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

[AdamFyi]

I did say “isn’t as necessary”, not remove it entirely.

That’s what I was responding to. Making it less necessary means that they’ll have to lower the dps checks to compensate. Which means a hole for the skilled healers to exploit that makes it possible to push dps thresholds, potentially causing even more focus on healer dps. They could also potentially move some of that damage into the DPS role instead, but that would mean rebalancing a lot of stuff which isn’t worth the time tbh.

It really sounds like people think a proper healer is impossible in XIV

It’s not that a “proper healer” is impossible, it’s “healer design from other games” the one that’s impossible to translate into XIV which is what a lot of people are always suggesting. I personally like how the healers function in XIV as is. It’s a lot more approachable and not as stressful as other MMOs, which I really appreciate. They could use some tweaks to their damage kits to make them more interesting than one dot and one nuke. Fix that and I’ll be satisfied.

[MirronTulaxia]

I mean, again, DPS with some minor additional responsibilities is not a Healer. And there will always be options for more skilled players to exploit things. Though they could slow down the casting of the Glare-equivalent and increase it's MP cost too I suppose to discourage it.

[Lilseph]

I mean, again, DPS with some minor additional responsibilities is not a Healer. And there will always be options for more skilled players to exploit things. Though they could slow down the casting of the Glare-equivalent and increase it's MP cost too I suppose to discourage it.

I saw this and was like "nope". If the game defines it as a Healer, then it is a Healer. Just cause the game's interpretation of it doesn't match yours, doesn't mean that it isn't one. And honestly, discouraging dpsing when so many fights have significant amount of downtime is probably the worst possible thing to suggest lmao. Having healers sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for damage to pop out sounds like riveting gameplay.

[Saefinn]

I mean, again, DPS with some minor additional responsibilities is not a Healer. And there will always be options for more skilled players to exploit things. Though they could slow down the casting of the Glare-equivalent and increase it's MP cost too I suppose to discourage it.

See, this is what I don't like and I feel is where people can be narrowminded when it comes to games that use the triad of "healer, tank, DPS". Different games will approach how that triad works differently and not all of them will use the exact same philosophies and I don't like that people come to this game and then expect this game's philosophy to change. The game is designed to benefit from healer DPS, it encourages it and at the higher tiers of content, needs it. I joined this game happy with the design philosophy and fell in love with healing in this game and now in its current state is dull as heck.

And it was a design that I feel complements the series as a whole. Because Final Fantasy hasn't generally been so rigid in such clear cut opaque definitions. Generally in an FF title you will find times your party doesn't need healing, in that time your healer character will have other things to do. This is a philosophy true of their single player games and philosophy true of their MMO's.

I played SCH in XI as our static's main healer, that job was plenty complicated and had a LOT and I mean an awful lot to do in its downtime and had a lot of DPS abilities and probably the biggest ability pool in the game. Whilst XI is a wholly different game, I love that they retained the philosophy of giving you more to do in your downtime when you're not healing. And now it's dull as heck.

And honestly, for people who struggle to keep up with healing and DPS, personally, I don't mind if they sacrifice DPS or just DPS sub-optimally, just as long as they're not being lazy when everybody else isn't. In fairness, for a lot of content, DPS helps but is not required. I was the same when I was still new and newish to the game, once more became second nature, I appreciated that I had more I could be doing.

IMO, they had the balance right for DPS/Heals in ARR and HW. So no inevitable shifting to being DPS that has the odd bit of healing. After all, it is not how many DPS abilities you have that affects DPS focus it is the content and how well your healing spells handle it that affects your healing focus. By adding things to restrict DPS or make it less dynamic, it doesn't make you do more healing, it just makes you more bored.

Blue Mage with 4 healing spells and a butt load of DPS ones has more of a healing focus in healer stance than any real healing jobs.

[Irenia]

Though they could slow down the casting of the Glare-equivalent and increase it's MP cost too I suppose to discourage it.

I'm curious, do you dislike the concept of ABC, or, Always Be Casting or something?

[Insertusernamehere]

I mean as I said, if they want to call what we have "healing" where it's DPS with some odd responsibilities then we may as well remove the pretense of the job. Give everyone some self-healing, you take care of yourself and maybe some AoE stuff, and we can make the current Healers "Support". Though that'll just basically be DPS with some other buttons being pushed too so it's really just delaying the inevitable shift to everything being a DPS.

Another game I play DPS can drop significant DPS and resume tank duty. Tank also can drop significant defense to access DPS. Same goes for healer they can drop their healing abilities to greatly increase their DPS.

I believe SE tried similar approach with Cleric / Tank stance and not worked out they removed all of it.

