saw a critlo go off, contemplate Dissipation if I overreached, when I could deem it safe enough to use Cleric stance safely long enough to get all dots up then see Bane go off succesfully. It all created this very enjoyable loop of managing dots, looking for oppertunities for all these various spells all the while keeping the party healthy both after and before damage went out. All this without any parser or numerical evaluation of any kind, the pure base enjoyment and satisfaction of getting a bit more out of the job is what made it. Both dungeons and regular open world fights were great after I started to really use Scholar. Compared, I try to get as much as I can out of Expert dungeons today but after I've used Excog and shield, dotted the mobs one by one there is nothing left but to spam Art of War until the pack is dead or the tank needs healing.

Game has changed and I probably haven't changed with it. Still carry a massive nostalgia for 3.0 Scholar as few things have clicked as well for me in this game's history and also feel bad because I don't greatly anticipate logging in to play as much as I used to. Just to confirm dinosaur status Im having had a lot of fun with WoW classic. There's this class there, Warrior, who's resource is rage that starts at 0 and is gained by hitting and getting hit. They can use this to increase auto-attack power, inflict slow movement, shouts that increase party attack, reduce enemy attack, fear, aoe taunt, can disarm, have a shield block + followup combo, revenge attack if someone dodges your attack, one charge only usable out of combat giving rage another only usable in combat costing rage, ways to gain more rage in return for taking more damage, stances with skills limited to each encourage swapping, spell casting interrupt, cleaves, aoe slow, dot(s), stacking armor reduction debuff, special attack if enemy is on low health, even a casted melee attack and more in the talent trees. You always want more rage, but fighting more than two mobs can be a risk when also there's roaming and respawning mobs and opposing faction out in the world. These skills aren't useful 100% of the time, but they are there making the class feel complete and probably because a designer thought it'd just be cool if they all this stuff. They are different games and classes from different eras to be sure, but it was oddly familiar as I find the class who's defining identity is getting angry and smashing things have more versatility and tools than the current FFXIV tactician job.

[ForteNightshade]

this,
I would dev rather spend time turning boss fight or trash fight more than just DPS>DPS>DPS>DPS>drop a oGCD heal>DPS x infinity
I rather see more buff and debuff and even more healing in relate to Healer role, but i guess not gonna happen when powerful low CD oGCD heal become a trend and they remove most of the dmg debuff (slash/pierced...etc) this expansion
also many debuff cant be cleanse with Esuna and many healer forget this skill exist

Quite a few healers would. Unfortunately, the devs seem terrified of the prospect this might make healing too hard for baby players. It's this mentality that causes the healer role to exist in a sort of perpetual limbo. They want healers to heal more yet also don't want content to be hard enough to demand said healing. Which, in turn, causes the community to insist on DPS because the alternative is standing around doing nothing. I really think the latter is what the devs want.

[TheGrimace]

Remember how Crystal Chronicles had one out of four players carry the "bucket" so that the team could progress through the dungeons?

Healers in XIV are the bucket carriers. They get stuck with the legwork and are generally under-thanked. And then there are times you get one that's up his or her own ass with too much pride. Just in general, it's really hard to find that 'happy medium' as players, and Square has yet to hit a fair balance too.

[TalithaSolarien]

My favourite job was AST, and after the changes I can barely play it properly. The heals are fine; fast and strong. But the card system is so cruddy from a usability standpoint, especially for console players. FFXIV is a game where a large portion of the population plays using a controller, and although there are varying degrees of difficulty between controller and keyboard/mouse users when playing certain jobs, every job's optimal rotation can be performed on either with the exception of AST. This is due to how FFXIV handles targeting party members.

Using a mouse and keyboard, to target a party member the player needs only click the player in the party list using their mouse (or mouseover if preferred), and WHILE they're doing this they can Redraw and Minor Arcana their cards.

On a controller however, the act of selecting a party member and the act of using an ability like Redraw are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. You cannot Redraw and target a party member at the same time, you must choose to do one or the other, and to choose a party member you must physically press the D-Pad up or down the requisite number of times AND press confirm to hard target said player each time or the targeting will reset and cause you to need to press the D-pad multiple times again. To do all this within a GCD is just insane. Before ShB changes, in full party situations you would AOE your cards to cut down on this need to spam your D-pad... now spamming the D-pad IS the main mechanic, because the card you play doesn't matter due to how Sleeve Draw works and the pathetic %s on the cards. Mechanically and mathematically, it's all about dealing them as fast as possible.

