Another patch, another 4-ish months of healer suffering.

[Mortex]

True, it doesn’t effect it but what changes are peoples expectations. If suddenly they gave whm eight dps tools and a specific rotation and meter management, players expectations are going to change to “better be using that whole dps rotation, meter etc etc or you are trash and will vote kick.” Also, i’m one of those where I try to play optimally despite my limits so yeah for me it would change. If whm got more complex, I would be forced to drop playing the class (perhaps the game entirely unless they provide a much easier healer class to play) which would be unfortunate because I like the story. Best ff in years storywise.

I mean you getting voterkicked for all kinds of stuff in Dungeonfinder and PF. Saw people getting kicked because he had the famous F in his Character Profile. Getting kicked for not doing dmg as a healer isnt that common in that regard its more common too get kicked for not healing as a healer.

[Mortex]

Like the problem right now is that healing in FF 14 has a lot of downtime were you dont need healing at all and the response you have as a veteran healer is too DPS. But when the DPS "Rotation" consists of 2 spells (one of them you use every bloody 30 seconds) then you ofc gonna get bored. Like i have runs in dungeons were i sit with one hand playing my "healer" and do eating, drink or just play with my handy with my other hand. Like the only time i have joy healing is in the new savage raid tier because you get rewardet for using all of your Kit. It is like one raid tier atm in the entire game that gives you healing enjoyment, the rest is downtime. Like i did heal Emerald weapon solo and the fight whas still boring as hell. And lets not talk about what they did or didnt do with the healer. WHM feels so super clunky that when you play astro for more then a day you gonna miss it when you are forced too heal in a fight and try to do dmg as WHM. Astro being so busted right now after being bad in the first tier and then okish in the second, if i didnt know any better i do assume thats a game they play in the FF 14 job team, astro being so bad at the start of every expansion too slowly buff it into god tier status. Whm getting only at the start of a expansion good (and that whas a hotfix from old lilys because they were so bad it whas like a april 1 joke) and new stuff and then they forget about it for the rest of the expansion. Like holy jesus you made Blood Lily a 300 potency dmg loss and dont fix it for the entire expansion, but ofc every other pure dmg jobs do get buffs so mutch that they arent memes anymore aka Samurai and BLM. And dont start about sch, were they made the perfect stormblood fairy so utterly bad that (same with smn pet) you can only be impressed how they did manage that. Feels like a monkey did broke in the development procces and did change the coding close before launch and nobody saw that or they did let the intern do that. Like on paper it does sound really cool using the fairy way more and as a "partner" (but that partner is deaf, blind, has the reflexes of a sloth and just eats cooldowns when you use more then 3 fairy abilitys in quick succession) but how they implemented that, jesus christ. Like i could go on and on about the entire healer gamestate expect astro after 2 raidtiers.

[Liam_Harper]

True, it doesn’t effect it but what changes are peoples expectations. If suddenly they gave whm eight dps tools and a specific rotation and meter management, players expectations are going to change to “better be using that whole dps rotation, meter etc etc or you are trash and will vote kick.”

You're exaggerating. No one asked for 8 more dps tools + meter management + specific rotation. We're not a dps class, we're just looking for something more engaging than 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1 to fill downtime and fixes to clipping. It's not asking too much. Player expectations won't change either and occasional toxic groups in PF are not proof against that, you'll always get those no matter how simple gameplay is. For example I've never seen an AST kicked on Normal for not juggling cards and Divination optimally with their full oGCD kit. Most are AspHelios spammers and maybe manage to play half their cards and no one really minds because it's Normal, which has no enrage timers. In fact I've never seen a healer kicked for not dealing enough damage even in Savage in my entire time playing.

Also, i’m one of those where I try to play optimally despite my limits so yeah for me it would change. If whm got more complex, I would be forced to drop playing the class

Why would you be forced to drop it? You don't have to play a class perfectly, why not just play an updated WhM to the best of your ability and be happy with that? You might even enjoy it or find that you start seeing gradual improvement over time that you would have sworn was impossible for you. Don't let disabilities or other issues limit you. There are plenty of us here who a few years ago would have been certain we'd never, ever be good enough for hard content but are digging into EX, Savage or even Ultimates now.

