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

[ForteNightshade]

It's not pointless because it replenishes MP which gets you back to doing damage. So you are always casting with a purpose.

Which is an entirely arbitrary addition because the actual healing component would be pointless otherwise. Put simply, instead of fitting a circle through a round hole, you're desperately curving edges off a square to make it round. Designing a convoluted system that doesn't create meaningful or engaging gameplay is purposeless.

Black Mage's system works because it all funnels into the same concept: damage. Umbral Ice isn't just a resource regeneration but allows for flexibility with Xenoglossy, Thunder applications and potential weaving. In other words, everything flows in a cohesive way, all in the service of dealing damage. Conversely, your comparison doesn't. Healers would have a pointless overheal they're forced into because they can't regain MP otherwise. The heal, itself, could be entirely removed and change absolutely nothing because the two mechanics don't contribute to each other. What purpose does casting Medica II accomplish when everyone is at 95% HP? Nothing. Whether you slap a damage buff, MP regain or give a whole LB bar, the Medica II cast itself added nothing. Therefore, its gameplay component isn't meaningful or engaging.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Please for the love of Zenos juicy backside - educate yourself on encounter and the class before you are making assumptions because what i read here is based on "i think it works like this" or "in my opinion it should work like this" and not what we actually have.

I have a feeling this is exactly how our devs deal with this entire role.

[AnotherPerson]

It's not pointless because it replenishes MP which gets you back to doing damage. So you are always casting with a purpose.

Spamming healing when healing is not needed to 'generate MP' is basically what Black mages do when you need to press Umbral Soul over and over again during Umbral Ice. Except the comparison you're making here is when the Black Mage is in Astral Fire and at 0 MP, they will "transpose" to Umbral Ice and spam "Umbral Soul" just to "GENERATE" more MP? And in comparison, what you're saying that this is good design and should be the core feature?

As a Black Mage, you should be fully aware how backwards design that is for an Umbral Ice phase. The flexibility of Black Mage's design is precisely being able to choose what to build to get the most of your Astral Fire phase while dishing out as much damage as possible in both phases. The core design is not be completely useless during one phase and can only dish out damage in the other phase, it's optimizing how to continue doing damage.

If damage requirements were ever that high where it would have necessitated it, then perhaps it would have been good design, but that means they would have to rework 4 expansions worth of encounter design content + ARR. That's honestly not feasible, nor does it make the game more accessible. Nor less boring when you're doing a solo instance and all that healing becomes excess overhealing.

[SeverianLyonesse]

It is a waste of a GCD, and a wasteful contribution to a party.

So there's a concept in MtG called utility. Where oftentimes the best cards to put in a deck are not the ones that are the most efficient at accomplishing the deck's primary goal, but because they can serve several different functions depending on context. The idea being that even if the *optimal* context doesn't present itself, the card still will likely have some kind of use that substantially impacts the board state in your favor. So let's say you don't care about having a creature on the field, or that creature ends up dying next turn, if it enters the battlefield with a "destroy/exile X type card", or triggers another card with "whenever X type card enters the battlefield, do Y", then the card will still likely justify itself. It can be viewed not as a creature with an ability, but a utility with a bonus creature attached to it.

So the fact that abilities have extra utility and don't always optimize the ability doesn't automatically mean the ability is poorly designed. The utility of adding MP to do anything in theory justifies overhealing--especially since needing MP as a decent healer really only comes down to two situations where you *need* to generate MP regardless of your skill as a healer: 1) Time going long (DPS are sucking) or 2) Players not doing mechanics and asking you to overheal/rez (again out of your control). So in the hands of a flexible healer, having a utility ability like this *could* in theory be a safeguard for healers to salvage runs that would otherwise wipe.

Now, I haven't put enough thought in as to whether this is actually the case here, but I don't believe in simply dismissing the possibility of using an MP-regenerating heal for suboptimal healing at face value.

Why do you think current Afflatus Misery is a damage loss? Because the GCDs spent on Solace or Rapture to build up to it do not offset the three Glare IIIs that you have to lose in order to get your blood lily—unless you are building up to Misery during downtime and not losing out on Glare III casts at all. This same thing applies to SGE’s Toxikon: because it is the same potency as Dosis III, it is a better use of your GCD to just cast Dosis III and heal with an oGCD Addersgall stack versus casting E. Diagnosis to absorb damage and farm Toxikon stacks. The only time you farm for them is during downtime.

