Major flaws in healing design.

[YusiKha]

But... my thread is about healers being incapable or refusing to heal....
Giving healers more to do damage wise, will give them an excuse. Right now this healer has no excuse. Yet I am the troll.

Removing damage spells doesn't make people not use the remaining ones.

Making their damage "rotations" complex is literally counterproductive not only to this thread, without reasoning, but to Square-Enix's choice to do this very thing to hopefully ensure healers heal.
Clearly it was a failed attempt, but you cant possibly think they reduced healer damage actions to just 2 "spells" without realizing its going to affect "healers fun" if they think healers should be dealing damage.

You can't say that Square removed damage options to make people heal more. If they did then can you please show me where?

Other possible reasons: (paraphrased from a prior post of mine)
They wanted to give each healer a solid base healing kit for now, and have the DPS kit expanded in further expansions
(to which they failed because AST is far superior to WHM/SCH)

They wanted to dumb down the DPS kit for newbies new to heal+damage
(to which they failed because only WHM has any in-kit encouraging to DPS, which doesn't come in until level 74)

They wanted to prune skills to stuff more boring healing actions into us.
(to which they succeeded, at the cost of long-term fun)

Seriously does anyone find Fey Blessing a worthwhile addition to SCH's kit? Why is the most interesting action (Afflatus Misery) this expansion just a damage return for GCD healing?
Am I going insane? Does nobody else find kits bloated with only +get healed skills dull?
Sorry that was off-topic.

Has it not been said that Square-Enix doesnt count healer damage into raid encounters? (Yes this is me asking a question. I heard its been said before, I never personally heard it from SE so no, I dont have or want to look for a link. My point still stands outside this one simple statement, as the others are 100% factual.) As well as Yoshida saying he hates cleric stance, ... and then SE removing a ton of healer damage spells?

It doesn't matter what a mouth at Square says when the encounters are designed for healer DPS. Most savage fights on release require healer DPS, or at least speedkill-level skill from everyone else. Healer DPS is required, Square just doesn't want to facilitate harassing bad healers, same with tanks and DPS (hence no ingame damage logging)

To me it seems 100% intentional that they removed all damage spells except a few from healers. They dont want them letting people die to do damage. Neither do I.

Well it didn't work. Why? Bad design or bad player. You can't fix a bad player with game design, unless you take the player out of the equation.
Best way to fix it would be to open up more opportunities to heal without losing DPS, that way people can't use the 'but muh deeps' excuse.

[Daniolaut]

I once had a RDM who did nothing but their Black magic abilities and never meleed. We should reduce RDM's abilities to 3 buttons .

Isnt this why DNC exists? If you want a super easy DPS to play, play DNC not RDM.

Not sure why you would want all dps jobs to be 1-2 buttons like dancer?

We want complexity too.

Which is why I suggested removing mitigation actions from dps classes and making healers do it.

Not the most perfect solution, but its a start.

This is true... In ARR. Everything beyond that they 100% include healer DPS as it's pretty much impossible to meet enrage without healers doing DPS. Cleric stance was removed in Stormblood (or change to such a huge degree that it became a small DPS buff window instead of a massive "stance dance" ability). DPS reduction was done an expansion later in Shadowbringers.

I am aware when changes are made. Not sure what youre trying to accomplish in this statement.

My point in saying what I said here, was they clearly moved in the direction to reduce the complexity of the damage rotation for healers to help combat poor gameplay.

Nobody wants them to die to do damage, but that's not the jobs fault... That's the person playing the jobs fault. Don't blame the tools, blame the craftsman.

But according to everyone else, I'm the troll and the healer who let everyone die is a good player. Thats the point I'm making. This person only made the run last longer by letting half the party die.

Removing damage spells doesn't make people not use the remaining ones.

You can't say that Square removed damage options to make people heal more. If they did then can you please show me where?

Other possible reasons: (paraphrased from a prior post of mine)
They wanted to give each healer a solid base healing kit for now, and have the DPS kit expanded in further expansions
(to which they failed because AST is far superior to WHM/SCH)

They wanted to dumb down the DPS kit for newbies new to heal+damage
(to which they failed because only WHM has any in-kit encouraging to DPS, which doesn't come in until level 74)

They wanted to prune skills to stuff more boring healing actions into us.
(to which they succeeded, at the cost of long-term fun)

Seriously does anyone find Fey Blessing a worthwhile addition to SCH's kit? Why is the most interesting action (Afflatus Misery) this expansion just a damage return for GCD healing?
Am I going insane? Does nobody else find kits bloated with only +get healed skills dull?
Sorry that was off-topic.

