Healers need an overhaul

[ValkyriaCrystalis]

I feel like they\\\\\\'ve made healers easier in the wrong ways. Like for a mid-tier player getting into EX, the ShB changes were good in theory: Make healer DPS more consistent (to hit those incredibly tough DPS checks \s), and provide tons of healing tools so you can\\\\\\'t run out no matter how inefficient you are. But that reasoning doesn\\\\\\'t make sense unless you\\\\\\'re looking at incredibly specific scenarios. Meanwhile, for veteran players it\\\\\\'s just more boring, and for complete newbs it doesn\\\\\\'t help at all.

If the goal was to make healing more approachable for novices, then they should have made it less punishing. For example, currently, the worst experience for a new player is going into a dungeon, dying to a mechanic they\\\\\\'ve never seen before, and causing a wipe because they were the healer and nobody could raise them. Why is the healer role the only one that causes wipes by dying in normal content? One thing I loved about TERA (R.I.P.) was that you got 5 free self-resses when you were new to a dungeon, so you had a chance to learn the bosses\\\\\\' attack patterns without wiping. FFXIV could do something similar, or just allow DPS to use Phoenix downs on the healer (slow, annoying, and potentially limited, but it keeps the run going).

Also, because -avoidable- damage is so high (and it gets worse as people take more vuln stacks), healers are heavily taxed by other people\\\\\\'s mistakes, and that becomes the central role of a healer: be ready for other people to fuck up. Which is not only stressful for newbie healers, but it\\\\\\'s incredibly boring for veteran healers when mistakes don\\\\\\'t happen. What if healing were more consistent? Less punishing for other people\\\\\\'s mistakes, and a bit higher or more frequent at a base level. Like why are wall-to-wall pulls the only time when single-target heals are needed in a good party? Healers basically have to learn 3 different modes of gameplay: DPS, scripted healing, and panic healing. …

Exactly this.
I play dps most of the time and I’m currently levelling sage. And your post clearly states why I’m anxious playing as healer.

Last night I healed the Copied Factory for the 1st time in my life, trying to cast my anxiety over.
My co healer, an AST, was undergeared and died a couple of times on avoidable damages. On the first boss my tank died because I was busy rising the AST, and as you pointed, it’s not a bliss to target a teammate on controller. For the boss starget, it’s easy, you just have to push R3 to “help the ennemy’s target”. But for an ally, you have to scroll down the entire player list.

I struggled a lot with panic healing because there was a very good amount of newbies on my team.

Otherwise, the party damages were incredibly easy to heal ! I would clearly prefer the opposite.

[IDontPetLalas]

Exactly this.
I play dps most of the time and I’m currently levelling sage. And your post clearly states why I’m anxious playing as healer.

Last night I healed the Copied Factory for the 1st time in my life, trying to cast my anxiety over.
My co healer, an AST, was undergeared and died a couple of times on avoidable damages. On the first boss my tank died because I was busy rising the AST, and as you pointed, it’s not a bliss to target a teammate on controller. For the boss starget, it’s easy, you just have to push R3 to “help the ennemy’s target”. But for an ally, you have to scroll down the entire player list.

I struggled a lot with panic healing because there was a very good amount of newbies on my team.

Otherwise, the party damages were incredibly easy to heal ! I would clearly prefer the opposite.

If I take the raid that you were doing, for example, that's a level 80 raid- by that level someone is expected to know their kit.

Now, one point that I absolutely Do agree with is Leonerdo"s point regarding self-resses, this is the only game where I did not have access to that as a healer, although we do have other jobs that can rez, that isn't a guarantee. I would give up a heal in order to have that skill.

i disagree however with the concept of healers needing to learn to 'panic healer' that is something that you do not want to learn, that is something that will get you into a very bad place. You're also not there is fix everyone's mistakes all of the time., you're there time get them through alive, there's a difference.