You really can't expect the Devs to design a class around the mindset of "I want to play optimally but I don't want there to be any effort involved in doing so". There's no depth, nothing to master, no fun to the class itself.

[Mortex]

You're exaggerating. No one asked for 8 more dps tools + meter management + specific rotation. We're not a dps class, we're just looking for something more engaging than 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1 to fill downtime and fixes to clipping. It's not asking too much. Player expectations won't change either and occasional toxic groups in PF are not proof against that, you'll always get those no matter how simple gameplay is. For example I've never seen an AST kicked on Normal for not juggling cards and Divination optimally with their full oGCD kit. Most are AspHelios spammers and maybe manage to play half their cards and no one really minds because it's Normal, which has no enrage timers. In fact I've never seen a healer kicked for not dealing enough damage even in Savage in my entire time playing.



Why would you be forced to drop it? You don't have to play a class perfectly, why not just play an updated WhM to the best of your ability and be happy with that? You might even enjoy it or find that you start seeing gradual improvement over time that you would have sworn was impossible for you. Don't let disabilities or other issues limit you. There are plenty of us here who a few years ago would have been certain we'd never, ever be good enough for hard content but are digging into EX, Savage or even Ultimates now.

You really can't expect the Devs to design a class around the mindset of "I want to play optimally but I don't want there to be any effort involved in doing so". There's no depth, nothing to master, no fun to the class itself.

It’s a sad reality that they have the mind set since shadowbringer that easy is better and more fun to play . And if they continue in that path they gonna end like wow.

[AphraelAmarantha]

snip

Im not going to give another anecdote to explain that just because YOU don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Reread my post.

Also, who says I’m not putting in effort? That’s another misconception that I’m tired of people just assuming because “oh, it’s one button, ez! If not you stupid” because that’s how it feels. It may be easy and boring to YOU or others but it sure the hell is not for ME. I’m incredibly engaged. It’s extremely difficult to ensure people don’t die, having to look across the screen to ensure tank isn’t dead, making sure my ogcds are available, checking my lilies to see how many I have, checking everyone else to make sure they aren’t dying, trying to remember where the enemy is in their rotation (most of the time I fail that and mistime it because again, I’m terrible at remembering patterns) per dungeon or boss, and still watching out for mechanics which some I don’t even remember because I haven’t run a dungeon or trial of its ilk for some time and then doing damage while trying to dodge enemy attacks or trying to heal. For me, that’s HARD. It’s ENGAGING already. I don’t need more complexity, if that happens, it becomes too overwhelming. I know what my limits are, I’ve gone through this over and over again in other games. And who says im not trying to learn? I do try to learn and I put as much effort in it as if my life depends on it. But trying does not equal performing. And that’s what matters in this game to many people I talk to in game and from what I read on these forums. And from my experience, if you aren’t performing, you get kicked and can’t clear content. Just because you know something doesn’t mean you can PERFORM.

Again, never said anyone’s opinion is invalid. But at the same time, you all are not considering that “hey, maybe this might actually be hard for some people and maybe they designed it that way to address some of those difficulties so people can experience the story or be able to play with their friends or get through solo content or whatever.” It may be easy for you and utterly boring, but have you considered that maybe to someone else it’s super engaging and hard? Don’t dismiss the possibility just because “oh, they only have to spam one or two buttons so it’s easy and no effort.” That’s dismissive and offensive. Not everyone who puts in effort gets the same result. Some people just perform better or worse based upon the upper limit of what their brain can handle.

[Rilifane]

True, it doesn’t effect it but what changes are peoples expectations. If suddenly they gave whm eight dps tools and a specific rotation and meter management, players expectations are going to change to “better be using that whole dps rotation, meter etc etc or you are trash and will vote kick.” Also, i’m one of those where I try to play optimally despite my limits so yeah for me it would change. If whm got more complex, I would be forced to drop playing the class (perhaps the game entirely unless they provide a much easier healer class to play) which would be unfortunate because I like the story. Best ff in years storywise.

