It's time to kill the argument that DPS abilities keep healers from healing.

[Shurrikhan]

[External] Mitigation
Buffs
Debuffing enemies
Healing
Damage
Rez

All of the above encapsulates the Support Role.

If this were to actually come down to a matter of categories, rather than playflow, shouldn't we note that not even one of those is unique to Healers/"Supports", though?

Tanks have external and internal mitigation. Melee DPS have internal mitigation.

Most DPS have external buffs.

All debuff enemies.

Most can technically heal.

All can damage.

Most Magical DPS also have rez.

And, heck, Chain Strategem is merely a worse (in being limited to a single enemy target) raid buff.

[inhaledcorn]

If this were to actually come down to a matter of categories, rather than playflow, shouldn't we note that not even one of those is unique to Healers/"Supports", though?

Tanks have external and internal mitigation. Melee DPS have internal mitigation.

Most DPS have external buffs.

All debuff enemies.

Most can technically heal.

All can damage.

Most Magical DPS also have rez.

And, heck, Chain Strategem is merely a worse (in being limited to a single enemy target) raid buff.

Well, healers have all of those things (or at least to), and the heals are usually for the self (except Curing Waltz). Usually one category can only do a few of those things, or the things they can do are generally a feature of the job itself. A lot of those things are just standard on the healers. A few of the things that aren't are who can buff/debuff.

Virus back, please! And let us Bane Chain Strat!

[Shurrikhan]

Well, healers have all of those things

XIV Healers are the XIV "Supports" in question. Their capacities haven't change with the label. That's the point.

Trying to come up with a role classification based solely on the categories of capacities available to a given job/spec/class/hero will almost always be a terrible idea. The only reliable indicator for a role ought to be what it provides a party in practice. And, in practice, our Healers do not feel integrally supportive at present.

So they've got raidwide mitigation. Unless that would have killed someone otherwise, it's effectively just a preemptive heal; it therefore doesn't even cross roles or help anyone perform their function. 95+% of the time, by the moment your party's health again becomes relevant, you could not tell the difference except in that the healer may therefore have gotten one more offensive cast off than if that skill didn't exist in their kit (and even then, only because it was oGCD while their alternative heal wasn't; for SCH, between Soil and Indom, the difference would be even less). We very rarely afford anyone unique opportunities by way of our mitigation, so where is the supporting aspect?

So they've got damage. Everyone has damage. Outside of the very rare DPS check, it has no meaningful thresholds; it is instead just %fight completion. Nothing about the Support dealing damage, outside of AoEs during tank's CDs in large pulls when TP was still a thing, will affect the gameplay of anyone else. So where is the supporting aspect? Where is that conscious decision or unique capacity that allows for something more or new?

So we align the occasional Divination or Chain Stratagem with CDs that would have been popped at that particular moment regardless (even more the case in EW). Back when that alignment was a more active thought, that had some impact, but is it really pushing along or allowing something further from anyone else?



Compare that to OW, for instance. I have to play differently based on what Supports I'm with, how that player tends to play them, where they are, what CDs they have up. They shape my experience. That is impactful and definitely makes them feel like Supports, especially when they're played well and played around well.

Renaming our "Healer", which we already know to be generic casters with attached HP-granting batteries, to "Supports" will more than likely bring out that sort of comparison. We typically expect more impact, more nuance -- in ways not limited just to healing-intensive situations -- from "Supports". And our kits do not have that. They should, so I feel such a name-change would create beneficial pressure, but that's also a likely reason why the devs have not and probably will not change labels (since it'd probably be a PR stunt alone, given their insistence on instead shallowing out gameplay, and they'd quickly get net negative reactions for doing so).

[Deceptus]

If this were to actually come down to a matter of categories, rather than playflow, shouldn't we note that not even one of those is unique to Healers/"Supports", though?

Tanks have external and internal mitigation. Melee DPS have internal mitigation.

Most DPS have external buffs.

All debuff enemies.

Most can technically heal.

All can damage.

Most Magical DPS also have rez.

And, heck, Chain Strategem is merely a worse (in being limited to a single enemy target) raid buff.

That's the problem.

The FFXIV Devs have offloaded so much of what is traditionally a healer's responsibility to other players.

Other players shouldn't have so many self healing options. What's the point of healers then? A current savage tier should NOT have been able to be accomplished without a single healer. That should have been a MAJOR wake up call to the devs. But no, they doubled down and gave PLD amazing self healing on a short CD skill.

