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

[Havenchild]

I've skimmed through a good portion of this thread and while I understand the frustrations (Healer Main, UCOB downed), I heavily believe that if they add much more challenge to Healers or healing in general (in almost any form), there is a high chance more players will leave the role. PF already struggles to fill Healer and Tank roles and many players actually get performance anxiety as is. A bad healer can wipe your raid consistently, and there's ALOT of underperforming healers already. To take the chance on making these roles more complicated will definitely backfire on the community as a whole and if history shows us, the idea is not even supported by the community overall.

[IDontPetLalas]

I've skimmed through a good portion of this thread and while I understand the frustrations (Healer Main, UCOB downed), I heavily believe that if they add much more challenge to Healers or healing in general (in almost any form), there is a high chance more players will leave the role. PF already struggles to fill Healer and Tank roles and many players actually get performance anxiety as is. A bad healer can wipe your raid consistently, and there's ALOT of underperforming healers already. To take the chance on making these roles more complicated will definitely backfire on the community as a whole and if history shows us, the idea is not even supported by the community overall.

Forgive me, could you enlighten us then over one hundred pages into just this thread? Exactly how do you define "much much challenge" and what history exactly? whose performance anxiety? Based upon what metrics exactly?

Because post like these are just shouting into the wind without any facts or proof at this point, whereas multiple people have made the effort to include posts showing just how little challenge there is at various levels of the game for healers.

[Havenchild]

Forgive me, could you enlighten us then over one hundred pages into just this thread? Exactly how do you define "much much challenge" and what history exactly? whose performance anxiety? Based upon what metrics exactly?

Because post like these are just shouting into the wind without any facts or proof at this point, whereas multiple people have made the effort to include posts showing just how little challenge there is at various levels of the game for healers.

History: Alexander Savage, Steps of Faith (OG), Eden Raids specifically E5S - E8S, anything that required a mote of either strategy or decent healing has had alot of complaints on the forums previously. Back around Stormblood, Healers complained about button bloat and how managing (contributing) DPS was a chore. That is the legacy of healing from Cleric Stance hopping, to overally DoT heavy (SCH), to lol AST card management. Healers have been reduced to where they are at because the tone of the overall classes has always been either too much effort or too many skills to manage. Yes there are vocal minorities on these forums that were disappointed with these changes but they were far outweighted by those complaining about competetive healing reliance vs ever increasing DPS checks. People keep pushing for DPS oriented healers, but there is also a faction that does not want complicated rotations and the battle has continued since beta, leading to the dev response of a middle ground -> more DPS reliance + less consistently demanded healing.

Performance Anxiety for healer roles is very much a thing. Maybe you've never heard of it, but I have had run-ins with countless amounts of players in FCs, Linkshells, PF and social media that wouldn't even touch healing because they already think there is too much reliance on the role. A biased take sure, but in my FFXIV career, it's well into the thousands of peoples I've crossed paths with, and that's just me, on my journey largely through what was known as the "raiding" servers. PF is actually the perfect diorama for this as well as Healers are still one of the rarest roles to fill in high end content. To be in denial of this very overt fact is silly at this point. This may boil down to the perception of healing in this game in general, but I don't think you can dismiss this as a fact.

Difficulty, while subjective, is going to be a slope. For those that actively play healers, yes, FFXIV is easy to adjust to no matter what new healer they put out, or changes they make. For those, however, that are teetering on the role or get their feet wet with the occasional savage or two, making the requirements more demanding will definitely push them away from the job. That's the core piece of players you need to worry about the most, as the hardcore healers will always remain, but the potential healers that could go either way may drop out, overall hurting the community. That's just logic, you don't really need facts but again PF is the perfect diorama here if you want a more rooted example.

I main SCH / SGE nowadays but have always mained healer roles since open beta. My opinion on them personally, no content has ever truly been difficult for healing beyond knowing what you can get away with (but that's true for all classes) and yes, I can even agree with some sentiments that Healer roles can be "basic" at times. Having said that, I've also been around long enough to see the countless complaint threads OG healing spawned on all the healing roles when it was more active. Been around long enough to go through EX, Savage and Ultimate content to know good healers are far more rare than not. Been around long enough to see people leave the role in droves.