There is a huge difference between asking for something more than one 30s dot and one spammable nuke and asking for 8 dps buttons with a specific rotation and additional resources/ gauges to watch.

Contrary to what you assume, people will not automatically expect more if something becomes more difficult. They will actually be far more lenient.
Just look at ARR and HW when healers had more dps options and more restrictions when using them (Cleric stance, high MP cost on Holy, dots with different durations, aggro management, MP in general, less oGCD tools for healing) but people didn't expect you to use all that. The only thing people wanted to see is, that you kept everyone alive and tried to dps a little bit just to prove that you aren't going auto-follow afk. And if someone was so uncomfortable with Cleric Stance that they'd rather dps without it, it was still okay. Not effective but nobody batted an eye.

And for a more recent example, look at ASTs Sleeve Draw pre 5.3.
As if anyone in a dungeon batted an eye if you didn't use it, missed some cards from it or took forever to get them all out. Or if your Divination got out at really odd times because of it.
Nor does anybody care if you hold back all your AF on SCH to the point of constantly wasting stacks when there is nothing to heal over using it for ED.

You may enjoy FFXIV for it's story alone and that's great but remember that it's still an MMO.
And one of the core aspects of any MMO is an engaging combat gameplay. But right now an entire role completely lacks it all for the sake of accessibility when the skill ceiling doesn't affect the skill floor or accessibility.

If healers in general including WhM, became more difficult at skill ceiling and you couldn't play it optimally despite trying, so be it. You are trying, you said so yourself and that's great. Maybe you'll surprise yourself by noticing that you can actually manage just fine. But if not: not everyone can excel at everything and if you're here for the story, it shouldn't matter to you; as I said, the more difficult something is, the less people expect you to get it right.
You will still occasionally encounter nasty players but nothing can protect you or anyelse from that aside from only going with a premade. No matter how strict the ToS, no matter how easy a class - bad eggs will be bad eggs.

It’s extremely difficult to ensure people don’t die, having to look across the screen to ensure tank isn’t dead, making sure my ogcds are available, checking my lilies to see how many I have, checking everyone else to make sure they aren’t dying...

This sounds like an UI problem, though.
Perhaps restructuring your UI to accomodate to your limits better might help. Having to "look across the screen" sounds like your important UI elements are too far apart, meaning your eyes will need to travel too far to get the neccessary information.
Most healers play with job gauge, an extra big hotbar with cooldowns, party list and focus target closely clumped together to avoid that exact problem. The more you can see at a glance the easier it is.

...trying to remember where the enemy is in their rotation (most of the time I fail that and mistime it because again, I’m terrible at remembering patterns) per dungeon or boss, and still watching out for mechanics which some I don’t even remember because I haven’t run a dungeon or trial of its ilk for some time...

Bold of you to assume we memorize every dungeon boss mechanic. I still don't know wether red or blue was stack on the T-Rex guy in Sohm Al because everytime I learned it by watching whats going on, I forget it not 5min after.
Most dungeon bosses telegraph their danger zones fairly early, so reacting instead of memorizing works just fine. Plus markers have been streamlined some time ago and are relatively intuitive without memorizing every single one.
On top of that, you generally only get a slap on your wirst in form of a vuln up debuff and that's it.

But at the same time, you all are not considering that “hey, maybe this might actually be hard for some people and maybe they designed it that way to address some of those difficulties so people can experience the story or be able to play with their friends or get through solo content or whatever.”

If you're playing with friends, it should be even less of a problem if they raise the skill ceiling because you can do content with them at the speed you prefer.
But, again, it does not affect how you'll get through the story if they raise the skill ceiling. People got through the story by not touching Cleric even once during ARR/ HW and they will continue to get through the story if they added an additional filler or two for the downtime most healers experience in any type of content, from casual to absolute endgame.

