Do you want healers to be reworked from the ground up?

[Hazama999]

For me to find healing engaging, the devs would have to likely revamp how the game is played, and primarily how damage is dealt.
Maybe it's cause I'm a medical student so there's bias in here, but healing in XIV is much-too binary. Anyone, even those not in this profession, can tell you that different ailments often require different treatments. You do not engage a laceration the same way you engage a burn.

The problem I see with healing in XIV is that in this magical world full of all kinds of potentially destructive energies, their infliction is reduced to just that: damaged or not damaged. This reductive approach makes for an equally reductive approach of dealing with said damage. It all comes down to... keeping the HP up. There is no nuance. What triaging exists is extremely basic.

The idea of proposing a complex healing system, however, feels like a pipe dream in this game. I suppose they could at least start with different types of damage?

[Deceptus]

IMO the jobs should be balanced around how they work in Savage, and let the rest of the game figure it out.

Absolutely, 100% wrong. You can't balance the game around content that 90% of the playerbase will never experience.

[Lyth]

Exactly. However, those 'gameplay elements' that 90% of the playerbase experiences are focused around housing issues and pretty pretty Mogstation glamours, if the Q+A sessions are anything to go by. Why would you address job balance issues around meeting their preferences, instead of the 10% of the playerbase who are more invested in playing said jobs than they are at playing dress-up? You're catering to the wrong audience.

[Almagnus1]

Absolutely, 100% wrong. You can't balance the game around content that 90% of the playerbase will never experience.

Actually you should because what's going to work in that environment is going to form the meta for everything else in the game.

[Veis_Alveare]

Absolutely, 100% wrong. You can't balance the game around content that 90% of the playerbase will never experience.

You can only balance jobs around their maximum potential contribution. To do less than that is to not actually balance anything but just rather assigning arbitrary numbers.

There's no "balancing" jobs around a dungeon setting or a suboptimal rotation.

All job balance is top-down. What works in Ultimate/late stage Savage will absolutely be fine in all other content but the same can't be said for something like an Alliance raid.

[Semirhage]

I don't think many would argue that the healers are currently unbalanced. They're just not fun to play.
Where I agree: Sacrificing fun for excessive homogenization and a narrow focus on numerical balance is a bad idea in a game.
Where my eyes narrow: "Therefore since balance is less important than fun, clearly that means this philosophy only applies to two out of the three healers who both get to be fun and directly stronger than the third one, and that one can languish in simplicity because it belongs there."

You take off the thumbscrews and allow all three healers design space, or we're going to be right back here in another expansion or so. I'll beat this drum as long as I keep seeing "Oh just revert AST and SCH and keep WHM the same as it currently is".

[ADVSS]

I don't think many would argue that the healers are currently unbalanced. They're just not fun to play.
Where I agree: Sacrificing fun for excessive homogenization and a narrow focus on numerical balance is a bad idea in a game.
Where my eyes narrow: "Therefore since balance is less important than fun, clearly that means this philosophy only applies to two out of the three healers who both get to be fun and directly stronger than the third one, and that one can languish in simplicity because it belongs there."

You take off the thumbscrews and allow all three healers design space, or we're going to be right back here in another expansion or so. I'll beat this drum as long as I keep seeing "Oh just revert AST and SCH and keep WHM the same as it currently is".

Yeah, i understand that some tuning may be necessary for things to be fair and balanced, but man did they crank it up to 11 on healers and tanks. Theres a critical point between "ease of use" and "like watching paint dry" and i think they may have crossed that line a little bit on some jobs in both catagories.. I'm not too thrilled what might happen next expansion. Theres going to be some new job actions displayed that will inevitably disappoint people when they see what they really are all about,instead of how they're portrayed. The only thing left too murder some of these jobs in pve is to put the pvp one button does it all in there. That happens, im out.

[Raikai]

Not a rework from ground up in general, but besides making their dps rotation a bit more engaging again, I think with the inevitable addition of a fourth healer, Astrologians could really have their Regen/Shielding aspect reworked into something else. To me it always felt like this in specific was just some sort of band-aid solution to mend the balance between WHM/SCH.

The perfect scenario to what each healer brings
WHM: No special utility, but extra heals - which may give room for them to dps more freely
SCH: A second pocket healer in the faerie - but they would have to improve her AI and resposiveness
AST: Cards giving buffs to the party
Apothecary*: Potions debuffing enemies

*Or whatever new job

[Recon1o6]

Not a rework from ground up in general, but besides making their dps rotation a bit more engaging again, I think with the inevitable addition of a fourth healer, Astrologians could really have their Regen/Shielding aspect reworked into something else. To me it always felt like this in specific was just some sort of band-aid solution to mend the balance between WHM/SCH.

The perfect scenario to what each healer brings
WHM: No special utility, but extra heals - which may give room for them to dps more freely
SCH: A second pocket healer in the faerie - but they would have to improve her AI and resposiveness
AST: Cards giving buffs to the party
Apothecary*: Potions debuffing enemies

*Or whatever new job

Good grief no, that scenario will, once again, leave WHM's bored which is unacceptable to the casual audience and booted out of extremes/savage/ultimate

We don't want 2/3 or 3/4 jobs to be fun during downtime and WHM not because they have more heals. Having more heals doesn't make healing any easier given how a single aoe heal fixes most incoming damage in this game.

A better scenario where each healer actually has some downtime.

WHM: High elemental burst damage, magical utility
SCH: Consistent dot damage, physical utility
AST: Card buffs
CHM: Potion debuffs

That way each healer can contribute with 2 more selfish dps and 2rdps based. WHM being a more high/low style and sch returning to being a gradual grinder.
More importantly, each one is also fun for the 90% of the playerbase that doesn't do savage.

[glamazon]

Good grief no, that scenario will, once again, leave WHM's bored which is unacceptable to the casual audience and booted out of extremes/savage/ultimate

We don't want 2/3 or 3/4 jobs to be fun during downtime and WHM not because they have more heals. Having more heals doesn't make healing any easier given how a single aoe heal fixes most incoming damage in this game.

A better scenario where each healer actually has some downtime.

WHM: High elemental burst damage, magical utility
SCH: Consistent dot damage, physical utility
AST: Card buffs
CHM: Potion debuffs

That way each healer can contribute with 2 more selfish dps and 2rdps based. WHM being a more high/low style and sch returning to being a gradual grinder.
More importantly, each one is also fun for the 90% of the playerbase that doesn't do savage.

I like this idea