Dear Square Enix, do something with GCD healing please.

[Halfgeeek]

This is just completely wrong though and not at all how healers in FFXIV work. No matter how much Yoshida says this, the fights say otherwise - the game is not tuned for "just do some DPS where you can!" but instead for healers contributing as much DPS as possible. These fights are tuned around healer DPS. To see that this is the case, all we need to look at is the top E8S speedkill.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/qCnHW...pe=damage-done
This is the E8S Rank 1 Speedkill. The rDPS requirement for enrage is 90725 and this group logged 104357 rDPS. If you subtract the healers, 104357 - 20662, you end up with 83695 which is 7000 rDPS behind the enrage requirement for the fight. And these are the TOP players for the fight.

If the content was tuned around not requiring healer DPS or just having healers "DPS where they can", it wouldn't be impossible, if not close to impossible to clear even if you had 4 of the best DPS players and 2 of the best tank DPS on the planet. This is the core problem, healers are in fact not "meant to heal." The design encounters that they're sticking with demand that we DPS, and using our GCD healing is always a DPS penalty not just to ourselves, but to our entire party's potential clear.

The devs don't actually intend for a clear at the min-ilvl without healers contributing major DPS. There was a JP interview on this topic years ago that I recently read over.

They design the raid based on expected DPS output of 4 DPS, 2 tanks, then adjust the requirements by X% so the healers have to contribute DPS, assuming other roles play perfectly.

The "healers just heal" thing only works once people over-gear content.

This is why they designed healers with one nuke GCD, and so many oGCD healing tools. The GCD has to constantly roll for Broil, Glare, etc. Healing in hard content is nearly all oGCD. The healer skill check is how good you are at dedicating GCDs towards dmg while keeping PT alive.

Some ppl dislike this design, and me too when I first started the game and while leveling. But my experience in Panda Savage has made me appreciate the more "simple" healer DPS design. Content that's fresh and at min ilvl is difficult enough for most healer players.

The downside is healing becomes quite boring once people get good and over-gear the content.

Edit: Just to counter OP, asking for a redesign of healers towards GCD healing, is a MASSIVE undertaking. Factor this: fights that are heavy on movement, would severely reduce healer's ability to heal, give they would be turret healers if using Cure 2, Adlo, etc. This would have to re-balance the entire game, from old to new encounters.. job imbalances would appear, since some healers have strong GCD healing mobility, etc. FF14 is not designed around WoW or other MMO healing gameplay.

[RinaShinomiya]

Edit: Just to counter OP, asking for a redesign of healers towards GCD healing, is a MASSIVE undertaking. Factor this: fights that are heavy on movement, would severely reduce healer's ability to heal, give they would be turret healers if using Cure 2, Adlo, etc. This would have to re-balance the entire game, from old to new encounters.. job imbalances would appear, since some healers have strong GCD healing mobility, etc. FF14 is not designed around WoW or other MMO healing gameplay.

Both WHM and SGE already have GCD heals that are instant cast. Between Regen, afflatus spells and Eukrasian heals. Plus content rarely requies that much movement that you need to run, everything else is fixed by either swift cast or slidecast.
The same can be said in reverse. Not every healer has ruin 2 or phlegma. Content isnt designed around it.

[AnotherPerson]

Both WHM and SGE already have GCD heals that are instant cast. Between Regen, afflatus spells and Eukrasian heals. Plus content rarely requies that much movement that you need to run, everything else is fixed by either swift cast or slidecast.
The same can be said in reverse. Not every healer has ruin 2 or phlegma. Content isnt designed around it.

That doesn't change the fact that SCH & SGE would have to be... redesigned to fit old encounters unless they homogenize all healers even further? SGE plays well because it fits the current paradigm of DPS as much as possible, use oGCD healing in between. Weakening oGCD heals to make SGE spam GCD heals will feel terrible because it relies on GCD DPS to proc Kardia. If anything, WHM can get its own unique gameplay by having GCD heals interact with its toolkit to reward it with more DPS (doubling down on Afflatus Misery interaction but with more skills), but the shield healers heavily rely on oGCD healing. Weakening their oGCD skills is a huge mistake imo.

[rewd]

If you want to make GCD healing more prominent, you should first make it interesting. And no, using Adloquium and then be rewarded with a Broil isn't interesting or fun to me. I'm still using a boring healing spell followed by a boring DPS spell.

[RinaShinomiya]

That doesn't change the fact that SCH & SGE would have to be... redesigned to fit old encounters unless they homogenize all healers even further? SGE plays well because it fits the current paradigm of DPS as much as possible, use oGCD healing in between. Weakening oGCD heals to make SGE spam GCD heals will feel terrible because it relies on GCD DPS to proc Kardia. If anything, WHM can get its own unique gameplay by having GCD heals interact with its toolkit to reward it with more DPS (doubling down on Afflatus Misery interaction but with more skills), but the shield healers heavily rely on oGCD healing. Weakening their oGCD skills is a huge mistake imo.

