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

[Insertusernamehere]

Yes I agree.. SE trying to make jobs more accessible to everyone so simplifying job their primary goal..
OP asking for more complex tasks for healers but its not going to happen. I think this game primarily aims causal players. For this reason they put no effort PvP.

I believe at future they will also simply samurai / monk / ninja to make it more accessible.

[elioaiko]

Unfortunately that's how the dice rolls, they may find a middle ground but overall healers are only going to get more accessible and easier with every expansion.

That's why asking for a more diverse DPS kit on tanks and healers is more feasible than actual complex tank/healer kits. It's just easier for them to do since DPS is just tweaks in numbers to balance. It's the gameplay of healers that sucks now. We have nothing in our downtime besides spamming. Give us something to do. If casuals don't want to DPS then fine they can burn all their MP but for those who do, we should more than just healbots in a game where they don't need to exist.

[Saefinn]

I'd have argued healers already were accessible. No newbie /has/ to do any kind of complex DPS rotation if they don't want to. The principle is "always be casting", it doesn't mean you have to do optimal play, you just need to not be lazy and sit around doing nothing whilst your party does all the work. Optimal play is more important quite high up, on content where you are going in as an experienced player (even then, taking stuff like EX, you could get away with no DPS as a healer, like I did when I started out)

Even then, if that's not good enough create a new dumbed down job that is accessible for them, whilst I'd have argued that White Mage was plenty accessible as it is quite straight forward as a healer, but if they needed it simpler, they could have made a 4th healer to accommodate that.

Like what they did with Casters, Red Mage has a dead simple rotation and is easy to play, it flows well and they've not had to dumb down Summoner or Black Mage to make casters more accessible to newer players. Arguably they've made Summoner even more complicated. Why can't healers get this treatment? I thought the whole point of having different jobs of the same role was to accommodate different design philosophies that appeal to different people rather than just being different flavours of the same thing.

[Veis_Alveare]

The biggest issue I have with that article (at least that hasn't been addressed so far) is that the only reason we're being forced into more and more simplified healers is because of the very worst of players.

Healers are a single point of failure in a way that no other role is in XIV for casual content. The number of times you need a tank or dps to be doing more than standing up and occasionally pressing any of their buttons is laughably limited and is reduced even further by having other competent players in a party.

Sure, you can squeak by sometimes on Clemency and/or Vercure but not only are you not able to count on having those jobs and skills available to you but you really shouldn't need to.

A recent example during my leveling of a dps - Aurum Vale. I know, it's the first bigboi dungeon, but it wasn't any of the usual issues that caused our disband. The tank pulled small, the other dps and I AoEd, it was all moving along without issue until the first boss.

The persistent damage coming from the Burrs stacks literally killed everyone because Eos can only do so much. The SCH never cast a single Succor or Whispering Dawn, nor did they heal anyone who wasn't the tank - including themselves. Despite auto-translate explanations of what went wrong this happened two more times before we disbanded.

This is the kind of person who they're designing healing around at this point, someone with absolutely no understanding of game mechanics or idea of what any of their buttons do. They need to be able to let their hands just fall on their keyboard and clear anything in the MSQ (just like tanks and dps can) or its somehow bad.

XIV would be able to solve this "unsolvable" problem if they would just stop catering to the worst common denominator and force players to put in a modicum of effort... not they won't, and so we'll keep having this same discussion.

[Saefinn]

Snip

The parallels I see between FFXIV and FFXI SCH is the following:
DoT Focus - Although each did it differently, in XIV you had 3 DoTs, you could spread them, place a DoT on the ground or a sudden DoT AoE. These were all the big parts of DPSing as FFXIV Scholar. Although FFXIV SCH was capable of nuking like a BLM (almost), it also had a DoT focus with the Helix spells, you'd use Weather spells to enhance them, you could also Modus Veritas on them and deal more damage in less time. But I guess FFXIV still gets a nuke in the form of Ruin/Broil. Just FFXIV SCH doesn't have an elemental aspect to it.
Stratagems - We very loosely have a reference to them, the ability to enhance spells based on a situation, this of course was way heavily in XI with its stratagem system, but we do have Deployment Tactics and Emergency Tactics that kinda fulfil that purpose.
Choice of how you expand your abilities - In XI you could either expand your White Magic with Addendum: White or your Black Magic with Addendum: Black, so it depended on whether you were DPS moding or heal moding. A parallel could also be made to faerie choice in FFXIV, because Eos is more healing focused and Selene was more utility focused.

