Do healers have to be easy to play?

[EmmetOtter]

Simply put, no.

Enhancing healers' damage kits does not expand their scope. Healers can currently deal damage. There is no reason that a more interesting set of damage abilities must increase their offensive output. Adding significant healing resources to damage classes would expand their scope. Equating the two is fallacious.

What's the point then? Asking for more buttons to push only to get the same damage output isn't beneficial, let alone "more interesting". Additional complexity for the sake of more complexity is a terrible reason.

[Darkmoonrise]

First, let’s face it, pure healer princesses are a rare breed. They make a lot of noise here but if you look at the ratio in game, they are pretty much inexistent (at least on Chaos). I see a specimen only now and then, something like once every 30 DFs and in PF their lifetime is around 3 wipes so doesn't matter. Thus, from my point of view, this an overrate problem. The real issue is that SE listen to the people making the most noise.

Now to address the problem, I don’t mind pure healer. What I dislike are dead weight. And a healer overhealing the hell out of the party or just standing there doing nothing is exactly that, a dead weight. And it’s not only healers, it can be no-rotation DPS, or no-aggro tank.

Currently if I face such a weight in a party, I do my best to prevent them to die out of boredom. For instance, as a tank, if the healer is a princess, I won’t use my cd nor avoid aoes.

OP, you’re right by saying that basic healing should be easy, and I think SE thinks the same. The problem is that the current implementation of this is: “heal requirement is very low”. It implies that the healer minimal job is almost non-existent, thus allowing pure healer to do nothing.

There is (at least) another solution to fulfil this requirement: “heal requirement is a full part job, except if you follow [other mechanism]”. [other mechanism] can be DPS, or cleaning buffs, or whatever, as long as you smash buttons. With such a solution, the healer has the choice. If he’s not confident doing something else, he can spam heal and it will work. On the other hand, if he’s confident, he can follow [other mechanism] to bring something else to the party.

Here are some examples on the top of my head to implement such a solution.

• A damage buff on the mobs which is cleared if the healer attacks it. So, the healer either DPS or needs to heal more. The buff comes back every 2-3 gcd, it could stack too.
• DPS ability with a very short (2 gcd) damage debuff. So, either you heal the none mitigated incoming damage or you DPS to decrease the incoming damage.
• Increase overhealing aggro by a lot, so it prevents heal spamming and force people to be aware of the party status.
• Increase the cost of all healing abilities (or disable auto MP regen) and add MP regen to DPS abilities. No DPS no MP no Heal.
• You get aggro by not casting. So, if people do nothing they get aggro. (this is maybe not a good idea)

Idea which don’t force but encourage DPS:

• Heal ability which potency increase the more you DPS.
• Healer rotation, with 2 damages at the beginning and a big heal at the end.
• Leech healing. Percentage of your DPS is converted to heal. (this could be the base for a whole new heal job)

Do you have more ideas to force heal to choose between easy heal spam or complex mechasim that brings something to the party?

[Seraphor]

What's the point then? Asking for more buttons to push only to get the same damage output isn't beneficial, let alone "more interesting". Additional complexity for the sake of more complexity is a terrible reason.

Not the same thing though.

You're assuming "Casting Glare and then comboing to Glare II will deal the same damage as casting Glare on it's own" which is incorrect, that's not the argument, as that system would be redundant.

Rather it would be anew system relative to an old system that would have the same output.
e.g. Glare has a potency of 250, Glare II has a potency of 350.
This way, comboing does deal more damage, but compared to the current system where Glare = 300 potency, it's the same output.
This could lead to greater DPS optimisation, and allow those who get more 'downtime' to pump out more damage than those who don't.

Obviously a simply 1>2 combo wouldn't actually be much more interesting to do, it's just to illustrate the numbers.



Personally I think WHM could take a page out of BLM's book with it's AF/UI, only instead it would apply to the healing/dps split.
We already see a taste in this with Lilies, using heals powers up a DPS spell.
What if using Glare granted a 3s buff that increased healing output by 3%, and could stack up to 3 times to 9% along with increasing the duration to 9s.
e.g. 1 Glare = 3s of +3% healing
2 Glares = 6s of +6%
3 Glares = 9s of +9%
Once you hit that 9s buff, it locks in place and can't be extended further until it reaches 0.

