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

[HyoMinPark]

Um, what?

I don't really care about most of your post's argument but this is just flat out wrong about bard. It's not popular (and hasn't been for a long time), it is not a low APM DPS nor is it "easy" by any nonsubjective metric - DNC and MCH both had simpler rotations, while with BRD missing a proc by even a few hundred milliseconds is a DPS loss.

In ShB, the only DPS that had significantly higher median than average was MCH, suggesting it was the easiest - but this seems to have been fixed by EW, as it is no longer the case. Could still argue it's easier because it's a set rotation instead of having to watch for/worry about procs, though.

You may have had a case allllllll the way back in ARR but that's the better part of a decade out of date.

Did you ignore the quoted part where I said “with the exception of ShB”? I feel like you didn’t actually read what I posted and instead jumped on debating a point I expressly listed as an exception. You’re also arguing points I’m not even really discussing, such as optimization versus my point of ease of play and accessibility, in addition to aesthetic. I’m not even discussing the former, so I have no idea why you even brought it up. It’s irrelevant in the scope of my point; so you are arguing way out of context here.



Ignoring ARR, HW bowmage may have been unpopular with the ARR BRDs, but BRD itself was still a highly-played job despite the controversy. SB BRD was one of the most played DPS jobs in game, and it had the highest amount of uploads for any DPS in all Savage tiers. It was immensely popular, and to argue otherwise is silly. ShB BRD was not, and I never said in there that it was popular.

You act as if BRD’s unpopularity has been a thing for a while, but SB was only two and a half years ago. You can’t really argue the release date of four years since BRD remained very popular throughout the entirety of the expansion. It only dropped off with the release of ShB in July 2019. That’s not all that long ago. Certainly not “the better part of a decade”, as per what you said implying BRD’s high popularity only being in ARR.



All of the physical ranged jobs are easy to play. They are all highly accessible. It is only at any sort of min-maxing where the nuance comes in—but even that has been removed bit by bit throughout the expansions. Especially for BRD going from SB to ShB. The skill floor and skill ceiling keep getting closer and closer. But I was never arguing skill ceiling. I was arguing ease of access, ease of play at basic/non-optimization levels, and aesthetic. You jumped to debunk an argument I wasn’t even making—and I can’t even figure out why.

[ForteNightshade]

Your ideals of what a healer should be does not match that of the devs. It does not mean they don't play their own game.

Time to bring up the holy trinity of incredibly bad design decision that suggest otherwise!

First on the docket we have Stormblood Lilies, everybody's favourite mechanics! So well thought out, new players were advised to take their brand new job gauge and pitch it into the corner of their screen and never look at it again. This iteration of Lilies weren't simply bad, they were completely and utterly useless. They literally made an entire mechanic out of original Spear, you know, the card they had to change in Heavensward because everyone hated it for being, well... useless. Even with a full three Lilies, you'd gain a measly twelve seconds on Assize. All while incurring a massive DPS loss to accomplish it. There was never any reason to even touch this system, which remained for the entire expansion despite constant criticism.

Next on the list is Piercing. Remember that curious little debuff that contributed to Bard, and to a lesser extent, Machinist's overwhelming dominance through two full expansions? The dev team openly acknowledged they never took it into consideration when balancing either of their respective damage. I repeat, they didn't consider a 10% (later 5%) flat damage buff that only a single job could offer might be why Bard continuously slotted into the meta for years nor that it would all but guaranteed Dragoon a permanent spot in practically every group.

And last to the stage, though far from the least. We have Monk. Just... Monk. A job that spent six years living in the shadows of two far superior jobs; whose many, [i]many[/] adjustments did absolutely nothing to actually alter its gameplay in the way players asked. A job that leading into Shadowbringers, the dev team praised as being their most proud change despite the widely maligned Riddle of Fire being exactly the same. It's reception proving to be so poor, they were forced to buff Monk into the moon while finally overhauling the aforementioned Riddle a mere month into the expansion. Even then, this "most proud" job spent all of Shadowbringers being completely gutted into the new version we see today.

Some dishonorable mentions must include, Astro's laughably bad MP economy in 5.0, Ninja's dealing physical range damage in 5.0, Summoner dealing physical range damage 6. (still depending!) and Living Dead being hilariously worse than Holmgang. Suffice it to say, people didn't conclude the dev team doesn't communicate when it comes to job design out of thin air. There's a litany of evidence to suggest they don't.

[Liam_Harper]

The masses have spoken. They prefer their healers simple.

It's not that players in general want their classes to be braindead. If you look at dps popularity, some of the easier classes aren't much more popular than some of the more "complex" classes.

