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

[QooEr]

I am not a fan of the rhetoric that to be a "good" healer you have to DPS, because it applies the logic that a healer that is completely apt at healing is a "bad" healer, even if for some reason they do not or cannot DPS in addition to healing. In my opinion, a "good" healer is a healer who keeps their party in good health and within reason, alive.

Keeping people alive doesnt mean you are a "good" healer. it doesnt even mean you are an "average" healer, its literally the bare minumum expected of a healer. its like saying a good tank is a tank that keeps aggro (and only that) and a good dps is one that meets dps checks and enrages by the skin of their teeth

there is also no such thing as being "completely apt at healing" when damage in normal content is so insanely low that healing is like 10% of all the casts you make. even the bottom of the barrel grey healers on fflogs spend less than 1/3rd of their casts actually healing. a good player, let alone a good healer, isnt someone who is just standing idly more than half of the time while everyone else carries them


and wether healer dps is needed or not, what people want is something to do during downtime. could you imagine spending 90% of a fight doing absolutely nothing? ive had runs of dungeons, extremes and even savage fights where both me and my cohealer havent needed to cast a single heal. in the entire instance, not 1 gcd heal.

[Crushnight]

snip

Sigh,

A good healer balances both, period.
A bad healer only heals.
A bad healer only dpses.

Yoshi P's statement is outdated.

Content Design for Savage and Ultimates require healer dps as evidenced by Shiva Savage where if you take out both the healer dps from the best parse(do bare in mind at this stage they are most assuredly BiS no questions asked) they fail the dps check of the fight, that makes healer dps 100% factored into a fight design thus Yoshi P's statement is false now.

Content below Savage won't factor healer dps.

Good healers spend between 60%-90% using their gcd dps skills in current max level content, the best healers near 100% if not 100% is gcd dps.

Ogcds are plentiful, powerful and have short cds they are up for near everything even in Savage fights let alone below that.

Healers are being told to Dps because IT IS LAZY TO STAND THERE DOING NOTHING while waiting for someone to get enough ouchies that you need to gcd heal.

No other role gets this level of leeway and it is absurd healers think because i'm a healer I can be afk for over half my time, that is grade A manure from a skunk farm.

People want better downtime tools and the easiest path for SE to do that is to increase number of dps skills available, they could surprise us with a new system but then you have 80 levels where that new system means jack and dung because they have never balances old content with new job design, Rdm at low levels/healers design now/Gnb/ Smn at lv 70 etc etc etc.

Honestly would you not be upset if you saw a Drk only using Unleash and popping cds? Their doing their job but at such a bare minimum standard that it should not be tolerated, healers just standing there waiting for ouchies are that Drk.

[MirronTulaxia]

Spending nearly 100% of your GCD on DPS skills is really why an overhaul on the role is necessary. To me you shouldn’t be spending more than half, but obviously the game isn’t designed that way. Just hope with the healer overhaul they get closer to that

[Billythepancake]

Spending nearly 100% of your GCD on DPS skills is really why an overhaul on the role is necessary. To me you shouldn’t be spending more than half, but obviously the game isn’t designed that way. Just hope with the healer overhaul they get closer to that

That's not just a healer overhaul they'd need to do, they'd need to rework the entire game from ARR to now to change that. It's way easier to just make healers work in the current system than to try and change both healers and the system. Especially with things like Covid slowing progression down on top of all the things they have to add into a new expansion an overhaul of that level is not feasible, unless you want literally nothing else in 6.0.

[MirronTulaxia]

That's not just a healer overhaul they'd need to do, they'd need to rework the entire game from ARR to now to change that. It's way easier to just make healers work in the current system than to try and change both healers and the system. Especially with things like Covid slowing progression down on top of all the things they have to add into a new expansion an overhaul of that level is not feasible, unless you want literally nothing else in 6.0.

I mean, I'd be content with them just changing it from the next expansion onwards, not really concerned with them reworking content.

[Billythepancake]

I mean, I'd be content with them just changing it from the next expansion onwards, not really concerned with them reworking content.

Then you have classes that flat out don't work until level 80. Either that or they're stupid easy, and then as soon as 80 hits they're hit with a massive difficulty spike and playstyle shift they were not prepared for.

Plus, I LOVE that healers contribute to DPS. This is the only MMO I could get a character to max, because it's the only MMO where I felt like healing was an active part of the fight. Every other game it's "Stand in the back and kiss booboos away while everyone else gets to do all the cool fun flips and explosions". I fell in love with SCH because it was the closest thing to my healer/dps hybrid, and I will stand by that is way better design than just standing to the side and spamming heals.

