Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Seraphor]

This is complete nonsense. Healers had additional buttons to manage beforehand and were perfectly fine. The whole problem with this stance is there's nothing to heal. A good number of healers want to heal more but there simply isn't enough outgoing damage to warrant nor do we believe the dev team has any aspirations to change that. Therefore, we're asking for something else to do but one button spam.

Sage doesn't "break up" anything. In Copied Factory, I pressed Dosis II 513 times; more than ten times any necessary heal. You look up any healer log, even average players, and you'll see their one button nuke overwhelmingly dominating every other ability they press.

So how many buttons do you want to press?
Is 2 enough? Or does it have to be 3?
1-2-3
What happens if you need to break combo? Or even if other skills don't break combo, what about burst windows or optimising the 3?

Healers can absolutely not having anything that punishes your dps output for interrupting or even delaying a combo, for even a single GCD.
There's already backlash for the fact that GCD heals don't completely reimburse your dps, how bad would it be if there were damage ramping from combos to take into account as well?

"Oh you can't delay your Holy 5 to cast cure because that's a 300 potency loss, you can only heal after a Holy 3"

Plus where are these extra skills going? Button bloat is already bad enough on healers, so you'd have to lose healing skills to make room for them. Then you're dumbing down the actual healing of the job too.

[Novae]

At this point, SE should remove healers and give tanks an eukrasia system, allowing them to upgrade their heals/shields into aoes. It would make a more engaging hybrid job to play with. Imagine having a DPS rotation, heals/shields, and being able to pull everything/ eat TBs. I'd play this anytime over spamming 1111111 for hours.

[Liam_Harper]

After finishing the thread, people are saying "We dont want harder, we want more DPS buttons as healers."

1. No. You signed up to heal. SO heal. ANY dps you can do at that point is just a bonus. If you want more in depth DPS, then pick a job with a red icon.

I love how these sort of comments assume the dps healer isn't healing or is placing it second priority. We signed up to play support. We do heal. In nearly all cases the dps spamming healer is far better at healing than the "I play healer to HEAL Sylphie", because the dps healer knows the entire toolkit inside out in order to maximize efficiency and uptime, while the healbot just blindly spams GCD heals and is completely unreliable in danger situations.

If you want less depth in your job and only play healer to heal, then YOU should pick up the job with the red icon. Because you're a waste of a healer slot and you're denying your groups a decent support.

Also a few more dps buttons doesn't really make healing harder. Dps is a downtime activity. It's not going to be rocket science if you're pressing 3-5 buttons instead of 1 during those long stretches where not much is happening. It also doesn't change anything from the perspective of a healbot because you ignore your dps toolkit anyway, so why even care if it has 1 button or 20?

[WaxSw]

Nah, I second it.
Any dps rotation will end up taking precedence, and suddenly you'll have every healer unable to heal because they're in the middle of their combo.
SGE is the peak of healer dps rotations, it has a couple of CDs and oGCDs to break up the Dosis/Dyskrasia spam and that's enough. Anything more would be overkill.
They should absolutely bring WHM and SCH up to that level though and AST has cards so to keep it busy.

Peak of "rotations" indeed, absolutely nothing to do with the rotation of other healers


(Both images are from SAVAGE btw)

Its painfully obvious who talks with and without knowledge about the reality of healers

[AnotherPerson]

So how many buttons do you want to press?
Is 2 enough? Or does it have to be 3?
1-2-3
What happens if you need to break combo? Or even if other skills don't break combo, what about burst windows or optimising the 3?

Healers can absolutely not having anything that punishes your dps output for interrupting or even delaying a combo, for even a single GCD.
There's already backlash for the fact that GCD heals don't completely reimburse your dps, how bad would it be if there were damage ramping from combos to take into account as well?

"Oh you can't delay your Holy 5 to cast cure because that's a 300 potency loss, you can only heal after a Holy 3"

Plus where are these extra skills going? Button bloat is already bad enough on healers, so you'd have to lose healing skills to make room for them. Then you're dumbing down the actual healing of the job too.

Gee, it's almost as if you're making it sound like healers don't have 20+ skills designed to be weaved between GCDs (healing skills labeled as abilities) and damage is completely random and unscripted. If damage is coming out and people are going to die, do you think a good healer who runs out of abilities to heal is going to NOT use their healing GCDs if that's all that's left for them to keep the party alive?

If GNB can be designed to not break combo when using their Gnashing Fang Combo, I don't see how healers could not be designed to be not break combo when using healing GCD as a last resort.

GCD heals that don't reimburse healer DPS is currently an issue for WHM only because they have a bigger focus on GCD healing (lilies) only partially refunds their DPS rather than having oGCD healing - which is a design problem for WHM in general as they cannot comparatively compete in the same level as the other healers without incurring loss - but this is a different problem from having DPS skills. This is a healing balance issue that makes WHM comparatively weaker without a toolkit adjustment, which extends to their gauge. WHM lacking a weave slot on Holy only shows there's issues with WHM's toolkit design, which has ALSO been talked about consistently in the healer forums. But that's not what this thread is focused on, because a good WHM still ends up having to spam Glare / Holy for a ridiculous amount of time in any content and would rather Medica II than let the party die - like any other healer that are forced to GCD heal when their free healing resources are used up and the party continues to fail a mechanic by stepping in bad. That's wholly unrelated to lack of DPS buttons when downtime is present.

