Healer design is still terrible and I'm tired of apologizing for it.

[meowmaou]

Agreed. I started this game as a healer in ShB because it was a role I hadn't played in an MMO before, and it was actually a lot of fun when I was still learning how to do it well. Now I'm in Endwalker and my HIGH END SCH gameplay is Broil into Broil into Broil x100 with the odd oGCD heal thrown out lazily like I'm spitting on the party in disgust. It just isn't as engaging as playing a DPS, at the moment.

I'm excited to level MNK, I'm excited to level RPR, and BLM seems promising, too. But I just don't feel motivated to level a healer because I'll end up barely doing anything, and for similar reasons I don't feel like levelling a tank because atm tanking feels like playing half a DPS job and not much more.

[Visanis]

You know it's pathetic when playing a healer in ARR actually provided a difference in play style and was way more in depth and engaging than it is right now.

The saddest question for those of us who have played since then is probably:
"How can they fuck an entire role up so badly when they had such a great start?"

[RinaShinomiya]

I personally haven't played since ARR but i did dip into healers back in Stormblood and i really liked AST and SCH back then. 5.0 rework sucked for these two imo. I still haven't gotten over how much the 5.0 made me hate Scholar. WHM was the only healer who got better with it, purely because WHM was rubbish in Stormblood (pretty glam tho) but even WHM lost Aero 3 for no reason at all. I will probably never understand what was wrong with each healer having a second AoE DoT. It's not great DPS gameplay but it gave us at least something more to do than just manage 1 dot every 30s and spam a nuke. OG Healer Stance might've been flawed but imagine if they refined it into a proper healer gameplay featuring a job gauge and everything.

I do not believe that having a Diet Coke Black mage gameplay system for WHM, with Astral and Umbral stances increasing / reducing MP costs, would be a bad idea. OGCD heals never cost MP + WHM could still keep the lillies for more free heals. Lucid dreaming feels like a crutch for "we don't wanna think of a proper MP system" rather than a actual part of our toolkit.

[OtakuSempai]

Agreed. I started this game as a healer in ShB because it was a role I hadn't played in an MMO before, and it was actually a lot of fun when I was still learning how to do it well. Now I'm in Endwalker and my HIGH END SCH gameplay is Broil into Broil into Broil x100 with the odd oGCD heal thrown out lazily like I'm spitting on the party in disgust. It just isn't as engaging as playing a DPS, at the moment.

I'm excited to level MNK, I'm excited to level RPR, and BLM seems promising, too. But I just don't feel motivated to level a healer because I'll end up barely doing anything, and for similar reasons I don't feel like levelling a tank because atm tanking feels like playing half a DPS job and not much more.

Everything you said here is exactly my sentiments as well. Now, imagine playing pre-Shb when most jobs had an identity and things to manage

If this is the opinion of a (relatively) newer player to the game I hope SE takes heed of this, cause not all newer players need a job that can be played with a drinking bird toy.

[OtakuSempai]

I personally haven't played since ARR but i did dip into healers back in Stormblood and i really liked AST and SCH back then. 5.0 rework sucked for these two imo. I still haven't gotten over how much the 5.0 made me hate Scholar. WHM was the only healer who got better with it, purely because WHM was rubbish in Stormblood (pretty glam tho) but even WHM lost Aero 3 for no reason at all. I will probably never understand what was wrong with each healer having a second AoE DoT. It's not great DPS gameplay but it gave us at least something more to do than just manage 1 dot every 30s and spam a nuke. OG Healer Stance might've been flawed but imagine if they refined it into a proper healer gameplay featuring a job gauge and everything.

I do not believe that having a Diet Coke Black mage gameplay system for WHM, with Astral and Umbral stances increasing / reducing MP costs, would be a bad idea. OGCD heals never cost MP + WHM could still keep the lillies for more free heals. Lucid dreaming feels like a crutch for "we don't wanna think of a proper MP system" rather than a actual part of our toolkit.

It kills me being reminded of what happened to SCH and AST in Shb. I remember leveling AST in the upper 30's back at the end of Stb and I was more engaged with the game doing low level content on that job than I have been in the last 3 years.

[Melorie]

It kills me being reminded of what happened to SCH and AST in Shb. I remember leveling AST in the upper 30's back at the end of Stb and I was more engaged with the game doing low level content on that job than I have been in the last 3 years.

Yeah. Like I don't mean to be nostalgic and act like the class design was perfect - it had issues, and the healing kit of said classes still were a bit disconnected, but 5.0 really managed to kill my enjoyment in ways that I did not find possible. Despite everything, I'm a casual player that didn't really care for optimization because I was able to have fun with it, now everything is so bare to the point that it's hard to not think of optimizing - you get to that stage really quickly and there's nothing there for you. It doesn't help that all the sacrifices that were made in 5.0 and all the changes were pretty much for nothing - nothing was really added to these classes that actually makes you feel they're going towards a certain direction that makes sense or is well-thought/designed. I wouldn't even mind losing all the things we lost back then if I actually felt that there was a direction they were going forward instead oh "here's a flashy new heal skill that hardly engages with the rest of your kit in any meaningful way".