Again, on the topic of utility. I agree that E. Diagnosis is best used for downtime. However, when a tank is...ahem...tanking, and forced me to expend all my OGCD shields, I may throw out a E. Diagnosis for the shield value. And then I get a bonus Toxikon for mobility/mobs. With a tank that knows what they are doing, I don't need it, but for random matchups, it's a versatile verb.

[Banriikku]

So there's a concept in MtG called utility. Where oftentimes the best cards to put in a deck are not the ones that are the most efficient at accomplishing the deck's primary goal, but because they can serve several different functions depending on context. The idea being that even if the *optimal* context doesn't present itself.... snip

So in the hands of a flexible healer, having a utility ability like this *could* in theory be a safeguard for healers to salvage runs that would otherwise wipe.

Now, I haven't put enough thought in as to whether this is actually the case here, but I don't believe in simply dismissing the possibility of using an MP-regenerating heal for suboptimal healing at face value.

Again, on the topic of utility. I agree that E. Diagnosis is best used for downtime. However, when a tank is...ahem...tanking, and forced me to expend all my OGCD shields, I may throw out a E. Diagnosis for the shield value. And then I get a bonus Toxikon for mobility/mobs. With a tank that knows what they are doing, I don't need it, but for random matchups, it's a versatile verb.

Interesting thought but you answering a question that is not the topic here or do i miss something?
The question is "how to make the FF14 healing more engaging without pushing the difficulty or change the core of the game" what you are proposing is something that will not have the result you are describing and will break the healer in one way or another. I wish for a change for how battle content is designed, to be more difficult or complex but that is something Yoshida himself said is not going to happen, so i take what they gave us.

So give all healers the same treatment as all other jobs. Make us "green dps" and stop pretending we are not. I am not proposing to increasing damage output but give me something like a rotation, dot to track, etc. just something beyond "1111112111111".

As i explained a couple of posts earlier we cant go the "healers should heal" without breaking the class in a negative way, the game is not designed around that much healing at all and buff/debuffs is also not an option because SE decided to kill almost all interaction in that regard. I know cross class skill were not the best but at least a step in the right direction.

I ask something easy to answer: Should all melee loose the their positionals ? Should all dps work like the MCH? Or better change NIN to DNC job mechanics ? Or BLM to SMN (lego mage) ? This would be a bad idea and you know what: All healers got this as the "REWORK of the healers".

[HyoMinPark]

It's not pointless because it replenishes MP which gets you back to doing damage. So you are always casting with a purpose.

Your MP regeneration on forced healing is an arbitrary system. You are tacking it onto the system to attempt to justify the unneeded healing. And your system is, again, designed with the sole purpose of forcing healers to use healing abilities regardless of whether or not that healing is needed or if that healing is useless. In this game, it is a far more likely possibility that the healing would be useless due to the nature of encounters and just how little healing is actually required. Even in the highest level of content. Not even Ultimate has as much damage as one would think: a healer’s nuke is still their most pressed ability by a mile. Even if you combine every healing cast to use against it, there is no competition.

You haven’t actually given any thought as to how to improve the gameplay of healers, or how to make them more engaging. You’re just trying to force healing onto them so that they live up to the healer name. Meaningfulness and usefulness of the system be damned. And you don’t understand how encounters in this game are designed, nor how healers actively function within them. Before you ever make suggestions for any role, you need to have an understanding of how the role functions within this game. I just don’t think you have that. Which isn’t inherently bad, but it becomes an issue when you start discussing gameplay. If you don’t understand healer gameplay, then you shouldn’t be offering suggestions. Familiarize yourself with how healers play within the current game design, and then we can talk.

So there is an exception and there can be more such cases.

Except Technical Finish delivers a potent attack from the DNC upon execution that makes up for the seconds spent prepping it. Your healing combo buff doesn’t. That is the difference there.

Encounter design can change moving forward, though I'm still not clear how my idea wouldn't work with the current design, and the point is to change how healers functions.

Except it isn’t going to change in a way that would make your proposal functional. Your system only works if the incoming damage to a party is increased in terms of amount and in terms of intervals. And hopefully those intervals line up with what seems to be a rigid “healing phase” if you are using BLM’s Umbral Ice as a template. Otherwise, you’re overhealing and not doing anything meaningful.

The developers have gone on-record stating that healing requirements will not increase because they don’t want to “stress out the baby healers”, so systems for healers need to be designed with this in mind. Forcing pointless healing is not the way to go.

Then again, I'm fine with how healers work now. My idea is simply based on the complaints I see from the players as well as what the devs have said they have in mind for the role.

You are not actually reading the complaints if you think healers are asking for a system like the one you’ve concocted.