Again that's my perspective and experience, people don't have to agree with it but based off that I genuinely believe there is no amount of complexity they can add to healer roles that would make it more attractive to play. So with that, what exactly is the purpose behind adding layers to it? To keep the hardcore healer players happy while pushing away the potential ones? That doesn't make sense to me.

[Silver-Strider]

I've skimmed through a good portion of this thread and while I understand the frustrations (Healer Main, UCOB downed), I heavily believe that if they add much more challenge to Healers or healing in general (in almost any form), there is a high chance more players will leave the role. PF already struggles to fill Healer and Tank roles and many players actually get performance anxiety as is. A bad healer can wipe your raid consistently, and there's ALOT of underperforming healers already. To take the chance on making these roles more complicated will definitely backfire on the community as a whole and if history shows us, the idea is not even supported by the community overall.

This argument applies to every single role. There are DPS in this game that suck. There are BLM that stay in Umbral Ice indefinitely, Freestyle SAMs, lolDRGs, the list goes on. They can wipe a raid just as consistently as a Bad Healer or Tank in the form of failing DPS checks with Add phases and Enrage mechanics being the most common type of DPS checks in raids. There is a MASSIVE variance between a Bad BLM and a Good BLM but the primary difference between a bad WHM and a good one is how many Cures vs Glares were cast. So tell me, why is it ok for players to have a high skill ceiling on DPS but not healers?

[Havenchild]

This argument applies to every single role. There are DPS in this game that suck. There are BLM that stay in Umbral Ice indefinitely, Freestyle SAMs, lolDRGs, the list goes on. They can wipe a raid just as consistently as a Bad Healer or Tank in the form of failing DPS checks with Add phases and Enrage mechanics being the most common type of DPS checks in raids. There is a MASSIVE variance between a Bad BLM and a Good BLM but the primary difference between a bad WHM and a good one is how many Cures vs Glares were cast. So tell me, why is it ok for players to have a high skill ceiling on DPS but not healers?

A bad healer is far more noticeable and can wipe your raid more consistently at literally any ilvl more than any other role in the game. A bad DPS can be carried by the other three + tanks in most encounters even DPS Check heavy ones, as gearing progresses (sans the more recent Ultimates). That is a fact.

Reducing the conversation to Cures vs Glares as the deciding factor of what makes a good healer is an understatement. If it really was that simple, pretty sure alot of people would be playing healers. In actuality though, there is planning, mp management, an understanding of slide casting, cast times, damage registration, server ticks etc. Players who have played casters, already have a good understanding of this but the average DPS / Tank class? With Instant GCD to Damage feedback? Yeah there's more that plays into it for sure.

There does not need to be a higher skill ceiling on classes that are barely played to begin with. To suggest so is literally counter thesis to what the devs want, and doesn't make logistical sense in the long run. Historically, they make the most changes to the classes with the least play rates. (For EX. MNKs, AST, SMN - Constantly adjusted because of this.) The goal is to make all roles accessible to as wide of a net of players they can. Once you understand that, you inherently come to understand every single design decision they make.

Again, why would you raise the skill ceiling on classes that have low play rates as is? That makes no sense.

Despite that, I do blame players more so than the devs for the homogenization of roles to the degree it has come. On one hand, homogenization does help with balancing classes against each other, however classes that have been more difficult to play have constantly been shunned by the player base when applying the effort vs reward logic, which has directly lead to them reducing complexity on certain classes.

The complaints to make roles more accessible FAR OUTWEIGHS the complaints clamoring for more involved gameplay. They almost always comment on the "feedback" they receive from players and what their internal diagnostics is reflecting playrate wise when making adjustments. I don't see any reason to doubt them on this.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I kinda hate how many of the people shouting about "healing is easy and boring" is that they actively ignore the many players in this game that struggle with managing heals during normal content. Its not as blatant in 8-man or 24-man stuff because of the fact that you have co-healers to synergize with when things get bad as well as other alliance healers who can spare a rez or two.