[AphraelAmarantha]

There is a huge difference between asking for something more than one 30s dot and one spammable nuke and asking for 8 dps buttons with a specific rotation and additional resources/ gauges to watch.

Contrary to what you assume, people will not automatically expect more if something becomes more difficult. They will actually be far more lenient.
Just look at ARR and HW when healers had more dps options and more restrictions when using them (Cleric stance, high MP cost on Holy, dots with different durations, aggro management, MP in general, less oGCD tools for healing) but people didn't expect you to use all that. The only thing people wanted to see is, that you kept everyone alive and tried to dps a little bit just to prove that you aren't going auto-follow afk. And if someone was so uncomfortable with Cleric Stance that they'd rather dps without it, it was still okay. Not effective but nobody batted an eye.

Not from my experience.

You may enjoy FFXIV for it's story alone and that's great but remember that it's still an MMO.
And one of the core aspects of any MMO is an engaging combat gameplay. But right now an entire role completely lacks it all for the sake of accessibility when the skill ceiling doesn't affect the skill floor or accessibility.

This is where I disagree though. Most other people may not find it engaging but I DO find it engaging.

If healers in general including WhM, became more difficult at skill ceiling and you couldn't play it optimally despite trying, so be it. You are trying, you said so yourself and that's great. Maybe you'll surprise yourself by noticing that you can actually manage just fine. But if not: not everyone can excel at everything and if you're here for the story, it shouldn't matter to you; as I said, the more difficult something is, the less people expect you to get it right.
You will still occasionally encounter nasty players but nothing can protect you or anyelse from that aside from only going with a premade. No matter how strict the ToS, no matter how easy a class - bad eggs will be bad eggs.

But it does matter because I also like to make sure I'm geared enough for the story content so I have to do raids and other dungeons and stuff just to keep up. I did the Dancer job quests and couldn't even clear them because my gear was no good at the time so I had to spend a few weeks to get better gear (was wearing marketplace gear stuff, but I also suck as a dps so that may have been that too lol). This required doing raids for tokens and people expect you to pull your weight so if you can't perform to clear said content, content is usually vote abandoned or you get kicked for being the weakest link.

This sounds like an UI problem, though.
Perhaps restructuring your UI to accomodate to your limits better might help. Having to "look across the screen" sounds like your important UI elements are too far apart, meaning your eyes will need to travel too far to get the neccessary information.
Most healers play with job gauge, an extra big hotbar with cooldowns, party list and focus target closely clumped together to avoid that exact problem. The more you can see at a glance the easier it is.

I have played around with the UI positions extensively and I have not been able to find anything that makes it easier or comfortable. I still have to look at the data on my screen for like two seconds before I can process what am I going to do. My average reaction time after taking some cognition tests and stuff is like 2-3 seconds before my brain processes the data I am looking at. Its another reason I like WHM cuz I can just use muscle memory to react to partywide damage like an instant Assize or Afflatus or something. However, when I'm dealing with individual heals and damage, I'm much slower because I have to actually look at the hp bars and figure out who's hurt or is the tank taking too much damage or something, then I have to tab (or use dpad because I use controller and I am really bad with kbnm, doesn't click for me at all x.x) through to get to the person I need to heal and then look at which abilities are not on cooldown so by the time I actually heal the tank, 4-6 seconds have already gone by and if their health was below 50 percent, more likely they are dead at that point. So to compensate I usually start healing when I know they are at 75 percent health because by the time I actually react and start healing, their hp have dropped to 10% or less.

Bold of you to assume we memorize every dungeon boss mechanic. I still don't know wether red or blue was stack on the T-Rex guy in Sohm Al because everytime I learned it by watching whats going on, I forget it not 5min after.
Most dungeon bosses telegraph their danger zones fairly early, so reacting instead of memorizing works just fine. Plus markers have been streamlined some time ago and are relatively intuitive without memorizing every single one.
On top of that, you generally only get a slap on your wirst in form of a vuln up debuff and that's it.

