Can Healer Balance Survive a 4th Healer?

[AlexionSkyllark]

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

[Semirhage]

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

What? I mean, making sure you have a barrier and regen healer (ew, ugh, I had to remind myself they were still pretending that's a thing when it hasn't been true since ARR) has been a stated goal for Endwalker. This otherwise hasn't held truth at all. They've always favored bringing 8 different jobs to content, sure, but they've been practically obsessive with making sure that any combination that fits role requirements is viable. FFXIV only favors class diversity inasmuch that GCD shields don't stack and you don't get party stat passives if all roles aren't represented/get the limit break penalty if you double up on a job. That's about it.

[Rilifane]

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

Yes, it absolutely does.
Excessively so considering how closely the devs are trying to keep all classes within a role in terms of rDPS, how they've gutted several classes for the sake of balance and how they've explicitely stated multiple times that it is one of their primary goals when it comes to balancing to ensure that any reasonable combination of classes can clear any content. All you get for taking 3 different dps types is a 1% buff.
The only reason many PFs stick to this is because 1% buff means a nicer parse for everyone but that doesn't have to do anything with SE because ACT and fflogs are external resources that are against the ToS.
Just like with some mechanics requiring disengaging for one GCD or more this is only SEs attempt at discouraging severly imbalanced comps (e.g. 4 melees) but it's still very much "bring the player, not the class". 1 melee 3 physical ranged comps can clear content just fine because the dps checks are tuned accordingly; they may have to put in a little bit more effort than a more balanced comp but even average gameplay cuts it. And in casual content it doesn't matter one bit what you play.
GCD shields from Noct AST and SCH don't stack, everything else does.
Many party buffs don't stack, so doubles on classes who bring signifcant rDPS through buffs are discouraged but just like 1% buff it's something people mostly pay attention to because of parses or because they're first week progging.

The only class that deviates a bit from this concept is RDM for early prog because they can chain ress. SMN can ress but not as quickly and easily.

[FusionSamurai]

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

All tank CDs are basically the same now. Healers can 1:1 70% of their buttons with each other. Remind me again how they are gunning for class diversity?

[Dalvy]

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

Were you healing during HW? They were absolutely trying to do this. The healing classes are the way they are today because they aimed for homogenization back then.

[Truen]

Guys, this game does NOT follow WoW's philosophy of "bring the player, not the class".

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

I disagree. FF14 does not favor class diversity. They dumbed down and homogenized way too far in 5.0 and have doubled down ever since. The SCH is now a boring, mindless healbot with 1 spammable, sorry dps button and single dot...and if they could get rid of that, I'm sure they would. The only differences FF14 boasts between jobs really begins and ends with cosmetics. I'm literally waiting in horror to see what further damage awaits us with the debut of 6.0's balancing we should all expect.

[Ayche]

All healers having the same DPS potential is progress just the same way all tanks having basically same DPS and same utilities such as gap closer is progress, because if you truly want to increase the amount of jobs in the game without at the same time increasing the amount of ROLES in the game, this is how it must be. Only way I can come halfway is to admit that there could had been another path of development, one where not a single job, not even Ninja, is added to the game without a solid treaty among the parties of the game, the players and the developers that each job from now on will only ever be a new role for the game, and jobs will only be added if they truly become a role to themselves.

For being a Dancer is not a role. Being a Samurai is not a role. But if you squint hard and stare at 2.0, you can say that being a Bard and being a Scholar were roles, sure. Only SCH had Adlo and Soil. Only Bard could sing more MP. So in some alternative universe FFXIV, every single new job would had been tasked with shouldering some new, unique burden that no other job can do. And I am going to cry realist that I am willing to take homogenized jobs over something that might had never been plausible in the first place.

[Deceptus]

FFXIV DOES favor class diversity, and that being said, they WILL favor a setup of a HoT healer + a shield healer on top of doubling up the healer types. I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so AST and WHM HoTs don't stack, either

Looks at the tanks.

Sees how SE wanted dedicated MT/OT roles.

Sees how that did NOT pan out at all.

Has very little confidence the shield / regen thing is going to work out as well.

[NYCLouisGamer]

... But if you squint hard and stare at 2.0, you can say that being a Bard and being a Scholar were roles, sure. Only SCH had Adlo and Soil. Only Bard could sing more MP. So in some alternative universe FFXIV, every single new job would had been tasked with shouldering some new, unique burden that no other job can do. And I am going to cry realist that I am willing to take homogenized jobs over something that might had never been plausible in the first place.

Please sing more to me about the beautiful world of which you speak. Jobs in FFXIV having unique utility, even if it means that no single comp is 100% viable for all content. An endless blue sky!...

FF14 Classic will be coming if the nostalgia gets any stronger.

[technole]

Tanks were fine, they had role/job balance well before healers ever did.

If anything they learned from the player base and how tanks were managed because good groups did not see tanks as MT/OT, just two tanks with a set of cooldowns that can be shared amongst the fight. They stepped this up even further in HW and the meta became forcing tank swaps to get another immunity/cooldown sooner = more damage for healers. This still lives on today in raid strats. Figuring out how in the fight to use both tanks immunities to their fullest potential. In a way that is kind of like healers as well, there isn't a main healer. It's just two healers that use the right skills for the situation. You use Temperance here, the Scholar will Soil the next mechanic, etc.

They stepped up healing this savage tier, likely as a precursor to what they are planning in 6.0, because shields are actually necessary in early weeks of a progression. Like doing E12S in i510 gear is much different than i530 for a healer. What they can likely do going forward is just making sure shields are necessary even at gear cap. They can spin some things like what they did in E1S where some of the AoEs are % of your HP, and not a fixed amount where overgearing the fight means you can't ignore the mechanic. Or those mechanics that always take you down to 1 HP no matter what your gear is kind of things. There used to be mechanics where if a person didn't have an Adlo/stoneskin, they'd get a stack of something or lose damage. Possibilities are there.