Therefore you're encouraged to get three Glares out in a row as often as possible to optimise healing, which in turn allows you to DPS more because you were able to heal more. But it would effectively discourage you spamming Glare more than 3 times because you want to actually take advantage of the healing buff.

Allow Holy to extend the duration of this buff without actually applying it or boosting it. Maybe by 2s each cast so that it will eventually run out still.
Maybe make it so this buff is only applicable when casting Glare on a target inflicted with Dia.
Then add in one new DPS skill that can spend a Lily, which a higher potency than Glare, but doesn't apply this healing buff.

You then want to open with a Dia, Glare x3 and then heal, and if you don't need to heal too much, you can spend a Lily for more DPS until you need to apply a Glare again.

[Jaelommiss]

What's the point then? Asking for more buttons to push only to get the same damage output isn't beneficial, let alone "more interesting". Additional complexity for the sake of more complexity is a terrible reason.

Interesting gameplay is dependent on decision making. Having multiple options is a necessary component of decision making. Adding additional buttons isn't interesting in itself, but is a foundational requirement for creating interesting gameplay.

You could take every combat class in the game, work out its average potency per GCD, and replace everything they have with a button that deals that exact amount of damage. When they reach a point that their average potency per GCD would increase, upgrade that one button to reflect the new amount.

Consider the following possibilities:
A 30 sec dot (Dia) and a direct attack spell (Glare)

A 1-2 spell combo (Glare w/ 2.0* sec casting time then Glare II w/ 2.5 sec casting time) that grants +5% healing potency for 10 secs, stacking up to five times. A 30 sec dot (Dia). A strong GCD spell (Glare III w/ 2.5 sec casting time) with a 15 sec CD that is always a crit against targets affected by Dia and grants +20% healing potency on the next healing spell within 15 secs on a crit. Glare III's CD is reset and its next cast becomes instant after spending a lily. A 60 sec CD that allows +healing stacks to be consumed, granting -10% healing and +10% damage per stack for 15 seconds.

If if they were both balanced to deal equal damage and healing I would prefer the second one because it's vastly more interactive.


*Necessary because combos are server validated

[EaMett]

Interesting gameplay is dependent on decision making. Having multiple options is a necessary component of decision making. Adding additional buttons isn't interesting in itself, but is a foundational requirement for creating interesting gameplay.

In addition to this, more decision making allows for more personal expression and better rewards. If you look at how SCH was in the past. You had twice the amount of timers to keep track of, it was more complicated and harder to play. But when you did it right you were really rewarded by performing better than your colleagues SCHs. Currently, one dot and one attack leaves no room for improvements, once you're good enough to manage 2 buttons you'll get bored since there's nothing more to optimize (in your dps rotation).

[elioaiko]

Healers in the leveling process should be easy to learn. However, they should be progressively expand on their complexity as you gain levels.

I don't get this idea that WHM is the easy healer. So it should held back to just Glare spam or just direct heals?

Honestly the only healer right now that takes any semblance of a braincell to use is AST and that's just because of its cards.

As for the DPS part of their kits, I think they could be expanded on. Spamming one spell is really dull and honestly doesn't make sense. Yes they aren't supposed to be DPS levels of complexity however, it would greatly make the lack of actual healing less boring.

SE will never make healing difficult simply because bad players will never get better. If they never learn how to properly time their CDs, then they will likely not pass said content if they increase the damage to match a pure healer aesthetic.

So what are we left with? Given the design of the game in general, downtime is inevitable. Once a fight is memorized, all there's left is to optimize it which in a healers case, is to DPS more while planning you and your cohealer's oGCDs out to cover it.

Healers should have more complexity in different ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be as difficult as AST.

What I miss about SCH is balancing DoT timers with your oGCD healing, but that's gone. They could have proc-based spells from using oGCDs.

WHM could be the healer with an actual combo where their GCD heals reward them with a spender like we have with Misery. They could expand on that with ST ones or even a DoT lily spell.