Players just want a class that isn't clunky, punishing to play for no reason or reward, or bloated with buttons just for the sake of having buttons. That's not complexity. AST is definitely bloated with buttons for the sake of buttons that give very little reward and SCH will always be clunkier than standard healers as long as the pet is simply oGCD's with a downside and ED is a penalty rather than optimization, because Sage doesn't pay heal tax.

WHM is in a strange spot where players aren't picking it because it's designed well and strong, they're taking it because their other options aren't fun. I'm playing WHM myself. I think it's the worst healer and used to be an AST main, but AST wasn't fun to play and our group has a Sage, so here I am.

[Risvertasashi]

-snip-

I know it wasn't your argument, just that part bugged me.

As to ease of access and just generally being easy, sure, you can make that argument I guess, but that's not what you said originally. But to address that specifically, if they were all so easy, I would expect them to be the most popular. Yet... as nice as totally free movement with no melee restrictions is. Well. It seems that's not enough.

And bard is reasonably popular right now because its buffs are now strong enough to make it attractive to endgame groups. So. Supposedly super easy to play,, supposedly a super popular class fantasy, attractive in what it brings, and no movement restrictions. Yet, at the time of this writing, sitting at #5 in popularity. Which isn't terrible but certainly isn't leading (though better than ShB, at least).

Rhetorical question - don't answer me but just think about it: What doesn't add up here?

The ability to remain the most popular job while being weakest in its role in quite singular to white mage.

[Nizzi]

Your ideals of what a healer should be does not match that of the devs. It does not mean they don't play their own game.

Would you mind telling me what my ideals of a healer are? Because it may surprise you, but I don't want to turn healers into a "complex DPS job" nor have I ever asked for that, unless you believe adding another DoT or two to manage would make it "complex". I just want my job to be fun in all types of content.
I'm a healer. I want to heal, and if I can't, I want something to be doing when there's nothing to heal that is more than hitting the same button over and over. I would love if there was a reason to use GCD heals more and I shouldn't have to have a party that is consistently messing up for me to have things to do outside of spamming 1-1-1 and reapplying a 30s DoT. I'd even be happy if the DoT timer was reduced just because it would give me something more to keep track of more often. Many people have come up with great ideas on these forums that have nothing to do with expanding the DPS kit to keep healers engaged in the endless amounts of downtime we get. Having the healer role be the role that is only fun on prog or when people is messing up and is otherwise dull/boring outside of that isn't a good design nor is it healthy for the longevity of the roles player base. A majority of people who play this game do not engage with Savage and above at all; should they be forced off of playing what they want or told to go do Savage(but only on prog!)/Ultimate if they want to heal?

This view of devs as being callous or nefariously mistreating healer jobs/players is a very strange one, and I can't reconcile it with what I have seen of the dev team.

I don't think the devs are "mistreating players" and that's a conclusion you're drawing from my post that isn't there. Criticism of the developers does not equal to some sort of malice towards them, and I wouldn't play this game if I felt like I was being mistreated - I pay for it, I'm not going to pay to be treated poorly. I just find it funny that Yoshida would laugh at WoW's team while having a large number of people unhappy with roles/jobs that they don't have any dedicated designers for. They play the game, but can you tell me that anyone is playing through the entire game as a healer? I can't imagine any of them would find spamming Broil over and over particularly fun to do for hundreds of hours of content.

I've come to terms with healers being simple on DPS rotation, rather, I look forward to new, interesting, spectacular and challenging content instead of a wishful healer re-work into a complex DPS job.

So DPS and Tanks can't enjoy "new, interesting, spectacular and challenging content" because they've got more to do than spamming 1-1-1? This is an odd statement because those roles get to enjoy that same content while also getting to enjoy having more to do. Healers don't get better enjoyment of this content because we have a braindead rotation, and saying such is just trying to find any sort of justification for why we're not allowed to have that same fun the other roles are having.

[HyoMinPark]

I know it wasn't your argument, just that part bugged me.

Pardon, but if you knew it wasn’t my argument, then why bring it up? If you want to debate optimization, that’s one thing. But I wasn’t talking about optimization anywhere in my post; never even mentioned it. I was talking about something else entirely, which means you’re taking what I said way out of context.

As to ease of access and just generally being easy, sure, you can make that argument I guess, but that's not what you said originally.

Yes, it was. I was drawing a parallel that you seem to have completely missed in your focus on a point I wasn’t even making.

WHM is the most accessible of the four healers, being available from the start of the game and the easiest of the four to learn due to being straight-forward and beginner friendly. It is also a Final Fantasy staple. But what you are failing to realize is that this does not mean that people prefer simpler healers when a lot of players—especially those invested in the Final Fantasy genre—flock to a job due to aesthetic.