[Hysterior]

There are still things they should do to keep healers busy outside of spamming 2 DPS skills.

- Removing DoTs: I cant remember the last time I used Esuna. Why?
- Increase burst damage phases. Force us to burn on cooldowns so we need to use more GCD healing.
- Damage by heals. More enemies should required healing to die. Like undead enemies. Make us use our healing skills for offense like in Shinryu.
- Give us more lower potency dots so we need to juggle more dot ticks (remember when SCH had 3 or 4 dots?)
- Make us interact with things on the area

There are a lot of things they can do.

[MirronTulaxia]

I'm curious, do you dislike the concept of ABC, or, Always Be Casting or something?

Given I didn't say anything about lessening the amount of actions a Healer performs but instead was about changing the category of actions a Healer performs (or more accurately the ratio) I'm not... even remotely sure how you got that from what I said. My guess is that you read it as "so then they'll do nothing in the downtime" when my idea is more they'll be doing something other than DPS. Ideally more healing, or if we really can't somehow make healing regular enough then we could do support I suppose, but I think people honestly just don't even want to contemplate it as opposed to it being "impossible".

[elioaiko]

Given I didn't say anything about lessening the amount of actions a Healer performs but instead was about changing the category of actions a Healer performs (or more accurately the ratio) I'm not... even remotely sure how you got that from what I said. My guess is that you read it as "so then they'll do nothing in the downtime" when my idea is more they'll be doing something other than DPS. Ideally more healing, or if we really can't somehow make healing regular enough then we could do support I suppose, but I think people honestly just don't even want to contemplate it as opposed to it being "impossible".

I think the reason why SE hasn't given healers more support skills is their fear of stressing out casuals for having too much to do.

Remember that they're trying to make healers and tanks more accessible to the general crowd (a.k.a non-healer oriented minds), so having too much to do (even if our downtime is just spamming) would scare away people or turn them away.

Just look at tanks, GNB is just a DPS with a tank icon. It feels so much like a DPS in a lot of aspects. And even Warrior felt this way before with the Fell Cleave spam.

Adding more complex abilities to their kits is not what SE wants. They want healers to be "pick up and learn quickly."

Ex. My roommate just got into FFXIV and wanted to play healer for shorter queues but was turned off because healer was "too much." The irony is that I was trying to help him and still he found it too stressful and he isn't the first person that felt this way. It's sad because I can only imagine how turned off the role seems to outsiders even if it's already dumbed down.

With that SE doesn't want healers to be more complex. Maybe AST will stay complex but even then, the cards have already been dumbed down. I wouldn't be surprised if they just removed cards entirely or reduce it to Lord/Lady for the sake of ease of access.

The best we could hope is that the 4th addition of (the same WHM copy jokingly or not) healer job will help diversify their constant need to nerf AST and overbuff it over the expansions. Someone said this before but AST's problem is that it's a filler for WHM or SCH which means it either performs better or worse, there's no inbetween. And as we've experienced with time, AST's been buffed to heaven and high to in order for people to want to play it.

[Gemina]

I played SCH in XI as our static's main healer, that job was plenty complicated and had a LOT and I mean an awful lot to do in its downtime and had a lot of DPS abilities and probably the biggest ability pool in the game. Whilst XI is a wholly different game, I love that they retained the philosophy of giving you more to do in your downtime when you're not healing. And now it's dull as heck.

It's interesting that you bring up XI. While I did not play SCH in that game, I did spend an enormous amount of time healing on my WHM and RDM. Red Mage in particular I would like to focus on because it is an example that SE has a history of taking away engaging gameplay for healers and dumbing them down gradually over time to only needing to execute a few skills in order to contribute to a party. It is also a job that in its prime, I felt played very closely to SCH in XIV during its prime back in 3.0, which was a huge reason why it is my first and still my go to job for all content. As such, I am more inclined to compare the gameplay of RDM in XI to SCH in XIV; while from what I know about SCH in XI seems more like a distant cousin to BLM in this game.

While RDM didn't have its skills pruned per say, it did suffer from a large part of its skillset becoming redundant, and its simplification is what ultimately caused me to leave the game. I think this is a big reason why I haven't been affected as greatly as other SCH mains because I have already been conditioned and come to expect this kind of treatment from SE towards its healers.

I have a greater amount of history and investment towards XIV now, but I would take healing in XIV over healing in XI any day of the week with the last impression that game left me with. Encounter design in XI is far different that XIV though, so while I do know where you are coming from, it is a difficult comparison to make. Ultimately, I know your point is you would like for more engaging gameplay as a healer, but just find it odd that you seem to prefer XI healing over XIV when I found the former to be even more dull.