[MirronTulaxia]

Given that I didn't say "they only heal" it's not like I'm saying anything drastic. For something called a healer to have 100% of their GCD be not healing if you're playing it properly is absurd though. People tend to play healers because they like the things you're saying are bad, but if you want to play DPS there are three times as many DPS options as there are healer, not even counting that healers are fairly arguable in terms of that capacity to boot.

In terms of them making changes that make past content wonky it wouldn't be the first time so that's not really a big deal to me.

[YusiKha]

I am not a fan of the rhetoric that to be a "good" healer you have to DPS, because it applies the logic that a healer that is completely apt at healing is a "bad" healer, even if for some reason they do not or cannot DPS in addition to healing. In my opinion, a "good" healer is a healer who keeps their party in good health and within reason, alive.

I think you may be misunderstanding the rhetoric then.
High DPS isn't the cause of being a good healer, but rather the symptom of being a good healer.

Being good at healing in FFXIV is about ensuring that the party survives the encounter with the least resources used per instance of damage.
An inefficient healer, someone who spends too many resources per healing instance, will need to dip into GCD heals just for people to survive and so have lower DPS.
A good healer has more free time between damage instances, so they fill that time with DPSing.

DPS, according to Yoshi-P, has NEVER been "required" to play the job endgame. No fights are tuned with healer's DPS in mind, a healer can refrain from DPSing and the fight is entirely clearable in spite of this--even endgame hardcore raid content. It will go faster if the healer joins in, but it is not ever mandatory.

What Yoshi-P said was wrong. Pure and simple. TEA requires healer DPS to clear, Shiva requires healer DPS to clear. The only fights that don't require healer DPS are fights that you massively overgear, or don't have an enrage (so dungeons)

But the attitude that healers must DPS or they are bad is a very toxic mindset, as evidenced by plenty of threads and players getting chuddy with people because they aren't DPSing, when in many cases, they healer simply can't do to some factor that the players either hadn't noticed, or simply hadn't thought of.

Incoming damage in this game is moderate, but the frequency is very low. Healing damage is super easy, and with the low frequency someone not DPSing is likely standing around doing nothing.
Now if I was a DPS/Tank player trying my butt off to get full uptime while doing my rotation and mechanics, I would get annoyed at Mr Pureheal who is just standing around doing literally nothing between 30s raidwides and tank busters.

It's not fair that healers try to get a free pass for non-contribution, while if tanks or dps tried to do the same, they take the full brunt of criticism.

[Crushnight]

Given that I didn't say "they only heal" it's not like I'm saying anything drastic. For something called a healer to have 100% of their GCD be not healing if you're playing it properly is absurd though. People tend to play healers because they like the things you're saying are bad, but if you want to play DPS there are three times as many DPS options as there are healer, not even counting that healers are fairly arguable in terms of that capacity to boot.

In terms of them making changes that make past content wonky it wouldn't be the first time so that's not really a big deal to me.

Problem, how does SE change healer design to accommodate more healing gcds?

If they nerf or remove ogcd heals you then have issues with Ultimates where healers cannot do their function and require buffs thus gcds heals get reduced since ogcds become too powerful again.

Change content design? Bad idea because content would have to be designed HARDER THAN ULTIMATE to force more gcd heals which the playerbase certainly cannot handle XD.

Do both and you get what Billy says a difficulty spike not just for new healers but veterans as well most likely turning off even more healers.

They have designed themselves into a corner by chasing the healing focus gameplay, they should've from the beginning continued enhancing the hybrid style that was very unique to FFXIV as an MMO where wasn't just 1 healer but all healers that felt like a hybrid but in different unique ways.

We are in the current healer mess where Cure 1 and Benefic 1 are being considered button bloat because of healing focus gameplay, the very playstyle they want to enforce is being made redundant by itself.

One can only hope the developers realise this because they sure as heck ain't letting anyone know about taking in feedback from healers.

[GucciSan]

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Just randomize the fights. That's all I'm asking for anyway. It doesn't need to be "harder than Ultimate" at all, just make encounters not as predictable to deal with. I love the game but the encounters are my biggest criticism; healing should be the most dynamic and chaotic role that YOU rein in under control with skill but XIV just does it for you because the fights are the same every time you do them.

Look at Engels in the Copied Factory: start of the fight he ALWAYS opens with either an AoE on the left/right, then the other side then a tankbuster. Why not sometimes start with the tankbuster? Or have a chance that he'll use the tankbuster twice in a row? It doesn't make things more difficult but now you can't preplan every heal. Make us actually consider what abilities to use and when because you never know what to expect. Push our oGCD's from being our first line of healing to our emergency heal buttons that we want to save. Make use use our skills in clever ways to open up room for DPS. Have use make interesting decisions. Right now the only time I have interesting decisions to make are in dungeon trash pulls.