Worthless Live Letter

[MintnHoney]

Well, some people certainly don't mind making yet another 1000+ posts complaining about the same thing over and over again for years to come.

Fair enough. Meanwhile, we're also still seeing things from Yoshi and his crew which are currently reinforcing and polishing all that jade. I'm not talking about the leaks either, though some of them have certainly been a great compound for that extra lustrous shine.

My point is that lots of healers are asking for more things to heal, yet gears will always be one of the reasons that reduce the healing required, thus reducing the impact of healers in a party.

Which is one of the recurring discussion points that gets talked about very often for this game, unfortunately. But, because MND is tied to our healing and damage potency, unless that was also specified for each encounter, alongside HP and defenses, our growth would still inevitably trivialize the encounters without solving any of the issues we hoped to at least gain headway on.

There are requests stating healers want to feel useful to the party. However, asking for more damage options doesn't solve this.

Not universally, but you also have to remember that there are many different requests going on in the healer forums, all at the same time. In addition to healers wanting to feel "useful" to the party, one big request is that healers wish to feel engaged. Since the general consensus is that encounters and stats will not be allowed to put pressure on players who lay flat against the skill floor, at least in regards to healing, the simplest and most immediate fallback is to focus on our ability to deal damage.

Providing support options is also something that gets suggested often, but after the announcement that Square Enix wanted to remove synergy from the game (save for Dancer, as they wanted Synergy to be Dancer's "niche"), many believed that Support was just not something they were willing to allow (see also their removal of status effects, elemental affinities, removal or upheaval of buffs/debuffs from the role, among many other examples and reasons others might cite for why they might feel as such).

It's a complicated situation that everyone can only offer simple solutions to, because to do anything else is just too difficult when there's no rapport or understanding between the developers, their vision and desires, and the players and their vision and desires. Also, frankly, it's just not usually worth the bother for a bit of self-satisfaction.

Healers just can't get anymore useful.

Numerically speaking, maybe not. On the other hand, many players are just looking to at least feel more useful, which is something entirely different. It comes back to a familiar question of "if you're not having fun, why are you playing the game?"
Not everyone needs to be the greatest-most-bestest that the world has ever seen (and have the plaque to prove it), but at the very least they would like to, in this fantasy RPG adventure, feel like they have some good impact on the situations presented to them. If that doesn't evolve as the game itself evolves (as it generally must for the sake of progression), then that feeling becomes lost and engagement suffers, which brings many players into a territory of not-fun, which many of my friends and I like to call "boring."
Meanwhile, for someone else, that's more than enough and all that they'd ever need.

It seems to me 1 button spam is not the reason that leads to the mentality of not feeling impactful, but the gear is.

Both are components that can lead to a player not feeling impact, and they're not the only ones, too. It's also very subjective, though there is a general guideline on how people something can be engaging or feel impactful to people.

Regarding Syphies, aren't they going to overheal anything at any situations anyway?

Oh, absolutely, that's a given. That's less an issue for the Sylphies and more an issue for anyone who would be displeased for their lack of engagement outside of their own brand of selective/tunnel vision.

I rarely see DPS get one shot by non tank mechanics during my min IL runs, even in raids. Min IL does not mean being naked with no job stone on. DPS are actually quite endurable sometimes

You're not wrong, but that's why I mentioned I was ignoring certain factors in my hypothetical, particularly variables. It's not to say that these things don't happen, or that DPS players are just all so braindead that they throw themselves into a tankbuster on purpose, or that all healers are Sylphies (or that all Sylphies are just Curebots), it's just that, given the specific scenario provided, the situation doesn't much change for healers from what we currently have with the parameters provided.

In my opinion, if you're really looking to shake things up, then you need to change what the variables are being put into, rather than just alter the variables.

[Aword3213]

Numerically speaking, maybe not. On the other hand, many players are just looking to at least feel more useful, which is something entirely different. It comes back to a familiar question of "if you're not having fun, why are you playing the game?"
Not everyone needs to be the greatest-most-bestest that the world has ever seen (and have the plaque to prove it), but at the very least they would like to, in this fantasy RPG adventure, feel like they have some good impact on the situations presented to them.
Both are components that can lead to a player not feeling impact, and they're not the only ones, too. It's also very subjective, though there is a general guideline on how people something can be engaging or feel impactful to people.

What I meant was healers are indeed useful. Healers are needed in most content, especially in raids. They're already being useful to the party. They heal, they mitigate, they raise, they provide raid buffs, and they deal damage. If there's a goal set by developer and the current healers have no problems reaching it, then there's nothing for the developers to fix. Asking for more options in the form of offensive abilities or supportive raid buffs does not change the maximum raid dps contribution set by developers, and I assume when people ask for more raid buffs, they are not asking for defensive ones. SAM is useful simply by doing his own thing. Healers don't need raid buffs to be useful to the team. Healers are useful when they heal. Healers are useful when they mitigate. Healers are useful when they are helping to contribute raid damage.

