Final Fantasy XIV’s healer problem and how it’s kind of unsolvable

[Ayesafaile]

What it actually means is:
60% of our downtime is: Broil, Ruin II, Biolysis
40% of our downtime is: those 15 healing spells

Except it's not actually 15 healing spells, it's the same 3 healing spells SCH has always had (Physick, Adloquium, Succor) and a dozen healing abilities. I think that's an important distinction to make, because under most circumstances you're not really spending time healing so much as just dropping a bit of damage potency to swap from Broil to Ruin II. If we were actually spending time healing, it'd feel a lot more meaningful than playing whack-a-mole with available oGCD heals between Ruin II casts.

Fundamentally, it's a lot less interesting to have a shiny new healing ability you can use once every couple minutes compared to a core spell you use every 15-30 seconds.

[ForgottenScholar]

I think this subject is unsolvable on the whole as it’s the healer player base that’s essentially split.

You have the one side that wants the role of a pure support/healing class and though this game has healing roles that certainly appear to play like that it’s the attitude of the player base that dictates otherwise. It has been said from a long time ago that all content in this game, bar ultimate, isn’t tuned to account for healer dps levels. Now yes it makes the fight go faster, but ultimately that doesn’t make it more fun does it? It’s the attitude of the party doing the content. And this actual argument is one of the core issues that has now accounted for the current healer hotbar, less dps spells and more healing spells.
If players were a little more patient in general dungeons and allowed healers to learn at their own pace to heal and mix dps rather than, in a lot of what I saw, bark and complain of they didn’t reach their parse we prob wouldn’t be at this point.

You also have the other side of the argument that wants more of a pure dps rotation put into the healers because as they have less to heal they wanna dps more, or be the Uber combat mage that can do it all! Effectively a rdm with a few more healing spells and that quicker queue time.

So in essence SE can only really go one way and ultimately alienate half their healer player base, and essentially what the article was getting at.

The only other way I can see it for 6.0 is now they have a core healing and dps kit of all the jobs they should branch out one in each direction for 6.0.

Make Sch a higher dos healer that can utilise more of smn toolkit. And maybe make Selene a dps fairy.

Make ast your support healer that goes a bit further than it does already.

Make whm your pure healer as it already is. Maybe with banish as well cos I kiss that spell from xi

And then finally make a melee healer that uses auras and aoe healing so aid battle, so geomancer with a hammer.

Essentially with this they can allow the healer community to gravitate to what specific one they want and then SE can tweak and adjust as necessary. I essentially think it would balance out in the long run as not all healers, like everyone else wants to play the same exact way forever do they?.

On top of this they seriously need to change the fight and level design. Lower the item level caps for all the dungeons to make healing a little more proactive and maybe start adding enfeebles and such that healers need to account for and sort. We all have Esuna but who seriously uses it in most content.

My suggestion is open for constructive debate, but let’s keep it civil peeps.

[QooEr]

getting rid of dps tools "because pure healers" is moot because pure healers are not going to use the abilities wether its broil spam or wether its the 5 dots scholar used to have

as long as healers have at least 1 dps ability people will still expect healers to contribute to damage instead of standing around doing nothing

[elioaiko]

While I do agree with parts of this article, there's a couple of things I disagree with.

Let's start with the agreements. I agree that healing is the only role in the game where you get punished for getting better with skill and gear. Once you gear up and you understand your job, you're DPSing most of the time.

I agree that the design of content prevents traditional healing is the biggest truth of them all but it is one that SE cannot change because the whole game would change and it would take a lot of time to completely change.

I also liked how they mentioned that increasing damage is not the way to make healing better. It only serves to cause more wipes and while you spam DPS spells, having to spam heals is basically doing the same thing except you're running into MP problems much faster.

I disagree that ShB has done anything to make healers more like pure healers. In fact it fees more of the same except our uniqueness and DPS spells got cut for basically no reason other than to make healers have "less" to worry about. Now it's boring since we only spam one button with a DoT every 30s.

