Shadowbringers Healer Role: Complaints, Feedback, and Suggestions

[Semirhage]

People often forget healers back in Heavensward, and especially ARR, had nowhere near the ridiculously overpowered kits they do now. Benediction alone was on a five minute CD. Tankbusters were also far more frequent, thus you were expected to actually, ya know, heal the tank more. Healing has become remarkably easier than it's ever been. Hence why you see so many complaints from players at all skill levels they have little to actually heal.

The combination of accessibility on both tanks and healers have reduced the role of both roles into gimped DPS who occasionally play the role they signed up for.

Healing being more challenging would be nice. I'm also in what appears to be a minority on the forums, because I also don't think the baseline healing kits beneath the OP always-available oGCDs are particularly interesting either; having like two GCD heals with barely any difference between them other than efficiency is an okay start, but a decision tree it is definitely not. Bouncing back and forth between juggling a modest damage kit and needing to swap out for a ~20 second triage with a few decent GCD heals and a short list of strong oGCDs back in Heavensward struck a decent balance between what would have otherwise been two kinda boring kit halves (on their own).

But I spend a decent chunk of time ranting at people who also seem to think "having one button for damage is just *chef's kiss* yum yum! Now just delete the oGCDs so we spam Cure when we're not spamming Glare!" would make healing better. Garbage can it all and start over for all I care. Current healer kits don't even have the distinction of any connection to their class lore. They're a collection of random, incoherent abilities that survived expansion slashing and were moved around to hide the huge holes where a glimmer of actual design used to live. Given your choice to spend the next GCD casting something, why would you use Thunder on a black mage? Easy, because Thundercloud is a strong, impactful part of the job design that outdamages Fire 4 if you don't overwrite too soon. Fire? Resetting the timer on Astral Fire. Freeze? Adds an umbral heart and lets you do more with your Flares. Why would you cast Regen? Who the hell knows, maybe it's the nearest Cure 2 equivalent button to your already cramped Glare finger. Holy? Because it's literally the only correct choice you have when facing a group of enemies. Assize? Because the white cooldown numbers disappeared. Cure 3? Because fuggit, why not, Medica 2 is overused and it basically does the same thing when you're in a stack, and trying to muscle memory where it is on the hotbar is the most fun you've had in the last ten minutes. Do Medica 2 or Cure 3 feed into another system that would give you pause to think about which of the two would influence your next move in a more interesting way? God no, but I'm gibbering into the void here because I hear "WHM is so well designed!" on these forums and ingame a frightening lot, largely because someone on the dev team figured out how to feed two entire heals in the Jumbled Trashpile Of Functionally Identical Healing Spells into poor man's Foul, as if that salvages the rest of the confused mess.

My rambling point here is, nuke the healers from orbit. There's barely anything worth saving. They're piles of barely-related buttons with some sparkles attached.

[Kabooa]

Given your choice to spend the next GCD casting something, why would you use Thunder on a black mage? Easy, because Thundercloud is a strong, impactful part of the job design that outdamages Fire 4 if you don't overwrite too soon..

Because you have to fill the GCD in Ice phase with something.

Make no mistake, if thundercloud didn't exist, we'd still use Thunder, because we're not going to use Blizzard 1 or Scathe, and being tied to the Server Tick for MP regen creates a variable recovery phase.

[Deceptus]

I sometimes forget Fey Blessing even exists because not only does it use the gauge but you barely notice its heal. That and none of the capstone abilities really synergize with each other. Between Dissipation, Fey Union, and Seraph use one and the other two cannot be.

A slightly-weaker-than-physick aoe heal on a 60 second cooldown that uses the fey gauge barely. How exciting.

Only bonus is it's aoe but yeah, it's weak and on top of that it suffers the pet penalty (33% IIRC). I really wish SE would just update the fairy tooltip to show what the actual potencies are.

The damage rotations could be managed by a sufficiently trained cat, the combo of few party-wide hits and absurd universal self-sustain means healing is mostly an occasional leisurely break from bonking that 1 key, and managing debuffs is now a red DPS thing so that's out the window too.

Real Talk? I have as little spell speed as I can, stack Crit and Det and have a macro for Glare / Broil / Malefic spam. What's sad is even using that inefficient macro, I've outdps'd people before.

