Healer Q&A in PLL LXVIII

[Renathras]

I completely understand this take. I also think that the healer role is so, so badly designed that it's evolved beyond the ability to succinctly describe all of the wretched things about it. You could probably get across the rancidness of the design in a brief five page essay. But it's not one, or two, or even five summarizable problems you could bullet point out. I think that's also one of the big problems with discussing healer role issues here on this forum. There is no one-patch-solves-all fix.

This is probably accurate. And even if we could outline the problems, could we agree on them?

For example, we all can see that healer KITS vs encounter DESIGN don't mesh. But what's the issue? We'd have to identify that to lead to the solution.

To me, the issue is that encounters have VERY STRICTLY SCRIPTED spikes of big damage, and healers (excepting maybe WHM) have VERY POWERFUL oGCD heals. This leads to a situation where healers are DPSing most of the time, and when damage goes out, they faceroll across high potency oGCDs, heal all the damage (or have ticking HoTs to heal before the next damage spike), then go back to DPSing to maximize their parses. This is how the high end gameplay works, and more modern dungeons (old dungeons deviate from this quite a bit, especially before SB, and lower levels, a lot of Jobs don't have those powerful heals yet)

But what's the solution here?

The high end raiding community thinks the solution is "give healers a dps rotation on par with tanks and damage on par with Ranged". Well, that's _A_ solution.

Another solution would be to nerf oGCDs. Why are your "cheap" heals (oGCDs) more powerful than your "expensive" heals (GCDs)? Shouldn't oGCDs be used for patching up the party and smoothing damage spikes and GCDs be what you use to actually deal with high damage? If you look at it from a risk/reward perspective, "expensive" (in MP and time) heals should be more powerful, not less or approximately equal. And we have so many (again, excepting WHM) that healers can generally cover an entire Extreme or Savage fight with oGCDs if they have a proper "healing plan". Why is this even a thing? Healing without using a single MP on healing or a single GCD on healing? Does that seem like healthy game design? That just makes your healers all DPSers that weave an occasional healing oGCD between their damage rotation - which leads to the demands of giving them a more engaging DPS rotation since they're...basically DPSers at that point.

So even if we CAN identify a general problem, do we even agree on the solution?

So how can we ask the Devs to do so when even we cannot?

[Semirhage]

This is probably accurate. And even if we could outline the problems, could we agree on them?

For example, we all can see that healer KITS vs encounter DESIGN don't mesh. But what's the issue? We'd have to identify that to lead to the solution.

To me, the issue is that encounters have VERY STRICTLY SCRIPTED spikes of big damage, and healers (excepting maybe WHM) have VERY POWERFUL oGCD heals. This leads to a situation where healers are DPSing most of the time, and when damage goes out, they faceroll across high potency oGCDs, heal all the damage (or have ticking HoTs to heal before the next damage spike), then go back to DPSing to maximize their parses. This is how the high end gameplay works, and more modern dungeons (old dungeons deviate from this quite a bit, especially before SB, and lower levels, a lot of Jobs don't have those powerful heals yet)

But what's the solution here?

The high end raiding community thinks the solution is "give healers a dps rotation on par with tanks and damage on par with Ranged". Well, that's _A_ solution.

Another solution would be to nerf oGCDs. Why are your "cheap" heals (oGCDs) more powerful than your "expensive" heals (GCDs)? Shouldn't oGCDs be used for patching up the party and smoothing damage spikes and GCDs be what you use to actually deal with high damage? If you look at it from a risk/reward perspective, "expensive" (in MP and time) heals should be more powerful, not less or approximately equal. And we have so many (again, excepting WHM) that healers can generally cover an entire Extreme or Savage fight with oGCDs if they have a proper "healing plan". Why is this even a thing? Healing without using a single MP on healing or a single GCD on healing? Does that seem like healthy game design? That just makes your healers all DPSers that weave an occasional healing oGCD between their damage rotation - which leads to the demands of giving them a more engaging DPS rotation since they're...basically DPSers at that point.