This has always been extremely common with BRD, who is by far the easiest to play DPS and has always been the most popular (with the exception of ShB—even HW bowmage was one of the highest played DPS jobs back then despite the mass exodus of BRDs): people like the bow and arrow aesthetic, or they are drawn to the idea of a more traditional, Final Fantasy BRD—and then sorely disappointed when that does not exist in this game. There have been countless topics about this on both this forum and the FFXIV subreddits. The same applies to WHM.

You are trying to present an argument that your data does not support because your data is way too vague. There are far too many variables to consider as to why it exists the way it does, so trying to argue “people prefer simple healers, look!” is flawed.

I explicitly mentioned accessibility, ease of play, and aesthetic in both examples. Nowhere did I mention optimization or any of the other points you brought up. You are taking something from my argument that was never there in the first place, and trying to argue about it. Aside from ignoring blatant exceptions to prior rules that I brought up. I wasn’t talking about EW BRD in there at all, either—though it is certainly dominating the ranks of physical ranged, and regaining its popularity that it lost during ShB.

And bard is reasonably popular right now because its buffs are now strong enough to make it attractive to endgame groups. So. Supposedly super easy to play,, supposedly a super popular class fantasy, attractive in what it brings, and no movement restrictions. Yet, at the time of this writing, sitting at #5 in popularity. Which isn't terrible but certainly isn't leading (though better than ShB, at least).

There is no supposedly about the ease of gameplay that BRD has at a non-optimization level (remember, that’s the gameplay I’m talking about—not min-maxed gameplay, though it has certainly lost a lot of that nuance as well), or the popularity of the bow and arrow aesthetic in fantasy-esque games like FFXIV (or the aesthetic of a Final Fantasy-esque BRD; not the hybrid this game has). If you think that aesthetic isn’t popular, then you haven’t been reading discussions that have popped up about it in the past. Nor discussions where BRD has always been recommended as “easiest DPS to play” whenever one of those threads appear. Usually alongside RDM because both have a very low skill floor and can be easily picked up by anyone unfamiliar with the DPS role or just this game in general.

I’m considering far more than just endgame gameplay here—I’m actually talking on terms of casual level play as well. I know that’s fairly uncommon for me, but if I was going to specify high-level play, I would have done that in my initial post and set that premise. I did not, therefore I am not even talking about that. Again, you are trying to rebut statements I’m not even making, and just making your own inferences off of…well, I don’t even know what, if I’m to be honest. Because I’m not talking solely around high-level play, optimization, or any of that right now, nor do I think I gave any real indication that that’s the angle I was approaching this from.

The only mention I ever made related to high-end play was to combat your assertion that BRD wasn’t the most popular DPS job in SB when I brought up the fact that it had the highest amount of uploaded parses for DPS jobs back then—and very consistently; but it’s not a little known fact that its popularity has always extended beyond Savage and optimization. Especially if you want to compare it to MCH. The only time BRD faltered during popularity was early HW after the induction of bowmage and during ShB due to a combination of job changes and DNC being the new kid on the block—but it was still very popular at the end of HW, and during SB. Your argument completely ignored that in favor of focusing solely on “they weren’t popular in ShB”.

Rhetorical question - don't answer me but just think about it: What doesn't add up here?

I know you said don’t answer, but I will anyways—and then I will stop derailing this thread with a discussion about BRD: what doesn’t add up here, to me, is your entire argument. You’re taking mine out of context and trying to argue things I haven’t even put forward. That’s what doesn’t add up to me.

The ability to remain the most popular job while being weakest in its role in quite singular to white mage.

Mmm, this wasn’t the argument I was making either. I think you entirely missed what argument I was making with regards to the WHM-BRD parallel I brought up. Being the weakest in a role had very little to do with it. It was all about an argument surrounding WHY numbers for WHM and SGE with regards to that graph Halfgeeek posted might be higher than SCH and AST, and why they couldn’t use it as definitive proof of their “people prefer simpler healers over healers with complexity” argument.


If you want to debate this further, you’re more than welcome to message me on Discord about it. But I won’t derail this thread any further with this unnecessary tangent we’ve gone off on.

[AmiableApkallu]

Why do I have to go out of my way to find engaging healer play versus just having it naturally?

Because it's how encounters are designed and played: "Don't stand in the bad." Which is to say, everyone does their best to avoid taking damage, i.e., everyone does their best to give the healer nothing to heal.