Ive commented on this thread about it before but in my time playing this game Ive had many situations where if a healer is down on a dungeon mob pull pretty much the entire party is just dead unless the tank is very good in its mitigation to finish the rest of the culling. There's people of different skill levels and I agree with Havenchild that there's this odd situation between the casual and mid/hardcore where each side has a different view of healing in general. So I can see the struggle behind the devs trying to find that rough middleground.

Although I will say they have yet to find it. Healing classes in general needs a bit of a rework, at least with its dps department. Having a single button rotation for it is so outdated and we could use just a bit more useful things to support the party instead of just spamming a single spell for damage. Thing is, some classes already have those extra dps damage abilities, like a White Mage's Assize and Afflatus Misery or a Sage's Toxicon and Phlegma. What we need is for those abilities to get retooled to being able to be more freely available to use for dps time. Sage's design is a step in the right direction but it can definitely be a lot better.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I've skimmed through a good portion of this thread and while I understand the frustrations (Healer Main, UCOB downed), I heavily believe that if they add much more challenge to Healers or healing in general (in almost any form), there is a high chance more players will leave the role. PF already struggles to fill Healer and Tank roles and many players actually get performance anxiety as is. A bad healer can wipe your raid consistently, and there's ALOT of underperforming healers already. To take the chance on making these roles more complicated will definitely backfire on the community as a whole and if history shows us, the idea is not even supported by the community overall.

A bad dps or tank can wipe your raid entirely too though. All it takes is one tank mis-positioning and cleaving the entire raid team to kill everyone. In savage, just one mistake from anyone can wipe the whole group. This whole argument of healers wiping raids consistently is heavily flawed.

[Atelier-Bagur]

A bad dps or tank can wipe your raid entirely too though. All it takes is one tank mis-positioning and cleaving the entire raid team to kill everyone. In savage, just one mistake from anyone can wipe the whole group. This whole argument of healers wiping raids consistently is heavily flawed.

Dps responsibility is only really true in savage and extreme content though, where complex mechanics are relegated to EVERY member to follow or else the whole thing gets screwed. In regular content difficulty is less demanding and the responsibility is really only relegated to the tank and healers surviving the fights.

[Phantasmal]

Again, why would you raise the skill ceiling on classes that have low play rates as is? That makes no sense.

I think raising the skill ceiling for healers is actually the play, but begrudgingly, not through healing.

Imo class design is at it's best when something has a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling. You can pick up the class and play it to success with minimal effort/knowledge, but if you want to excel, you have room to grow. Since healing is so binary, either someone is gamer enough to keep up with the incoming damage, or not; the skill floor has to be low in order to not dissuade people from the role. So with that restriction, the next best bet would be to give healers a more comprehensive and engaging damage rotation. The devs already design non-savage/ultimate content around healers not doing any damage, so I fail to see why they wouldn't try to at least give healers more than 2~3 buttons to press.

It doesn't have to be a casual vs hard-core debate if both can get what they want out of the job. Healer damage might not be what folks exactly want in order to make it happen, but it's the best I can think of that isn't just telling newer healers to drop their canes in the name of the role being made more interesting/difficult, or telling raiding healers that they should play a different game or switch roles.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Dps responsibility is only really true in savage and extreme content though, where complex mechanics are relegated to EVERY member to follow or else the whole thing gets screwed. In regular content difficulty is less demanding and the responsibility is really only relegated to the tank and healers surviving the fights.

I meant just a few examples i can think of that require enough dps to be alive in normal content are the first nier raid where people need to stand in puddles. The second nier raid with the same mechanic. Then of course there’s dps checks in various normal context etc etc. There’s many ways a dps or tank can wipe the party, just as much if not more than a healer can. Dps now have a plethora of healing abilities and same with a couple of the tanks.