I don't like that the whole thing about a "bad" healer. There are plenty of moments where people will tunnel vision on DPS, it happens to every healer at some point. Personally a bad healer is one that doesn't contribute to anything other than stand there and over heal and spam the same GCD heal. They're wasting others' time and like the writer said, you're supposed to make use of your DPS spells as well as your kit.

Also adding a more diverse DPS kit isn't going to cause more tunnel vision. Having something else to do instead of Broil/Glare/Malefic spam would be far more interesting. Like someone else mentioned, its the LEAST offensive way to add more to the healers without breaking their balance. I feel that SE is better at making unique DPS kit than anything else.

Finally, the problem can be solved, it's just SE is stubborn and trying to make their current healing philosophy work rather than step back, take in feedback, get some fresh ideas and minds to really tackle the issue.

So overall, decent write-up, I just hope SE does something cause 6.0 will likely either push more veteran healers or meet us halfway.

[Gemina]

This I feel is a non-argument. A few points: [LIST][*]Was it ever *THAT* big of a problem? In my experience, it never has been. You once in a while got unlucky, big deal, people are new, are learning, make mistakes and so on. It's a learning experience. And sometimes people just aren't very good, which is gonna happen, but we should focus on helping them instead of sucking the fun out of things to make them too easy

Tunnel visioning was a big enough problem that it was one of the few things towards healing that Yoshi specifically stated in I believe was his interview with Mr. Happy back in 2019. I should mention though that he didn't even bring it up himself, it was only when asked about the state of healing in FFXIV.

Personally, I know it is an issue as well. I can't speak for savage/ultimate since I am not a participant, but I found it happening in all content outside of those. This was really bad back with pre SB Cleric Stance that gimped your healing in order to boost your damage.

Seeing a healer with full MP and not healing, not rezzing, and is not in a dodge fest with mechanics while just sitting there spamming their DPS skill(s) when someone is in critical HP or down is definitely a thing in my experience, and in my opinion is just as bad as the heals only healer who only acts when heals are needed. Like you though, I am one person. The dev team however, very likely has tons of data that shows them how much this was happening.

If you are a dev and you are comparing these two fundamental errors in the healer mentality (the first being a tunnel visioned healer, and the second a heals only healer), it is only the former that leads to player KOs. Healer damage for the most part is not factored into any DPS checks the game has, so not only does the heals only healer fulfill the bare minimum of their role, but should the raid not meet the DPS requirement, they are technically not at fault. Due to this, if there is a 'needle' of sorts as the article points out, it's a pretty easy decision which way to nudge it.

Now please don't misinterpret what I am saying here. I am well aware that this is also an issue. It is an issue that stems from the early days of this game's development, and this team made the decision to keep the demand from healers low. Because of this early decision, they cemented all encounter design going forward as to demand more from healers now would undoubtedly change encounter design across the board (from ARR to ShB). Context is a thing too, because when I say it like that; it gives the impression that there is no solution. What I honestly should say is...

... Because of this early decision, they cemented all encounter design going forward as to demand more from healers now would undoubtedly change encounter design across the board (from ARR to ShB). However, this might not be a bad thing.

See what I mean?

I know it is difficult to accept the devs decision to remove DPS skills from healers, especially if your experiences in game shows that this choice really hasn't made an improvement. And I will also agree to disagree that the solution is insolvable. Gigantic problems often have a swift and simple solution. It just eludes the convoluted mind.

[Rivinhal]

Healer damage for the most part is not factored into any DPS checks the game has

I realize that you stated you don't do savage content and couldn't speak on it, and even stated "for the most part" here... but end-game content like savage raids/etc. can't really be overlooked when stating something like this. Because I'm fairly certain healer damage is factored in when it comes to high-end content.

[Saefinn]

snip

I can appreciate what you're saying with regards to tunnel vision. I guess I just feel a problem like that should be solved with helping people improve in this regard rather than just remove something entirely.

Some of the tunnel vision issues also happened more with relation to Cleric Stance, which they also got rid of. The phrase I've ended up adopting is, "improve don't remove".

And again, in my experience I never really found it to be a huge issue, when it was an issue, the healer most of the time would adjust or we just put it down to a bad healer. As we still get.

