The Problem With Healers as a Role Withing FFXIV

[Dearche]

Third is the fact that without predictable and constant damage, there's no opportunity to create healing rotations to keep the act of healing interesting. As things stand, healers all just have a jumble of skills that generally just do the same thing. There are slight differences between potency and restrictions, but overall they're the same.

Every healer has big single target healing, weaker AOE healing, and everything else is just a variation of the two, with the bulk of abilities veering towards the latter. There's no synergistic effects between the abilities to promote using them in a particular order, or to use certain combinations together to improve the effect. They're all more or less the same abilities with differing effects put on them.

You can argue that the management of all these abilities is the skill of the healer, but frankly, there's not much difference between what we have right now and just consolidating all these skills into four abilities. A single target and AOE heal that uses MP, and a single target and AOE heal that is on a 15s or so CD with 2-3 charges.

This change would make learning healer infinitely easier, but it would also expose just how little there is when it comes to healer design.

It's really unfortunate, since most other healing related abilities either fall into abilities that manages MP, allows movement while casting, or increases the potency of the heals by a insignificant amount. Frankly, the first is pointless since MP is only important when it comes to rapid firing rezzes or coming off of a rez, the second can be done by just using oGCD healing weaved between instant cast attack spells, and the last is a waste of a hotbar slot.


These are the biggest reasons why healing as a role is broken, not just when it comes to class and duty design, but from the fundamental philosophy of the entire thing.

It is possible that making avoidable AOEs give a stacking debuff that instantly kills the target when it reaches a certain number, but otherwise those AOEs do very little damage. This way scripted damage can come much more often to minimize downtime. You can even make healing combos or other synergistic rotations for healers to do so that they aren't just replacing the single button DPS spam with healing single button spam.

People constantly make the same mistake when it comes to the healer role within the holy trinity. The healer's job isn't to fix other people's mistakes. Anyone can do that, so everyone should be responsible for that, not just one part of the trinity. That's why the DPS all have self-healing skills. The role of the healer ties directly to the tank instead. The tank's job is to prevent the party from wiping in 5 seconds. The healer's job is the continuously push back that 5 second margin for as long as possible. The DPS's job is to end the encounter before the tank and healer give out from the strain.

[BungleBear]

Every healer has big single target healing, weaker AOE healing, and everything else is just a variation of the two, with the bulk of abilities veering towards the latter. There's no synergistic effects between the abilities to promote using them in a particular order, or to use certain combinations together to improve the effect. They're all more or less the same abilities with differing effects put on them.

You can argue that the management of all these abilities is the skill of the healer, but frankly, there's not much difference between what we have right now and just consolidating all these skills into four abilities. A single target and AOE heal that uses MP, and a single target and AOE heal that is on a 15s or so CD with 2-3 charges.

This change would make learning healer infinitely easier, but it would also expose just how little there is when it comes to healer design.

I think you're underestimating the diversity in our healing toolkit. It seems like you're saying "every healing ability is either single-target or AOE, so there are only two kinds of healing ability". But surely there are other relevant differences between healing abilities besides the number of targets they heal.

Take SCH, for example. Sure, Indom and Whispering Dawn are both AOE heals. But Indom has lower potency and heals instantly, whereas WD has higher potency and heals over time. So Indom is preferable when raidwide damage is imminent, but WD is preferable otherwise. WD and Sacred Soil are both HOTs with roughly the same potency. But SS has the added benefit of damage reduction, whereas WD doesn't require your party to remain in a tightly circumscribed location. So SS is preferable in situations where your party stacks for multiple raidwide hits. It's not rocket science, but working out which healing ability to use in which situation still requires some thought and planning.

I don't understand why you say that reducing the healing abilities to only four would be "not much difference" but also that it would be "infinitely easier". That seems like a big difference.

[Dearche]

I think you're underestimating the diversity in our healing toolkit. It seems like you're saying "every healing ability is either single-target or AOE, so there are only two kinds of healing ability". But surely there are other relevant differences between healing abilities besides the number of targets they heal.

Take SCH, for example. Sure, Indom and Whispering Dawn are both AOE heals. But Indom has lower potency and heals instantly, whereas WD has higher potency and heals over time. So Indom is preferable when raidwide damage is imminent, but WD is preferable otherwise. WD and Sacred Soil are both HOTs with roughly the same potency. But SS has the added benefit of damage reduction, whereas WD doesn't require your party to remain in a tightly circumscribed location. So SS is preferable in situations where your party stacks for multiple raidwide hits. It's not rocket science, but working out which healing ability to use in which situation still requires some thought and planning.

I don't understand why you say that reducing the healing abilities to only four would be "not much difference" but also that it would be "infinitely easier". That seems like a big difference.

I mean, I admit that I was exaggerating, with SS being the most glaring example. But in reality, HOTs don't last long enough to really be much of an issue when it comes to AOE healing. The raid-wides often don't come quick enough in significant enough damage that the AOE HOTs don't just end up doing the same work as normal AOE heals.

In the context of FF, most of the time the more deciding factor is the potency of the heal and whether it's a GCD or oGCD heal. And due to what all our DPS actions are, we always pick the oGCD when possible. Even the potency isn't that big of a deal a lot of the time since aside from a few specific examples, they don't vary that significantly.