So even if we CAN identify a general problem, do we even agree on the solution?

So how can we ask the Devs to do so when even we cannot?

Say we nerf oGCDs. Say we increase the frequency of outgoing damage. What are you left with?

Regen, Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure. Oh the whole party took damage. Medica 2, Medica Medica Medica Medica Medica. Say, if you put Regen on hotkey 2, and Cure on hotkey 1, you can still have 211111111111111 gameplay!

Even if you were to go back and fundamentally change how encounter design works, the GCD healing kits aren't interesting either. I like playing healers because I like supporting the party and multitasking. Something healing/support jobs often excel at, in many games across many subgenres. I have always included damage dealing as an integral part of that party support, because damage dealing is a crucial part of the whole goal of every encounter: to make your enemies die. Spending the vast majority of your time spamming healing spells is something I have seen almost never in video games. Because the thing is, if you fail at healing, your party dies. You fail. You can hobble along for a long time with suboptimal damage output, but as a game designer you *need* a larger buffer for healing because the penalty for outright failure is that much higher. And you don't want to scare off all but the most hardcore of top-tier skilled players.

Square could increase healing requirements. They could nerf the strength of oGCDs. They could "force" players to spam GCD heals like healers are "supposed" to do. It would be boring, because the GCD healing kits are boring. It would also drop participation, because the minimum healing you have to do would go up.

I'm not against raising the skill floor so it's too scary for people who don't care about healing to get into it. Yoshida and I clearly disagree there. You and Yoshida clearly disagree there. It's fine to sacrifice some accessibility to make things actually engaging. Where we disagree is that I think "pure healing" is fecking boring. I usually play healers in games, but the few ones that make me drop the role are the ones that turn me into a precious helpless princess whose only option in battle is casting Booboo Kiss 4, and running away if the rest of the party isn't there to carry me around. The best designed healers have a wide spread of tools. Yes, they have more focus on healing spells than any other role, but I'm having fun when I heal the tank, then sleep a bear, then poison a goblin, then put the archer in a bubble to keep him alive a few more rounds, then hit an imp with my staff, then throw a holy blast at a demon, then put a regen on the paladin, then banish a skeleton, then deflect some lightning, then roast the enemy wizard in a pillar of fire.

This is an MMO, not a turn-based game. I realize that the above scenario is far too complex for an MMO kit to offer. But there's a grand canyon of options between that an "NO! I don't play to deal any damage! I play healer to HEAL! It's in the name so that's all it should do! Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure is the peak of gameplay! I don't mind pressing 1111111111111, it's not boring at all!"

Not a chance. I'm never playing a healer designed liked that. Because it's boring. I'm paying attention to one or two health bars and making them go up sometimes when they go down. "Healers should spend most of their time healing" is a mentality that makes absolutely no sense to me, because I've never played a game where that was remotely true. MAYBE 50% of their time if the game's outgoing damage is high.

...and you talk about Yoshi P being dismissive to people...

Pot, meet kettle. <_<

No, I want to play a game. But I don't want to play a game as a damage dealer. You know this, so cut the snark a bit, eh? I'm treating this discussion and people in it in good faith, perhaps you should as well.

I've had this discussion what feels like a million times. Healers are multitasker support classes. I don't play a healer to spam Cure spells like a Trust robot.

[Silver-Strider]

I don't play a healer to spam Cure spells like a Trust robot.

Alphinaud and Uriange both have more DPS spells than we do as players and it's bs that SE trusts the NPC to do damage but for players it's considered too much. Seeing Aero 3 in Tower of Zot kills me a little inside every time.

[AnotherPerson]

The high end raiding community thinks the solution is "give healers a dps rotation on par with tanks and damage on par with Ranged". Well, that's _A_ solution.