True, dungeon mechs are more forgiving but raid ones are not. Especially this last tier where most of the attacks you have to be staring at the boss to figure out what the heck it's doing. That's tough because if I'm looking at the boss, I cant look at hp bars and cooldowns and stuff. So if I'm healing and I don't see the boss' tell because I am trying to figure out if healing is needed or not, its usually face to floor for me because there is not enough time to get out of the aoe. Sure I can move the UI near the middle of the screen (which I have done) but now too much stuff in the way for me to see other things going on as well like aoe markers and stuff in addition to me still needing to take several seconds to figure out what I need to do in that exact moment. So for bosses like e10n, I am literally standing there not doing anything and just looking at the boss and its cast meter so I can figure how am I supposed to avoid the attack or where am I supposed to move. (and I still get it mixed up lol. e12n is the worst of them, especially in the third phase due to multiple attacks going off at once but no time to dodge them and never being able to remember which one does what and when).

[Liam_Harper]

Again, never said anyone’s opinion is invalid. But at the same time, you all are not considering that “hey, maybe this might actually be hard for some people and maybe they designed it that way to address some of those difficulties so people can experience the story or be able to play with their friends or get through solo content or whatever.”

This is what they design Normal mode for. That's why it has almost no enrage timers and far less damage. There's also Trusts to avoid PF stress. All of this is great. But they shouldn't be designing classes around this, because unlike Normal which has EX or Savage for those who've mastered it, a class wouldn't have any further depth once you've fully mastered it.

It's perfectly fair if your opinion is that you like it the way it is. But as you admitted, "most other people may not find it engaging" and it's only fair they design classes that a larger majority of players may enjoy, rather than a few, especially when Normal mode already covers their needs.

[Laphicet]

As normal, I use benediction on the tank pre pull,

There is so much wrong with this statement I don't even know where to start. Benediction is not meant to be used prepull, it's meant to be used once the tank is low on hp, usually after the holyspam stun runs out.

As for other details in the post, sounds like you weren't managing CDs too well, either. Wasting Bene for what I could only assume to be the lols, not using plenary>cure3 for the extra healing potency (it's actually stronger than cureII under plenary by about 50-100 potency), using the wings at a poor time or stacking the wings (10% damage reduction is no joke but you don't stack it with plenary because the healing buffs stack very poorly resulting in the healing buff being much less than you'd think), trying to keep medica II uptime when the regen is negligible compared to the MP cost, etc. Also, if a tank is being squishy like that, check their gear. Sounds like your tank was in aug. scavean and was taking so much damage because of that (dungeon is doable in that but it puts a lot more stress on healers and you shouldn't be doing either of the two megapulls in it).

Still, your ONE bad experience does not mean that the entire class gets to be designed around you and your love of simplicity, let me tell you a little story.

I joined the game back in 4.5.5, I only played for about two or three months, when the new expac was on the way, I was enjoying healers for what they were, particularly WHM, but my favorite was AST, for the adaptability in combat and the whole idea of manipulating fate and dealing with the hand you were dealt. I loved how the lore tied in with the gameplay, and how the cards all did different things according to the domain they were calling upon, and I loved adapting to the flow with this and learning how to manage such properly. I didn't mind the simpler dps kit compared to WHM because the card mechanics and managing royal road more than made up for it.

Lo and behold when 5.0 rolled around I was disgusted with what they did to my once favorite class. Not only did they gut the cards completely, destroying the lore interacting with the class (the very thing that they use as justification for not making BLU an actual class, by the by), but they brought every single healer dps kit down to that level of ASTs while giving them not even half the focus to manage. AST's potencies were also roughly cut in HALF across the board, both in damage and healing, making them a wet noodle and making AST one of my least favorite healers, though it took me forever to realize just how bad they had done it. It just feels hollow, even now after all the buffs, like the soul of the class was just torn out... and it has made me jaded about the situation as the devs refuse to talk to us on this matter or on healers in general. During the time When AST's kit was in such shambles they would rather talk about SANDWICHES during a live letter than address the myriad concerns people had about healers.

