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

[Thoosa]

I think the issue lies in the fights being very scripted so damage is very predictable. The aoe bleed mechanics all come every 3 minutes which ofc fit lilybell perfectly. The damage is high, one aoe that phoinix does will straight up wipe the party without serious mitigation and even then, week one, it drops us to 5%health. But there is time before the next big hit to just heal it up with asylum and fairy plus assize on cooldown.

It kinda feels like the way it’s going - healers will end up with mostly ogcd spells and a really boring gcd dps rotation and the way they will handle damage will just be more regular scripted raidwides plus a load of healer specific mechs to deal with. No more watching health bars, or a situation where gcd healing is required often and then the challenge being how you fit your dps in and balance it with mp usage. Also the only time you will use a reasonable amount of your kit will be in late savage and Ultimate.

[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.

[Thoosa]

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 tried Disc priest, but oh boy it’s brutal in M+, you end up trying to keep that thing up which causes you to heal when you dps, and then you’re manically pressing smite, penance and mind flay and then when it goes really bad, shadowmend spam - it’s easily the hardest healer and depends a lot on party comp - I can’t see 14 ever having a healer that tough to play.

Sage seems to me to be a hybrid of shield and pure healer to me and it’s the only interesting 14 healer imo.

[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.

[OtakuSempai]

I tried Disc priest, but oh boy it’s brutal in M+, you end up trying to keep that thing up which causes you to heal when you dps, and then you’re manically pressing smite, penance and mind flay and then when it goes really bad, shadowmend spam - it’s easily the hardest healer and depends a lot on party comp - I can’t see 14 ever having a healer that tough to play.

Sage seems to me to be a hybrid of shield and pure healer to me and it’s the only interesting 14 healer imo.

Yes and that's why I love it lol. It's extremely powerful in the right hands and you'll never be worried about keeping your party alive.

Every healer in ff14 is just so painfully boring in comparison.

[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.

[Mortex]

That’s pretty bad - hopefully the last savage fight requires some gcd heals? Not sure if this tier is comparable to the e1s tier at all in terms of difficulty?

If they feel like they don’t want to put pressure on the healers in fights, they could give instant rez’s to the tanks and then vastly increase the incoming damage?

I can assure you p4s door boss slaps the party a lot and pretty hard in some situations. P4s phase 2 has actually almost no healing until the curtain call mechanic were you have too break 8 tether that deal raid wide damage in a specific timing. Healing wise this raid tier is actually pretty relaxed. Also pretty sure they use some gcds for p3s because fountain of fire phase deals for every tower you soak tower 99 % hp dmg too the healer soaking it (you have 3 tower and both healer are on opposite sides doing that).
This raid tier is really pretty heal friendly still. No Titan maximum stuff

[RinaShinomiya]

You know what's funny about current healer design?
Doing Rathalos duty and having your Hotbar reduced to 6 buttons because you're a healer and Phase 2 blocks healing outside the mega potion.
What a blast was that duty to play. I know it's just 1 Duty but when we got nothing to weave the lack of a proper DPS gameplay becomes extra irritating.

[LuciaMirain]

It wouldn't make the game all that more difficult, but it would make it interesting if critters were less predictable. And, in turn, this would make healers more important. This would also allow control-skills and debuffs like heavy to be useful. For example, a boss suddenly turns and waltzes toward the healer to kill the healer with a tank buster. A DPS then uses a bind skill so the healer can get away, and the tank can run up to eat the buster instead. But this wouldn't always happen. Sometimes the boss would flurry aoe or sometimes it would target a dps that was especially hurting. Dynamic. Interesting. Heal worthy. The patterns would come from knowing the boss's temperament. One boss would hate bards, for example, while another would hate healers above all. Or another would attack high dps and tanks. A boss would prefer single target attacks or aoes or debuffs or damage over time. Just make the behaviors match the boss's personality and have them make an honest effort to kill the party.

I don't expect this to happen, of course, nor is it even the best solution. But it is an example of how an AI design change would make our current healer kits (and those of other classes) more interesting. The unchanging, scripted nature of the game is the root of the problem.

Ok so storytime: twintania actually targets and stuns a person and then sends a mob after them. If the mob reaches the player, the players just straight up dies. The goal is to dps down that mob, stun it or whatever before it reaches the player. It was clutch back then.

We also had a fight that pushed healers into a solozone, with the train, but then healers complained they had to dps....:P We also had in as12 that healers needed to heal themselves while taking massive damage until the dps could come and kill the mob that was attacking them. We also had AS4 that dropped healers to no mp at a part of the fight and then we had to plan out how to get mp up, and heal up in a few seconds.

I dont know if you have done ultimate, but I think going into TEA for the first time was the actual first time since I started doing savage that I actually felt like a healer. Like I was important beyond my ogcds. I had to medica 2. I had to rapture. I ran out of mp unless I managed it carefully, even with old thin air. My AST cohealer would just stand and do emotes at some parts because they were out of mp. Im not saying every fights has to be like ultimates. But there are obviously ways to make healers engage more with their entire toolkit. Hell, make repose mean something. Make it so healers HAVE to sleep a wave of mobs before they reach the group.