General Community Resistant to Healer Damage?

[Hazama999]

I feel like I wouldn't care so much about my 2-3 buttons for DPSing as a healer if the healing was more engaging... That said, I'm not entirely sure how this could be made so without some big changes. One idea I had floating about was of different kinds of healing damage which would necessitate different kinds of skills. In real life, there are instances where different protocols or algorithms are followed depending on how a patient presents. Here's a simple example for a patient presentation with a possible acute coronary syndrome:



Now before you roast me alive, I know the comparison is not perfect. In-game, I find it unlikely that you'd be triaging someone for a possible myocardial infarction in the middle of combat but the algorithm serves to illustrate the kind of decision-making that often goes into... well, medicine. I am also not saying that the nuances of real-life medical care should somehow find their way into FFXIV, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't yearning for a bit more complexity. As others have pointed out, it feels like you're just making bars up when they go down and I find that much too reductionistic to be engaging. There is some modicum of complexity to be had right now since you also gotta know when damage is dished out... but that's more of an encounter design consideration rather than the healing itself.

[Jaelommiss]

One idea I had floating about was of different kinds of healing damage which would necessitate different kinds of skills.

Suppose they bring back TP. Optimal rotations for most classes will be adjusted to be either MP or TP negative. Weaker rotations would exist that are MP/TP neutral. Instead of just managing HP, healers are also responsible for maintaining party MP and TP. So long as healers keep HP from reaching 0 no one will die, but party dps will drop dramatically if MP or TP run out.

It'd be a massive deviation from how healing is generally approached, but I could see it making the game more interesting. Some classes (BLM) would be entirely self contained. Others (DRK) would be able to dump excess resources into damage. I expect there would be backlash from tanks and dps whose optimal rotations would become dependent on their healer.

[MirronTulaxia]

I feel like I wouldn't care so much about my 2-3 buttons for DPSing as a healer if the healing was more engaging... That said, I'm not entirely sure how this could be made so without some big changes. One idea I had floating about was of different kinds of healing damage which would necessitate different kinds of skills. In real life, there are instances where different protocols or algorithms are followed depending on how a patient presents. Here's a simple example for a patient presentation with a possible acute coronary syndrome:



Now before you roast me alive, I know the comparison is not perfect. In-game, I find it unlikely that you'd be triaging someone for a possible myocardial infarction in the middle of combat but the algorithm serves to illustrate the kind of decision-making that often goes into... well, medicine. I am also not saying that the nuances of real-life medical care should somehow find their way into FFXIV, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't yearning for a bit more complexity. As others have pointed out, it feels like you're just making bars up when they go down and I find that much too reductionistic to be engaging. There is some modicum of complexity to be had right now since you also gotta know when damage is dished out... but that's more of an encounter design consideration rather than the healing itself.

Honestly I like the idea of having to watch different gauges for healers. One of the things I was toying with in a different game with elemental affinities and such was different elemental healing too, which makes it important to pay attention to the element you use. While something like that doesn't work here they could certainly have multiple types of healing to keep track of.

Though at the same time I do worry a bit about the idea of Healers being responsible for MP, it certainly seems like a decent change.