Which is a perfect opportunity to make SCH & SGE more unique from another than anything else. I also think you blow it a little out of proportion how much SGE would be affected by having to toss out a 300 potency heal with a 540 potency barrier attached every few seconds instead of DPS to get a 170 potency tickle. Especially with E.Prognosis youre just healing the tank for 70 potency less to give a 320 potency barrier. The biggest issue would've been SCH and SGE clashing more when played together

[OtakuSempai]

Focusing on GCD healing and compelling players to use GCD healing, in pursuit of "making healers HEALERS" would require a complete redesign of the entire game and it's encounter design. It would go way beyond the scope of just simple job redesigns. That's why it's not talked about and suggested as much from people more familiar with the role, it's simply too difficult to do an entire game overhaul to flesh out one role especially given how reluctant they are to even do minor tweaks.

Adding a mini dps rotation or additional skills to utilize in healing downtime is far easier and more likely to be implemented and it's why many of us ask for it. "Healers should HEAL" is a fine moniker but completely ignores how this game is played (and most mmos in general), and being puritanical and inflexible helps nothing.

[RinaShinomiya]

Focusing on GCD healing and compelling players to use GCD healing, in pursuit of "making healers HEALERS" would require a complete redesign of the entire game and it's encounter design. It would go way beyond the scope of just simple job redesigns. That's why it's not talked about and suggested as much from people more familiar with the role, it's simply too difficult to do an entire game overhaul to flesh out one role especially given how reluctant they are to even do minor tweaks.

Adding a mini dps rotation or additional skills to utilize in healing downtime is far easier and more likely to be implemented and it's why many of us ask for it. "Healers should HEAL" is a fine moniker but completely ignores how this game is played (and most mmos in general), and being puritanical and inflexible helps nothing.

With what hotbar space? AST and SCH already have hotbar issues WHM and SGE can fit some extra skills but thats besides the point. Im not arguing we should just GCD heal and nothing else, im arguing we should GCD heal instead of oGCD heal because of hotbar bloat and redundancies. That comes up like what every 30s in most scenarios? Slightly more often in savage? The only reason redesigning healers would be a monumental task is because healers been neglected for far too long

[OtakuSempai]

With what hotbar space? AST and SCH already have hotbar issues WHM and SGE can fit some extra skills but thats besides the point.

It is possible to add additional skills without increasing buttons. Reworking current skills is also an option, since I think our plethora of OGCD heals are bloated and redundant anyway.

Im not arguing we should just GCD heal and nothing else, im arguing we should GCD heal instead of oGCD heal because of hotbar bloat and redundancies. That comes up like what every 30s in most scenarios? Slightly more often in savage? The only reason redesigning healers would be a monumental task is because healers been neglected for far too long

This is why it would be difficult. Encounter design isn't focused around consistent high damage that would facilitate GCD healing, but around short spiky damage better suited to oGCDs. Almost all encounter design would need to shift and be changed. If you just say, removed oGCDs as they are currently or nerfed them heavily, a lot of lower skilled healers would not be able to keep up, and its bad enough already for them. It would be a disaster.

[IllyaPrisma]

Agreed. Make oGCDs for utilities and buffs and give more gcds. That would help the issue of not healing enough, now it would force healers to actually use their gcd to heal, meaning less time to dps and more focus on healing.

I don't agree with seeing things as a dps penalty, rather it is better to just do dps where you can and that is it. Square should FULLY shift the focus to healing. A change like removing healing oGCDs would help a lot. Even if they left all healers dps buttons as normal but maybe gave them a few more short cd ogcd damage abilities so it instead doesn't hurt your healing.

Time to really change the perspective on healers, because you are meant to HEAL.

This is just so unbelievably backwards and sounds like such a green and stereotypical perspective of the "Healer" role.

Are you aware that week 1 (and week 2 for that matter) savage groups WOULD ABSOLUTELY NOT BE ABLE TO CLEAR WITHOUT HEALER DPS. Yet the Devs constantly make contradictory statements saying "We don't factor in Healer DPS when designing encounters". That's clearly false. Maybe if they stop designing predictable and scripted damage spikes in every encounter with large amounts of downtime, Healers might feel incentive to use GCD Healing. That's not going to happen though.

[RinaShinomiya]

It is possible to add additional skills without increasing buttons. Reworking current skills is also an option, since I think our plethora of OGCD heals are bloated and redundant anyway.



This is why it would be difficult. Encounter design isn't focused around consistent high damage that would facilitate GCD healing, but around short spiky damage better suited to oGCDs. Almost all encounter design would need to shift and be changed. If you just say, removed oGCDs as they are currently or nerfed them heavily, a lot of lower skilled healers would not be able to keep up, and its bad enough already for them. It would be a disaster.

Again, you misunderstand. Instead of throwing a indom every 60s we'd throw a succor every 60s except after the succor we'd do something that gives the 295 potency back we lost on GCD healing. I'm not advocating for more high damage, just that we get mechanics that make GCD healing DPS neutral so we dont need so many redundant oGCD buttons that do the same but without DPS penalty. the Alternative is for Square to cut down on GCD healing related actions across the board which means more homogenization because we need more room for Cure 3 on a cooldown so deployment tactics needs to go.