Please Nerf Shield Healer Pure Heals

[Saefinn]

It's possible but it would mean a huge gap between casual content and endgame content. Because with their focus on accesibility, they will never design casual content that requires constant attention from the healer or the party dies.
And if endgame content requires just that, the learning curve would be incredibly steep and I don't want to imagine the reaction of the average healer. Even some career healers might be put off. Imagine going from lenient DF content to raids that suddenly have WL2s all over.

I don't think it'd be that steep I for sure think there needs to be maybe some kind of training log because they could hand pick content based on its difficulty for people who're learning to practice against. I think once your healing starts becoming second nature the DPS aspect is simple to work in. Healers have never had a complicated DPS rotation but was enough to stop it from being too monotonous. But the DPS requirement of Extremes I think is low enough for a healer to learn their DPS balance before touching Savage. Good DPS or any DPS is technically not needed for a vast majority of the game's content, so I think it gives loads of room for people to learn to heal without that burden and to build on it so they can get used to the healing and DPS balance. This is why I view it as a low skill floor with room and a higher skill ceiling if we add more in the way of DPS abilities. By the time you're doing Savage, you're not a beginner level healer anymore.

I also don't get how it's viewed as all overly complicated or difficult. Because much of what people are asking for we've already had. It's not anything new or radical. Many of us learned to heal back when we had all this. I feel healers shouldn't be dumbed down and easier to make them more accessible because I'd argue they're accessible, but instead it'd be better for people to have better tools to learn instead.

One of the things I praised about the game back in ARR was how the content was balanced to favour you learning the job. Because they were steady difficulty increases, which was nice as a new player. I viewed Guildleves as "mini dungeon practices" when I wasn't as confident it was a quick shot run of something where I could test the water before I entered dungeons. Satasha has always been tuned so that people can make mistakes and screw up. The heal requirement is so low that it doesn't matter who is tanking the mobs. This I always viewed as intentional because you're gonna have newbie tanks and newbie healers running it and it's going to be their first experience of running dungeons in the game. The dungeon difficulties throughout were gradual with the odd DPS, tanking and healing checks to test you. You also gradually pick up your abilities at a pace where you've got space to learn to integrate them into your skill set up.

It meant by the time I was at level 50 I knew how to play my job. And then at level 50 I had further progression to hone my skills before I got to attempt Extreme Trials and Coils. For the record, I rarely DPS'd in those early days too. I have my Titan EX clear on YouTube and rewatching it I cringe because I think "I could have DPS'd there, I could have DPS'd there and there". But it was fine, my mind was more focused on keeping people alive and getting a clear than it was to play optimally.

But I don't think the game can quite work like that any more, with some jobs starting at a higher level, some people using jump potions, some just grinding their jobs I think for many they don't get a journey like that. I think what they should have is a training log as part of the Hall of the Novice. It'd be a sequential log that have you queue for content to give you that journey. Maybe lessons at Hall of the Novice to go with it. Heck with a Hall of the Novice accompaniment, it could be a space for people to learn how Shield healing works and erase any perception (if the changes I think at needed happen) that they're weak.

I feel this would help making healing (and other roles) approachable without watering them down. Because it gives people a path to learn rather than maybe throwing them in the deep end and ultimately, I think that would be more rewarding if anything. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment of doing something because you improved vs because they made healing easier.

[hythrain]

One of the things I praised about the game back in ARR was how the content was balanced to favour you learning the job. Because they were steady difficulty increases, which was nice as a new player. I viewed Guildleves as "mini dungeon practices" when I wasn't as confident it was a quick shot run of something where I could test the water before I entered dungeons. Satasha has always been tuned so that people can make mistakes and screw up. The heal requirement is so low that it doesn't matter who is tanking the mobs. This I always viewed as intentional because you're gonna have newbie tanks and newbie healers running it and it's going to be their first experience of running dungeons in the game. The dungeon difficulties throughout were gradual with the odd DPS, tanking and healing checks to test you. You also gradually pick up your abilities at a pace where you've got space to learn to integrate them into your skill set up.

I don't think it's as hard to learn as you think. The majority of my experience with the game has been with Shadowbringers, yet starting late has never hindered my ability to learn. There can be an issue when Sage comes along and people are starting at level 70, but an easy fix could be to require anyone who wants to heal as Sage to first have a minimum amount of content and levels played as something like Conjurer. It's not even that slow to level a Conjurer to, say, level 50 before you're allowed to touch Sage. At least this way, you ensure some level of understanding in playing.

I feel it's problem in that the devs want it two opposing ways.
They want healing to be easier for accessibility. But they also want healers to be focused on their healing. But by making it easier they reduce the healing requirement and increase the space for DPS.