EDIT: Adding in a second response instead of double posting—

So the fact that abilities have extra utility and don't always optimize the ability doesn't automatically mean the ability is poorly designed. The utility of adding MP to do anything in theory justifies overhealing--especially since needing MP as a decent healer really only comes down to two situations where you *need* to generate MP regardless of your skill as a healer: 1) Time going long (DPS are sucking) or 2) Players not doing mechanics and asking you to overheal/rez (again out of your control). So in the hands of a flexible healer, having a utility ability like this *could* in theory be a safeguard for healers to salvage runs that would otherwise wipe.

I disagree. In the proposed system, the healing rotation is implemented with the sole purpose of forcing healers to heal via a “healing combo”. It does not take into account if said healing is actually needed, nor does it take into account if this kind of gameplay will be rewarding or engaging for the person playing a healer. User linayar then attempts to justify an unneeded “healing phase” by tacking a completely arbitrary MP regeneration onto it. They would be removing the current system of mana recovery (Lucid Dreaming) and shoving it onto a new system that is both unengaging and does not contribute to the party as a whole.

Take into account how much damage actually occurs during a fight. Now think about how scripted each of these raidwides are. Also think about how infrequent they are. Using BLM as a template, Astral Fire and Umbral Ice are particularly rigid in terms of when one goes into each phase, so it stands to reason that linayar’s system would be equally as rigid. They stated that all offensive attacks would have high MP costs, so we can also assume it would be likely for healers to constantly be dipping into this healing phase to recover MP. The issues arise when we stop and ask ourselves, “How often will these healing phases line up with actual damage output from the boss?” I feel relatively safe in saying “hardly ever” given my 6+ year experience healing in this game. Every time a healer goes into a “healing phase” to regenerate their MP, if they are healing a party at full HP, then they are contributing nothing to the group. This is a poorly designed system because when would any job in any role ever make use of something that is not actively contributing to the group?

Healer recovery as it stands is already immensely powerful. With the exception of WHM, all healers have decent mana pools and are MP positive with proactive Lucid and other mana recovery tools usage. Healers already have a ton of healing at their disposal—a ton of tools that they can use to salvage a wipe or scuffed run. I don’t foresee this system adding anything to healers that they cannot already do. I also believe that there exist runs where it’s best to just wipe and start over versus struggle bussing through the rest of the fight.

Now, I haven't put enough thought in as to whether this is actually the case here, but I don't believe in simply dismissing the possibility of using an MP-regenerating heal for suboptimal healing at face value.

My dismissal isn’t one made at face value—even though I could tell by just reading the proposal that the system is completely arbitrary and not needed in this game. It would not function in terms of content design, nor would it give healer mains what they actually want, which is engaging gameplay. Would healers like to heal more? Absolutely, I think they would. However, overhealing is not meaningful—and healers want meaningful healing; not wasteful healing. Overhealing is a waste of your GCD. And it is known at this point that the developers will not be upping healing requirements, so healers are turning to their secondary function of damage dealer, and asking for more engagement there.

My dismissal comes from considering all of these factors, and from my healing experience in this game. It’s not me brushing it off without actually thinking about the functionality of the system.

Again, on the topic of utility. I agree that E. Diagnosis is best used for downtime. However, when a tank is...ahem...tanking, and forced me to expend all my OGCD shields, I may throw out a E. Diagnosis for the shield value. And then I get a bonus Toxikon for mobility/mobs. With a tank that knows what they are doing, I don't need it, but for random matchups, it's a versatile verb.

That doesn’t change that it’s still a damage loss, which was what I was discussing as a part of the snippet you’re responding to. Linayar wanted to buff the potency of the next damage ability after coming out of a healing phase in order to make the healing phase DPS neutral in a sense—and I was pointing out just how much they would have to buff that first hit by to make the healing phase actually damage neutral, or otherwise healers are going to be unhappy with it. Misery and Toxikon were just two examples illustrating how things already exist in this game that are not DPS neutral, and how they are often ignored or criticized as a result. Afflatus Misery being a DPS loss is one of the myriad of complaints WHM mains have, and making Toxikon an actual DPS neutral ability is the most common thing I see SGEs ask for (and one of the few “complaints” the job actually has).