Another solution would be to nerf oGCDs. Why are your "cheap" heals (oGCDs) more powerful than your "expensive" heals (GCDs)? Shouldn't oGCDs be used for patching up the party and smoothing damage spikes and GCDs be what you use to actually deal with high damage? If you look at it from a risk/reward perspective, "expensive" (in MP and time) heals should be more powerful, not less or approximately equal. And we have so many (again, excepting WHM) that healers can generally cover an entire Extreme or Savage fight with oGCDs if they have a proper "healing plan". Why is this even a thing? Healing without using a single MP on healing or a single GCD on healing?

So even if we CAN identify a general problem, do we even agree on the solution?

So how can we ask the Devs to do so when even we cannot?

No, that would never work as a solution - The problem is accessibility. Nerfing healing only makes things more difficult for subpar players as they depend on those oGCD healing in a pinch rather than the norm. That does nothing for them as the power of the oGCD heals would be too weak to do anything and makes things more difficult for them. The solution is never to raise the skill floor, or else healers would have never have been in this state to begin with.

As for why a healing plan is a thing - that's because fight design is scripted + there is an existence of an enrage timer. Mainly the enrage timer. It's what incentivizes good play by making all players adhere to a personal responsibility of doing mechanics and avoiding excess damage. Failing to do mechanics will make it more difficult to clear or outright wipe due to being debuffed with stat debuff (damage down, vulnerability down, death debuff). Having more healing or more damage will never resolve that fact because the game was never designed with that in mind. Thus DPS becomes always a forefront and utmost importance to help with the clear - which makes it always useful compared to healing (which is only useful when people lose HP). This is due to FFXIV's combat design being very similar to an action RPG. We don't have large and frequent amounts of unavoidable damage - instead we have fewer instances of unavoidable damage and frequent / large amounts of avoidable damage in the form of mechanics.

Finally, healers have to clear the MSQ. What you proposed is not a solution to solo instances. You're still going to be spamming 11111111111 until the instance is over and all enemies are defeated. The engagement is still not there. Even if they weren't DPSers, they will still need to clear content that was made for DPS & tanks - which means DPS who can use their full combo needs the enjoyment in doing so, leading to enemies with a high HP bar. Not to mention, DPS doesn't have as much survivability as a tank or healer, so instances have very low outgoing damage requirements for it to be accessible. And if a DPS needs time to clear it even with their high DPS, you can bet a healer is going to be bored because they won't have anything to do but press 11111111111.

[Renathras]

The solution is never to raise the skill floor, or else healers would have never have been in this state to begin with.

As for why a healing plan is a thing

I don't understand this argument. On the one hand, you say this can't be done, because people can't clear content. But those people aren't using heal plans. So how is scripted fights that are clearable using heal plans helping these people?

FFXIV WAS designed originally with more healing (RELATIVE TO our healing kits). It was designed for healers to use GCD heals. Remember at level 50 (ARR's level cap), WHM had exactly ONE oGCD heal, Benediction, an emergency panic button. SCHs had only one direct oGCD heal, Lustrate (it also had WD, but that wasn't up front healing.)

ARR was designed with GCD healing in mind and a higher amount of outgoing damage over shorter, more frequent times than today. So was HW. Both Coils and Alex were not designed like modern fights. We did have fairly large and relatively frequent unavoidable damage.

So the game originally WAS designed around this rough concept. At least, moreso than it is now. Whether that was a good or bad thing, worked well or poorly, that we can debate. But appealing to a presumed past authority doesn't support your position here, as that wasn't really true.

.

Oh, and to the last: I'd ask you to understand this is a personal preference thing, I guess?

To me, pressing 11111 is little different than pressing 123124. Both are basically muscle memory. I don't play DPS roles because...I derive zero pleasure/dopamine hits from seeing big damage numbers or "flalessly executing" a rotation. When I get my GNB opener right, I'm like "okay, now that's done...moving on". I don't feel some high level of joy or excitement over a "job well done". To me, the "job well done" is when the screen fades to black for the victory fanfare when the boss dies. That's all I care about. How we get there is immaterial to me. And this goes for solo instances as well.