In terms of healing, FFXIV SCH I think was the most unique kinda healing experience I've had in an MMO, which is one reason I loved it.

FFXI's ended up finding its niche with Regens, though initially it didn't, it was through its stratagems enhancing their cures, but when content ramped up and WHM got Cure V and Cure VI, in their refusal to step on WHM's toes, SCH was a weaker healer until they gave SCH a higher tier Regen to make up the difference. Though during my prime, it was when SCH was the weaker healer, but that was never a problem for me, because I made it work, I was the main healer for my static back when everybody wanted WHM, but I guess this is where some of my "fun > balance" arguments come from, because I've had the experience of trying to join groups to be met with "do you have WHM instead?", refusing to level WHM and being like "well, you can have me or wait ages until you find a WHM" and I'd get to play the job I enjoy. This is something that's waaaay less of a problem here. I've only seen it twice in the 7 years I've played this game and against people who'd probably out DPS most.


And Red Mage, yeah sadly, got left behind and I don't know if they ever made up for that. I remember RDM getting no love for a looong time, kinda like MNK here.

[Morningstar1337]

A recent example during my leveling of a dps - Aurum Vale. I know, it's the first bigboi dungeon, but it wasn't any of the usual issues that caused our disband. The tank pulled small, the other dps and I AoEd, it was all moving along without issue until the first boss.

I think that distinction belongs to Dzemael Darkhold IMO, it seems to encourage bigboy pulls whereas Vale discourages it (for the first leg of each dungeonat least)

[Videra]

I think that distinction belongs to Dzemael Darkhold IMO, it seems to encourage bigboy pulls whereas Vale discourages it (for the first leg of each dungeonat least)

Outside of clearing savage first week, one of the most satisfying feelings for a tank in this game is to do that mega-pull pull at the start of Dismal Dankhold.

[Ilyrian]

it seems to encourage bigboy pulls whereas Vale discourages it (for the first leg of each dungeonat least)

I think that first section of AV is to teach LoS pulling. Success varies though.

[GrimGale]

- In XI you could either expand your White Magic with Addendum: White or your Black Magic with Addendum: Black.

I love the FFXI concept for SCH. While I like the shields too, If they ever redesign the class in FF14 after they split it from SMN I hope they take the Addendum/Stratagem mechanics from FFXI and integrate them.

Use stratagems to substitute Aetherflow, and get the two addendum stances. White/Support to unlock Embrava with Eos and Black/Debuffing to unlock Kaustra with Selene.

[Saefinn]

I love the FFXI concept for SCH. While I like the shields too, If they ever redesign the class in FF14 after they split it from SMN I hope they take the Addendum/Stratagem mechanics from FFXI and integrate them.

Use stratagems to substitute Aetherflow, and get the two addendum stances. White/Support to unlock Embrava with Eos and Black/Debuffing to unlock Kaustra with Selene.

To me it is proof that you can have a competent healing role with something complex and with a lot of non-healing options whilst being able to have a proper healer focus when you need it.

But I can see stuff like Emergency Tactics and Deployment Tactics, if better utilised filling the niche statagems had (maybe even if they did it like DRK's Dark Arts before they destroyed it). And if they improved faerie use, then it'd fill that Addendum Black/White niche, all in the way FFXIV feels like its own job and respecting how FFXIV plays. XI was a lot slower paced, so I don't see sense in doing it the same way, but there are definitely ways

Honestly this is the kinda direction I hoped SCH would evolve into because it has the foundations there.