LL impressions pre-patchnotes: healers still garbo it seems

[Semirhage]

I've said it before: this is an echo of a problem healing roles have had for a long time, in a lot of games, that have seen solutions far more nuanced than the one we saw with 5.0. Healing is usually a pretty boring, thankless task for a lot of people. Some get into it for the roleplay, but you need a healing system that's FAR more interesting than Cure, Other Cure, Big Cure, Long Cure, Pre-Cure, and Party Cure to capture the interest of the people who hop in for the gameplay aspects. Some have solved it by making that interesting gameplay loop (though I haven't seen it too often. It's much easier to design an intuitive DPS). Some have solved it by making healing a thing you can do pretty well, but also easily/quickly set aside during the time it's not useful.

SE seems to have taken the dreaded third road: listen to DPS and Tank players b**tch and moan about "their" healers not being good little healbots because it's a healer's job to keep MY glorious rotation going so keep hacking their kits down until they learn "their place" as a Trust AI purely focused on me and my gameplay experience. I died once in a 24 man with 6 vuln stacks, why wasn't that healer healing meeeeeeeee. Take away that pesky Malefic because it's distracting them from carrying meeeee through the content.

Expect more of this to come.

[Kabooa]

SE seems to have taken the dreaded third road: listen to DPS and Tank players b**tch and moan about "their" healers not being good little healbots because it's a healer's job to keep MY glorious rotation going so keep hacking their kits down until they learn "their place" as a Trust AI purely focused on me and my gameplay experience. I died once in a 24 man with 6 vuln stacks, why wasn't that healer healing meeeeeeeee. Take away that pesky Malefic because it's distracting them from carrying meeeee through the content.

Nothing says credible like looking at the one or two posts created per patch about how one person screwed it up and using that to generalize a population.

[elioaiko]

They have made changes that no one wanted and simplified everything with no reasons, it took them 2 years for doing this and healers are still not balanced properly. They will add a 4th healer, great, it will be > to the all 3 others cause it will attract people and it will be nerfed few patches later. I'm maybe pessimistic but i don't trust SE anymore for this task ^^'

They will continue to mess up healers and tanks as long as they keep up this charade that they know what's best for the 2 roles when they openly admit that they play mostly DPS jobs themselves.

Don't get me wrong I think they did a fantastic job on RDM, SAM, DNC. But that's where it stops, it seems like the current team knows how to design DPS jobs and admittedly, it is the most flexible role to design for.

But they really need to hire some new battle designers or have a sit down conversation with an an actual healer/tank main. And no, influencers do not count, as most of them are also DPS mains.

[Ramura_Sono]

The fact that they are changing Monk because they felt like waiting for the next expansion was "too much" while we healers have been claiming for reworks and changes for more than one year and yet we haven't recived any kind of feedback is something that I find outright insulting.

You do realize they've been telling monks to "wait for the next expansion" since Heavensward, right? You realize Monks have been asking for changes and reworks for the better half of a decade, right? You thinking the lack of feedback with regards to healers, is in anyway comparable to how the devs have treated monk is laughable.

[MintnHoney]

influencers do not count, as most of them are also DPS mains.

Even if they were strictly healer mains, an influencer would be a poor choice just because it can't be guaranteed that they would be impartial enough to give an honest critique (most, if not all, would feel inclined to feed compliments and avoid getting on Squeen's bad side so that they, too, might get the invites and the products and sponsorships, and also potentially avoid video takedowns and claims, etc.).

You do realize they've been telling monks to "wait for the next expansion" since Heavensward, right? You realize Monks have been asking for changes and reworks for the better half of a decade, right? You thinking the lack of feedback with regards to healers, is in anyway comparable to how the devs have treated monk is laughable.

At least they told Monks that they were inclined to agree that this was an issue due to player feedback, and had/have intended to "fix it," rather than ignoring them the whole time and saying, when they do acknowledge them (that one time), that they see nothing wrong and nothing will be changed.

[ForteNightshade]

Well, so it's the difference of ends and means to that ends.

See, if you want to see the means to which SE got to the ends isn't ideal... I actually agree with you there.

