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

[Irenia]

But we can't focus on healing. There is barely any healing to do!

Indeed, that was never in question; as I said IMO it's all perception.

Shofie's post might indeed be the casual's view of what healers are expected to do. It's "nice" to contribute to DPS, but they're supposed to keep the team alive. Even if the team is not doing mechanics, it is the healer's job to babysit.

But for us who want to get better, who aren't just satisfied with merely keeping everyone alive, we all know that the true measure of skill in any role is how much your presence speeds an encounter up. This means healing is number one for healers, but the goal now shifts to do as much damage while keeping everyone alive. We want to be judged on this metric.

But causal players don't care, and may actively reject such a skill spectrum. And the problem is that SE is trying to please both the casual, who only play this game to chill, and the skill seeker, who aims to improve their play. It's why we have Ultimate, but the classic Tank Stance and Diversion are gone. It's why parsing is "don't ask, don't tell", even though it is technically against the TOS. But healing might not be able to make everyone happy. SE could be forced to make a hard choice with healer design. I just hope they remember that players who aim to improve also want to have fun doing it.

[Deceptus]

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.

This is either

1) An outdated quote

or

2) Yoshi doesn't understand the game the way it's currently designed.

Healer DPS is absolutely required at end game. Current Savage content is literally impossible to beat without it.

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.

Quite honestly I'd even go so far as to accept the Buff / Debuff / Support role instead of pure dps during downtime. DPS is better than nothing but Support would play much better in the healing vein.

[Crushnight]

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.

OK I like to direct you to a fight known as o10s for why making everything random would not work.

O10s has random tankbusters, it just led to frustration as it very well could decide 1 tank eat all of them in a fight and they run out of cds for them(this was still in SB so no idea how ShB tanks may handle it now) and they are eating it raw, this meant that healers had to adjust for this potential extra damage in any given run, O10s also had random nail spawns for add phase meaning no one could pre position so you immediately have to adjust positions accordingly after the fact. Tanks had no answer to this rng back in SB breeding frustration. Everyone lost uptime in this fight purely down to rng not just healers.

Rng in fights can work if not overdone Middy Savage was overdoing it and you want an entire expansion designed like it, tell you now bad idea, nothing kills enjoyment faster than working hard and rng goes and screws you over just look at Black Desert's enhancement process. Raiders in FFXIV would not take it kindly look at TEA's wormhole mechanic or remember Nisi and Royal pentacle, then what if only in dungeons/24 mans , well it spice it up but everything would have to have longer casts thus slowing fights down for the less skilled playerbase to handle the rng of mechanics, boring every none healer which would just be a bad move.

Then you have the last issue of 80 levels of scripted fights is then completely thrown out the window talk about wanting to add a difficulty spike in the extreme, you would drive away way more people than you want to, if there is one thing i've learned over the years playing FFXIV is the general community do not pay attention to what a boss is doing until it happens.

[Crushnight]

Quite honestly I'd even go so far as to accept the Buff / Debuff / Support role instead of pure dps during downtime. DPS is better than nothing but Support would play much better in the healing vein.

I would be all for a support heavy downtime had they not strip Ast of everything non dmg up, this card system change shows that SE cannot handle support role because the non dmg up buffs didn't suit their use despite many many Asts using them.

Let's face it for this community if it doesn't provide more dps than glare/malefic/broil it's worthless because Balance is king I'm sorry I mean damage is king >_>

[Deceptus]

I would be all for a support heavy downtime had they not strip Ast of everything non dmg up, this card system change shows that SE cannot handle support role because the non dmg up buffs didn't suit their use despite many many Asts using them.

Let's face it for this community if it doesn't provide more dps than glare/malefic/broil it's worthless because Balance is king I'm sorry I mean damage is king >_>

I think the problem was they only had one healer that could properly support. Now, in the next expansion if they make a 2nd support style healer they can bring the cards back and have 2 "pure" healers and 2 "support" healers. Similar to MT / OT they were going for in ShB (they failed at it)

But if I was a developer and I had my way:

Remove support from DPS entirely. They need to focus on DPS.

Protect: Role Action Similar to what it did in pvp, gave a short Physical damage reduction on a relatively short CD.

Shell: Role Action Gives a short Magic Damage reduction on relatively short CD. Essentially what Apocatastasis used to do on BLM but to a target.

Eye for an Eye: Lowers target's strength and dexterity by 10%. (remove feint from physical DPS jobs)

Addle: Lowers target's intelligence and mind by 10% Remove from Magic DPS.

There, now every healer has proper support actions.

[ForteNightshade]

To be clear here: I think healers should DPS if they're able to, and "able" is a really broad word here. Not every player is created the same, and some of us struggle with balancing healing with DPS on a lot of days, and that shouldn't be considered someone being a "bad healer" because they aren't DPSing "enough". But, if the party is doing mechanics well, and everyone's geared decently enough, and staying out of AOEs, and you find they don't need much attention...then yeah, throw some DPS out, hell yeah.

