It's time to hire dedicated Tank an Healer devs!

[Deceptus]

And the encounter design made around bursts doesn't really help to solve this issue.

This has been said by Yoshi numerous times but reality doesn't mesh with what he says.

Eden Savage wasn't clearable at min ilvl without significant healer dps.

[MiaShino]

So I have a somewhat related question, but is there an MMO out there that does tank and healer classes RIGHT? Because in the beginning of ARR, Yoshi and Co. played a lot of WOW to see what made it addictive and fun and what features they could bring over to XIV. I'm just wondering if there's a game out there that really feels rewarding to play tank and healer classes.

I never played much or any WoW, though I did sometimes watch others play so I had to consult my uncle and friends. They told me to Google "disc priest" which was considered one of the more "pure healers". One of the first skills I see is this one;
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=81749/atonement

I also counted ummm, between eight and ten deeps skills on priest just looking through the list of abilities they use to have. There is another spell called "Holy Nova" that detonates a second time for 50% damage if hits more then three targets. This reinforces what he said that even in old wow he would always pull as big as he could.

Aion is the one I have more experience with! Two healers I am most familiar with are Cleric and Muse.
Locating ability lists for these classes has become quite the difficulty because the game is mostly gone.

Cleric had many many (over ten possibly twelve) deeps skills. Several of these were status effect placing dots that might lower enemy accuracy or defenses. They had a long cast powerful nuke capable of one shotting weaker stuffs (trash). They were even able to summon pets called a "holy spirit" that would deal damage while they healed or did other things including more damage. The cleric was even capable of tanking for limited periods of time if the main tanks all perished.

The muse required juggling between dps songs and healing songs amusingly considering the theme of FF14 at the times was called "The song of fire and ice". You were able to increase the potency of your heal or deeps song by allowing them to charge, up to three charges. If you released the spells early they would have reduced damage or healing effect so had to constantly make decisions. Can I charge this now for bigger heals or will it cause death?

Both healers had multiple ways to restore mana so doing damage was never issue.

Swtor, another one I am most familiar with has actual healer rotations. By this I am meaning that the order you use your healing spells in causes different effects to happen. Some healing provides charges for recovering mana when it crits or make other heals cast instantly. Sorcerer/Sage even has the ability to rapid heal by using a nuke dps skill. Each blast will do increased damage and healing up to three blasts. Mine healed for roughly 60-75k in a game where the average hp was 100k. It did this per blast.

We were expected to do damage during any downtime and I never once struggled to accomplish this. This is the first of any game I have ever played where support believes it should not have to deal damage. When asking family and friends they kinda balk at the idea that healers only heal. Even tanks were expected to put out reasonable damage to the point where in WoW my uncle would equip half deeps gear and spec partially into deeps talent trees as tank.

Healers managed, I managed, this is phenomenon unique to FF14 and not other mmos.

[Melorie]

So I have a somewhat related question, but is there an MMO out there that does tank and healer classes RIGHT? Because in the beginning of ARR, Yoshi and Co. played a lot of WOW to see what made it addictive and fun and what features they could bring over to XIV. I'm just wondering if there's a game out there that really feels rewarding to play tank and healer classes.

It doesn't really make sense to compare other healers to FFXIV since FFXIV fight design is so... specific. That being said, I'm trying to remember the supports that I've played over the years in MMOs and mobas, and I'm struggling to think about one that was just healing healing healing and that's it. Each one of them had at least a side-thing going on that took their time - de-buffs & different types of buffs, cleasing de-buffs, managing mp or giving mp generation to party members, and most of them had some form of damage. I've never really encountered another class design that was about using a few of your powerful heals and then spamming one skill through your downtime in the way that FFXIV does. Which wouldn't be a problem if our downtime wasn't just pressing 1 button to DPS.

[kaynide]

It doesn't really make sense to compare other healers to FFXIV since FFXIV fight design is so... specific. That being said, I'm trying to remember the supports that I've played over the years in MMOs and mobas, and I'm struggling to think about one that was just healing healing healing and that's it. Each one of them had at least a side-thing going on that took their time - de-buffs & different types of buffs, cleasing de-buffs, managing mp or giving mp generation to party members, and most of them had some form of damage. I've never really encountered another class design that was about using a few of your powerful heals and then spamming one skill through your downtime in the way that FFXIV does. Which wouldn't be a problem if our downtime wasn't just pressing 1 button to DPS.

