Adding more Healer responsibility: Yay or Nay?

[Deceptus]

At the moment SE seems to have decided to walk away from their design philosophy that healers should do damage during their downtime, despite the fact that this is how it's been since the game began. To that end I'd like to see healers take more support responsibilities outside the health pool. Casting buffs and other status effects when healing isn't needed. Gods know that Final Fantasy has a near limitless amount of ideas to pull from.

I'm 100% on board with this. Healers should be the buffers/debuffers of FFXIV.

Apocastatis (sp)? Should be a role action for healers and renamed Shell. Buffs the group to take reduced spell damage.
Put Protect back in like pvp action. Buffs the target to take reduced damage for a short time.
Feint? Give it to healers as a mob damage debuff.

[Connor]

I'm 100% on board with this. Healers should be the buffers/debuffers of FFXIV.

Apocastatis (sp)? Should be a role action for healers and renamed Shell. Buffs the group to take reduced spell damage.
Put Protect back in like pvp action. Buffs the target to take reduced damage for a short time.
Feint? Give it to healers as a mob damage debuff.

I think this is a great idea also and I’d love to see them take healers down a more support-oriented route, but I’m curious what people think about the form of support abilities this could/should take?

Personally I think they’d be better as GCDs, if not just so that they’re readily available and not used at pre-determined parts of a fight because of cooldowns. But then I understand most healers would want them to be oGCDs so that they don’t overlap with damage rotations.

I guess what I want to ask is, whether healers would prefer GCD support spells that use more actively in place of damage spells (placing healer responsibility more towards support) , or would they prefer healers to be focused purely on balancing between damage and healing (placing healer responsibility more on maximising damage output). Or maybe they’d like to see all of the above? A mix of healing, complex damage rotations and some support responsibilities?

Also, naturally I think when discussing stuff that’s purely conceptual that we should put the game’s design to one side for the moment, since the game design doesn’t really accommodate much of anything besides just damage, so there’s not much to actually discuss. So let’s assume that whichever responsibility healers preferred causes game design to magically adjust itself to whatever it was chosen.

Tl;dr is would healers rather healer responsibility fell more towards support, damage, or both, given the assumption that the game design would somehow magically conform its design to match this

[ty_taurus]

I think this is a great idea also and I’d love to see them take healers down a more support-oriented route, but I’m curious what people think about the form of support abilities this could/should take?

Personally I think they’d be better as GCDs, if not just so that they’re readily available and not used at pre-determined parts of a fight because of cooldowns. But then I understand most healers would want them to be oGCDs so that they don’t overlap with damage rotations.

I guess what I want to ask is, whether healers would prefer GCD support spells that use more actively in place of damage spells (placing healer responsibility more towards support) , or would they prefer healers to be focused purely on balancing between damage and healing (placing healer responsibility more on maximising damage output). Or maybe they’d like to see all of the above? A mix of healing, complex damage rotations and some support responsibilities?

Also, naturally I think when discussing stuff that’s purely conceptual that we should put the game’s design to one side for the moment, since the game design doesn’t really accommodate much of anything besides just damage, so there’s not much to actually discuss. So let’s assume that whichever responsibility healers preferred causes game design to magically adjust itself to whatever it was chosen.

Tl;dr is would healers rather healer responsibility fell more towards support, damage, or both, given the assumption that the game design would somehow magically conform its design to match this

I like that healers are designed to be capable of contributing to rDPS in this game. It makes a lot of sense, but I do think one thing we need to help revive some of each job's individuality is different ways of contributing to it.

Scholar, for example, used to be the "Green DPS" healer who tried to maximize their personal DPS by shielding allies and utilizing their faerie to heal as much as possible so they don't have to. This works perfectly for the players who want to maximize their DPS as healers, but there are players who don't want this at all. There are the "Support Only" healers who don't want pressure to DPS while healing.