It doesn't matter what a mouth at Square says when the encounters are designed for healer DPS. Most savage fights on release require healer DPS, or at least speedkill-level skill from everyone else. Healer DPS is required, Square just doesn't want to facilitate harassing bad healers, same with tanks and DPS (hence no ingame damage logging)

Well it didn't work. Why? Bad design or bad player. You can't fix a bad player with game design, unless you take the player out of the equation.
Best way to fix it would be to open up more opportunities to heal without losing DPS, that way people can't use the 'but muh deeps' excuse.

I'm aware of everything you said. I gave a proposed option.

SE cant "make" people work together, no. You only pointed out what I pointed out.

I also dont see how AST is "far superior." I think thats a bit of an exaggerated statement.

I personally think rewarding a damage spell for healing is a step in the right direction. You're welcome to disagree.

I'm kinda failing to see your point in this post except that you just dont like anything I say. Which is fine, you dont have to agree with me. I know people have different view points. I do appreciate you at least explaining your reasoning instead of just saying "no" or something completely pointless.

[Snek]

Isnt this why DNC exists? If you want a super easy DPS to play, play DNC not RDM.

Not sure why you would want all dps jobs to be 1-2 buttons like dancer?

Apologies, I thought I made it clear that the example given there was to show a similarity in poor suggestion/reasoning. To be clear: no job should be so simple, and there's a bit more to DNC than that.

I am aware when changes are made. Not sure what youre trying to accomplish in this statement.

Was answering this question which made it seem like you weren't sure:

Has it not been said that Square-Enix doesn't count healer damage into raid encounters? (Yes this is me asking a question. I heard its been said before, I never personally heard it from SE so no, I dont have or want to look for a link. My point still stands outside this one simple statement, as the others are 100% factual.) As well as Yoshida saying he hates cleric stance, ... and then SE removing a ton of healer damage spells?

My point in saying what I said here, was they clearly moved in the direction to reduce the complexity of the damage rotation for healers to help combat poor gameplay.

Yes, and what everyone is saying is that this doesn't work. Even if they reduce all healers to 3 spells, a DPS spell, a heal everyone spell, and a raise. There will ALWAYS be someone who does nothing but press their one DPS ability. There will always be some folk who play a role very very poorly. What everyone is saying is that this is the wrong mindset. Don't blame the tools (i.e. the job) blame the craftsman (i.e. the player) for using their tools so poorly.

But according to everyone else, I'm the troll and the healer who let everyone die is a good player. Thats the point I'm making. This person only made the run last longer by letting half the party die.

People do not think you're the troll because you don't want the player to die, people think you're the troll because you are blaming the wrong thing for the death. Think of it like this: Ever had a dungeon run where you had a tank never put on their tank stance? Probably not because everyone immediately tells them to put on tank stance. But, for the sake of example, lets say nobody did and everyone died. Is it the jobs fault, or the players fault?

[ForteNightshade]

It happens all the time. I just finished witnessing this happening. A 99% "healer" spamming glare over and over, and then the tank dying after taking a tank buster at 60% HP, then not getting shielded or healed, prior or after the tank buster, resulting in death.

At i481, 60% of my HP is roughly 87,000. What tank busters outside of EX and Savage will hit hard enough through Vengeance/Raw that a auto-attack will finish them off? Maybe Shiva but there's absolutely no reason to top up a tank to nearly full HP in baby content. Which segues nicely into...

This was a 99% savage healer in a story mode raid, refusing to heal.

Guess why that is? Healing is trivial in story mode raids. In fact, back in Stormblood a friend and I did a little experiment. We queued into Phantom Train and did precisely zero DPS—even going so far as to out ranage Assize and Earthly Star so they wouldn't clip him. The healing requirements were so laughable, I could have /sit and gone to make dinner without her even noticing. We then did the opposite; DPSing extremely aggressively and playing "how low can the party go". Given the second set of tanks used CDs better, they were even more comfy than the ones we were spam healing. Nevertheless, our combined HPS was comically low yet no one was remotely in danger.

The simple fact is healing requirements in story mode content is a complete joke. You could program a bot to handle it. That's why you see such aggressive playstyles. Sure, some people take it too far and allow people to die but it's nowhere near as prevalent as you're insinuating. If you want healers to focus more on healing, convince the dev team to make healing more of a requirement so the above scenario can't happen. No role should be able to AFK from their primary responsibility and it have no impact. Healers can. Or at least one of them can.