This so much. I'm currently leveling my AST using a Controller and I outright hate passing cards using a Controller. I plan to just level her to 80 and then shelf her for the rest of the expansion unless they add major usability enhancements for us.
This is really surprising for a game that usually gets Controller support so well.

[MrKusakabe]

I ruined the reason to put on my Scholar attire myself. It is in my signature..

The reason why I enjoy(ed) Scholar was the contrast to my main damage-dealing profession: Black Mage. That was in 2014. Healing itself was never that much fun because, in my opinion, it is kind of a stupid gameplay philosophy:

A guy [tank] stands there and getting spanked left and right by a 25m huge dragon. I hold my book up, some sparkling comes up and he is a bit more healthy again. Until he gets spanked [insert amount of times] again.

It is like watching the laundry in your washing machine trough the window spinning and count down the seconds when it briefly pauses. Then I check all the things in the machine [other players] - rinse and repeat. Inbetween I have probably the most underwhelming damage spells ever. Heck, even in friggin MapleStory my Priest (later Bishop) had something that made you go: "Boom! Holy Magic in your face!".

Here we have a Marylin Monroe air blast ("Art of War", what a dumb name that is alone!), some soap bubbles (Miasma?) and funky new year's eve partybomb without confetti (Bravade in German, not sure what's in English). I am not really saying that I am bored by the gameplay itself, I let my guys wipe often by my incompetence. It is just this absolute lackluster feeling of being Scholar. The damage dealing part is underwhelming, the fairy part is so robotic and unreliable and healing in itself is not really much fun. What's left? A shell....

I mean, I literally came up with a skill that could do rewarding damage while I nipped on my Coca Cola can. Look what I just randomly put together:

It is a spell that needs to be placed in a triangle shape that the Scholar can place wherever he or she wants. It is like dropping a magical orb with an "ammo" system. Then you walk freely around, drop the other two. On the last instance, the dots connect and form either a damaging or healing triangle (lightly glowing in respectively colors) which stays ready for the next 10 seconds.

Then you activate it, healing all people inside it or damaging the foes. The smaller the area, the bigger the impact to avoid mass-healing. That would be "The Art of War" to me. You run around (not being able to cast heals -> Strategy), the fairy has to do the healing (our integral part of Scholar) and you can plan something - how big the area is, if you want damage or heal, when you activate it.

That would be "tactical" to some sort. And I just pulled this out of my butt and on the fly while typing, and I'd run around the place to create funny shapes to blow up enemies or healing safe-spots, I can tell you that.


Or you can set your fairy to a special member like "Yuumi" in LoL. Her spells then change to more focussed and determined ones. You can command the fairy to (buff, protect, heal, CC) the tank while you personally take care of your mates on the other part of the boss arena with AoE stuff or..place triangles of doom.

About healing in general?

Unfortunately, I can't really point my finger on "that" and say: "This is the reason as to why being a Scholar or not". It is multi-layered. What I like is the fact I am not as replacable. Being alive is "pretty mandatory" and that is why I am there. But that is it.

Because every fun is taken out in my opinion.. There is no reason to be "proud" to be Scholar anymore. The only reason why I like it is the fact that I can heal and mean something to my mates that wa . But the incentive is so low that I will often slip into my crimson red Duelist attire and satisfy my random healing needs with some Vercures while I can play an actually fun profession at the same time which does it for me, which is fun and where I get enjoyment out of it on several levels..


Sincerely,

[GrimGale]

What makes healing fun and rewarding? Triage.

World of Warcraft is a MMO where healing is made interesting by two limiting factors: Mana Management and the fact that very few healing spells were AoE.

In vanilla only a few spells could top off your party, and even then they had very long CD's and enormous mana costs. They were situational and very valuable when the raid took massive aoe damage (Which in early wow usually meant something was going very very wrong.)

So how did WoW made healing interesting? You had to be very selective regarding who to heal and what to use to heal.

That meant in turn that tanking, aggro management and mechanics were to be respected. If a healer ran out of Mana it meant the party would not be able to fight anymore. The tank would die, the dps would then follow and finally the healer would go down.

What do we have in FFXIV? Healers almost never run out of mana and we have incredibly powerful AoE healing tools with very low prices CD wise. As a result, triage is barely a thing. Not to mention aggro is not an issue, tanks virtually never lose aggro.

That is why, as opposed to WoW where class design was the interesting part, the bulk of "fun" in FFXIV's design is in the encounters. Resolving mechanics is what makes combat interesting.

But then, why do we even have so many classes? Why have a WHM, a SCH and an AST? Why have four tanks? The more the game evolves and the encounter design brings in new concepts the more our classes become homogenized to allow any combination of such classes the ability to clear said mechanics efficiently. Jobs become an aesthetic choice,so much so those at the core of parties: healers and tanks.