Indeed, the only thing I get more from playing a tank (I don't ever DPS MSQ) over a healer is things like EW's final solo fight feel a bit more...logical?...when I have a melee weapon. I'd feel the exact same doing that fight on SCH as SMN. It feels the same to me whether rolling through Summons or casting Broil x1,000. I genuinely feel no different about damage. I don't think I could be more ambivalent about it if I tried.

I feel kinda like this is like an asexual person attempting to explain a lack of desire to a non-asexual person, but if someone like Zenos is a combat-sexual, I'm the exact inverse of whatever that is.

On the other hand, I derive tremendous joy from seeing a low healthbar and filling it up, bringing a friend back from the brink, or throwing down mitigation. I LOVE seeing big yellow bars on my party that, after a major attack, still have a little bit of yellow left over. That's incredibly satisfying to me for reasons I can't put into words...

[Silver-Strider]

I don't understand this argument. On the one hand, you say this can't be done, because people can't clear content. But those people aren't using heal plans. So how is scripted fights that are clearable using heal plans helping these people?

FFXIV WAS designed originally with more healing (RELATIVE TO our healing kits). It was designed for healers to use GCD heals. Remember at level 50 (ARR's level cap), WHM had exactly ONE oGCD heal, Benediction, an emergency panic button. SCHs had only one direct oGCD heal, Lustrate (it also had WD, but that wasn't up front healing.)

ARR was designed with GCD healing in mind and a higher amount of outgoing damage over shorter, more frequent times than today. So was HW. Both Coils and Alex were not designed like modern fights. We did have fairly large and relatively frequent unavoidable damage.

So the game originally WAS designed around this rough concept. At least, moreso than it is now. Whether that was a good or bad thing, worked well or poorly, that we can debate. But appealing to a presumed past authority doesn't support your position here, as that wasn't really true.

ARR was a different beast altogether though. Healers had more to do back then with Virus rotations to help mitigate, shielding prey mechanics, etc. Nowadays, I can't even remember the last time I even saw a prey mechanic that needed shielding to survive and we probably never will again because they took away WHM's ability to shield on demand with the removal of Stoneskin. Even then though, Healers would still try and squeeze in some DPS with Cleric Stance dancing and SCH had 5 DoTs to manage while WHM at least had Fluid Aura for some extra damage, so long as the enemy was immune to the KB anyways. Then, when HW came out, WHM got Aero 3 as well and while Fluid Aura lost its damage, it merely got replaced with Assize as an oGCD attack so the emphasis on DPS never went away, even back then.

[Dhalya]

FFXIV WAS designed originally with more healing (RELATIVE TO our healing kits). It was designed for healers to use GCD heals. Remember at level 50 (ARR's level cap), WHM had exactly ONE oGCD heal, Benediction, an emergency panic button. SCHs had only one direct oGCD heal, Lustrate (it also had WD, but that wasn't up front healing.)

ARR was designed with GCD healing in mind and a higher amount of outgoing damage over shorter, more frequent times than today. So was HW. Both Coils and Alex were not designed like modern fights. We did have fairly large and relatively frequent unavoidable damage.

I am not sure how much more healing there was in ARR, if you have tried the unreal trials in ShB, those could be similarly healed with oGCDs tho I agree Leviathan ex did have some nasty random stuff happening.

Anyway I don't see that huge of a difference between GCD and oGCD healing, so you do
glare > glare > glare+tetra > glare > glare > glare+assize > glare > dia
or
stone > stone > cure > cure2 > stone > medica 2 > medica > aero,
just at a much slower pace and dealing less damage, is it more engaging or fun? I don't think so.

Also I think your perception of the past is wrong just because back then players mentality was different. Parsing wasnt so popular, the game was new so people just focused on mechanics and dps was secondary, dps checks were lighter and people still struggled to meet them because they sucked at doing big deeps, healers spam healing just to be safe. I even remember the trend of 'main healer' and 'off-healer' who would just spam damage (which is extremely suboptimal when you do the math) so yeah, it took time for people to over-optimize everything to maximum and now they are bored as they have been spamming the same formula for years and the number of offensive abilities has actually been reduced since ARR.