Either:
They accept that down time is a thing and give us more to do during that time.
Or
They rebalance the healing requirement and the tools for dealing with it to significantly reduce downtime.

Or possible both. Because they could still balance new content to increase the requirement without touching old content and have a little more in the way of our down time. For me this would be the best option.

I got into healing because I enjoy healing and I like have to balance DPS with it, But, 70% DPS 30% heals is a really bad ratio, which feels like the average.

What, to you, would be a good balance? How much time would you think should be spent DPSing? To that end, should end-game content be balanced with healer DPS in mind or should it be a bonus? These are the questions that need to be started with first, because ultimately they determine what should be done. I'm personally in the realm of "I want to heal more than 75% of the time" group, which would put healer DPS as more of a bonus.

[Saefinn]

I don't think it's as hard to learn as you think. The majority of my experience with the game has been with Shadowbringers, yet starting late has never hindered my ability to learn. There can be an issue when Sage comes along and people are starting at level 70, but an easy fix could be to require anyone who wants to heal as Sage to first have a minimum amount of content and levels played as something like Conjurer. It's not even that slow to level a Conjurer to, say, level 50 before you're allowed to touch Sage. At least this way, you ensure some level of understanding in playing.

I'd be inclined to agree, but people keep talking about how healers should be accessible and how the "old ways" would inhibit that. There is an answer for that and that is to provide the tools to learn, rather than make healing simpler like they did.

What, to you, would be a good balance? How much time would you think should be spent DPSing? To that end, should end-game content be balanced with healer DPS in mind or should it be a bonus? These are the questions that need to be started with first, because ultimately they determine what should be done. I'm personally in the realm of "I want to heal more than 75% of the time" group, which would put healer DPS as more of a bonus.

Personally? One that's reflective of our kit. I am fairly flexible on this requirement. I would argue that our current tool kit is designed better for something closer to your 75% than it is for the ratio it feels we have. I know the devs view DPS as just a bonus, but sadly their design isn't reflective of this.

If a DPS rotation has to be dull as heck like it is now, then I'm more inclined to prefer more in your line of thinking, heal 75% of the time. But I don't mind DPS juggling and the concept of having more to do than heal, but I need the tools to there, else it's dull as heck. But I can see a lot of pitfalls in trying to achieve 75% with existing design (including encounter design), which is the disparity between normal and high end content, how gear and player skill affects that percentage. But I think we can for sure have it better than where it stands at the moment. Hence I am in favour of a mix of both increasing the heal requirement and offering more downtime variety such a through more DPS abilities.

[hythrain]

snip

So I'm gonna offer a weird perspective here. Might take me a couple posts, depending on length. I'll mark "Ok, I'm done" when it's all done.

Years ago, I played WoW hardcore (from six months after launch up through to near the end of its third expansion, Cataclysm, when I went casual.) From the 1st expansion on I was a raid healer, doing 10/25 player raids. During my time, WoW's healing was where you were healing 80% or more for the vast majority of fights, both in dungeons and in raids. Free time was left to allow mana to regen (since it was faster after not casting for 5 seconds). This was more important in raids, but overall mana management mattered. Healing also wasn't hard in this style, despite what some people may think. It kept you busy, but save for the hardest of content it was not brutal. As time went on, this got lessened and things got easier as they wanted to "simplify" thing as FF14 devs do, but even now I don't think they've simplified it as much as FF14 is trying to.

WoW also featured 5 healers when I played hardcore that were all really unique in their healing styles. There was a core set-up of skills that each healer had, but each healer had their own strengths and weaknesses.

To outline it briefly:

Holy Priest - Standard healer, no solid strengths or weaknesses
Restoration Druid - A regen heavy healer that excelled at fights where there was lots of small damage consistently going out but had a rougher time on fights with huge spikes of damage.
Holy Paladin - A powerful single target healer that was good for healing tanks but had weak AOE healing.
Restoration Shaman - The strongest AOE healer but weaker single target heals.
Discipline Priest - A barrier healer who was a bit lower than Holy Priest on AOE and about the same on single target, but had a role in being able to lessen spike damage.

Now these strengths and weaknesses only mattered in raids. When in small party content, your skills worked well enough to let any healer do it. So in short, in any situation where your weakness could be a problem you had at least one other healer to help out.

