SE FINALLY ANSWERED THE HEALERS COMMUNITY LONG ANSWERED QUESTION

[Aword3213]

The general consensus is heal minor boo boo's until satisfactory, and then back to glare/malefic spam. To me that's boring, and not really what I signed up for when healing. I signed up to heal and keep the party/raid alive.

I think there are serveral of reasons that lead to dps mentality on healers.

First,our raw healing potential is way too high compared to othe games. We can top off everyone's hp at a moment's notice. Most of our heals lack interactions with other actions in our kits. Just one click on them and you're good to go. Back to one button spam we go.

Second, we have too many oGCDs at our disposal. Those oGCDs heal efficiently and we have no reason not to use them. Since oGCDs alone are enough to cover the damage taken, there's no reason to hard cast a GCD heal instead. We have nothing else to cast, so we are left with Glare/Broil/Malefic. If they keep adding more oGCD heals to our kit, that means we will have spam the same offensive button even more. Keeping on adding oGCD heals doesn't solve 1 button spam, in contrast, it only makes it worse.


Third, the contents offer little challenge regarding healing. In 4 man dugeons and 24 man raids, heal checks are almost nonexistent. In savage content, failing mechanics mostly mean instant death or team wipe. No amount of healing can save you from that. Aside from that that, heal checks, while being few enough to begin with, only exist in week 1 prog or Min IL challenges.

There are lots of things they can do to make healer more engaging to play. Giving us more offensive tools to use is one way to go, but it's not the direction developers are going to take. I don't know whether or not they will change their design philosophy some day. However, if they are not willing to take that route and have made their choce on delving into healing intensive gameplay, I really wish they can reexamine our kts as a whole. Our healing output needs to be adjusted. The balance between the amount of GCDs and oGCDs needs to be controlled. More interaction between spells/abilties should be included like many other roles. Encounter design needs to be alligned with our overall healing potential.

[MellowMink]

At least healers can do something right....heal.

The fact that healers are complaining about DPS is beyond me. That should be an after thought. I didn't pick a healer to DPS. There are like 12 other jobs that do that.

DPS is something you do when your done topping off everyone's HP, the downtime portions.

And when that downtime you refer to frequently becomes over two-thirds of most fights for the duration of an expansion, can you you not see why healers would understandably be complaining about boredom and repetition when it comes to their available DPS abilities? I'm talking about all content too, so simply raising healing requirements for Endwalker content alone won't fix problems that many healers have with the other 80% of the game's content.

Your post is worded like DPS "downtime" for healers that are good at keeping their companions alive (not constantly at 95% health or higher, but alive for the sake of optimization) is a small minority of the gameplay, but it's the opposite.

[Semirhage]

Healing isn't an end. It's a means. The point of healing is to keep your party alive, not to maximize the amount of time you spend doing it for the sake of seeing green numbers. When I play a healer, I do it to help my party. If the most useful thing I can do at the moment is shield, I'll shield. If it's healing I'll heal. If it's buffing I'll buff. If it's damage, even better! That means I've done the rest adequately and I now have downtime as a reward.

I don't get people who don't see making downtime activity fun as *the* solution. Square has already stated a vociferous opposition to ever making unskilled healers uncomfortable for any reason. Now, hilariously, they've decided to oppose raising the skill ceiling to achieve this for whatever reason. But on the other hand, why in the world would they consider raising healing requirements either? That'd scare your average duty finder healer even faster. If their goals are as stated, forcing healers to be curebots would align with them even less than improving downtime activity.

It's not like I'd play WHM to cast Glare either. It's BORING. It's just also more useful than spamming Cure.

[Sebazy]

<snip>

As much as we've banged heads in other threads. When you're right, you're very right. Hit the nail on the head and I wish more people would understand the finer details in your point.

Our healing kits are borderline overpowered for Savage once we are geared. They make an absolute mockery of Dungeons and 24 mans aka the content where eating ground markers isn't likely to result in a one shot. We've generally got cool downs to spare and once you know your kit, it's easy enough to see those mistakes coming and have an asylum or soil lined up to deal with it.

Not using this stat squish as an excuse to re-evaluate our healing kits will likely go onto haunt SE down the line IMHO.

[MellowMink]

Just a reminder that healing shouldn't be done any time that someone else gets a papercut; you should be trying to optimize damage output and healing, and while that exact balance can slightly vary between players, it's definitely not almost entirely healing throughout the entire instance, only attacking when everyone is at maximum health and with maximum shields. If the player is still alive and hasn't died to an avoidable mechanic that would kill them, then the healers are successfully doing their job.

[WaxSw]

DPS is something you do when your done topping off everyone's HP, the downtime portions.

I honestly think the DPS could be squashed rather quickly if enemies and bosses hit WAY harder. Then healers are FORCED to heal, and not worry so much about DPS. You know the game has it wrong when I don't feel anxiety in keeping party members alive, but that I let combust fall off.

Healers need to sweat more in keeping people alive.

Just this tell me enough to know you don't know what you're talking about at all

1st: Topping off is stupid, the last hp that matters is the last one so unless a mechanic requires everyone to be at 100% hp healing more than necessary is a waste of resources, efficiency and triage is the game name of the game we play and topping people in an unnecesary way goes against that

2nd: That would only work in the highest end content as you cannot push casuals that far, meaning that in the majority of the content we'll still have a dull rotation, let alone the fact that a lot of our kit is just redundant and doesn't have any interesting interactions so a full heal encounter woudn't be that engaging.

