Can we get a rework of healers for 6.0

[Lyth]

why change a willing formula

Problem is, the formula already has been changed, without consideration or regard for what players previously wanted.

The appeal of doing dps as tanks and healers in Heavensward came down to carry potential. Your WAR showed up in full STR gear (or some crafted, if they wanted to play a bit less greedy). They had marginally more HP than your Dragoon. They then turned out to be tankier than your PLD, while doing more damage than your BRD. Your SCH spent pretty much the entire fight in Cleric Stance, but they're also still managed to somehow solo heal your team when your WHM died. These were your carry heroes. It felt good to translate your mastery of a role into a gamechanging advantage for your team.

From Stormblood to Shadowbringers, we've seen a progressive effort from the dev team to separate out the dps done by 'true damage dealers' and the rest of us. They've done this by placing restrictions on our gear and limitations on our stat progression (and even our access to certain procs, like DH). In some cases, they failed spectacularly and embarrassingly had to backpedal (see: i270 strength gear in Stormblood).

But the devs don't want what you want. Even if you're the 'best' healer player, your damage by default is going to be a fraction of a player who picked DPS, irrespective of their competence. This is only going to get worse with subsequent expansions. Can't have you embarrassing your DPS for binding all their keys to auto-attack, now can we? And if doing damage is the only thing that has value, then where does that leave you? Is there any surprise that people now want to switch off these roles to DPS?

As a healer, what do you have to offer your team, besides being a half-strength dps? Under such conditions, if healing has no impact, then healers have no impact.

If the devs and playerbase can embrace uncertainty, then healing for healing sake can be applied. Until then, every job is a DPS, that occasionally presses other buttons to not wipe.

I don't think this is universal. In Stormblood, there were a couple of influential streamers who argued that Crit/DH procs were unfair on WARs trying to achieve their perfect dps run. This is obviously dumb, because the entire point of having Crits is to introduce in some variability in your damage output. What was baffling was that the dev team actually listened to this suggestion and made everything into guaranteed Crit/DH procs.

I mean, we can suggest more dumb things out of our own convenience. Any healing requirements in a fight detracts from our ability to maximise our dps. So we should get rid of HP and heals altogether. The only way you can now die is by failing dps checks or by messing up mechanics. Actually, better yet, actually playing the game is difficult. They should just replace fights with animated cutscenes of the players winning and collecting gacha Mogstation glamours. There, even less variability.

You can't blame the average layperson for suggesting ideas that they haven't thought through properly. You can certainly blame the dev team for catering to dumb suggestions, though. There's a problem with being too polite.

I'd just wish that the team would choose one or the other. Are we healers who DPS on the side? Or are we DPS who heal on the side?

Either approach is fine. But you have to remember: the average player picks DPS. It's that single player game mentality. People pick tank and healer specifically because they want to make a difference to their group. If you neuter the impact that these roles have (because wipes make people feel bad), nobody will play them.

[Semirhage]

Problem is, the formula already has been changed, without consideration or regard for what players previously wanted.

The appeal of doing dps as tanks and healers in Heavensward came down to carry potential. Your WAR showed up in full STR gear (or some crafted, if they wanted to play a bit less greedy). They had marginally more HP than your Dragoon. They then turned out to be tankier than your PLD, while doing more damage than your BRD. Your SCH spent pretty much the entire fight in Cleric Stance, but they're also still managed to somehow solo heal your team when your WHM died. These were your carry heroes. It felt good to translate your mastery of a role into a gamechanging advantage for your team.

From Stormblood to Shadowbringers, we've seen a progressive effort from the dev team to separate out the dps done by 'true damage dealers' and the rest of us. They've done this by placing restrictions on our gear and limitations on our stat progression (and even our access to certain procs, like DH). In some cases, they failed spectacularly and embarrassingly had to backpedal (see: i270 strength gear in Stormblood).

God I miss being able to hard carry a terrible DF group through heal bombing them while also outdamaging them. I thought that was a fantastic reward for playing the class well.

But we can't embarrass DPS mains, so they can't die from standing in fire and they have to do way more damage than everyone else. Where do tanks and healers fit in there? I'm exaggerating a little. But not by much.

[Liam_Harper]

Problem is, the formula already has been changed, without consideration or regard for what players previously wanted.

The appeal of doing dps as tanks and healers in Heavensward came down to carry potential. Your WAR showed up in full STR gear (or some crafted, if they wanted to play a bit less greedy). They had marginally more HP than your Dragoon. They then turned out to be tankier than your PLD, while doing more damage than your BRD. Your SCH spent pretty much the entire fight in Cleric Stance, but they're also still managed to somehow solo heal your team when your WHM died. These were your carry heroes. It felt good to translate your mastery of a role into a gamechanging advantage for your team.

From Stormblood to Shadowbringers, we've seen a progressive effort from the dev team to separate out the dps done by 'true damage dealers' and the rest of us. They've done this by placing restrictions on our gear and limitations on our stat progression (and even our access to certain procs, like DH). In some cases, they failed spectacularly and embarrassingly had to backpedal (see: i270 strength gear in Stormblood).

