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

[Anacrusys]

I’ve been maining healers here and in WoW for many years and played them all at max levels. So far only SCH and SGE at 90 though. Unfortunately, I like all of the WoW healers better than my EW healers. This is not a go play WoW advertisement I know they are hurting right now. I don’t like posting WoW stuff on FF board, but I’m frustrated with the healers. I’m very surprised The FF design team didn’t use some of the concepts years ago. Side note: I’m on PS5 here so targetting is much worse. In WoW, I have mouseover macros for all healing and dispels. I can mouse over their party/raid frames to cast without clicking them.

The WoW healers IMO are more involved, diverse, and higher skill cap. Their kits are totally unique when you switch from one to another it’s an entirely new experience. Lots of Synergy between skills. The healers all have at least 5 dps skills, 3 movement skills, crowd control. You have to manage mana, other resources, and buffs.

Disipline Priest is ranged and does most of its healing by damaging mobs. hard to play well and has 8 dps skills. Ramps up healing. Their Penance skill channels while moving, dps’s on mobs, and heals on players, very cool for one key.
Holy priest is a ranged primarily reaction style healer the most straightforward and can have up to 7 dps skills.
Holy paladin is a melee healer with mostly melee and some ranged dps skills. Does some healing with dps skills
Mistweaver monk is a half ranged and half melee healer with insane mobility. Can do some of its healing with melee dps skills, some channeling
Restoration Druid is a primarily HoT healer with 5 different hots. Has three different forms bear, cat, and normal, can melee and ranged dps, several dots as well.
Restoration Shaman focuses on totem healing with several other cool healing tools.

If you want to see details look at the spell summaries, rotation/cd’s, talents sections in this guide.

https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/class-guides

[OtakuSempai]

I’ve been maining healers here and in WoW for many years and played them all at max levels. So far only SCH and SGE at 90 though. Unfortunately, I like all of the WoW healers better than my EW healers. This is not a go play WoW advertisement I know they are hurting right now. I don’t like posting WoW stuff on FF board, but I’m frustrated with the healers. I’m very surprised The FF design team didn’t use some of the concepts years ago. Side note: I’m on PS5 here so targetting is much worse. In WoW, I have mouseover macros for all healing and dispels. I can mouse over their party/raid frames to cast without clicking them.

The WoW healers IMO are more involved, diverse, and higher skill cap. Their kits are totally unique when you switch from one to another it’s an entirely new experience. Lots of Synergy between skills. The healers all have at least 5 dps skills, 3 movement skills, crowd control. You have to manage mana, other resources, and buffs.

Disipline Priest is ranged and does most of its healing by damaging mobs. hard to play well and has 8 dps skills. Ramps up healing. Their Penance skill channels while moving, dps’s on mobs, and heals on players, very cool for one key.
Holy priest is a ranged primarily reaction style healer the most straightforward and can have up to 7 dps skills.
Holy paladin is a melee healer with mostly melee and some ranged dps skills. Does some healing with dps skills
Mistweaver monk is a half ranged and half melee healer with insane mobility. Can do some of its healing with melee dps skills, some channeling
Restoration Druid is a primarily HoT healer with 5 different hots. Has three different forms bear, cat, and normal, can melee and ranged dps, several dots as well.
Restoration Shaman focuses on totem healing with several other cool healing tools.

If you want to see details look at the spell summaries, rotation/cd’s, talents sections in this guide.

https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/class-guides

I main disc priest (when I actually do play wow) and even regular, casual content is hyper engaging. I was super disappointed SGE wasn't more akin to it.

Total missed opportunity to not have kardia set up from your gcd heals. Hell just imagine how fun it would be if prog and diag could spread Kardia, and pneuma was a 10 sec CD or something that could be used like Penance in wow

[HyoMinPark]

I main disc priest (when I actually do play wow) and even regular, casual content is hyper engaging. I was super disappointed SGE wasn't more akin to it.