Also:

SE needs to stop making single target spells that only can target "Your Party members". In Delebrum Reginae I can't Excogitation or Divine Benison another groups tank because reasons?

[GrimGale]

I honestly would not mind having 50% healing and 50% downtime. I do enjoy the wider support role beyond healing. Honestly, better crafted downtime could be potentially fun, juggling healing with each jobs distinct internal mechanics during downtime, just like AST.

Again:

WHM, proper damage rotation, big slow strong spells combined with light hitting quick casts, and mobility skills.

SCH, proper debuff management. Drain and leech effects and weakness exposing debuffs. Why our dot damage doesn't feed into our fairy healing is something I don't yet understand.

AST, proper buff management. Royal Road was a great tool to ensure me made the most of the RNG. Feels like the 3 charges on redraw could have worked much better for that system.
Buff extension, spreading, expanding could have worked great.
Also Balance needed to go. Too strong compared to the others.

Interestingly enough we have 6 secondary stats: Determination, Critical Hit, Direct hit, Spell/Skill speed, Tenacity and Piety. One for each card, hmmm...

[LeonKeyh]

From a newbie's perspective on "normal" (read: easy) content, the healing kits are full of stuff that is used in niche situations and can definitely be pared down. On the flip side, the DPS kit could be made significantly more complex (and rewarding).

One of my favorite healers to play in any MMO was Chloromancer from RIFT. Its healing was intertwined with the damage that it dealt and that was a fun concept and something that I'd like to see in FF14, even if it's just a single class that does it.

It had a passive heal, a debuff put on enemies that when hit had a 10% chance of the attacker to heal the damage they dealt (with a cap dependent on the Chloromancer's stats), a DoT on enemies that heals any players near that enemy, a buff that you put on the tank and damage from certain abilities cause a heal on that target (think Dance Partner and some of your DPS abilities cause a heal on your partner).

I would love a healer that had a complex DPS kit and if you did great at the DPS portion, it buffed, augmented, or even replaced most of the need to use direct healing.

[Colt47]

Well, if we're going shields vs HP recovery types...

WHM
1) Cut or remove divine benison as it really doesn't fit the regen style healing they have.
2) Remove the current free cure and make it something more useful to the job. Something like after using a solace or rapture you get a free instant cast of Cure I, cure II, medica, medica II, or cure III, depending on what is unlocked. Maybe even make the next cast instant cast and free regardless.
3) make cure II replace cure I.
4) Plenary indulgence feels kind of weird and I think it should proc off any heal from anyone and not just your own medica, medica II, cure III, or afflatus rapture.
5) Definitely need a less sluggish holy. The new style of gameplay just doesn't work with the delayed animation and the damage from holy doesn't really match the impact it is supposed to have.

[Allegor]

Interestingly enough we have 6 secondary stats: Determination, Critical Hit, Direct hit, Spell/Skill speed, Tenacity and Piety. One for each card, hmmm...

Sadly, the meta will demand Crit becomes the new Balance, with Tenacity and Piety becoming the new Spire and Ewer aka "the useless cards" - there's just no winning there.

[Anhra]

So, the past days i have been pushing my luck in dungeons by running Daily Roulette (lv80, expert and 50/60/70) as a regular Conjurer and amusingly, that Healing Kit is so far, more than sufficient to heal any Dungeon i encountered so far, even with mass pulling.

I have yet to test this later with Trials, trough, but i doubt it will be any different, but i will make another post or even a Thread once testing is completed.

[HamiltonCalder]

So, the past days i have been pushing my luck in dungeons by running Daily Roulette (lv80, expert and 50/60/70) as a regular Conjurer and amusingly, that Healing Kit is so far, more than sufficient to heal any Dungeon i encountered so far, even with mass pulling.

I have yet to test this later with Trials, trough, but i doubt it will be any different, but i will make another post or even a Thread once testing is completed.

Please do not do this.

[ItMe]

So, the past days i have been pushing my luck in dungeons by running Daily Roulette (lv80, expert and 50/60/70) as a regular Conjurer and amusingly, that Healing Kit is so far, more than sufficient to heal any Dungeon i encountered so far, even with mass pulling.

I have yet to test this later with Trials, trough, but i doubt it will be any different, but i will make another post or even a Thread once testing is completed.

I keep telling people: soul stone-less runs can be surprisingly fun ♡
You going in with your friends though? Or inflicting your test on randos?