[hythrain]

Honestly, it's easier to get that 75% healing time going than it may seem. I don't think you saw my post a couple pages back, but basically the trick is to do it over time. For example, from levels 1 to 30 you make healing easy and have a 75% DPS/25% healing ratio (as we do now). This provides an environment that allows for lots of mistakes and learning to balance healing with DPS. By level 50, you aim for that to be 60/40 for DPS, giving less room for error. By 60, 50/50. And then by 70, you're putting more healing on the plate than DPS until, finally, by 80 you're where you need to be. And in terms of casual content, the 25% DPS, 75% healing ratio is a good balance because it still gives you room for error. At that sort of level, encounters wouldn't be designed with healer DPS in mind, meaning if a healer was worried about mistakes they could just... not DPS. At least then they have a lot to do. In addition, since you're getting more healing tools over time it'll make more sense to do it this way. And the thing is, you don't even need it perfect in end-game casual content compared to Savage. If anything, it should be that way! Savage should automatically have a higher skill floor for everyone just to start it, because that's the idea of it. It's called Savage because it should be savage.

The trick is HOW you get this done. A change like this needs to sweep the entire game to make it a gradual change that players, even casual ones, get used to. If we try to go from 75/25 at 80 to 25/75 by whatever Endwalker's level cap is, it won't fly. You also need to force would be healers to go through the ropes. Yes, they can do it at an accelerated rate if they have experience in the game but it still needs to be done. The question, therefore, is if Yoshi and his team are willing to modify damage from every dungeon, trial and raid from before Endwalker to make it work (including adjusting old Savages for those who want to do them at min ilevel to ensure they can be done without the healer DPS). Solo content doesn't need to be touched at all, because even if you're a healer in solo content you'll be DPSing a lot to get stuff done.

... I'm not sure where I was going with this anymore. Lost my original train of thought. Oh well, I'm done.

[Irenia]

The 75/25 healing/dps ratio sounds nice, however there is many ways to look at healing downtime. One way is the concept of what I've been calling "mistake space"; time spent DPSing in optimal scenarios is time that could be spent healing mistakes made by the healer or their allies, thus "mistake space".

The suggested ratio may be way too punishing for casual players who need more healing generally. Whether it is bad cooldown usage or just standing in bad, if a healer only gets 1 gcd out of 4 to fix mistakes, then they can easily run out of mistake space. Not to mention combat rez; in it's current form it'll only be useful if you will be aoe healing as a matter of course. And if the healer doesn't heal perfectly, then they may end up giving tanks and dps to play perfectly since the healer uses up all the mistake space for themselves.

I think this is something that the dev team is trying to avoid.

[ItMe]

"mistake space"

This is a very keen observation.

[hythrain]

snip

I've certainly been trying to keep this in mind. I've consistently been trying to be mindful of that spare DPS time to be used for mistakes, which is why I didn't suggest a more harsh ratio like 90/10 (something I am far more familiar with due to my old WoW experience).

That said, if we're talking end-game Savage content then casual players don't matter. They're not the ones doing it, at least not until later on when they're a lot better geared for it. This is where I think we should see that 75/25 healing ratio. In casual gameplay, we can let it slip a bit more, but we don't want to exceed a certain amount.

There are two main obstacles to me: the first is the fact that healer is the only job in FF14 that has a third task to do (DPS, arena watching, healing, making it possibly the hardest role in the game. Yet people can level a summoner to 80, decide they wanna go Scholar and bam; they're a Scholar at level 80. We're opening more of this problem with Sage, because now ANYONE who has hit 70 can just... start healing. When you allow this, you're forced to keep a low skill floor at that level. Healing is the one job that nobody should be able to jump in the deep end for.

The second obstacle is the way FF14 tries to deal damage to players. From what I see, most attacks are slow, big hits that take away tons of health that require lots of healing for them. This is true even for tanks. I just finished tanking Orbonne where regular hits from bosses were hitting me for 10k damage, 10% of my health, and tank busters were taking half my health. While that makes sense for a tank buster, when the damage comes in slow, huge hits like we get, it makes it impossible to tune things differently. And let's not forget if you dodge the attack altogether. A single dodge leaves a LOT of open space.

Instead, damage should be in smaller amounts at a more steady pace. This reduces the effectiveness of a single dodge yet the dodge is till valuable since, y'know, it gives some breathing room, it gives more control over damage numbers to the devs, and you don't need to rely purely on the big, slow heals. And not just on tanks. This should be true for damage to other party members. There are a lot of damage effects that go out that do big hits to DPS and healers, but there's so LITTLE in terms of "here's a bunch of small, consistent damage." The most prominent example I can think of for it is Behemoth in Labyrinth. However, consistently hitting the party for small damage is something that should be done, because that ALSO encourage healing the party outside of when someone makes a mistake or a boss does some big unavoidable hit.

There are totally ways to make a 75/25 heal-to-dps ratio work without it ruining mistake space. The problem is, the devs are viewing things in VERY limited scopes that make these ideas harder for them to execute.

