Healers need an overhaul

[Rilifane]

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.

Please no. This is probably the worst way to solve healer issues.

Rewarding overhealing with the only thing that really counts in this game, namely damage, is a terrible idea.
What gives healers the tiniest of skill ceilings?
Knowing when to heal but, more importantly, knowing when not to heal.
The former is easier to see than the latter. Low HP bar and aoe cast? Heal.
The latter, however, requires keeping an eye on more things: how much mitigation does the party currently have? Are regens already ticking? Does the co heal prepared a heal to use any moment (Summoned Seraph, Star, Macro buff on the party, Plenary applied etc)? How much damage does this attack do, is the current HP pool of the party enough and how much time is there until the next damage? Does someone have a vuln stack (or multiple) and needs extra attention to survive?

The key is finding the balance between healing as much as necessary to keep people alive and no more than that and use the rest of the time to actively dps.
The moment you reward overhealing with damage there is much less thought to healing because you can simply heal all the time without any coordination whatsoever because overhealing now translates into damage. Please don't give all those Medica II bots out there that use it 4 times in a row when everyone is already at 70%+ after the raidwide went through even more reasons to defend their abyssmal and wasteful gameplay.
Besides it might result into a different way of chadding the co heal: wait until they healed and then heal when everyone is full HP because now you get a damage boost. Yay!

When we need is meaningful downtime gameplay that has some variety and identity to it and requires a function brain to maximize in the form of more dps-related buttons and preferably synergies tied to them.
We've been treated long enough as we don't have a functioning brain, making overheal translate into damage would be the worst offender yet.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

Please no. This is probably the worst way to solve healer issues.

I have to agree with Rilifane on this one, Tychonius. That's no smaller a change than just giving back healers a halfway decent offensive kit, yet probably far more gimmicky and less satisfying. I'd much rather have distinct, and varied and fitting, downtime tools.

[Semirhage]

Well there is *one* small bonus to overheal = damage. It's not enough to make me want it, but it'd be entertaining nonetheless. Could you imagine the spittle-flecked rage that would come from "I heal ONLY!" crowd? Now you're FORCING them to either heal carefully between their dance emotes or they might...deal a little damage. *agonized wailing*

[akasha_arts]

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in that healers should have a better DPS rotation. All of them basically boil down to 1 DOT and 1 single target attack with some healers getting a occasionally pressed DPS ability for razzle dazzle.

I think something similar to what tanks have for dps rotations would be nice. A 1-2-3 combo with that leading to bigger burst attacks.

[Sebazy]

It boggles my mind that SE won't give one of the healers the ability to indirectly do DPS by way of throwing GCD buffs onto other party members. It ticks so many boxes that I can only assume that it's sheer laziness that it hasn't been attempted properly.

It instantly solves the 'I want to be a healer and not DPS but still want to contribute' head cannon.

It offers up a legitimate alternative style of play, something that's sorely lacking within the role.

Remember Lamitt's fire arrow augmentation from the 1.0 cinematic that the CGI team took the liberty of adding in? Yeah.....

It's a concept that has so much room for interesting mechanics and positional goodness that healers otherwise never get to see.

[Allegor]

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in that healers should have a better DPS rotation. All of them basically boil down to 1 DOT and 1 single target attack with some healers getting a occasionally pressed DPS ability for razzle dazzle.

I think something similar to what tanks have for dps rotations would be nice. A 1-2-3 combo with that leading to bigger burst attacks.

I'd actually prefer it be proc-based like RDM and DNC, that way there'd be no interrupting rotation when needing to throw an emergency heal or raise, and the unpredictability of it would not make it feel like the 111111111111111 rotation was just replaced with 123123123123123 instead

[Silverbane]

It boggles my mind that SE won't give one of the healers the ability to indirectly do DPS by way of throwing GCD buffs onto other party members.

Oh, you mean like Scholar's Chain Strategem's 10% increase in Crit rate?
Or doesn't that count since it is applied to the target, not the party members?

[Eorzean_username]

Remember Lamitt's fire arrow augmentation from the 1.0 cinematic that the CGI team took the liberty of adding in? Yeah.....

It's actually a recurring thing in the FF franchise, "En-" (or sometimes Sword Magic) spells that add Elemental bonus effects to weapon attacks.

You can actually see some ARR mobs still using this, like some Amaljaa will use "Enfire", some Ixali will use "Enaero", etc.

I always thought it was odd that FFXIV had nothing similar, but then I always thought it was odd that FFXIV just ignored elemental vulnerabilities. Even if you disable them on bosses for Balance™, you could at least enable it on open-world mobs where nothing matters anyway, just to have some flavor...

And despite the devs's sincere hopes, the grotesque and irritating Eureka spinny wheel was not the same thing.

...Anyway, I guess few people want a world where you choose the correct En-spell to apply to your fighters to make a dungeon go faster. But it could still make for a fun bonus effect that, as you say, allows a Healer to contribute damage support without having to actually strike anything themself.

[QooEr]

Oh, you mean like Scholar's Chain Strategem's 10% increase in Crit rate?
Or doesn't that count since it is applied to the target, not the party members?

sebazy said gcd. chain, cards and divination are not gcds

[Sani2341]

Oh, you mean like Scholar's Chain Strategem's 10% increase in Crit rate?
Or doesn't that count since it is applied to the target, not the party members?

pretty sure the idea was more along the lines of say a .5% buff(or whatever other number would on average be equivalent to a glabrolificis) applied with a GCD on a rather short coooldown to shake up the repetitive nuke spamm, rather than an oGCD you press once a minute between nukes