healers need a serious overhaul

[Granyala]

No surprise, when I applied to static groups a few months later... everyone said i was a crap healer and needed to work on my damage rotation!?!? (Those other players had uploaded their parses which had me at 90%+ on healing, and only in the 30%~50% window on damage)
This was my first introduction to what parsing was. I had never heard of this before untill people started shoving logs from other players in face.

Over the last few months I have become increasingly anxious to throw out a single heal because I need the GCD and the weaves between to dish out Damaging spells like Glare, assize(which "the balance"clearly states never save assize for healing) and Blood lily cuz if I dont, I know people will see me as a bad player.

1. BE HAPPY that the people refused to take you into their static. They were clearly idiot players, incapable of actually reading the parsing logs and understanding what was going on. You encountered a "wannabe tryhard" guild, trust me (I have a decade of raiding experience) when I say you do NOT want to raid with people like that. Any proper guild would invite you to testraids, because even if you can read parse data very well, it is always more accurate the see the player in action. Especially in the case of healers, whose performance is highly dependent on how other players are doing.

2. Do not be afraid of healing. That is your job, that's why you are there. If the other healer refuses to do the job, solo heal the encounter (way more fun than mashing Glare anyway). However, do not stand around when there is nothing to heal. Use that downtime to DPS.

Personally, I do not think healers need any big overhaul at all. SE needs to stop being chickens and design encounters that actually mandate healing. If they do that, if they make it a struggle to keep people alive (as it should be), that obsession with healer DPS will die out on it's own. People are only obsessed with DPS because right now, the split is 20% healing 80% DPS. There is, literally, nothing else to do most of the fight than mash those DPS buttons until they beg for mercy.

[ForteNightshade]

Personally, I do not think healers need any big overhaul at all. SE needs to stop being chickens and design encounters that actually mandate healing. If they do that, if they make it a struggle to keep people alive (as it should be), that obsession with healer DPS will die out on it's own. People are only obsessed with DPS because right now, the split is 20% healing 80% DPS. There is, literally, nothing else to do most of the fight than mash those DPS buttons until they beg for mercy.

While you aren't inherently wrong, it's wishful thinking at best SE will ever design encounters to hit hard enough to warrant the sheer amount of healing tools we have nowadays. Even Ultimate doesn't necessitate it. They simply won't go in that direction out of fear it'll make healing too difficult for inexperienced or downright incompetent players. Therefore, healers need to be a sort of hybrid role. And they need to have a solid DPS foundation that isn't simply Glare spam.

[van_arn]

This just reminds me of the complaints in stormblood that healers were too focused on dps rotations, and that they should be able to go the “healers heal” route.

Shadowbringers comes in and turns the healer dps rotation into two buttons.

People are shocked they’re still being judged on their damage even though Square has now drained the fun from doing damage.

There is no solution for this unless healing requirements are pushed to the point where it’s just never possible to get a 211111 off on a boss, and Square can’t do that.

They certainly won’t go back and do that for 80 levels of content, meaning even if they *do* require it in the new expansion that’ll only be necessary balance-wise for about 10% of the game.

Please look forward to the 1111; you made your bed.

[BeautyAstrologian]

It's the DPS fault. OMG!! ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ... They never stand in my star... ˚‧º·(˃̣̣̥o˂̣̣̥)‧º·

If they stand in my star then you wouldn't need to heal as much ϞϞ(๑⚈ ․̫ ⚈๑)

Ask your DPS to stand in the bubble and star (′ꈍωꈍ‵) It's not a problem with healer design.... it's the DPS!! (งᓀ‸ᓂ)ง

[Ftail]

If the other healer refuses to heal with oGCDs and you are out of them, do not dip into your GCD heals, just let the group wipe. There’s no reason you should be forced to solo heal with another healer present.

[Vahlnir]

It's the DPS fault. OMG!! ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ... They never stand in my star... ˚‧º·(˃̣̣̥o˂̣̣̥)‧º·

If they stand in my star then you wouldn't need to heal as much ϞϞ(๑⚈ ․̫ ⚈๑)

Ask your DPS to stand in the bubble and star (′ꈍωꈍ‵) It's not a problem with healer design.... it's the DPS!! (งᓀ‸ᓂ)ง

Hi TitanMen. Been awhile. Not long enough if you ask me.

[Jaelommiss]

1. BE HAPPY that the people refused to take you into their static. They were clearly idiot players, incapable of actually reading the parsing logs and understanding what was going on. You encountered a "wannabe tryhard" guild, trust me (I have a decade of raiding experience) when I say you do NOT want to raid with people like that. Any proper guild would invite you to testraids, because even if you can read parse data very well, it is always more accurate the see the player in action. Especially in the case of healers, whose performance is highly dependent on how other players are doing.

I took a look at their best logs for the expansion and I wouldn't offer them a trial unless I was desperate for a healer.

While I recognize that players will always perform better in a static, I've yet to meet a high performer who manages 50+ savage clears without ever exceeding 50th percentile. Looking a bit deeper confirms it. In the fights I reviewed I saw Asylum, Tetragrammaton, Divine Benison, Temperance, and Thin Air being severely underutilized and they had significant (>40%) overhealing. Additionally, they used anywhere from 1.5-4.5 GCDs per minute fewer than my current WHM cohealer for all the fights without deaths that I looked at. Losing this much uptime speaks to a lack of understanding of the fights' mechanics or an inability to resolve them efficiently. Healing was often immediate and overwhelming even when there was no need for it. When paired with an aggressive cohealer (>95th percentile for healing) they elected to overheal rather than use the opportunity to deal more damage. Everything suggests that this is someone who tosses out healing in response to any and all damage rather than assessing whether or not healing is required and responding appropriately. Many of their logs look like sloppy prog healing that managed to stumble into a clear. Entering some logs into xivanalysis shows that casts are interrupted 20+ times per fight. This stems from immediately moving for mechanics rather than waiting until closer to the snapshot, slidecasting incorrectly, and deciding to change a Glare to a heal after damage is taken rather than waiting for the cast to end.