But the devs don't want what you want. Even if you're the 'best' healer player, your damage by default is going to be a fraction of a player who picked DPS, irrespective of their competence. This is only going to get worse with subsequent expansions. Can't have you embarrassing your DPS for binding all their keys to auto-attack, now can we? And if doing damage is the only thing that has value, then where does that leave you? Is there any surprise that people now want to switch off these roles to DPS?

It's sad how true this is. I've seen it in other MMO's too, WoW especially hit their tanks hard after endless complaints from poorly geared dps doing their rotation wrong and getting out-damaged by very skilled and well geared tanks, or exceptional tanks holding raid bosses solo.
It was indeed as you mention really rewarding to translate your skill and knowledge of your class into amazing game-changing contributions for your team. Many people mastered their class and played and lived for those brief moments. It's natural to want to feel like you make a noticeable impact to the team.

Dev mentality however seems to be that because they're a paying customer, you must shield the bad player from their own performance and protect their feelings. Even more so in FF14 than a lot of other games. It's an exercise in futility really, not only does the underperforming player get frustrated anyway because their groups rarely clear and people randomly kick them, so it feels the community is super toxic and bad, but any semi-decent player loses a lot of motivation because very little they do will ever have much impact, be noticed or appreciated. It makes everything feel lukewarm. It's "fine" and functions but it's never particularly exciting.

[Mortex]

It's sad how true this is. I've seen it in other MMO's too, WoW especially hit their tanks hard after endless complaints from poorly geared dps doing their rotation wrong and getting out-damaged by very skilled and well geared tanks, or exceptional tanks holding raid bosses solo.
It was indeed as you mention really rewarding to translate your skill and knowledge of your class into amazing game-changing contributions for your team. Many people mastered their class and played and lived for those brief moments. It's natural to want to feel like you make a noticeable impact to the team.

Dev mentality however seems to be that because they're a paying customer, you must shield the bad player from their own performance and protect their feelings. Even more so in FF14 than a lot of other games. It's an exercise in futility really, not only does the underperforming player get frustrated anyway because their groups rarely clear and people randomly kick them, so it feels the community is super toxic and bad, but any semi-decent player loses a lot of motivation because very little they do will ever have much impact, be noticed or appreciated. It makes everything feel lukewarm. It's "fine" and functions but it's never particularly exciting.

Don’t forget that these “bad” player come with the same answer when you try to help them and give them tips. The “you don’t pay my sub line”. The most famous and also most meme answer somebody can receive. 90% of these people that don’t do that as a meme answer are also the people saying how toxic the community is. Or another fun thing people do is totally fail rotations and then telling people that give tips that “that is his way of playing the job and how he wants too be different from all other”. And i have no Problem with these people being that in normal or 24 mans but the moment they want a free carry in a savage fight, I’m going too lose my marbles in real life.

[Truen]

The current design of healers is the worst it's ever been in this game. I absolutely hate what they did to the SCH...this expansion has been so upsetting for me. I can't wait until it's over.

[Recon1o6]

The current design of healers is the worst it's ever been in this game. I absolutely hate what they did to the SCH...this expansion has been so upsetting for me. I can't wait until it's over.

agreed but dont get your hopes up since SE hasn't shown enough to convince us we have even ONE healer job that is not terrible. The only thing they showed in the sage preview was the barebones and as such can't be taken as any proof at a change in healing design or the current atrocious status quo

-Basic heal
-Basic nuke
-Basic Aoe
-Basic single target regen/shield

Don't base just on what you see, you got to think about what's missing from a trailer that they don't want to show yet. So far we have had no indicators of a corrected course to healing being fun again

[Truen]

Don't base just on what you see, you got to think about what's missing from a trailer that they don't want to show yet. So far we have had no indicators of a corrected course to healing being fun again

Well said. I guess, my problem is I no longer trust the development team to make sound decisions after what they rolled out, and forced us to endure, through the 5.0 expansion cycle. Absolutely horrible--worst expansion cycle for healing I've ever seen (in any game). Endless: Dot, BROIL, BROIL, BROIL, heal, BROIL, dot, BROIL...<cries>

[NYCLouisGamer]

I don't believe that this problem of boring healer jobs can be fixed without encounter redesign. Currently, any changes to a job seems to leave some abilities OP & other abilities useless. Non-healers jobs rage if our ranking goes up. So let's make encounters (sub-Savage) require regular healing first. Just add a percentage increase to enemy dps across the board. I do not believe it is possible to balance both normal & Savage tier to the same ability.

Then once enemy damage is no longer trivial, SE can introduce both healing & dps rotations to healer jobs. Imagine a healing rotation?! That would be awesome. Like, RDM-level awesome & ingenious battle system design.

[Brandedblade]

Until we are proven otherwise in either September or October when the job action trailer comes out, I think it's safe to say that major reworks are coming, especially with AST and SCH to potentially strengthen them to their roles within the Pure-Regen/Barrier dichotomy. I can see WHM getting off with little major rework but there's no way AST and SCH are going to be unscathed.

[Almagnus1]

SE just needs to embrace the Green DPS... and then design a set of skills for all the healers that does damage and healing. That way we get our rotation (even a simple 1-2-3 would be welcome here), and the jobs become a little less boring.