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

[Thoosa]

Honestly on WHM because it has so many ogcd heals, they should give it a small three button DPS rotation, because glare spam is so boring!

I would prefer healers become proper healers, as in, they have to handle lots of incoming damage often. I don’t see that happening though

And if you argue for more dps abilities, you may as well be a DPS with some ogcd heals.

[IDontPetLalas]

Honestly on WHM because it has so many ogcd heals, they should give it a small three button DPS rotation, because glare spam is so boring!

I would prefer healers become proper healers, as in, they have to handle lots of incoming damage often. I don’t see that happening though

And if you argue for more dps abilities, you may as well be a DPS with some ogcd heals.

well that depends upon how you define a "proper" healer - in this game I would say that it is one that heals and does DPS. I certainly don't want to spam heals throughout a run. I certainly am up for an intense phase of healing when necessary but I far prefer a mix of heals and DPS.

There are certainly other games that are designed around pure healing roles in most of their content but I would hope that FFXIV doesn't adopt that design direction.

[Mortex]

Honestly on WHM because it has so many ogcd heals, they should give it a small three button DPS rotation, because glare spam is so boring!

I would prefer healers become proper healers, as in, they have to handle lots of incoming damage often. I don’t see that happening though

And if you argue for more dps abilities, you may as well be a DPS with some ogcd heals.

Whm has 1 aoe ogcd assize that you use more so do deal dmg the. Healing and it has with 45 a really shitty timing too weave efficient, 2 single ogcd Tetra and benediction , a aoe healing field that is useless in movement situations and a 500 cure shield. In comparison astro has 3 single target heals with stronger potency and no clipping with malefic, it has also on a 1 minute cd 4 aoe heals aka celestial opposition, collective unconsciousness , horoscope that you can weave free for 200 potency and the star that is also free healing all on a very short cd. Like telling whm has good ogcd healing is like saying schs pet functions really well.

[Mortex]

well that depends upon how you define a "proper" healer - in this game I would say that it is one that heals and does DPS. I certainly don't want to spam heals throughout a run. I certainly am up for an intense phase of healing when necessary but I far prefer a mix of heals and DPS.

There are certainly other games that are designed around pure healing roles in most of their content but I would hope that FFXIV doesn't adopt that design direction.

It starts already with the word “healer” . Like fights have so mutch downtime that if you even want too keep people always on 100 % you effectively can only heal in must fights for ages the tank. Wow did handle healing there better, because there is always aoe dmg happening and really heavy dmg spikes that if you do mythic raids and don’t mitigate them you just die and it doesn’t have mana regeneration abilities. You have to conserve mana as mutch as possible because a lot of bosses do the most dmg at the end of fights, so you don’t try to overheal like mad. In healing regards wow is way more ahead then ff 14 and healer do get a lot of fights cool stuff to do and not heal too 100 % or wipe stuff

[Anhra]

In order for "proper healers" to work,it would also require to change the way how healing in this game works in general. currently, pretty much every single job has ways of healing or influence healing (like monk for example) which imo, shouldnt be a thing in the first place. removing healing skills (bloodbath, second wind, job specific healing skills) from non-healer jobs would be a great first step (and replace said skills with utlity that actually FITS for the job, i mean, why the fuck has warrior a 1200 potency self heal?) which would in turn, make said jobs more dependent on healers in general and actually increase the difficulty of the game by a fair margin. Jobs that cant heal themselves through skill, would be forced to be dependend on healing potions which should compensate for that weakness, unless they bring a healer with themselves (or a chocobo who does that for you). Jobs like Paladin should of course, be a exception for rather obvious reasons, but instead, have other weaknesses like lower damage or ways to defend themselves (like having fewer amount of skills which increase defenses, and rely more on blockrate).

Tl;dr: Jobs are too balanced out and should have more weaknesses so that healers can compensate for one major weakness which is self-sustainment, what is and should be the core focus on roles in the first place.

[IDontPetLalas]

It starts already with the word “healer” . Like fights have so mutch downtime that if you even want too keep people always on 100 % you effectively can only heal in must fights for ages the tank. Wow did handle healing there better, because there is always aoe dmg happening and really heavy dmg spikes that if you do mythic raids and don’t mitigate them you just die and it doesn’t have mana regeneration abilities. You have to conserve mana as mutch as possible because a lot of bosses do the most dmg at the end of fights, so you don’t try to overheal like mad. In healing regards wow is way more ahead then ff 14 and healer do get a lot of fights cool stuff to do and not heal too 100 % or wipe stuff

I can understand that there are times when it's good to look at another game for inspiration - but that doesn't mean copying it. Fundamentally - this is not WOW. FFXIV may want to go in that direction one day (I hope they don't) , up until now that hasn't been the way that FFXIV has designed healers or encounters and it seems to be a fairly successful model so far.

Incidentally- I'm not a fan of games that go into forcing me to keep my eye continually on my mana - while was am very capable of doing that, even when it was done so that it really required skill - it was not fun at all. It sucked. I would much rather spend my time with more challenging mechanics or even optimizing my healing and DPS strategies to prevent overhealing.

[Caliburn]

In terms of gameplay style/fun, I think AST is pretty much perfect. Yes the cards aren't as strategic as they were before, but it does mean you can focus more on healing.

WHM isn't so bad for me. I miss Aero III. I like that they have a variety of different heals like Cure III and the Afflatus spells.