[Billythepancake]

Nothing wrong with the healing jobs and queues. Everything is fine for me.
No idea about all this topic.
I enjoy all the healing jobs.

"Hunger isn't a real issue because I eat every day" that's your argument.

[Melichoir]

But then, why do we even have so many classes? Why have a WHM, a SCH and an AST? Why have four tanks? The more the game evolves and the encounter design brings in new concepts the more our classes become homogenized to allow any combination of such classes the ability to clear said mechanics efficiently. Jobs become an aesthetic choice,so much so those at the core of parties: healers and tanks.

Dont quite agree with this. While homogenization is expected to happen, its not occurring as harsh as its being presented. There are still differences, and those differences matter a lot. As an example, it becomes a lot easier on healing if you dont run double WHM, AST, or SCH in savage. You could do it, but having a more diversified healer comp is better (and I dont mean just for LB.) Furthermore, Healers are gonna have some overlap. At their core, a healer has got to heal. Youre gonna have skills that cross over with one another a little bit. So every healer is gonna have some kind of AoE heal, direct heal, and possible HoT, but how they focus on said skill or how powerful it is is gonna vary. Even WoW had this. Resto shaman chain heal is a variation of Prayer of Mending from Holy/Disc Priest. They conceptually cover the same task, but operate a little differently in scope. Both jump from target to target applying a heal as they do, but Chain heal jumps immediately to the next damaged targeted where PoM has to be procced before it jumps again. Its heal a lot of people at once, or heal one at a time but jump automatically to the next person. Healing potency is a little varied too. Accomplish the same task, goes about it a little differently. And mind you, at one point or another, one skill or the other was considered OP and the other trash. That flipped on occasion.

Homogenization is, I think, a boogy man when we talk about class balances. Its an effect of boiling down every class and skill to the very core basics and then claim "Oh its all the same." People are trying to make the point that because SE trimmed down SCH damage skills, and adjusted AST, that everything is homogenous and healer sucks now. I dont believe this to be the case from my own experiences thus far with healing, nor from discussing healing with people whove been fairly active in raiding. I think I see this pop up more frequently in Normal content (dungeons, and basic roulettes) where the class distinctions become less important and you can get by on the more baseline skills the classes have in common.

This doesnt mean that the classes are fine or dont need to have some adjustments. But I feel that people are greatly over exaggerating the homogenization concept while propping up the "SCH lost its identity" myth when they pulled out some of its DPS skills (SCH healing is based around pet/player healing; being able to deal damage while your pet heals was a side effect of that, not the crux of the class.)

Healers are broadly fine, with some necessary fine tuning required. AST probably needs the most attention all things considering. And the greatest complaint I keep seeing with AST isnt that its not functional, but that it feels clunky/boring to play. While Im not gonna sit here and be like "Fun doesnt matter" (especially since Ive got feelings of disappointment wiht DRK in this regards), I dont think saying "the class is broken cause its not fun, start from scratch!" is really on point. Argue that the class is unfun to play, but not that it isnt working.

"Hunger isn't a real issue because I eat every day" that's your argument.

I mean the inverse argument is "Im not enjoying this job. All Healers are Broken. Everything sucks." Which is, if I want to be flippant, how most of the responses in this thread boil down to.

The data tends to show healers are leaning towards achieving parity in results, so the issues tends to be more an issue of play than functionality.

[Zweiss]

this,
I would dev rather spend time turning boss fight or trash fight more than just DPS>DPS>DPS>DPS>drop a oGCD heal>DPS x infinity
I rather see more buff and debuff and even more healing in relate to Healer role, but i guess not gonna happen when powerful low CD oGCD heal become a trend and they remove most of the dmg debuff (slash/pierced...etc) this expansion
also many debuff cant be cleanse with Esuna and many healer forget this skill exist

Agreed. The main issue is that they will never change how these fights are designed. They said they would for ShB, hence the removal of almost all healer DPS options but we see how that ended up. They were banking on the hope that removing Protect and even more tank CDs would force healers to heal more, but then gave all of them more instant cast AoE oGCD heals on top of those they already had thus negating much of the need to force cast GCD heals.

Additionally, they’ve been designing fights around this order for the last 6 and a half years since 2.0’s reboot. For them to just suddenly flip encounter, role design and planning on its head after such a long time of doing the same thing over and over just won’t happen. Not when you realize how easy it is for them to design both fights and how classes work in those fights in this manner, sticking with what they know “works”, regardless of how much parts of their player base -us- dislike it.