I resort to E.Diag spam only when necessary when I have a paper tank. But I don’t touch it outside of downtime otherwise. There’s no point in breaking my Dosis/Dyskrasia spam to farm for an ability that results in me losing damage. Especially if the shields aren’t even needed. The irony of being a shield healer is that I use my barriers quite infrequently.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Interesting thought but you answering a question that is not the topic here or do i miss something?
The question is "how to make the FF14 healing more engaging without pushing the difficulty or change the core of the game" what you are proposing is something that will not have the result you are describing and will break the healer in one way or another. I wish for a change for how battle content is designed, to be more difficult or complex but that is something Yoshida himself said is not going to happen, so i take what they gave us.

The post in question is a page prior. I am answering that post specifically, which is making the argument that MP-restoring overheals are a waste of GCD uptime simply because they aren't maximizing the healing half of their utility.

I think I have generally been on your side of posting, I was just limiting the scope of that criticism specifically because it was declaring certain abilities useless simply because they encouraged overhealing, which I think lacks a lot of nuance and may be dismissing things prematurely. As a general rule (subject to case-by-case analysis, of course), there's nothing wrong with having abilities with *more* utility, which generally tends to *increase* decision-making in play, not *decrease*.

EDIT to respond:

I disagree. In the proposed system, the healing rotation is implemented with the sole purpose of forcing healers to heal via a “healing combo”. It does not take into account if said healing is actually needed, nor does it take into account if this kind of gameplay will be rewarding or engaging for the person playing a healer. User linayar then attempts to justify an unneeded “healing phase” by tacking a completely arbitrary MP regeneration onto it. They would be removing the current system of mana recovery (Lucid Dreaming) and shoving it onto a new system that is both unengaging and does not contribute to the party as a whole.

I do think that, like BLM, a healer with some sort of "MP generation" phase could work. But now that I have better context I do agree that it is much more difficult to justify that as part of a "healing phase" the way healing works in this game. It would either require higher enemy damage outputs that would lead to even more scripted heal-checks in trials (as you somewhat observed). Or it would need more utility than *just* MP regeneration, and I think by necessity would want at least some minimal damage output in addition to healing and MP-regen. No job can justify substantial DPS-downtime (outside of necessary healing) the way every encounter in the game is designed.

My dismissal isn’t one made at face value—even though I could tell by just reading the proposal that the system is completely arbitrary and not needed in this game. It would not function in terms of content design, nor would it give healer mains what they actually want, which is engaging gameplay. Would healers like to heal more? Absolutely, I think they would. However, overhealing is not meaningful—and healers want meaningful healing; not wasteful healing. Overhealing is a waste of your GCD. And it is known at this point that the developers will not be upping healing requirements, so healers are turning to their secondary function of damage dealer, and asking for more engagement there.

It is, but again I think merely overhealing shouldn't be the absolute metric of whether an ability is good or bad. It is a semi-decent metric in the context of the game as designed now because healers have so little agency/utility outside of healing. But if healers had a stronger role as a whole I wouldn't be concerned about abilities having multiple uses, as long as these "overheals" still had effects that felt like they were contributing to the party. I do appreciate your commentary though.

[Ayer2015]

I would simply like an explanation as to why the devs feel having a more robust dps rotation on healers would be a bad thing. Expecting the game's content to be made harder is unrealistic given the game caters to a wide audience. That said, having the option to press more than one button to do damage would be nice for those of use who have copious downtime in most forms of content.

[Aword3213]

I thought healers couldn’t possibly get any worse. But after reading this, I was clearly wrong.

Just saying it’s possible to progress MSQ without any offensive tools. Not that I wish healers to be that way.

[Banriikku]

*more* utility, which generally tends to *increase* decision-making in play, not *decrease*.
..snip..

We have 2 diffrent types of Ability/Skill Types for the player itself or the party to look at "damage enabling" and "damage disabling". With this in mind, we are very limited how to "fix" the healers. To name the rules: no increase in healing or how difficult it is, no encounter changes and healer diffilculty itself has to stay fairly low.

So we only have "DPS" here as a solution (DPS rotation not increase in damage = not how much, just how we do apply the damage).

Next is "Why not utility?"
Because at the moment we have besides damage enable or disable just the SCH with movementspeed. The DEV's and Yoshida stated they wanted it that way. With this our "Frame" is even more strict.

"overheal is not a good metric"
This here is a good point but it is critique at the encounter design and core design of the class, which will not be changed. At the moment the metric of "what is good healer" is determined by the "Framework of Encounter and Class design" and this is at the moment: Overheal bad, ABC, maximum DPS.
We were given this, we never choose this. So thats my reasoning here.
But i like your thoughts and the possibiltys you have pointed out but for a reasonable change we will sadly only have "DPS rotation" because of the frame we got from the Dev's.