This isn't to say that they're a bad player. I don't believe that any bad player would be able to clear a savage tier. They just don't meet the standard that my team and I hold ourselves to, and it would be a waste of their time and ours to spend an evening trialing them. Does this make my team "wannabe tryhards"? Possibly. We pride ourselves on our performance, certainly. The majority of my team has several oranges for last tier, and we're well on our way to repeating that this tier.

Cirque-it, if you're reading this please don't take it as an attack. More than anything it looks like you simply haven't adopted a damage-oriented approach yet. While your healing efficiency could be improved, I would prioritize working on your uptime first. That's costing you far more damage than your excess healing GCDs.

Practice slidecasting. Just walk up and down the street outside your FC's house chain casting Medica and slidecast as far as you can with each cast. You're going to interrupt almost all of them at the start. Eventually it'll be automatic and you'll be able to move in raids without having to stop casting.

Start watching for your oGCDs before you use a GCD heal. See is Tetra is available each time you go to push Cure II. Same for Asylum and Medica II. Try to align Divine Benison to Dia. There will be times you want to hold it, but more often than not it's best to have it soak an autoattack. Being able to time your Dia reapplications to Divine Benison's CD will make it easier to see whether you need to reapply it yet.

Learn when mechanics snapshot. You don't need to be out of an aoe until it snapshots. Generally it'll be when the boss's castbar ends. This is going to kill you a ton, but once you have it down you'll have to interrupt your casts less often.

Similarly, learn every fight's timeline until you can replay it in your head from memory. An enormous part of maintaining uptime is prepositioning for mechanics so that you don't have to move, and you need to know what's coming up next to do that. This will also help you plan your healing in advance so you are less likely to heal excessively. Pull up your logs for current fights, go to the resources tab, and follow one non-tank's HP through the fight. Identify what mechanic is hurting them each time it dips and what healing you're using each time it bounces back up. This works best if you pick someone who doesn't die or take avoidable damage. If you heal consistently every pull it will be easier for your cohealer to heal efficiently with you. If that's still not enough, communicate with them. "I used X and Y for that mechanic. Could you add Z for it?" If nothing else it'll show the rest of the party that you're trying to make it work.

Mash your Glare hotkey as your default action. There are very few times that you will cause deaths if you delay your healing by one GCD. If you still haven't decided what to do when it finishes, use another one. 2.5 seconds will give you time to assess the party, your available resources, and choose a course of action. If you know that desperate healing is required immediately after a mechanic then start thinking about the heal you need to apply before it resolves. Bosses often have long cast bars for everything they do.

Lastly, consider forming your own team if you're not having luck joining any others. When I formed my team I hadn't stepped foot into any savage raids. I was shocked at just how many experienced players were willing to give a new team a shot. While it might be tempting to recruit from your friends and FC, I would recommend sticking to strangers. Being able to turn people away with no hurt feelings let you ensure that everyone has matching objectives and if you foster a good environment they'll be your friends soon enough.

If you want more detailed feedback or suggestions you can contact me on Discord. Qina#4625. Good luck.

[Dogempire]

A lot of healers panic and throw out instant heals gcd after gcd everytime a raidwide comes out instead of letting their regens or bubbles do their work. Not saying to only use regens, but if you don't let your regens tick then you're effectively not using a part of your kit, and when you have 2 healers using regens then there's literally nothing to worry about unless the boss is casting some sort of high damage raidwide everyone needs to be topped off for.

If you pretty much learn to do just that then the amount of healing you need to do becomes considerably lower

[Granyala]

While you aren't inherently wrong, it's wishful thinking at best SE will ever design encounters to hit hard enough to warrant the sheer amount of healing tools we have nowadays. Even Ultimate doesn't necessitate it. They simply won't go in that direction out of fear it'll make healing too difficult for inexperienced or downright incompetent players. Therefore, healers need to be a sort of hybrid role. And they need to have a solid DPS foundation that isn't simply Glare spam.

I completely agree.

I never expected SE to completely change the design paradigm.
Frankly: I am perfectly fine with being a dual role, and I find the weaving in between DPS and healing a lot of fun.

Problem is: that falls flat on it's face when they refuse to make non savage content at least a little bit more healing intense and that's when you notice the 1 button DPS spam the most.

I'd say a 70% Heal and 30% DPS split would be fine.

Does this make my team "wannabe tryhards"? Possibly.

Technically: yes.
You are doing and demanding way more than the game ever would and turn away players on that basis alone.

Practically: no. IMHO, it depends on how you transmit the message.
You did it very well in this thread, gave solid reasoning and most importantly: offered considerable hints for long term improvement.

I fully agree that a raid needs like minded people and it is not a problem that not everyone shares your particular mindset.
You don't need to share it in order to clear savage either.

[Wyakin]

There is a clear set strict scripted minimum requirement for how much you actually need to heal to make sure players don’t die. (This of course providing that people don’t mess up and eat unnecessary damage) once you have beaten that threshold any gcds spent now healing are wasted GCD. Any OGCD used for healing are wasted. Spend them on damage, which unless someone’s is dead as a result, is never wasted.