[ZedxKayn]

After finishing the thread, people are saying "We dont want harder, we want more DPS buttons as healers."

1. No. You signed up to heal. SO heal. ANY dps you can do at that point is just a bonus. If you want more in depth DPS, then pick a job with a red icon.
2. Wanting more DPS buttons is literally the same as harder.

Famfrit catboys strike again.

[IDontPetLalas]

So how many buttons do you want to press?
Is 2 enough? Or does it have to be 3?
1-2-3
What happens if you need to break combo? Or even if other skills don't break combo, what about burst windows or optimising the 3?

Healers can absolutely not having anything that punishes your dps output for interrupting or even delaying a combo, for even a single GCD.
There's already backlash for the fact that GCD heals don't completely reimburse your dps, how bad would it be if there were damage ramping from combos to take into account as well?

"Oh you can't delay your Holy 5 to cast cure because that's a 300 potency loss, you can only heal after a Holy 3"

Plus where are these extra skills going? Button bloat is already bad enough on healers, so you'd have to lose healing skills to make room for them. Then you're dumbing down the actual healing of the job too.

Don't act like damage isn't scripted in this game , because it is.

Don't act like tanks weren't given massive improvements to self-healing, because they were.

Don't even recognize that many healing skills could potentially be combined to reduce button bloat, or actually synergize healing and damage.

No, instead fall back on just "it's too much for healers to think about about" Who is dumbing down who here?

[ForteNightshade]

So how many buttons do you want to press?
Is 2 enough? Or does it have to be 3?
1-2-3
What happens if you need to break combo? Or even if other skills don't break combo, what about burst windows or optimising the 3?

Who said anything about combos? That is your inference not mine. Even if they were to do combos, Dancer's aren't interrupted should they press their procs. They could easily design them around proc based gameplay not unlike Sage's Toxicon system but more refined. QooEr brings up the better argument though. Scholar used to have five buttons to achieve its DPS and not a single one of them interrupted their healing. Ironically, they actually healed more back then compared to nowadays because we lacked the sheer number of overpowered oGCDs. I'd also like to point out Heavensward and Stormblood debuted the hardest content this game has ever seen and yet none of the healers struggled to perform their base role (healing) yet apparently reintroducing those same abilities will cause wanton panic and break all the healer balance.

What absolute nonsense.

They could quite literally take the potency of Glare III, cut it down by half and give us another DoT to manage instead and that alone would be better. Not by a lot but certainly better than what it is now.

Plus where are these extra skills going? Button bloat is already bad enough on healers, so you'd have to lose healing skills to make room for them. Then you're dumbing down the actual healing of the job too.

Since you asked, I'll use the most button bloated healer, Astro, for my example.

- Play merged into Draw (Which should have been the case already)
- Crown Play/Minor Arcana removed entirely
- Benefic upgrades into Benefic II

Doing that alone cleans up a lot of buttons. I'd opt to scrap Minor Arcana because in its present state, it's either a DPS button or a FeelsBadMan because you never need Lady. So we may as well use that button space to give back some actual consistent DPS alternative to Malefic spam. From there, I would borrow Sage's Eukrasia system and give a form of it to each healer with the goal being to shore up hotbar space. That way you could combined Helios and Aspected Helios into a single button, with either being accessible through Astro's version of "Eukrasia". You could do the same with both Celestial abilities.

You could drop Horoscope and bake the potency into the aforementioned GCD heals, same with Synastry, which almost never sees any use. There's also an argument to be made healers have too many oGCD heals. Hence why they have so little to heal. So that's another option to explore. Finally, you could overhaul Astrodyne into a DPS tool for the Astro themselves—especially when playing for three seals offers such negligible gains that even top tier Astro just settle with two. To compensate though, return Divination back to what it was since a random self buff that you press and forget isn't all that interesting on a healer to begin with.

And all this is just off the top of my head. Is it all perfect? Hardly. However, it's a start to both clean up button space and pave the way for interesting gameplay because pressing Fall Malefic 150 times certainly isn't.

[Saimeren]

If you want your job to be engaging, play Ultimate, the hardest content in the game that only a few percentage of actual players do.

That should tell you everything you need to know right there.

If only a fraction of the playerbase are doing ultimates, that should suggest that the majority of the playerbase is fine with all of the other content you just dismissed.

If people weren't satisfied with savages and extremes then you'd simply see more participation in ultimates. Even if it's failures. You'd still see more people doing it trying to get better.

If you're so good at the game that doing savages and extremes is like blowing a piece of paper with a breeze, then you have the ultimates. If the challenge that you're complaining about wanting is too hard for you, then get better.

Learn the fights and push the buttons better. If you're as good as you think you are, progression shouldn't be an issue for you. Just because you can't clear it in the first few go arounds, doesn't mean it's "too hard". Do proper progression and get better at the fights over time.