At that point, designing a healing kit is a matter of deciding how many mistakes and how much unavoidable damage you want someone to be able to heal through, and the latter won't be all that interesting or engaging so long as encounters are scripted from start to finish. From another thread, an observation that resonates with me:

Ideally for me, all jobs should fall under "easy to learn, hard to master." A lot like playing Tetris casually really. The problem is.. healers as are have very little room to get better or improve since all the damage in the game is completely predictable. There are no points in the game where there is unexpected damage.

The only source of unpredictability, currently, is other players.

[ForteNightshade]

I would love if there was a reason to use GCD heals more and I shouldn't have to have a party that is consistently messing up for me to have things to do outside of spamming 1-1-1 and reapplying a 30s DoT.

The sad part is even this isn't enough some times. I really want to emphasise just how little we actually heal nowadays relative to DPS. On my group's P1S clear, we had six deaths, with one leading to brick and 27 damage downs. Day one shenanigan memes at their finest. Our healers still combined for 53% of their casts being on just two buttons: Fall Malefic and Dosis III. I'm even being intentionally disingenous with those numbers since AST will always have a bloated non-DPS cast amount due to cards yet it still led to more than half their combined casts on two buttons.

Now before anyone jumps in and claims if they GCD healed more, then we wouldn't have deaths or damage downs. Those all occurred due to mechanical mistakes and one-shots. Healers can't heal through going to the wrong spot and dying cause of it. And yes, I know P1S is the "easy" Savage turn but it's still Savage. The majority of players don't even get content that remotely makes them do any healer. There's a reason so many are started to complain about Bloodwhetting. Tanks literally don't need healers in dungeons. Even both EX primals don't need a single GCD heal. Which means you're spamming the same button a bazillion times.

[Semirhage]

There's a litany of evidence to suggest they don't.

And who can forget that Yoshida quote that I can't be bothered to hunt down the infographic for: the bewilderingly out of touch "The White Mage would be doing all the healing while the Scholar DPSed away", when in fact Scholar was pulling higher DPS and HPS because oGCD healing is a thing.

It's a set of situations that only begins to make sense if you step into the shoes of a DPS main with only a vague, Sylphie-informed opinion on how healers "should" play. It's not just a snarky dismissive piece of hyperbole. If you imagine being a DPS main, who doesn't particularly like playing healers, looking at your party menu when you're punching or spear poking away. "What's that healer doing? I'm taking damage and I don't see them casting Cure! I'm going to di-oh I'm fine. What's that, Tetra? They blew an emergency tool on me instead of healing like a healer should!" "All I see is Broil on that cast bar! That healer is really lazy, they only cast their DPS spell and they aren't paying attention to our health bars! I'm not going to connect the dots with the fact that we made it through the content. Why aren't they healing!?" "They pick the role to enjoy casting healing spells or something. They should enjoy all of the healing spells we gave them then."

Healers occupy the "oh right they exist too, better throw a raidwide in there or something. Ehh whatever. Good enough! Back to designing other mechanics" mental space.

[HyoMinPark]

Because it's how encounters are designed and played: "Don't stand in the bad." Which is to say, everyone does their best to avoid taking damage, i.e., everyone does their best to give the healer nothing to heal.

At that point, designing a healing kit is a matter of deciding how many mistakes and how much unavoidable damage you want someone to be able to heal through, and the latter won't be all that interesting or engaging so long as encounters are scripted from start to finish. From another thread, an observation that resonates with me:


The only source of unpredictability, currently, is other players.

And I would argue that the current encounter design philosophy is flawed—and I have argued that. It’s flawed because the developers cater it towards the lowest common denominators for each role. It goes beyond just healers, but they design most content in mind with tanks that struggle to use mitigation properly, healers that struggle to heal properly and/or balance dealing damage, and DPS that barely know their rotations.

I actually adore a lot of the healing kits healers have. Part of why I stuck with AST after the card neutering was because its ShB healing kit was phenomenal. I love SGE’s healing kit, and I wish to see Kardia expanded upon in the future. Despite SCH being clunky, I like the general concept of a healer pet job and Seraph; they just need to do more to make both concepts smoother and make SCH’s kit as a whole more cohesive. Same with WHM and Lilies. But all four healing kits have one thing in common: they are complete overkill for most content in this game. Bordering on unnecessary.

I think the developers need to seriously consider their design going forward with regards to both content and healer gameplay. If they want to keep giving healers more and more healing tools, they need to design content that puts them to use. If they don’t want to do that, then they should consider other forms of healer engagement that aren’t reliant upon messy parties in DF being messy parties in DF. Even just giving back a second or third DoT would be enough for me.