And that's not all, in spite of simplifying these healers to be a true bore and so repetitive that it breaks your keyboard because your number keys aren't rated for that many keypresses (true story, btw, have to use a logitech wireless KB now because my 1 and 8 keys broke and the busted connection started breaking surrounding keys). There are still people out there who REFUSE to use the dps side of your kit and sit there spamming cure 1/physik/benefic, saving their OGCDs for "emergencies" that never come because of how lenient healing is in most cases. and they are INCREDIBLY common. I have had bad experience after bad experience with these lazy healers who refuse to dps, and not a case of high outgoing damage like your case, but legitimate "I'll cast cure II once ever 30 seconds and do nothing the rest" or "I'll try spamming heals that's a good trick" while the tank is at full HP players. And these are a COMMON sight when I don't play healer, even at ENDGAME content. And the worst part is that when you try and correct them and be helpful about it, half ignore you, 20% get agressive with you, 25% try to kick you or BOTH get agressive and try to kick you, and only the last 5% actually are willing to take advice and learn. And I'm not even being rude about it, just stating things matter of factly mid pulls so I don't lose uptime too much by typing ("CureII+glare>CureIx2", "more dps less cure please", "Please use holy", so on.) and when I do go into detail I try to be matter of fact as possible ("I'm not/the tank is not going to get oneshot, you can do more dps before healing", "Try healing me at half health instead of after the tiniest bit of damage, my health goes down slower than you would think", "You know excog heals automatically at half health so try letting that do the work and DPS in the meantime", for just a few examples of countless that got me berated or yelled at).

And the worst part about those poor healers? they're in over half of my dungeon runs nowadays when I don't play healer. No joke, when I was leveling through doma castle on WAR, all but one of my ten or so runs were bad healers that I gave advice to, and half of those went badly, one even devolved into a huge argument between me and the two DPS whiteknighting for the healer where I got told to "go back to WOW", a game that I had never played, for having the audacity to try and help people perform better (something I get frequently told in runs in general for just trying to help and being very matter of fact about it, now that I think on it). And that's just one bundle of bad experiences, I could try and give a full listing but I'm pretty sure I would hit the edited post text limit in that process. It's almost like the people who would normally teach these people or played healer before have mostly gone on to other classes or new games entirely, so we have this new crop of awful healers with nobody to teach them, and those that try to get kicked, harassed, or ignored. It feels like I'm in some kind of bizzaro world where people actively don't want to improve themselves and it's just making me drained and want to move on from the game. I miss the fun I used to have and I really miss the smoother dungeon runs we had back when healers were complex enough to keep people maining them without the need for queue incentives and the like, which we really need now (seriously, healer mounts just like tanks have would be a great start to fixing things).

Basically, you are in the minority for wanting things to be so braindead, because once you hit that understanding, and realize how little healing is actually needed and such, you start filling that downtime with the same button over and over again, and it becomes dull as it starts to wear you down, with no secondary system to focus on or worry about, or a secondary system so paltry and so barebones that it does very little to relieve the monotony.

Here's a little homework assignment for you, next time you're in a dungeon, try not healing the tank until they drop to below 35% of their HP, see how this goes... or try letting them drop further, even (although still make sure you have regen/dirunal asp. bene ticking on them). You'd be surprised with just how little healing is needed in most dungeons when push comes to shove. And what do you do when you're not healing?

[Kyeria]

You'd be surprised with just how little healing is needed in most dungeons when push comes to shove. And what do you do when you're not healing?

I'm a healer main and if my recent experiences going into the DPS realm are anything to go by - the answer here, is nothing. I've never realized how many healers played like this until I wasn't playing one and it's incredibly frustrating. We'd wiped so many times because the healer couldn't keep up - only casting Cure 1 and regen. There is so much downtime even when playing healers effectively that I literally don't understand how healers fail to keep people alive when they are only casting healing spells.

Part of this needs to be resolved by SE by making Cure/Benefic 1 evolve into Cure/Benefic 2 as the first tier spells become useless shortly after learning the second variation. My mind has been blown by the amount of healers spamming Cure 1 in 70+ dungeons, raids, trials "etc"...