Total missed opportunity to not have kardia set up from your gcd heals. Hell just imagine how fun it would be if prog and diag could spread Kardia, and pneuma was a 10 sec CD or something that could be used like Penance in wow

I think the issue here is that GCD heals in this game are used as a last resort after burning through oGCD ones. At that point, you’ve effectively made Kardia a mechanic that directly contradicts the better way to play any healing class in FFXIV. Putting it on the damage abilities was a much better design choice when you consider the way healers are actually played, and it rewards you for contributing to damage rather than standing idle. Forcing it onto GCD heals borders on making Kardia a useless job mechanic a la SB WHM Lilies.

How would your suggestion function? As it is now, Kardia procs once off of a damage spell. Having a HoT proc once off of a single target or AOE heal isn’t really that great of a gimmick, in my opinion. Spamming it wouldn’t be an option due to things like mana used as a resource and the damage loss from wasting your GCD on spamming an AOE heal—and then there’s the overhealing potential for the Kardia proc that makes it entirely ineffective. Making it a heal over time would be slightly better, but still suboptimal since you have other aspects of your SGE kit to use for AOE healing and heal over time without sacrificing your GCD for it.

[OtakuSempai]

I think the issue here is that GCD heals in this game are used as a last resort after burning through oGCD ones. At that point, you’ve effectively made Kardia a mechanic that directly contradicts the better way to play any healing class in FFXIV. Putting it on the damage abilities was a much better design choice when you consider the way healers are actually played, and it rewards you for contributing to damage rather than standing idle. Forcing it onto GCD heals borders on making Kardia a useless job mechanic a la SB WHM Lilies.

How would your suggestion function? As it is now, Kardia procs once off of a damage spell. Having a HoT proc once off of a single target or AOE heal isn’t really that great of a gimmick, in my opinion. Spamming it wouldn’t be an option due to things like mana used as a resource and the damage loss from wasting your GCD on spamming an AOE heal—and then there’s the overhealing potential for the Kardia proc that makes it entirely ineffective. Making it a heal over time would be slightly better, but still suboptimal since you have other aspects of your SGE kit to use for AOE healing and heal over time without sacrificing your GCD for it.

Obviously importing another spec from another mmo wouldn't quite work. My post wasn't an in depth suggestion so let me clarify.

Ideally the GCD heals would spread kardia, not trigger it. Giving an opportunity to have kardia rolling on multiple people which could incentivize DPSing more. Also having pneuma on a short CD so it could be a core part of the dps kit and mix up the gameplay. Only problem I see with this is the GCD heals would have to be toned down to compensate the added synergy with kardia, since it would be expected you would be healing more with kardia through dps. Also the added dps spells would need to be healing more through kardia to compensate.

This is essentially how disc priest works in WoW. You have several healing/support spells that leave the kardia equivalent (atonement). It's inefficient to spam your direct heals so what you do is spread atonement on the targets you think will need healing in the short term, then fling out your damage spells when the damage rolls in. Then rinse/repeat, since atonement only lasts a handful of seconds.

I think part of that playstyle can be adopted here, instead of the WHM clone it currently is imo.

[Xtro99]

I main disc priest (when I actually do play wow) and even regular, casual content is hyper engaging. I was super disappointed SGE wasn't more akin to it.

Total missed opportunity to not have kardia set up from your gcd heals. Hell just imagine how fun it would be if prog and diag could spread Kardia, and pneuma was a 10 sec CD or something that could be used like Penance in wow

I think WoW made two of the best healing specs I've ever played in any MMO, Legion Disc is probably the best iteration of a DPS to Healing class with a very difficult learning curve, high risk, high reward gameplay I've ever seen. Cat weave Druid with its constant shapeshifting and reliance on HoT spells is another example on how to make a healing class feel dynamic and rewarding if played well with the downside of having no "oh crap" buttons to save the day if your group is messing things up.