You also have to remember; just because you're good at the game, doesn't mean everyone else is. FFXIV is rather friendly to "bad" gamers. (bad is relative/subjective, it's just the blanket term I'm using.) Yoshi-P knows that the majority of his playerbase aren't going to be clearing ultimates so he has his team focus on the "easier" content.

Just because someone sucks at the game doesn't mean they don't want to feel power progression and move up the raid/trial tiers. So they introduce that to those of us who aren't that good or can't dedicate the time they'd like for proper progression.

So, I see one of two situations here.

A- You're as good as you think you are and should be able to progress in ultimates and this is largely a non issue for you

B- You're not as good as you think you are, can't do ultimate progression very well and are just trying to inflate your ego by telling everyone how easy you think this game is. At which point savages and extremes are likely where you belong.

[MintnHoney]

So how many buttons do you want to press?
Is 2 enough? Or does it have to be 3?
1-2-3

Given how often we need to heal using a GCD, especially when paired with a self-sufficient tank (which is a good thing), why not 6 for maximum flashiness, with 2 alternative buttons we can press as "finishers" to our combo for altered visual effects?

What happens if you need to break combo? Or even if other skills don't break combo, what about burst windows or optimising the 3?

A couple of things can happen in this scenario: "healers adjust," as is usual for healers in general, and they kiss your boo-boos better and life goes on. Or the person who forces the break in the combo has their face scraped across concrete to rub their nose in the shit they pulled so that they hopefully learn never to do it again.
Because we're a civilized society, and because that person is usually a precious snowflake DPS, it's almost always going to be the former.

Healers can absolutely not having anything that punishes your dps output for interrupting or even delaying a combo, for even a single GCD.
There's already backlash for the fact that GCD heals don't completely reimburse your dps, how bad would it be if there were damage ramping from combos to take into account as well?

This "backlash" basically affects no one, outside of a static where they should be looking to squeeze out every bit of DPS from everyone. Otherwise, healers who don't want to DPS at all typically get away with it, and healers who can't or don't optimize their DPS in encounters aren't typically given any sort of "backlash" for it so long as healing was provided. If "backlash" is given, even if in the form of gentle feedback, and feelings are hurt, then you can bet your sweet, furry ass that we'll see a thread pop up in the forums about being unfairly thrown into GM Jail over something that the OP doesn't even remember happening and the GM can't/won't provide details for.

So you don't have to worry, Squeen is already thinking of the children.

Meanwhile, having GCD heals take away from your DPS in general has lead to wanting to primarily use OGCDs for healing instead, and since this has been a thing for a few expansions now, the mentality the dev team has been inadvertently growing actually supports the ability to have a GCD combo.
You might actually be referring to WHMs being unhappy with Afflatus Misery being a DPS loss, but that's actually a legitimate issue, as the "reward" for taking advantage of a class "feature" is less than what you'd get for ignoring it.

Plus, truthfully, not many players are specifically asking for a DPS combo for healers. They're just asking for other things to do, whether it be buffing players, debuffing enemies, providing indirect effects, perhaps setting up something in the battle environment, etc. It doesn't have to be a DPS combo, although that is quite literally the easiest thing that Yoshi-P and his team could provide without dramatically altering the battle design they have been trying to provide over the years.

Plus where are these extra skills going? Button bloat is already bad enough on healers, so you'd have to lose healing skills to make room for them. Then you're dumbing down the actual healing of the job too.

First, healing isn't exactly rocket science. For as nervous as some players get about healing and having "responsibility," healing in this game is conversely just as scripted as the damage provided by enemies in an encounter, so, as with every fight in this game, it's really just about getting used to the encounter as it's presented and pressing the appropriate HP-goes-up button when it's necessary. Maybe more than one if you're like me and either feel the need for it, or you just want to toss more glitter around.

But otherwise, this is another reason why we feel neglected as a role. We're given an overabundance of buttons, and some of them are redundant or obsolete at later levels. It's been suggested many times by many healers to cull certain healing buttons in favor of more useful ones or have them evolve into their stronger forms via traits to save room, with some adjustments here and there for the sake of keeping the skill floor just as low as it has been. Such suggestions include either evolving "Heal 1" into "Heal 2" or combining "Heal 1" with "Esuna" into a single button, both of which are reasonable and would reduce bloat by at least 1 button. Speaking strictly about AST, players have expressed that the Play, Crown Play, and Undraw buttons have been useless bloat, and I'm sure there are other, similarly useless buttons that have been added over time.
There are opportunities, even without trying to add room for DPS, to cull.

You also have to remember; just because you're good at the game, doesn't mean everyone else is. FFXIV is rather friendly to "bad" gamers. (bad is relative/subjective, it's just the blanket term I'm using.) Yoshi-P knows that the majority of his playerbase aren't going to be clearing ultimates so he has his team focus on the "easier" content.

Believe me, if you've been playing a healer for more than one expansion, then you would be well aware that Yoshi-P likes to design, at least the healer role, specifically for the lowest common denominator. The drool gland can only produce so much drool.

But having a low skill floor doesn't mean that the skill ceiling has to be low as well, and the issue, for us, has never really been about adding difficulty. The issue has been about adding depth.