Healers need an overhaul

[Tychonius]

There's only so much support you can provide to people in any situation. If party members keep dying, and the answer is "you better keep their HP at max OR ELSE" then fine; but if party members keep dying, for FFXIV, the answer really is "get good," per Yoshi P once upon a time, because there aren't many encounters where players should be dying over and over unless they're actively doing something wrong (such as standing in the wrong place at the wrong time).

Yea, that's my original point. The thing that makes parties fail tends to be errors in dealing with mechanics, not simply "the healer isn't good enough", because it would be too binary if everything hinged on whether or not the healer can keep up.

[BRVV]

I wish healers had job gauges that tied to dps. I don't need a UI element to tell me if that one SGE skill is active. It already shows the combo lines or how they are called. Scholar's job gauges are really boring. Use skill for points -> use heals -> maybe use big fairy...

Tanks have dps combos and mechanics tied to them. Why not healers?

[Shurrikhan]

I wish healers had job gauges that tied to dps. I don't need a UI element to tell me if that one SGE skill is active. It already shows the combo lines or how they are called. Scholar's job gauges are really boring. Use skill for points -> use heals -> maybe use big fairy...

Tanks have dps combos and mechanics tied to them. Why not healers?

To be fair, most of those tank gauges aren't much more interesting for it. DRK's gauge doesn't need to be on one's screen. WAR's gauge is just a Fel Cleave charge counter. PLD's gauge is just a Shelltron charge counter. GNB's is a GF-if-available-else-Burst/Fated counter. Let's face it; Shadowbringers and especially Endwalker has done all gauges dirty.

But yes, having more to do with our gauges could be a boon. (Not necessarily, as tying things behind something else has as much chance to be a change for the worse, but it certainly could help out.) That'd apply even if we ultimately went a whole different direction with some of them.

To take SCH, for instance, I'd love to actually bring back Eos/Selene distinctions and go deep into that. I don't care if that means bringing back Attack Speed as a Selene buff and certain people getting pissed at having received it just because "Oh, no, what will I do with this extra GCD?!" (Though, I'd prefer that raid fights strayed back away from easily having 100% continuous uptime even for melee or BLMs and that we had more than a single raid buff timing, so I'm clearly just a sadist.) Give us more active control, more to do, more to capitalize upon. And then see what the gauge might have in store for/from that.

[Nizzi]

To take SCH, for instance, I'd love to actually bring back Eos/Selene distinctions and go deep into that. I don't care if that means bringing back Attack Speed as a Selene buff and certain people getting pissed at having received it just because "Oh, no, what will I do with this extra GCD?!" (Though, I'd prefer that raid fights strayed back away from easily having 100% continuous uptime even for melee or BLMs and that we had more than a single raid buff timing, so I'm clearly just a sadist.) Give us more active control, more to do, more to capitalize upon. And then see what the gauge might have in store for/from that.

I'd love to see a distinction between Eos and Selene come back as well, doubly so if they made it to where we could swap between the two in battle to actually use them tactially... because SCH is supposed to be a tactician of sorts, right Square? It's a shame that there's so many good ideas present in the healers, and instead of figuring out a way to make them work, the developers would rather just remove them from the game.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd love to see a distinction between Eos and Selene come back as well, doubly so if they made it to where we could swap between the two in battle to actually use them tactially... because SCH is supposed to be a tactician of sorts, right Square? It's a shame that there's so many good ideas present in the healers, and instead of figuring out a way to make them work, the developers would rather just remove them from the game.

What? Tactician? I thought these themes were based on color palette or whether their central resources always generate over time, only in combat, or via ability-press?

To be fair, we can to some degree blame (arguably shortsighted) player preference for some of those reductions, such as in the removal of Attack Speed (the likes of Arrow or Fey Light) or Ability Recast Speed (original Spear) as buffs. Now, that's not to say that those buffs were all decent as is and players just didn't know how to utilize them. ARS acceleration, for instance, was quite poorly designed in that it could only snapshot, and only by percentage, which would then force desync or (especially in the context of a single Card charge) ability holding for its optimal usage (which even then fell short of just giving someone Balance). Somehow, though, that became seen first and foremost as a "wrench in the works," rather than something most wanted to possibly improve and reiterate upon. And from there came the idea that the best solution to this was not to increase jobs' rotational flexibility or the control/precision with which buffers could apply those buffs, but rather to just remove any such wrench (gameplay-affecting buffs, all but one form of crit proc, pacing variance the likes of Stormblood Riddle of Fire or Tornado Kick rotations, and finally any raid downtime altogether). It's... kind of embarrassing.