SCH is keybind-hell imo. I had to re-do my keybinds recently because I hadn't backed up my local data. I use extra buttons like QERFX and an MMO mouse with 12 buttons (I try to only use about 6 for battle).

AST and WHM actions all fit perfectly into easily accessible keys. But not matter how much I rearrange everything, I can't get a comfortable keybind layout for SCH. There are just too many situational actions to fit on. A lot of the actions feel shoehorned in, like Emergency Tactics and Dissipation, which basically just trade one number for another.

I'd prefer if Dissipation was reworked to be a huge fairy healing buff, although I suppose that's kinda what Seraph is supposed to be. Regardless, removing the fairy is a weird choice design-wisd.

Emergency Tactics, for something with the word "Emergency" in it, is quite a slow method of attempting to pull off clutch heals. I'd like it if it buffed heals and/or shields for a few seconds to make the second button press feel more worthwhile under pressure.

There's a lot to fix with SCH in terms of gameplay. It should definitely be the "strategic" healer, but it needs to be done with less buttons and a better pet.

[Deceptus]

In order for "proper healers" to work,it would also require to change the way how healing in this game works in general. currently, pretty much every single job has ways of healing or influence healing (like monk for example) which imo, shouldnt be a thing in the first place. removing healing skills (bloodbath, second wind, job specific healing skills) from non-healer jobs would be a great first step (and replace said skills with utlity that actually FITS for the job, i mean, why the fuck has warrior a 1200 potency self heal?) which would in turn, make said jobs more dependent on healers in general and actually increase the difficulty of the game by a fair margin. Jobs that cant heal themselves through skill, would be forced to be dependend on healing potions which should compensate for that weakness, unless they bring a healer with themselves (or a chocobo who does that for you). Jobs like Paladin should of course, be a exception for rather obvious reasons, but instead, have other weaknesses like lower damage or ways to defend themselves (like having fewer amount of skills which increase defenses, and rely more on blockrate).

Tl;dr: Jobs are too balanced out and should have more weaknesses so that healers can compensate for one major weakness which is self-sustainment, what is and should be the core focus on roles in the first place.

In a nutshell this is the right answer. Healers are hard to balance because so many other jobs have healing options, not to mention mobs hit so weak. So well played healers in well played groups end up healing very little.

[Liam_Harper]

In a nutshell this is the right answer. Healers are hard to balance because so many other jobs have healing options, not to mention mobs hit so weak. So well played healers in well played groups end up healing very little.

This is actually something I strongly disagree with.

In WoW dps and tanks have far better healing and self-sufficiency and healers are still healing the majority of the time. Bloodbath and second wind are actually fairly weak and only really allow you to survive a raidwide that the healer didn't/couldn't top off. By removing dps/tank self-sufficiency, you design yourself into a corner where the healer has sole responsibility and the devs actually reduce damage intake further so a poor healer or a healer death isn't an instant wipe. When everyone has a good toolkit, you can design content that rewards using that toolkit. I'd be all in favor of bumping damage intake significantly and bumping self-sufficiency further with it. There's nothing more satisfying than pulling off crazy things and saving a messy run due to perfect usage of a wide toolkit. Good play should be rewarded.

Good healers are naturally going to heal less in skilled groups. The answer is not ripping the groups tools away so playing well means nothing, the answer is making heal dps and downtime more engaging so you can still push even more from your class as your group masters the encounter. We've already taken agro management away and we want to pull more from tanks/heals?

[Anhra]

This is actually something I strongly disagree with.

In WoW dps and tanks have far better healing and self-sufficiency and healers are still healing the majority of the time. Bloodbath and second wind are actually fairly weak and only really allow you to survive a raidwide that the healer didn't/couldn't top off. By removing dps/tank self-sufficiency, you design yourself into a corner where the healer has sole responsibility and the devs actually reduce damage intake further so a poor healer or a healer death isn't an instant wipe. When everyone has a good toolkit, you can design content that rewards using that toolkit. I'd be all in favor of bumping damage intake significantly and bumping self-sufficiency further with it. There's nothing more satisfying than pulling off crazy things and saving a messy run due to perfect usage of a wide toolkit. Good play should be rewarded.

Good healers are naturally going to heal less in skilled groups. The answer is not ripping the groups tools away so playing well means nothing, the answer is making heal dps and downtime more engaging so you can still push even more from your class as your group masters the encounter. We've already taken agro management away and we want to pull more from tanks/heals?

You are forgetting that there is more than just raids out there. WoW's skillkit for every class they have is a thing that has been refined for many years to suit for BOTH PvP and PvE alike and trust me, its far more complex than any of the jobs in this game, if blizzard did anything right with WoW, then its the design on how their jobs work in combat. Since PvP is pretty much the deadest content right next to lord of verminion (on EU servers at least), square enix has pretty much easy play on this to allow specialisation builds without having to take PvP into consideration for balance tweaks. and i strongly doubt that it has something to do with skill to remind yourself that you have a discount price skill avaiable on your disposal that might or might not allow you to endure 1-2 auto attacks from a boss as dps before you hit the ground if it should come to this.

since were going the WoW route on the disgussion about healers already, then let us check on something interesting here. At first, try having a look at our Healers Skillkit for WHM,SCH and AST and then take a look at the link which shows the skills a Priest in WoW has access to,do you spot anything interesting when you compare them? (edit: added link for the shaman class as well for reference)

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Priest_abilities
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Shaman_abilities