Healers need an overhaul

[Niadissa]

Here's a blast from the past. It may not have been terribly interactive. The skills may not have affected one another too much. The design under a microscope may be lacking a LOT of the buffing, skill chaining, and FUN that healer classes in a lot of games have. But my God, look at the comparative variety of flippin' abilities you used back in Heavensward. The uninterrupted chain of eight back to back casts of Stone is an ANOMALY. Compared to how garbage healers are designed these days? I'd take even flawed design like that in a heartbeat.

Cleric stance as it was, was pretty bad. I do believe it could have been adjusted to work, but they threw it out completely without even really trying to fix it. I don't miss it, but I do occasionally look back and wonder "What if?".

[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.

[Fukuro]

I‘ve recently been playing Crystaline Conflict a lot, and it‘s kind of funny to see that healers with about 6 skills compared to the about 16-20 they normally have feel way more distinct and fun to play and actually seem to have their own identity.

[MintnHoney]

I‘ve recently been playing Crystaline Conflict a lot, and it‘s kind of funny to see that the healers with about 6 skills compared to the about 16-20 they normally have feel way more distinct and fun to play and actually seem to have their own identity.

It is amazing, isn't it? Part of it is because the bar was so low in the first place, but the other half of it is that they actually designed the jobs' kits with the game in mind. Although things can still use some tweaks, the general spirit of the PVP kits are pretty damn great.
I sincerely hope they expand on them for use in any upcoming side modes they bring forth in the game, like the Criterion Dungeons or, if they happen to bring in a new Eureka/Bozja.

[ASkellington]

It is amazing, isn't it? Part of it is because the bar was so low in the first place, but the other half of it is that they actually designed the jobs' kits with the game in mind. Although things can still use some tweaks, the general spirit of the PVP kits are pretty damn great.
I sincerely hope they expand on them for use in any upcoming side modes they bring forth in the game, like the Criterion Dungeons or, if they happen to bring in a new Eureka/Bozja.

I'd like this. Limit my kit in a PvE instance akin to PvP's for more fun? Yes.

However, I still want actual PvE content to get a similar treatment. I said in Shb caster was what I thought all roles should be:

BLM, RDM and SMN felt widely different from one another and in the role there was something for everyone.

I don't understand why that isn't shown through out the rest of the game. All 3 were 100% viable with their different playstyles and while SMN's didn't persist in EW (and I have my personal opinions on that that I'll keep to myself) RDM and BLM not only survived but seem (as my BLM is lv50 on an alt somewhere) to have built upon their playstyles in ways the mains like.

[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.

[LeonKeyh]

Best overall job design (IMO) would be the more you DPS, the more you heal.

Something along the lines of:


WHM - Casting damage spells increases Lily generation rate
SCH - Casting damage spells gives a stackable buff which increases the amount your next healing spell heals for
AST - Casting damage spells decreases the cooldown on healing CDs (e.g. ED)
SGE - Casting damage spells builds synergy with Kardia which increases the amount healed; Using a non-damage GCD resets the stack


Ideally, I feel like you should reward people DPSing by needing even less healing. That would explicitly show that as a healer you should be DPSing (not that SGE hasn't already unsuccessfully done that) while making it "easier" on people that actually do that. I think that 6 DPS GCDs and 4 healing GCDs should ultimately heal more than 10 healing GCDs


Definitely shouldn't reward healers for overhealing.