[Silver-Strider]

Anyway I don't see that huge of a difference between GCD and oGCD healing, so you do
glare > glare > glare+tetra > glare > glare > glare+assize > glare > dia
or
stone > stone > cure > cure2 > stone > medica 2 > medica > aero,
just at a much slower pace and dealing less damage, is it more engaging or fun? I don't think so.

There was a lot more to it than that, I can assure you.
For starters, Protect was on the GCD and was absolutely mandatory to have on. While it did last for 30 minutes, you'd have to reapply it if someone died so they at least stood a chance of not getting killed immediately to the next raid wide because Weakness back then wasn't just a damage down to your DPS stats but a full on stat reduction across the board, meaning you had less health to survive damage as well. It was particularly true of DRGs because Physical and Magic damage was not standardized so each class took different amounts of damage, depending on if an AoE attack was physical or magic based but DRG's had PITIFUL magic resistance and would topple over almost every magical AoE unless they had Protect and maybe a Shield for good measure. Tank busters actually hurt like no one's business because enemies could actually CRIT you; At minimum ilvl, if you didn't have a Shield up on top of Mitigation, if you got Crit, you were dead. Then, you had Prey Mechanics that absolutely required you to shield people in order to survive them at all. Couple that with the fact WHM's MP economy being even worse than it currently is and that SCH's AoE healing was essentially limited to Succor and healing was legitimately more involved back then than it is now. There was MP to manage, Tank busters to shield, Cleric Stance Dancing to squeeze in DPS whenever possible, semi frequent raid wide damage.

It was fun though. Stressful as hell but it was always great when you pulled it off.

Nowadays, I sit and spam Glare for the majority of the fight. No shields to keep up, no prey mechanics to watch for, no tank buster too powerful to OHKO tanks, no Cleric Stance Dancing to optimize my DPS, nothing.

[Dhalya]

There was a lot more to it than that, I can assure you.

Yes, we used to have more dots to manage, cleric stance and that's what healers want back, just more things to do especially in dps department and i fully agree with that.

Protect is imho a bad example, it was just an automatic thing to press, zero brain activity involved.
Mitigation? So WHM presses glare > temperance, SCH broil > soil, done. Before the scholar would press succor + soil and WHM just pray to god.
Again I think it all comes down to players experience and after years and years of playing and reading about optimization, even ARR fights would be fully mapped out by healers today, just by pressing a few more GCD heals.
As long as the fight has a predictable timeline, then after enough repetitions you just find the correct order of your spells to use and incorporating one esuna or cure II will not change much.

What we need is randomized incoming damage/randomized mechanics to keep healers on their toes.
Second option is fun dps rotation and keep the healing as it is now.

I just don't see how slightly more incoming PREDICTABLE damage changes anything, you just swap glare for medica, or one prey mechanic exactly at 1:25 where you just press one regen followed by one GCD heal.

[Silver-Strider]

Yes, we used to have more dots to manage, cleric stance and that's what healers want back, just more things to do especially in dps department and i fully agree with that.

Protect is imho a bad example, it was just an automatic thing to press, zero brain activity involved.
Mitigation? So WHM presses glare > temperance, SCH broil > soil, done. Before the scholar would press succor + soil and WHM just pray to god.
Again I think it all comes down to players experience and after years and years of playing and reading about optimization, even ARR fights would be fully mapped out by healers today, just by pressing a few more GCD heals.
As long as the fight has a predictable timeline, then after enough repetitions you just find the correct order of your spells to use and incorporating one esuna or cure II will not change much.

What we need is randomized incoming damage/randomized mechanics to keep healers on their toes.
Second option is fun dps rotation and keep the healing as it is now.

I just don't see how slightly more incoming PREDICTABLE damage changes anything, you just swap glare for medica, or one prey mechanic exactly at 1:25 where you just press one regen followed by one GCD heal.

WHM had Stoneskin for mitigation which was a GCD shield just like Succor.

Random incoming damage doesn't really do anything different than predictable damage because you just swap from Glare to Medica regardless if it's predictable or not.