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

[Semirhage]

When "one button for 80% of the encounter" makes up 80% of the arguments of why healing should be changed, it is indeed a flight of fancy created by the playerbase. They couldn't have been more stern and stagnant to their approach to the healers in FFXIV; yet here you are. Still pining for the change because you somehow know that every healer in this game is suffering and oppressed by their god forsaken one button rotation.

Again, a view about this cannot even be challenged as it is outright blasphemy to even remotely mention that healing can be enjoyable. If your rebuttal for that argument is, "So you enjoy pushing one button 80% of the encounter?" My response to that is, "You bet. Love it!"

Define a "real" healer. Seriously, I want to hear your perspective. If you're implying the devs don't know what one is, I would like to find out. It would also clue me in on how long I've been doing it wrong.

It's difficult to argue with posts like these, because it's like swordfighting a fart. I'm not allowed to make definitive statements on how gameplay works because we "can't know" and there are "a lot of variables", yet when Square decides things whether they're objectively at odds with how gameplay works or not they're infallible arbiters- the only correct decision is to agree with them or leave.

I've played all three healers up to Shadowbringers. I spend most encounters spamming one button. Over and over again. I guess I was hallucinating? One button spam is a great shorthand argument because it summarizes a lot of the problems with the healer role: the way they're designed makes them unfun spammy boring messes.

Oh no, you don't get to draw me into defining a "real" healer. You're the one who passive-aggressively flits into threads pretending to have no clearly defined opinions other than "Squeenix's decisions are sacrosanct" and "if you don't enjoy it maybe healing isn't for you", pretending as if that isn't just the normal Sylphie "you guys aren't REAL healers you just play for the queues" line with extra deniability steps.

[Truen]

FF14 healers are the most basic, boring healers found in any MMO on the market. We spam one button WAY too much, but sadly Yoshi P thinks this is the greatest thing ever. The fun builds we enjoyed during Heavensward aren't coming back

[HappyHubris]

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.

How would talents fix low-damage high-choreographed encounter design that leaves healers bored?

You can't have a "more damage at the cost of healing" talent spec, because it would break the current encounter design (that is balanced around healers doing X DPS).

I guess you could have a talent that massively nerfs healing spell potency, but it seems like an option that few players would pick.

[Connor]

In my opinion it’s the encounter design that’s the main problem. Not the only problem, but the root cause. If we actually had a reason to use our healing gcds healers would feel much less ‘spammy’ and brainless.

That said, the problem there is that if they made healing requirements so high that healers had to use every single tool in their kit, those requirements would have to become astronomically high because they keep giving us so many overpowered off-cool-down abilities.

I kinda wish they could just invert the potencies of GCD and oGCDs. Current healer design could be great…if we were playing a different game. It feels like the developers accidentally designed them for a different game with challenging healing requirements then found out at the last minute ‘wait this job design is for ffxiv?!’. Then, too ashamed to admit their mistake, they had to keep designing healers as if every party they joined was desperately struggling to retain even a sliver of HP

[NobleWinter]

How would talents fix low-damage high-choreographed encounter design that leaves healers bored?

You can't have a "more damage at the cost of healing" talent spec, because it would break the current encounter design (that is balanced around healers doing X DPS).

I guess you could have a talent that massively nerfs healing spell potency, but it seems like an option that few players would pick.

Once upon a time Scholar had a fairy named Selene that had less healing output than Eos and a tiny raidwide haste buff in exchange. It was literally less healing for instances where you didn't need it. It was amazing, and now it's gone forever. It would definitely be possible for every healer to have tradeoffs built into their kit that prioritized either dps or healing. Cleric Stance was the first attempt at this but it was very punishing for people who couldn't toggle the buff well unfortunately. Still I would very much welcome a return to having options. Astro could get Nocturnal Sect back as a damage phase, Scholar Selene, WHM could use the Iconic Faith buff and Sage could have an Autopsy Mode that focused on dps. The entire healer role is terribly uninspired right now and anything to make each healer more distinct instead of mirroring almost every ability from one another would be welcome.

[Szylver]

FF14 healers are the most basic, boring healers found in any MMO on the market. We spam one button WAY too much, but sadly Yoshi P thinks this is the greatest thing ever. The fun builds we enjoyed during Heavensward aren't coming back

Did you try the new AST? more buttons than a joystic can have and more APM than a SC2 player... sadly is all to keep the player busy without to much reward for it.

[Punslinger]

In my opinion it’s the encounter design that’s the main problem. Not the only problem, but the root cause. If we actually had a reason to use our healing gcds healers would feel much less ‘spammy’ and brainless.

That said, the problem there is that if they made healing requirements so high that healers had to use every single tool in their kit, those requirements would have to become astronomically high because they keep giving us so many overpowered off-cool-down abilities.

Agreed. Not only is every bit of damage scripted, but fight mechanics are very punishing if you fail them. The general sense I get from FF14's encounter design is that the dev team really, really, super-duper does not want healers to be able to compensate for failed mechanics. That's why so damn many mechanics are one-shots or "this must be done perfectly by all 8 party members or it's a wipe" mechanics (think the meteors in SoSEX). Look at the first boss of Breach, back in ShB: the big telegraphed beam is a one-shot, the other major mechanic yeets you off the platform if you're not hugging a cube.

If I had to describe healing, and to a lesser extent, tanking, in FF14 right now, I'd call it perfunctory. You're just going through the motions. You're a healer/tank because this is an MMO and MMOs have healers/tanks. What you actually do most of the time is DPS in both cases, and just hit one of your "Role oGCDs" every 30-60 seconds as needed. At this point, the roles exist just because it's a genre convention that they exist.

A good healer should be able to pull their party through failed mechanics and compensate for mistakes. That is the traditional purpose of healers in MMOs. But Square doesn't want players to clear fights without perfectly AAAing Max300 executing the mechanics.

[Risvertasashi]

A good healer should be able to pull their party through failed mechanics and compensate for mistakes. That is the traditional purpose of healers in MMOs.

It's not like FF14 hasn't been through this phase.

The problem is if too many mechanics are too easily recoverable, it becomes "Healer adjust, we're eating this for uptime". People will ignore every mechanic they can for more DPS uptime and just more DPS generally.

Not that I wouldn't like to see some system-level changes to healing, but this ain't the answer.

[Silver-Strider]

It's not like FF14 hasn't been through this phase.

The problem is if too many mechanics are too easily recoverable, it becomes "Healer adjust, we're eating this for uptime". People will ignore every mechanic they can for more DPS uptime and just more DPS generally.

Not that I wouldn't like to see some system-level changes to healing, but this ain't the answer.

Damage down debuff solves that problem real quick

[meowmaou]

Feels like the issues with healers are even more clear this expac, since a bunch of tanks got even more self-heal. Heck even with just GNB, a RPR and a DNC I had a party where we beat the lv87 dungeon boss with no healer at all, easy.