I don't think it was a bad decision in ARR to make healing work in encounter design in the way it did because I thought it appropriate for an FF title, a series where healer characters/jobs aren't tunnelled into a single purpose and for me, it is an extra element to make them interesting. But I think people from other MMO's (except maybe FFXI) come to expect healers to do a lot more healing.

With regards to finding it difficult to accept really stems from being bored out of my mind playing my favourite job and my preferred role in an any MMO, because I'm at heart a healer. I am generally quite open minded and unafraid of change, hence I didn't even complain in SB because I had stuff to enjoy. It feels like the changes we got did not resolve the problems they set out to resolve (and if anything worsened a couple of them) and just made the experience dull and uninspiring.

And with regards to data, sadly sometimes the data doesn't always reflect reality, whilst we don't have the liberty sadly of knowing their data. But I know they go to places like the forum for feedback and well, shooting myself in the foot, it's not the most reliable place, as much as I try to be fair in my own posts. Because it rarely tells you what is working or why. When people were complaining in ARR and HW, I was content in playing my role and never communicated anywhere that I was loving it and what I loved about it. And this is one of the biggest challenges in measuring satisfaction, people don't really go out of their way to give feedback that something is going great but will when it isn't.

And in fairness, our data isn't completely reliable, as much of what we have ourselves is anecdotal but at least gives insight to user experience and the problems, which I think anecdotal evidence is good for. We do have some measurable data from the community too, but it only tells so much and much of it is circled around the Reddit community (as the satisfaction polls to go out are from Reddit), but it is still useful data.

However, there is something I've suggested before, if the devs were to put out a well constructed survey, they could obtain better data. They could map what people like and don't like, what is working and what isn't working, what they'd prefer to see or prefer gone and so on. And I don't think there is any shame in putting one out either. Though emphasis on "well-constructed", of course. Maybe give an in game item for completing the survey as an incentive to give feedback.

[Videra]

I really do feel like it would at least placate people if SE hit the 'Fuck Go Back' button to 3.X or 4.X. Beggars can't be choosers, and I'd take either. The game, in general, had a higher skill ceiling back then, but they keep removing mechanics and dumbing everything down - which is why I'm pessimistic about healers improving ever, basically.

[Tulzscha]

Tunnel visioning was a big enough problem that it was one of the few things towards healing that Yoshi specifically stated in I believe was his interview with Mr. Happy back in 2019. I should mention though that he didn't even bring it up himself, it was only when asked about the state of healing in FFXIV.

Personally, I know it is an issue as well. I can't speak for savage/ultimate since I am not a participant, but I found it happening in all content outside of those. This was really bad back with pre SB Cleric Stance that gimped your healing in order to boost your damage.

Tunnel vision is not a design issue, it's a player issue. It happens to everyone and it doesn't mean that jobs need to be simplified, only that the player needs more practice. If the devs really want to do something about it they could increase how far we can zoom out but don't take fun out of the game because people who don't even need to worry about the full complexity of their job can't handle it.

It's no different from a dps staring too long at their bars to see what they can use next or focusing so hard on your one little part of the screen you don't see trouble coming from somewhere else. Should all dps and raids be dumbed down to account for these player mistakes? Of course not, and neither should healers. You practice and improve and feel good for it, that's what gaming (life, really) is all about.

[Recon1o6]

Tbh, this isn't so much a problem as proof that the pure healer concept is not fit for the game. This is why healer downtime is just as important as healing and tis time the devs recognised it


Its not an unsolvable problem as ff14 has combat medic healers. The problem is the lack of will to accept the solution on the dev team

Tunnel vision in healer dps is not much of a problem and never was on account of the basic fact that healers can only get downtime by doing their job in the first place or the tank doing their job effectively as well. A healer will naturally get more downtime as they become more skilled because they can afford to compensate for more damage before taking action given how scripted things are

hell blm's have the worst tunnel vision cases given how many people complain about having to rescue them out of aoe's and then the idiots teleport back after to get illed anyway >>