3rd: Tuning the game for that high damage gameplay consumes a lot of dev resources as they would have to rebalance all the fights of the game if they want it to happen and the devs already told us that is not going to happen

Thats why we ask for more things to do in downtime because its the most we do and since we can't have less quantity of it at least improve its quality

[Saefinn]

Then it seems SGE is the new meta healer for those that want to DPS and heal effectively.

From what I can tell is SGE is nearly completely dependent on healing via damage skills/spells. And healing your "dance partner". This is quite literally the best of both worlds. Your not sacrificing personal DPS with having to switch gears to heal. It's all in one. The pure healers seem to have taken the other route of downshifting to DPS and then upshift to heal.

Will I attempt SGE...maybe. I'm not keen on shield/barrier healing as I prefer the pure healing style. AST will be my go to healer, but I will forever hate malefic spam. It was fun when it became the norm...now it's just boring as hell to spam 1 spell.

SGE mostly uses it's whole kit, to heal. My feeling is SGE will become the desired form of healing in the future simply because you have more to offer then a point button DPS.

I feel like SGE and AST are are a step in the right direction, even though AST got stripped in 5.0, it has been my go to healer because it gives me more variety than SCH does right now with how healing is balanced. And I think SGE and AST are closer to what I want, I don't think they are there yet, but I am hoping SGE is fun or salvageable enough that I can get enjoyment out if, because it has everything that I still like about SCH plus some QoL and a bit more variety in its downtime.

I can be salty and say "but this is what SCH should have got" but ngl, if I end up liking SGE enough, then I'll cut my losses and focus on feedback I think that can improve on it if I feel there is a need to (and give positive feedback on what I like) - I already have one bit of feedback I think that is small but could make a difference and that's either turning Toxicon into an oGCD or giving a single target equivalent, just because with its current set up, the Addersting mechanic will mostly get used on trash mobs and not much else. Fortunately, it's something they may address as I think it's small enough to be encompassed in their "these may change on release" statement or the kind of thing that would suit a 6.05 or 6.1 patch if they do see that it's a problem.

[Deceptus]

Then it seems SGE is the new meta healer for those that want to DPS and heal effectively.
.

It could have, and should have, been Sage AND Scholar for those who want to dps and heal effectively. Until the FFXIV devs decided to gut Scholar.

And then a few years later decide that model is OK, but ONLY on the shiny new expansion job.

[GrimGale]

I don't know where this strange fascination with SGE as the "Damage healer" comes from. Yes, your damaging spells trigger a 170 potency heal on your Kardia target.

It's the same as Scholar's Fairy Embrace, just selectively applied to a single target. Every GCD you use for damage applies a small sustain heal on the Kardia target, just like every GCD the Fairy gets applies Embrace to the Party member with lowest HP. Whenever you use a GCD for anything else than damage, Kardia will not trigger, while the Fairy uses Embrace for as long as you don't make her busy with their abilities. There is a bit of nuance between the two but they work in essentially the same way.

Both classes have an in-built system that allows them to sustain the tanks while they DPS.

SCH has 5 damaging abilities, a Single target damaging nuke with Broil, a DoT called Biolysis, a movement tool with Ruin II, an oGCD with Energy Drain and an AoE with Art of War.
SGE has 5 damaging abilities, a Single target damaging nuke with Dosis, a DoT called Eukrasian Dosis, a movement tool you have to unlock with Toxikon, a GCD with 45s CD with Phlegma and an AoE with Dyskrasia.

If SGE is the "damage healer" that is meant to satisfy people that want a more involved healing downtime experience, then SCH is also a "damage healer". They have pratically the same abilities with minor nuances. They have practically the same tools to sustain the team while they deal damage.

Based on it's design being so close to SCH's I feel like SGE will suffer from the same problems SCH does regarding the one-button spam.

[HappyHubris]

I think there are serveral of reasons that lead to dps mentality on healers.

First,our raw healing potential is way too high compared to othe games. We can top off everyone's hp at a moment's notice. Most of our heals lack interactions with other actions in our kits. Just one click on them and you're good to go. Back to one button spam we go.

Second, we have too many oGCDs at our disposal. Those oGCDs heal efficiently and we have no reason not to use them. Since oGCDs alone are enough to cover the damage taken, there's no reason to hard cast a GCD heal instead. We have nothing else to cast, so we are left with Glare/Broil/Malefic. If they keep adding more oGCD heals to our kit, that means we will have spam the same offensive button even more. Keeping on adding oGCD heals doesn't solve 1 button spam, in contrast, it only makes it worse.


Third, the contents offer little challenge regarding healing. In 4 man dugeons and 24 man raids, heal checks are almost nonexistent. In savage content, failing mechanics mostly mean instant death or team wipe. No amount of healing can save you from that. Aside from that that, heal checks, while being few enough to begin with, only exist in week 1 prog or Min IL challenges.

There are lots of things they can do to make healer more engaging to play. Giving us more offensive tools to use is one way to go, but it's not the direction developers are going to take. I don't know whether or not they will change their design philosophy some day. However, if they are not willing to take that route and have made their choce on delving into healing intensive gameplay, I really wish they can reexamine our kts as a whole. Our healing output needs to be adjusted. The balance between the amount of GCDs and oGCDs needs to be controlled. More interaction between spells/abilties should be included like many other roles. Encounter design needs to be alligned with our overall healing potential.

Nice summary. After four iterations of "new" FFXIV I'm going to hang up my pointy hat and cane, because there's zero indication that these issues will be addressed. It's a shame: FFXIV really nails the fantasy healer aesthetic in a way that other games do not. But the actual mechanics mean that you're rarely GCD healing.

So more pewpew, I guess.