Feeling useful, however, is subjective. As you have already explained, people have different opinions on current healers. Some like it and some don't. Thing is, if healers do feel engaging in min IL content, which the difficulty was built upon, and they no longer feel as engaged as they gear up, what makes healers have different mentality towards the same content?

In my opinion, if you're really looking to shake things up, then you need to change what the variables are being put into, rather than just alter the variables.

My opinion about HP and Defense does not necessarily counteract any other suggestions people are making. They need not homogenize those bonuses as I suggested, but IMO it's worth considering their influences towards any content that involves healing.

[Sebazy]

Healers don't need raid buffs to be useful to the team. Healers are useful when they heal. Healers are useful when they mitigate. Healers are useful when they are helping to contribute raid damage.

Which takes us right back to the root of this whole issue.

Healer's aren't healing healing for large chunks of content at all levels of the game. We aren't debuffing because SB took that away, we are barely buffing because SE are deathly afraid of giving healers anything significant after the whole Creator Balance thing. All that's left is mashing that Glare hotkey into a smouldering stump.

Every healer that makes an effort to optimise their gameplay and gear will hit a point where the game devolves into little more than cookie clicker whilst they wait for their next chance to 'be useful'.

[GrimGale]

Which takes us right back to the root of this whole issue.

Healer's aren't healing healing for large chunks of content at all levels of the game. We aren't debuffing because SB took that away, we are barely buffing because SE are deathly afraid of giving healers anything significant after the whole Creator Balance thing. All that's left is mashing that Glare hotkey into a smouldering stump.

Every healer that makes an effort to optimise their gameplay and gear will hit a point where the game devolves into little more than cookie clicker whilst they wait for their next chance to 'be useful'.

Now we have Tanks carving away at that usefulness with potent self sustain options too. PLD has so many self healing options I expect them to essentially be able to complete runs without a healer. WAR is also a sustain god. GBN less so, but still get quite a few options. DRK however seems to lack much self sustain options beyond their still potent Darkest Knight. (Though they have to pay a hefty DPS price for that, where the other tanks dont.)

[Calysto]

Every healer that makes an effort to optimise their gameplay and gear will hit a point where the game devolves into little more than cookie clicker whilst they wait for their next chance to 'be useful'.

To be fair, nowadays I think Cookie Clicker has more depth then XIV healers.
-Random timed buff (golden cookies)
-Decisions making (spells)
-Stances managment (pantheon and apocalypse)
-Ressources optimisation (upgrades/building choices)
-Ressources stock/dump (stock exchange, wrinklers, garden)
edit : and they all synergize with each other

Sure you can click a few thousand times between thoses events ; but it isn't reall worth it outside of a burst window (frenzy).
The big difference if that CC is an iddle game ; FFXIV is not yet

[ItMe]

PLD has so many self healing options I expect them to essentially be able to complete runs without a healer.

They already can.
PLD and WAR can solo Pagl'than right now.
The newest duty, and our max possible iLVL has not gone up since it was introduced.

And some ShB Savage raids were cleared while current without a healer. We have the infamous E4S SMN party of PLD, WAR, DNC, and 5 SMN as the most obvious example.
(Link for those who haven't seen the vid yet)
https://youtu.be/zdDxjXMMWgU

(Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "runs.")

[Deceptus]

Now we have Tanks carving away at that usefulness with potent self sustain options too. PLD has so many self healing options I expect them to essentially be able to complete runs without a healer. WAR is also a sustain god.

Which is hilarious because they TOOK AWAY THAT TANK SUSTAIN IN SHADOWBRINGERS. . .

Only to bring it back in Endwalker.

Again, another example of they really don't have an overall vision for jobs. They're literally just throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks.

[Aword3213]

They already can.
PLD and WAR can solo Pagl'than right now.
The newest duty, and our max possible iLVL has not gone up since it was introduced.

I rarely put my attention on solo dungeons run, but shouldn't healers be able to solo them as well?

TBs in 4 man dungeons are a joke. As long as healers don't get one shot, they can solo everything due to limitless sustain( unless there's an enrage timer)

[Semirhage]

Anyone still Stockholmed to WHM and SCH had better prepare for two (more) years of being told that your one button spam jobs "feel comfy"! "I love how simple it is". "I just like to settle down, turn my brain off, and run roulettes after work". "It's so satisfying to keep a tank up through big pulls in (easy) dungeons". "I hope they keep building on this design, it feels really good!"

Your choices at this point are two more years of wondering why the hell these jobs are designed so stupidly a four year old could play them and why people keep defending that design, or play a DPS and roll your eyes wistfully at the healer ghetto whenever more sewage comes splorting out patch after patch.

[Aword3213]

Healer's aren't healing healing for large chunks of content at all levels of the game.

Part of the reason is relative to high IL even when synched.

Not saying all contents are well designed though. Eden's Verse is notorious for huge healing downtime.