[Daniolaut]

Apologies, I thought I made it clear that the example given there was to show a similarity in poor suggestion/reasoning. To be clear: no job should be so simple, and there's a bit more to DNC than that.

No you did, I was letting you know your comparison was not even similar by "going completely off topic." Because that's essentially what you did. In my opinion of course.

Yes, and what everyone is saying is that this doesn't work. Even if they reduce all healers to 3 spells, a DPS spell, a heal everyone spell, and a raise. There will ALWAYS be someone who does nothing but press their one DPS ability.

Which I am also aware of. The problem is, as was stated in my original post, its widely accepted and actually encouraged to do this. Force all the healing onto one healer, and let the other healer deal damage.

Sure, there are some healers who work together, but in a pug situation, more often than not, the "better" healer is going to do nothing except cast damage spells, and they are either going to wipe the entire raid and they are going to call everyone horrible players, or the other healer is going to pick up their slack because they don't want to waste time.

Its happened plenty of times.

People do not think you're the troll because you don't want the player to die, people think you're the troll because you are blaming the wrong thing for the death.

No, I'm pretty sure people are calling me a troll, because I don't follow the hive mind of "dps is king" mindset. While watching countless parties wipe, that otherwise shouldn't.

I also wasnt blaming the job. I repeated what everyone else was saying "healing is so boring/flawed" and gave a simple proposed solution. (Moving Feint/addle to healers, and changing all damage taken up debuffs to damage down debuffs.)

Thats literally all I said in my post. The rest is pointless fluff.

If I said:

Thread title:
I have an idea for healing changes.

Thread body:
I came up with an idea to remove feint/addle to protect/shell, to make healing a bit more engaging.

....people would either ignore the thread or just say "no"

I'm very well versed in how the forums work by now.

At i481, 60% of my HP is roughly 87,000. What tank busters outside of EX and Savage will hit hard enough through Vengeance/Raw that a auto-attack will finish them off? Maybe Shiva but there's absolutely no reason to top up a tank to nearly full HP in baby content. Which segues nicely into...



Guess why that is? Healing is trivial in story mode raids. .

Fine.
What I saw exactly. Since I do not parse.
Was the tank was at 67,000 HP roughly.
Then the boss started casting a tank buster.
The mentioned healer only cast glare at this time. Because thats what I saw. At least thats the only thing I saw. I wasnt paying 100% to only them.

Then
After the tank was at 67,000 HP or so.
They dropped to around 1,600 HP.
Then they died.

I never saw said healer cast anything else.

Healing is so trivial in this fight, yet their assize and whatever the other healer was doing resulted in not only the tanks death, but roughly half the party as well.

The duty was cleared with only 4-5 people standing. This only increased the time spent in the raid.

Had the healer healed the tank, instead of doing what you did. deeming it trivial and refusing to heal, the fight would have not lasted nearly as long.

So congrats to you and anyone else who refuses to heal forcing people who actually care, such as that RDM spamming ver-cure or PLD spamming Clemency because healers wont heal

Maybe. Just maybe those "such bad players" doing those things wouldnt have to if healers did their jobs. Just a thought though. Clearly i'm wrong.

And before you go having a knee jerk reaction and say "blah blah blah, you dont need to heal immediatley/top people off." I'm ONE HUNDRED PERCENT aware. I play healer too. I also dont heal people immediately to 100%.

The key point here, the point I am making. Is that healers should pay attention and work as a team.

I wont "just let people die" when I'm healing. I am not parsing. I don't care about parses. I care about clearing, and avoiding needless issues. I push damage as a DPS a tank a healer and I clear fights when the party works together.

The problem I run into is people like this causing needless problems, and thinking they are literally a "god" at the game when they are the furthest from it.

[AceofRains]

I especially like this idea, because it puts the proper responsibility onto healers, and removes the "boring, healers have nothing to do besides spam one attack" complaint.

It also gives the opportunity to restore the actions "protect" and "shell."

Feint > Protect:

Role Ability
Protect:
Type-Ability
Cast-Instant
Recast-90s
MP Cost-0
Range-15-20y
Increases parties physical defense by 10%.
Duration: 10s

Addle > Shell:
Shell:
Type-Ability
Cast-Instant
Recast-90s
MP Cost-0
Range-15-20y
Increases parties magical defense by 10%.
Duration: 10s

It also removes AST from being the only healer that can perform both shield and regen capabilities.

Oh my gawd I was thinking the same thing about restoring Protect and Shell like this, except specifically for White Mage, and possibly brining back old Sacred Prism which allows you to turn it into an AoE. However for the intents and purposes of AoE, White Mage does have Temperance.