This really is the crux of it. Like, in FFXI the Whm had to manage several buffs like protect, stone skin, haste; and then work in DoTs and situational buffs like resisting fire. There wasn’t a lot of DPS, but there was a lot to keep track of which was pretty satisfying.

I get why people want that, and I personally would prefer that kind of complexity, but I also understand the more complicated it becomes the fewer people want to play it….which is the main thing the devs are watching.

I mean, in 2.0 they tried to encourage players to do cnj/Whm by offering a mount, or adventurer in need bonuses for roulette..but still there were long queues.
now, even as a dps I rarely wait more than 5 min- for devs that is mission accomplished.

[MiaShino]

now, even as a dps I rarely wait more than 5 min- for devs that is mission accomplished.

You are most lucky then!

[ItMe]

You are most lucky then!

Out of curiosity, what is your average queue time when you run DPS?

[KizuyaKatogami]

This really is the crux of it. Like, in FFXI the Whm had to manage several buffs like protect, stone skin, haste; and then work in DoTs and situational buffs like resisting fire. There wasn’t a lot of DPS, but there was a lot to keep track of which was pretty satisfying.

I get why people want that, and I personally would prefer that kind of complexity, but I also understand the more complicated it becomes the fewer people want to play it….which is the main thing the devs are watching.

I mean, in 2.0 they tried to encourage players to do cnj/Whm by offering a mount, or adventurer in need bonuses for roulette..but still there were long queues.
now, even as a dps I rarely wait more than 5 min- for devs that is mission accomplished.

Here’s the thing though. Shb was said(by the devs) to be the expansion where they spent the most time on the healers, yet it’s the expansion with the most controversial and negative results they’ve had to date. We haven’t really seen an influx of players wanting to play healer, so like at this point perhaps something needs to change? And what they’re doing isn’t actually working? It’s weird to me they continue to cull skills and dps each expansion and they aren’t seeing more positive feedback, but actually less. Yet despite this theyve still managed to dance around the idea of either giving healers more dps skills, or making raids require more healing.

[Melorie]

I get why people want that, and I personally would prefer that kind of complexity, but I also understand the more complicated it becomes the fewer people want to play it….which is the main thing the devs are watching.

But they have to start somewhere. Dumbing down everything in the name of being ""accessible"" and ""easy"" and erasing the whole learning curve for the entire role is not way of doing this. Try new things (*truly* new things instead of empty promises such as mobs hitting more that haven't been fullfilled), adjust as needed. They didn't release a healer last expansion in order to work on them and the only thing they did was transform all the downtime of the three classes into the same thing (except maybe AST but still, I'm not going to comment what they did on ast because it was a stab in my heart). People that want to play this role deserves to have fun and feel like they're progressing and getting rewarded for playing better. Try new options, adjust as needed - we've been asking for anything for years. Why only DPS mains are allowed to have layers of depth and optimization?
And as it been said over and OVER again, complexity is not the same as being dynamic, rewarding or having depth. It can't be that hard to have a big brain solution that can be adjusted for entry-level players to the class that isn't "spam the same button forever the better you get through all the classes of this particular role". FFXIV devs have the potential to do better than this.

I've never even seen this concept of "let's turn a class into a braindead thing if you put a little bit of time into it just so everyone else can have fun except the ones that take it seriously" in any other game. I can't believe that the same people that made FFXIV what is today aren't capable of having any other solution for this.

[Arkdra]

You are most lucky then!

It's content and job dependent. I almost never sit in an exdr queue as a melee dps longer than 5 minutes. Same for ADR, NRR and Trials. 5/6/7 and ldr though? Oof.

[MiaShino]

Out of curiosity, what is your average queue time when you run DPS?

Between family and friends and myself I would say hmm, roughly 12 - 20 minutes.

It does vary wildly at the times though! As someone stated it can also be duty dependent so those of us playing deeps wait much less for Alliance then we do for leveling (for reasons most obvious).

We can wait as little as five minutes or as long as thirty. Tank queues no longer appear to be instant anymore as many friends queue with one tank and will still wait more than five minutes sometimes. My queue as healer is never not instant, it is also always instant for those friends and family that play healers.

Sooooo for averages:

Deeps = 12 - 20 minutes or longer
Tank + Deeps = Five minutes average sometimes longer and occasionally still instant
Healer + Deeps = Almost always instant, longest I remember seeing twas one minute
Tank + Healer = Almost always instant, significantly faster than any other combination

Edit; I asked friend and she gave this to me for this.


The queue popped at about thirteen minutes and something.