I'm sorry but no. In this game you are a bad healer if you're aren't actively DPSing by level 60. There is simply no excuse. I can appreciate inexperienced healers being cautious at endgame, especially if they're attempted Savage for the first time. But even then, you can throw out Glare/Dia without any real difficulty. People took your DPS spells being apart of your kit because they are. Yoshida can say whatever he wants, however the game simply isn't designed in a manner where healers should only heal. Electing not to DPS means you're literally contributing nothing for a good portion of the encounter—likely more than half of it. This is why it irks other players so much, and why the current approach to healers is a failure.

No other job gets the luxury of being able to sit around waiting for damage to occur. Why should healers?

If the dev team does intend for healers to primarily focus on healing and only contribute minimal DPS then they need to either create fights where healing has a much strong focus or overhaul healers into a support-esque role so they have something besides damage to focus on during downtime. And yes, I'm aware increasing the healing requirements too much will hindrance the casual players. But even the average players are complaining nowadays due to how little they actually need to heal. That speaks volumes to how undertuned a lot of encounters are. So something has to bunch come 6.0.

[MirronTulaxia]

I’m not sure I have any specific ideas for how they should raise the amount of healing. Any change inevitably will make things more difficult, but given they barely heal as is that’s to be expected. If the bulk of what they do is DPS with a dash of tossing a Lily out then it’s hardly surprising that things would be more difficult, they’re not playing Healers and then you ask them to do that.

So with a spike in difficulty being moot it’s just about making sure to change damage requirements so the DPS isn’t as necessary and upping the frequency of damage, possibly the amount. Maybe change mitigation amounts on tanks some too.

[Billythepancake]

I’m not sure I have any specific ideas for how they should raise the amount of healing. Any change inevitably will make things more difficult, but given they barely heal as is that’s to be expected. If the bulk of what they do is DPS with a dash of tossing a Lily out then it’s hardly surprising that things would be more difficult, they’re not playing Healers and then you ask them to do that.

So with a spike in difficulty being moot it’s just about making sure to change damage requirements so the DPS isn’t as necessary and upping the frequency of damage, possibly the amount. Maybe change mitigation amounts on tanks some too.

Ultimates have a 30% heal rate. You want regular content to exceed that and be more difficult than ultimate? With the people I've played with, honestly, I'm surprised some of them can even tie their shoes. I'd hate to get stuck in a dungeon for MSQ progression because the game required actual competency from the healer. At least with EXs and Savage I can choose the dumb dumbs I'm stuck with, can't really do that with DF.

Obviously the mechanics wouldn't be as hard overall as ultimate, don't tell me that. But healing is a huge part of ultimate and it's all about managing resources. I cannot see the player base of this game genuinely making good use of their kits in required content. I'd much rather just be given more to do when there's no healing to do, it's easier to implement and more satisfying. I should feel rewarded for going the distance and learning to get better at my class, not feel punished because now I have nothing to do other than spam 1 button.

[MirronTulaxia]

Ultimates have a 30% heal rate. You want regular content to exceed that and be more difficult than ultimate? With the people I've played with, honestly, I'm surprised some of them can even tie their shoes. I'd hate to get stuck in a dungeon for MSQ progression because the game required actual competency from the healer. At least with EXs and Savage I can choose the dumb dumbs I'm stuck with, can't really do that with DF.

Obviously the mechanics wouldn't be as hard overall as ultimate, don't tell me that. But healing is a huge part of ultimate and it's all about managing resources. I cannot see the player base of this game genuinely making good use of their kits in required content. I'd much rather just be given more to do when there's no healing to do, it's easier to implement and more satisfying. I should feel rewarded for going the distance and learning to get better at my class, not feel punished because now I have nothing to do other than spam 1 button.

I didn't say make it more difficult. More healing doesn't, to me, have to mean a difficulty spike.

That and I don't really see people as being that incompetent so much as they'll put forward the minimum effort needed to clear. Which is different from being unable to do harder things. Though being stuck in the MSQ isn't really possible with Trusts anymore either.

[Crushnight]

I think the problem was they only had one healer that could properly support. Now, in the next expansion if they make a 2nd support style healer they can bring the cards back and have 2 "pure" healers and 2 "support" healers. Similar to MT / OT they were going for in ShB (they failed at it)

But if I was a developer and I had my way:

Remove support from DPS entirely. They need to focus on DPS.

Protect: Role Action Similar to what it did in pvp, gave a short Physical damage reduction on a relatively short CD.
Shell: Role Action Gives a short Magic Damage reduction on relatively short CD. Essentially what Apocatastasis used to do on BLM but to a target.
Eye for an Eye: Lowers target's strength and dexterity by 10%. (remove feint from physical DPS jobs)
Addle: Lowers target's intelligence and mind by 10% Remove from Magic DPS.

There, now every healer has proper support actions.

That doesn't solve the 1 button spam as half of those are ogcds and the other half have to be so powerful that it brings a net gain on glares/broils/malefics or people will consider them worthless (which they wouldn't be just certain people will and if SE listens like they did with Ast they'll get axed) like people viewed Bole etc (which was plenty useful just offered less than Balance so it got axed much to mine and a few others annoyance).