I would see it as a single target spell with a 1 second cast like Esuna. That way as the Tank Buster or Raid-wide lands you can follow up with a OGC without clipping.

Like, I look at WHM’s kit and there’s such an excessive amount of healing skills, but they definitely stand to mitigate by a clutch protect or shell, among having like one more DPS spell.


The other roles don’t need Feint and Addle- it takes away from the job of mitigation, which is a Healers duty.

[Yshtola]

Oh look, it's another bad take from the adoring fan lookalike.

[Snek]

No you did, I was letting you know your comparison was not even similar by "going completely off topic." Because that's essentially what you did. In my opinion of course.

We can agree to disagree there, having a healer not do their primary job (i.e. healing) is the same as having a DPS not do theirs IMO.

Which I am also aware of. The problem is, as was stated in my original post, its widely accepted and actually encouraged to do this. Force all the healing onto one healer, and let the other healer deal damage.

IMO, I think it's less that it's "widely accepted" and more of a "nobody notices if it's a clear". If there is constant wipes they'd blame both healers as they wouldn't have noticed who the problem is. The best solution here is to make healing checks in regular content impossible to do as a solo healer... Or create a HUD element that allows people to parse so everyone knows who isn't doing their job. But we know neither of that will happen.

No, I'm pretty sure people are calling me a troll, because I don't follow the hive mind of "dps is king" mindset. While watching countless parties wipe, that otherwise shouldn't.

The "DPS is king" mindset was cultivated by Squeenix. Their healer design with incredibly strong oGCD healing and tight enrages pushes healers to needing to pump out as much DPS as possible. Couple that with highly scripted fight design you can then plan out all your heals to barely ever have to press a GCD heal. They'd need to rethink how they design fights (i.e. a TON more variation) or seriously crank up the incoming damage. Your suggestion doesn't solve this problem.

I also wasnt blaming the job. I repeated what everyone else was saying "healing is so boring/flawed" and gave a simple proposed solution. (Moving Feint/addle to healers, and changing all damage taken up debuffs to damage down debuffs.)

Apologies, guess I got caught up when you appeared to defended the 2 button healer design which I thought was odd, since it didn't compliment your opening post. Personally I don't think DPS need to lose their 1 or 2 defensive party utility skills (but won't care if they do either). I do fully agree that they need to reassess how they're designing healers. But moving 2 skills really doesn't change anything... The problems are still there. They'll still be pressing their DPS buttons 80% of the time and be bored out of their skull. Also: making the boss attack the healers after the tanks dies just ensures the wipe if they don't have a DPS with a raise and, again, doesn't solve the problem of one healer not bothering to heal.

[PondHollow]

There are no systems in place to punish healers for not doing their job

There's a high likeliness if healers don't do their job everyone dies. If that doesn't happen, there was a high likeliness the healers were fine.

I can see no record of your savage progress, so if you've been met with people boasting about savage stuff and not cooperating, I'm sorry your group experiences have been poor. Fortunately most of the player base is not like that. It is not so ubiquitous a situation as to merit retroactive introduction of new mechanics all over the place.

As a healer who overheals, I promise you you don't want a culture that makes it likely you'll get two of me in your Shiva weeklies.

[AceofRains]

I wanted to bring up additions or edits to DPS rotations for Healers. I can’t say they need to be a lot more complex but they are lacking a few things that can be done in a unique way., I just feel more comfortable with discussing it with OP. Not to derail your initial thread suggestions.

White Mage: Assize no longer deals immediate damage/less offensive potency, or same potency but does this by trait, spreads Aero/Dia from one enemy in the zone, to all enemies hit.
Also needs a move and attack spell like Scholar’s Ruin II. Maybe Banish?

Scholar:
-Selene is DPS fairy. She won’t heal heal, she will attack. Speed boost comes back. Instead of Whispering Dawn, you get an AoE DoT, like Fey Curse or something. Maybe it’s an AoE slow.
-Alternatively, a spread DoT could be facilitated by a trait that makes Biolysis spread to every enemy around the one inflicted with Chain Stratagem. Much more thematic. Or both.
-Ruin II trait upgrades to a spell of higher potency while under the effect of Aetherflow. It does not however consume stacks.

Astrologian:
-Bring back Stella. Stella now deals immediate damage like chain lightning to any combust inflicted enemies, and spreads combust to 2 other enemies. It’s like a constellation effect where you connect the DoTs a few times, then start heavier AoE with Gravity.
-Also could use a move and attack spell like Ruin II, but possibly not since lightspeed helps make this possible for Malefic. Demi perhaps?