[Saefinn]

Honestly, it's easier to get that 75% healing time going than it may seem. I don't think you saw my post a couple pages back, but basically the trick is to do it over time. For example, from levels 1 to 30 you make healing easy and have a 75% DPS/25% healing ratio (as we do now). This provides an environment that allows for lots of mistakes and learning to balance healing with DPS. By level 50, you aim for that to be 60/40 for DPS, giving less room for error. By 60, 50/50. And then by 70, you're putting more healing on the plate than DPS until, finally, by 80 you're where you need to be. And in terms of casual content, the 25% DPS, 75% healing ratio is a good balance because it still gives you room for error. At that sort of level, encounters wouldn't be designed with healer DPS in mind, meaning if a healer was worried about mistakes they could just... not DPS. At least then they have a lot to do. In addition, since you're getting more healing tools over time it'll make more sense to do it this way. And the thing is, you don't even need it perfect in end-game casual content compared to Savage. If anything, it should be that way! Savage should automatically have a higher skill floor for everyone just to start it, because that's the idea of it. It's called Savage because it should be savage.

The trick is HOW you get this done. A change like this needs to sweep the entire game to make it a gradual change that players, even casual ones, get used to. If we try to go from 75/25 at 80 to 25/75 by whatever Endwalker's level cap is, it won't fly. You also need to force would be healers to go through the ropes. Yes, they can do it at an accelerated rate if they have experience in the game but it still needs to be done. The question, therefore, is if Yoshi and his team are willing to modify damage from every dungeon, trial and raid from before Endwalker to make it work (including adjusting old Savages for those who want to do them at min ilevel to ensure they can be done without the healer DPS). Solo content doesn't need to be touched at all, because even if you're a healer in solo content you'll be DPSing a lot to get stuff done.

... I'm not sure where I was going with this anymore. Lost my original train of thought. Oh well, I'm done.

Whilst I think doing this could address the balance of healing and DPS and prepare people for more of a healing focus. I feel rebalancing all the old content would be too big of a task the devs would do for healers, that said...if they're gonna do it, it's probably best they do it during the numbers crunch they're doing for Endwalker.

But I think the compromise that I've arrived at here is that we break up the monotony in the down time with more DPS or support abilities. They don't have to be complicated just like before they stripped the healer jobs. Then for content moving forward address that ratio. Level's 80 to 90 could follow the kind of transition you describe.

[hythrain]

snip

We could go an alternative way. The use of role quests that the devs used in ShB instead of class quests, which you HAD to finish to go past a certain point, could allow for a better system: a Hall of Skills. In this, everyone must undergo multiple tasks with a set item level (like what Bozja does) to prove their competency at the job. They cannot queue for dungeons, trials or raids without having done these (trust party dungeons can still be done, though). Here's a brief idea of what the tasks could be, though this could be expanded upon (note all tasks need to be on a per job basis and not per role):

DPS Hall of Skills Ideas
1. DPS Check - Test how much damage you can do under a hard enrage timer. Winning takes a minimum level of DPS but not perfection. Instead, you need to be capable of 80% of the max DPS for your job.
2. Position Check - Test your ability to kill an enemy slowly while not getting hit. Healing skills and base regen are disabled, and every time you're hit your DPS is lowered for the rest of the fight.
3. Combination Check - Combines the DPS and Position Checks

Tank Hall of Skill Ideas:
1. Enmity Check - Test your ability to maintain enmity on the enemy from NPCs. They will generate higher than normal enmity and it's up to you to manage your DPS to ensure you can hold it.
2. Position Check - Same as the DPS one. No NPCs needed for this.
3. Defensive Cooldown Check - Test smart use of defensive cooldowns. An NPC will heal you but they can only heal a certain amount per second. If you don't use defensive cooldowns, especially at specific parts, you won't survive. You only need to survive a certain amount of time.
4. Combination Check - Combination of the three previous tests.


Healer Hall of Skills
1. Tank Healing Check - Test your ability to heal a single target and keep it alive while maintaining MP. The expectation is that you don't DPS at all, and as such DPS skills are disabled.
2. AOE Healing Check - Test your ability to heal a group while maintaining MP.
3. Combo Healing Check - Perform both of the last two at once. This is just to ensure you can do healing in general before adding in additiona stuff.
4. Positional Check - Same as DPS and Tank, save for this change: every time you get hit, your healing power is reduced for the rest of the fight. Get hit too much and you can't heal the NPCs that you need to finish the target.
5. DPS Weave Check - Check your ability to heal a single target and weave DPS in as well. This fight would be a hard enrage timer, where if you don't DPS the enemy won't die. Note that the expectation will be that you only need to DPS about 15-20% of the time.
6. Combination Check - The total package, mixing everything from the above to test your skills.

As you might've noticed, Tank and Healer have more they need to do since they have more to pay attention to... at least as far as I can think of.