This is where Astrologian could use some reworking. They already have the identity of the buff healer who has the lowest personal DPS. I think Astrologian should get GCD support tools that buff the damage of other players while also protecting and/or healing them--tools that should outweigh the DPS you get from Malefic. Maybe in this build, keeping Combust up is the only real DPS AST should be doing in dungeons or raids. These buffs could also be placed on the AST themselves for soloing, of course. They would just be more beneficial on a DPS who is attacking 100% of the time and doesn't need to stop to heal.

rDPS contribution from healers is a part of FFXIV, but that doesn't mean we can't have healers designed to cater to the players with different wants from the healing role. If we had something like this, with perhaps WHM and/or Healer 4 being a mix of the two, that would make more players happy, right?

[KDSilver]

I don't want "more responsabilities".
I want some of the old flavour gameplay back.

[Vitreus]

I think this is a great idea also and I’d love to see them take healers down a more support-oriented route, but I’m curious what people think about the form of support abilities this could/should take?

Personally I think they’d be better as GCDs, if not just so that they’re readily available and not used at pre-determined parts of a fight because of cooldowns. But then I understand most healers would want them to be oGCDs so that they don’t overlap with damage rotations.

I guess what I want to ask is, whether healers would prefer GCD support spells that use more actively in place of damage spells (placing healer responsibility more towards support) , or would they prefer healers to be focused purely on balancing between damage and healing (placing healer responsibility more on maximising damage output). Or maybe they’d like to see all of the above? A mix of healing, complex damage rotations and some support responsibilities?

Also, naturally I think when discussing stuff that’s purely conceptual that we should put the game’s design to one side for the moment, since the game design doesn’t really accommodate much of anything besides just damage, so there’s not much to actually discuss. So let’s assume that whichever responsibility healers preferred causes game design to magically adjust itself to whatever it was chosen.

Tl;dr is would healers rather healer responsibility fell more towards support, damage, or both, given the assumption that the game design would somehow magically conform its design to match this

I'd much rather use GCD's on support abilities rather than damage if the damage kit I am working with is the current one in Shadowbringers. If I'm still going to be spamming 1 - 1 - 1 - ... - 1 - 2 - 1- 1 - ... etc. in the next expansion PLEASE give me GCD support abilities.

[rxantos]

Sleep only works if everyone stops attacking. Good luck with that.

[KageTokage]

I honestly wouldn't mind if they made Esuna important in dungeon boss fights again.

These days it pretty much only needs to be used as a consequence of people being hit by avoidable mechanics outside of savage and EX trials.

[ty_taurus]

Sleep only works if everyone stops attacking. Good luck with that.

I imagine if they made adds that were meant to be put to sleep, it would be treated as a raid mechanic and people would know to leave the add alone. The tricky part would be introducing sleep mechanics as a semi-regular thing.

I honestly wouldn't mind if they made Esuna important in dungeon boss fights again.

These days it pretty much only needs to be used as a consequence of people being hit by avoidable mechanics outside of savage and EX trials.

Yeah, more need to Esuna things like Doom off allies would be nice too, or Paralysis which can really screw up DPS players if you don't remove it.

[MaxDetroit]

FF14 needs more croud control oportunities in general.
In other games there are supporter classes specialized on cc and there are a lot of encounters where e.g. enemies need to be sleeped / mezzed and other classes have to watch their AOEs not waking them up, etc.
FF14 has removed a lot of cc options from bigger encounters over time until there is no cc needed at all.

I think, especially in 8-player raids, cc skills (repose) should get a come back, especially since you can guarantee that all helaers have the leep skill and it is available.
Imagine an encounter where you have to keep one or two adds asleep while doing mechanics and heal the tanks, and the DDs have to watch their AOEs not to wake them up - this can be a lot fun, if done right.

[Yuletide]

I don't have an opinion of it.. I can see why people have issues with the healer either doing too much, or not doing enough.. Overall I think its important to remember those who are playing on the PS4, if you give healers too much to do, it can be hard to play. I'm a PC player, but I recently started leveling my character on my PS4 when I'm away from home. I can't imagine how stressful it would be if you gave PS4 players too much to do. I think SE trying to please both platforms is essentially what people have problems with. The game is not as challenging as a PC-only mmo. I do somewhat wish we had more buffs/debuffs, though at the same time, in other FF games, that wasn't entirely what healers were. The buffs/debuffs were spread evenly across all classes and not all stacked as the healer's responsibility..