But let's also consider: People would stomp about and jump up and down in insistence that new Spear was better than Arrow, just because Spear affected all throughput and Arrow only some 60-90% of it... despite Spear's increased crit chance being no higher than Arrow's Attack Speed increase (and crit, as we know, being only a .4 to .6x damage modifier). A kit-wide effect of only half potency is still worse than a full effect on a mere majority of one's kit (100% of a .48x bonus is still less than, say, 78% of a 1x bonus). So, maybe I shouldn't be surprised by any of this.

[MintnHoney]

Yea, that's my original point. The thing that makes parties fail tends to be errors in dealing with mechanics, not simply "the healer isn't good enough", because it would be too binary if everything hinged on whether or not the healer can keep up.

I apologize for missing that point, then. If nothing else, we at least seem to agree.

You know, I think it's funny that they had ever claimed that they don't take Healer DPS into account when setting limits for encounters, not because we've determined that that's not actually the case (although we have), but because it kind of means that they never really counted us, in the end, as part of the equation that moves towards the game's goal. Even in that statement, we are kind of an unneeded presence in fights, other than, maybe, to be baby-sitters and additional obstacles for the players who actually matter. :/

[Tychonius]

You know, I think it's funny that they had ever claimed that they don't take Healer DPS into account when setting limits for encounters, not because we've determined that that's not actually the case (although we have), but because it kind of means that they never really counted us, in the end, as part of the equation that moves towards the game's goal. Even in that statement, we are kind of an unneeded presence in fights, other than, maybe, to be baby-sitters and additional obstacles for the players who actually matter. :/

Yea, that's kind of what it boils down to. Healers are like toupees, you only notice the bad ones. The ideal healer just quietly does their job of negating any unavoidable damage and you don't even notice that they are doing that unless they are bad at it and let you die.

That's why I think in order for healer to be a reasonable role in a more casual game that isn't comfortable just making content straight up impossible without an amazing healer you need to have some kind of way of translating overheal into additional damage. Currently that's done by making healers attack instead of heal when everyone is already at full health. The issue with that is that because damage is a secondary role for healers their rotations are kind of bleh.

I would prefer a mechanic where the extra damage comes from more healing, like having the ability to build up some kind of overheal resource that gets spent to deal extra damage, or being able to pulse any healing that exceeds the targets hitpoints to nearby enemies as damage, or something like that.

[MintnHoney]

Yea, that's kind of what it boils down to. Healers are like toupees, you only notice the bad ones.

This is a good quote for posterity.

[IDontPetLalas]

Yea, that's kind of what it boils down to. Healers are like toupees, you only notice the bad ones. The ideal healer just quietly does their job of negating any unavoidable damage and you don't even notice that they are doing that unless they are bad at it and let you die.

That's why I think in order for healer to be a reasonable role in a more casual game that isn't comfortable just making content straight up impossible without an amazing healer you need to have some kind of way of translating overheal into additional damage. Currently that's done by making healers attack instead of heal when everyone is already at full health. The issue with that is that because damage is a secondary role for healers their rotations are kind of bleh.

I would prefer a mechanic where the extra damage comes from more healing, like having the ability to build up some kind of overheal resource that gets spent to deal extra damage, or being able to pulse any healing that exceeds the targets hitpoints to nearby enemies as damage, or something like that.

I really don't know why you keep on insisting on this "overheal" concept, so basically once someone spams heals and someone is above 100 % then this translated to damage.

So that is going to reward those people who just hit healing buttons, without any thought, as opposed to actually healing when needed and then DPSing with adding into some additional options.

I know which one I would prefer, and it isn't the first option. I prefer to be treated as though I have some intelligence .

[Silverbane]

Healers are like toupees, you only notice the bad ones. The ideal healer just quietly does their job of negating any unavoidable damage and you don't even notice that they are doing that unless they are bad at it and let you die.

I can't speak to other games, but that's not an ideal FFXIV healer at all. An ideal FFXIV healer keeps people from becoming useless due to death or status effects (when possible) and makes a substantial contribution to the damage output (when possible).

That's why I think in order for healer to be a reasonable role ... you need to have some kind of way of translating overheal into additional damage. Currently that's done by making healers attack instead of heal when everyone is already at full health.

No, currently that's done by the healer attacking when no one needs to be healed. "At full health" is not the same as "does not need to be healed," and keeping everyone at full health wastes the other people's abilities to do their own healing (which in tanks right now, for example, is pretty substantial).

The issue with that is that because damage is a secondary role for healers their rotations are kind of bleh.

I could say the same thing about Warrior, or Reaper; I don't consider 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 much more interesting than 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1.

I would prefer a mechanic where the extra damage comes from more healing, like having the ability to build up some kind of overheal resource that gets spent to deal extra damage, or being able to pulse any healing that exceeds the targets hitpoints to nearby enemies as damage, or something like that.

I would prefer we not provide healers with more motivation to do their job incorrectly.
That job is emphatically not to keep everyone at full health.