But as I also tend to prefer playing a certain healer that has spent a good chunk of time being the healer no one wants in their groups, and that some people think should be the inferior healer by default, I'm not quite so eager to throw away balance for a mid-expac rework even if such were viable.

To be fair, it cannot be understated FFlogs played a significant role in that exclusion. At the time, pDPS was all that matter. Which meant if you had any interesting in parsing, you wanted buff jobs. Black Mage, Monk, and later Samurai, languished in obscurity for essentially the same reason. With the shift to rDPS/aDPS, selfish jobs no longer have worry about the almighty Trick Attack, Piercing debuff and etc. That isn't to say White Mage lacked issues but I sincerely doubt it would have been ostracized the way it was had rDPS being the ranking factor; 3.4 notwithstanding. 10% AoE balance was just comically broken.

[WaxSw]

You do realize they've been telling monks to "wait for the next expansion" since Heavensward, right? You realize Monks have been asking for changes and reworks for the better half of a decade, right? You thinking the lack of feedback with regards to healers, is in anyway comparable to how the devs have treated monk is laughable.

The big difference there is the feedback, devs told the monks that at least they knew the problems there were, we've seen zero feedback from the devs since the start of the expansion, they've been talking about 2B's butt more time than about the healers in the last 3 live letters and on top of that healer design right now I'd say is the worst design I've ever seen in any game ever, at least monks got to be rewarded by good execution in all their iterations clunkier or not, healer's reward is having a more boring job most of the time

[bundythenoob]

The big difference there is the feedback, devs told the monks that at least they knew the problems there were, we've seen zero feedback from the devs since the start of the expansion, they've been talking about 2B's butt more time than about the healers in the last 3 live letters and on top of that healer design right now I'd say is the worst design I've ever seen in any game ever, at least monks got to be rewarded by good execution in all their iterations clunkier or not, healer's reward is having a more boring job most of the time

I would add that Tanks are in a similar situation as healers right now, not only with the simplification of gameplay kits, but with the lack of meaningful dev feedback. the only thing saving tanks from being as boring as healers is that we have a gimped dps rotation instead of just 2 buttons. either way, the lack of communication from devs for both playerbases is disturbing, and is not helped by the content drought. Even a simple "we hear you, please wait while we think" would ease much of the worries of both healer and tank communities.

If this accessibility and lack of communication continues past 6.0, I know for a fact that irreparable damage will be dealt. just look at what happened to WoW, and now FFXIV is in the early stages of such changes.

[elioaiko]

SE seems to have taken the dreaded third road: listen to DPS and Tank players b**tch and moan about "their" healers not being good little healbots because it's a healer's job to keep MY glorious rotation going so keep hacking their kits down until they learn "their place" as a Trust AI purely focused on me and my gameplay experience. I died once in a 24 man with 6 vuln stacks, why wasn't that healer healing meeeeeeeee. Take away that pesky Malefic because it's distracting them from carrying meeeee through the content.

It drives me insane when those who have never played healer role in any online game choose to speak for the role they never were a part of.

I knew someone from an old FC who had the mindset that healers are just healbots and that "healers are only one way and that their DPS spells are unnecessary."

Would always have him whining in chat about how low his HP got that "good" healers strictly focus on healing and keep 100% HP.

Helped him a roulette with some other members and all he did was cast Adlo and Physick, and the tank asked him if he could use Excog or Fey Union. His response oGCDs was for emergencies so he won't be using them and "pull smaller if you can't handle it."

Eventually he left the FC due him disagreeing with the leader about how healing works. During the argument, he said that healing was boring and proclaimed to WoW as the MMO for healers and that FFXIV should be more like that.

Overall, I feel that no one but the healing community itself should have an option on what works and what doesn't. DPS players mostly (I feel that tanks understand or even dual role at times) should not speak for healer jobs because they either don't care enough or understand what's the core issue that needs changing.

More like "they're fine" or "I felt that SCH was really strong and needs nerfing".

[Corbeau]

Eventually he left the FC due him disagreeing with the leader about how healing works. During the argument, he said that healing was boring and proclaimed to WoW as the MMO for healers and that FFXIV should be more like that.

That's pretty funny considering the WoW healers I remember had more complex DPS rotations, with procs and/or interconnected skills that impacted each other, than the XIV healers.