Point being, that DPS and healing should go hand in hand, not entirely seperate. It shouldn't be focus on spamming one button, then dropping it for GCD healing because emergency. It should be a mesh that rewards your for learning and optimizing it.

[NobleWinter]

In theory that should work but the issue would be how the WHM's damage is weighed against the buffs and the debuffs.
As the party size grows the collective buffed damage of the group/debuffed boss would easily outweigh the WHM damage output otherwise you'd have to scale WHM through the roof which would make them OP solo.
It would just lead to another mandatory SCH/AST meta.

I always hear this argument and I think it could be fixed with a trait at Level 1. Lets call it 'Conjurer's Call' and say that for lore reasons you reach out to the elementals to help protect your allies granting an increase in damage potency for each person added to your party. This would make the WHM personal dps grow just like the raidwide buffs of your other healing counterparts.

[Lyth]

Everything becomes easier with gear. This allows players at different skill levels to clear the same fight.

A bigger problem is that healing doesn't really matter all that much. Raid wipes matter. Individual deaths much less so, especially if you can just brute force it with superior dps. Here's a scary thought: if there was a hard cap on the number of rez uses per pull shared amongst your entire team, then even the 'baseline' act of healing is something valuable, and every would-be fatal misstep averted by your healers carries all that more weight.

There also needs to be an emphasis placed on giving both healers something to actively heal at the same time, such that it's impossible to fulfill both tasks with one healer alone.

Lastly, resource management needs to be a thing. Every job has a second resource system outside of MP. Cooldowns and resources are superfluous unless fights actively force their attrition.

Healing needs to have value. But that comes from having there be consequences for poor healing.

[Liam_Harper]

The easier you make something, the worse people who aren't that interested in improvement become. They don't suddenly become useful players. They only want to put the bare minimum in and all you've done is made that minimum even lower. They also develop the "it's easy who cares?" attitude as they're carried through content and bad habits become ingrained because you can reach lv80 without anything forcing you to adapt.

Heal dps is 2-3 buttons and the large majority of healers are still terrible at it and putting out poor healing at the same time. Low dps uptime, no idea how to plan movement, heal sniping and overhealing for light damage but falling to pieces and running around panicking when real damage or deaths happen, barely utilizing oGcd's and so on.
You could make healing even easier and those players would actually get even worse, which seems to be the direction we're going.

Accessibility as a means to boost player numbers is a trap many companies fall into. The reason it even works temporarily is that they have a great game at the core which carries their success, but rather than focus on and develop that core for the people who love it, they tear it to bits, water it down and hand it out like fast food.
The issue is they've pushed the veterans away from many activities and the remaining players get easily bored because they don't even like the activity that much and will demand easier and easier content while continuing to put minimum effort in. It's a steady decline. WoW is a good example of this, they're still going but their subscriber numbers are like a ghost of their past glory and very few people will claim WoW is an amazing game anymore. It'd be sad if FF14 went that way in the years to come.

[Absurdity]

Preventative healing (i.e shields) is arguably easier than reactive healing. Blanketing a raid with shields to mitigate a player's mistakes before they happen is easier than reacting to player error whilst the healer is also having to navigate the same mechanics.

In theory yes, in practice the shields are currently so minor that you end up having to heal people's mistakes anyway which causes you to end up in the same situation as a reactive healer, just with an extra GCD wasted.


I'm in the camp of "I don't care which healer becomes the easy one, as long as the others are more engaging." If they want to make SCH the "tutorial healer" go ahead, they already removed most of it's interesting kit anyway.

First, let’s face it, pure healer princesses are a rare breed. They make a lot of noise here but if you look at the ratio in game, they are pretty much inexistent (at least on Chaos). I see a specimen only now and then, something like once every 30 DFs and in PF their lifetime is around 3 wipes so doesn't matter. Thus, from my point of view, this an overrate problem. The real issue is that SE listen to the people making the most noise.

They are a lot more common in leveling dungeons but yes, even on Light they are rather rare. There do however seem to be quite a lot more of them on NA data centers.