I'm of the mindset that lots of that mob debuffing should be removed from DPS and given to healers. Most of them don't use their debuffs anyway, or their self heals (bloodbath)

[Liam_Harper]

Other players shouldn't have so many self healing options. What's the point of healers then? A current savage tier should NOT have been able to be accomplished without a single healer. That should have been a MAJOR wake up call to the devs. But no, they doubled down and gave PLD amazing self healing on a short CD skill.

I'm 110% fine with other classes having good self-sustain, provided that the difficulty of the content reflects the additional toolkit. Back in WoW when Death Knights were almost able to solo raid bosses, healers were still useful because there was plenty of damage flying around and a bad tank could easily die if they weren't paying attention. Versatility in the toolkit also makes other classes more fun, dps being able to survive a hit without a healer, or tanks being juggernauts just feels great.

I'm very against the suggestion of removing toolkit from roles until we're boiled down to healers just spamming bland heals and glare, tanks doing 1, 2, 3 and soaking hits and dps simply doing dps and having no other influence other than numbers. FF14 already leans far too much into this.
I'm also a bit tired of the endless complaints over a single Savage kill without healers, by amazing players who knew their classes inside out. No average team can do that. Things like this promote innovation and breathe life into the game and people want to stifle it into blandness by saying things like "now healers are useless!" when 99.9% of raid teams would crumple without one.

Clemency too is fine. It's not even that crazy a heal, and the only reason it does so much work is because of the lack of damage. It's all in small predictable spikes. That's why healers don't have enough to heal. Because everything hits for so little, the tiny bit of toolkit tanks and dps get can actually cover a lot of it.

Enough is enough. Stop nerfing classes. I'd rather see more tank and dps toolkit and more damage intake to put that toolkit into action and reward you for it.

[Deceptus]

I'm very against the suggestion of removing toolkit from roles until we're boiled down to healers just spamming bland heals and glare, tanks doing 1, 2, 3 and soaking hits and dps simply doing dps and having no other influence other than numbers. FF14 already leans far too much into this.

It sounds like you don't want the other roles to have the playstyle that healers have to put up with. It's almost like that's a sound argument why healers shouldn't have to be designed this way.

Clemency too is fine. It's not even that crazy a heal, and the only reason it does so much work is because of the lack of damage. It's all in small predictable spikes. That's why healers don't have enough to heal. Because everything hits for so little, the tiny bit of toolkit tanks and dps get can actually cover a lot of it.

Clemency wasn't what I was talking about. In addition to Clemency, in Endwalker Paladins are getting:

* Healing added onto Sheltron (1000 total potency worth over 12s)
* Healing added onto Intervene (1000 total potency over 12s)
* Healing added on to Divine Veil (400 potency).


1000 potency is more than Cure 2, and just short of a Regen.

I'm also a bit tired of the endless complaints over a single Savage kill without healers, by amazing players who knew their classes inside out. No average team can do that. Things like this promote innovation and breathe life into the game and people want to stifle it into blandness by saying things like "now healers are useless!" when 99.9% of raid teams would crumple without one.

You can be tired of the evidence, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. EX's are routinely done with one healer instead of two because healing requirements are so low and jobs have so much self sustain.

[Shurrikhan]

You can be tired of the evidence, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. EX's are routinely done with one healer instead of two because healing requirements are so low and jobs have so much self sustain.

It [the clearing of entire Savage tiers without a healer] exists, sure, but only for the 0.01%. Do you really want to take skills away from everyone, affecting also the 99.99% of players for whom this was never an issue, just to remove the potential for oddball compositions or similar innovation among so small a portion of the playerbase?

[Liam_Harper]

You can be tired of the evidence, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. EX's are routinely done with one healer instead of two because healing requirements are so low and jobs have so much self sustain.

It's purely because the damage is low. I promise you any decent healer could solo heal an EX even if the dps took Bloodbath and second wind off their bars and the tanks only used regular mitigation on tankbusters. We might have to throw in an extra GCD heal here and there, maybe a HoT on the tank from time to time, but we'd be able to live with only casting 110 broil or malefic instead of 120.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm 110% fine with other classes having good self-sustain, provided that the difficulty of the content reflects the additional toolkit....

I'm very against the suggestion of removing toolkit from roles until we're boiled down to healers just spamming bland heals and glare, tanks doing 1, 2, 3 and soaking hits and dps simply doing dps and having no other influence other than numbers. FF14 already leans far too much into this.

Same. It's not the other roles' capacities that may extend (in technical category alone) into other roles that are killing our need to heal; it's simply the lack of damage. All the cross-over skills do is give us more to track -- a greater sense of exchange, affordance, and economy.