And while I do wish that they would actually work on the healing side of things, it seems to me that just embracing the fact that this game content is always based on dps above all else and there's really low decision-making involved in most of the combat would at least give them something to work it, given that they're unable to actually have a solution for the healing side.

[Navnav]

Until square bite the bullet and try to handle balancing issues like all other mmorpgs, healers will stay the way they are. This game needs Talents or Specialisations, but square will not do it due to not wanting to invest the time into balancing. That is your ONLY fix. Otherwise the game will become overbloated per healer if they implement what you guys are asking for.

It's unfortunate, but when you look really hard at this game, the actual gameplay is terrible and class design not far behind. It makes up for it very well with the content, world, story and community. But jeeez is the game awful mechanically speaking.

[meowmaou]

Now, imagine playing pre-Shb when most jobs had an identity and things to manage

Oh yeah, I have a couple ARR boomer friends who've made old tanking for example sound so much more interesting than what we have now. One of 'em is also really into XI (which I've played some amount of and will prolly go back to soon for that exp chain bonus month) and that game had fantastic job identity, compared to this one.

Whatever expacs are coming are gonna have to REALLY catch my interest in other ways if the gameplay continues on this trend.

[RinaShinomiya]

Until square bite the bullet and try to handle balancing issues like all other mmorpgs, healers will stay the way they are. This game needs Talents or Specialisations, but square will not do it due to not wanting to invest the time into balancing. That is your ONLY fix. Otherwise the game will become overbloated per healer if they implement what you guys are asking for.

It's unfortunate, but when you look really hard at this game, the actual gameplay is terrible and class design not far behind. It makes up for it very well with the content, world, story and community. But jeeez is the game awful mechanically speaking.

Specs and talent trees will achieve absolutely nothing. SE can barely balance one playstyle on some classes, or in case of Healers, a entire role. What makes you think they achieve that with specs (lets say 2 to be generous). That just means twice the balancing work needing to be done.

Sage already proved you can cleverly get rid of button bloat without sacrificing the toolkit and Sage doesn't even really need it. Without Eukrasia Sage would have 31 buttons which is still a comfortable amount. But thanks to Eukrasia its only 29.

On WHM and AST Cure 1/Benefic 1 has no real reason to exist as a separate button. It's just not worth to cut your HPS in half just to conserve on a little bit of mana. + if you made Cure 2 & Medica upgrade to Afflatus spells once a lilly is aquired, or make the play buttons on AST part of the Draw button again, you'd effectively cut down on 3 buttons for both classes without changing their toolkit at all. Worse yet you can apply a Eukrasia button to both healers, which would cut down on another 2 buttons without affecting their toolkit at all. At this point we removed 5 buttons and in case of AST this is in dire need of happening since AST has 34 buttons right now and that just should never happen. Scholar has a similar bloat issue but again. you could just remove "Summon Eos" & "Summon Selene" and have the fairy just spawn automatically. Sage doesnt lose Kardia upon death and even if they did its a OGCD, so why should Scholar waste a GCD every time they die? And again, with a Eukrasia button you could cut down on another 2 buttons without affecting Scholars Kit (in case of Succor it might even add a GCD AoE pure-heal that scholar lacks).

Sage has 6 DPS buttons and yet its kit not overbloated other healers have between 4 and 5 and they are overbloated. The fact that this happens just shows that SE just don't care and or know what to do with the role. Which is tragic because they were killing it for 6 years then for some reason took crazy pills.

[OtakuSempai]

Until square bite the bullet and try to handle balancing issues like all other mmorpgs, healers will stay the way they are. This game needs Talents or Specialisations, but square will not do it due to not wanting to invest the time into balancing. That is your ONLY fix. Otherwise the game will become overbloated per healer if they implement what you guys are asking for.

It's unfortunate, but when you look really hard at this game, the actual gameplay is terrible and class design not far behind. It makes up for it very well with the content, world, story and community. But jeeez is the game awful mechanically speaking.

I think you nailed it on SE not willing to bite the bullet and actually actively balance job design that would consist of more than 1 button. Its quite obvious why they went this direction since it would get increasingly burdensome to balance since they insist on adding new jobs every expansion.

However, with Yoshi's comment about the suits at SE giving him the go ahead of "spare no expense" in regards to FFXIV's development, I don't think this is as good of an excuse. There's no reason why we can't have dedicated healer designers, or hell a designer for each job. That's what "spare no expense" would mean to me, cause it seems like literally every other part of the game they have nailed down enough already.