Healers need an overhaul

[Yeastyloins]

I disagree. But just as I prefer sweet desserts and my spouse prefers savory ones, what I find enjoyable in FFXIV may not be what you find enjoyable.

The central conceit of most of the "healing is broken" advocates is that other people play the game and enjoy the game for the same reasons they do. And that conceit is demonstrably false: Even among these critics, it's explicit that within their ranks are people who prefer diametrically opposite kinds of healing (e.g., no-DPS healing versus complex-DPS-kit healing).

Yet these complainers insist that healing is broken as an objective fact, instead of just being their subjective opinion. This delusion and the tendency to hyperbole that it creates is in my opinion the primary reason that SE should not and probably will not listen to these complaints.

If the critics can't understand why I find running SGE or SCH fun even though they don't, their opinion on what's wrong and how to fix it has no utility, because SE isn't making the game just for them (or for me, but I'm not complaining).

But rather than even try to understand why I enjoy it, many of these critics instead accuse me of being incompetent or trolling, or whatever, none of which accusations have any basis in fact. Others do everything they can to silence me -- no doubt afraid that other people will see what I say is true. This attitude is yet another reason why SE should not and probably will not pay any attention to these critics, because an MMO requires compromise and accommodation of differences in the player base, and these critics have demonstrated that they are not disposed to do that.

Have you healed a savage tier when it was current? For example, like did you do P1s-P4s before 6.1 came out? This isn't going to be a "wow you casual rat, go do some real content" type response but rather I am asking this in order to get your perspective of your experience. How you play healers (or any job) in normal content vs harder content can vary and can highlight strengths and weaknesses of designs.

[GrimGale]

Healers are problematic anyway just because of having to target something other than opponents. Think about it: If an enemy attacks a player in this game, the enemy is usually auto targeted so there's no need to think about having to move and click the target or tab to it. For healers, there is no equivalent for players. If someone is getting hit by a monster, the fastest way to swap to the player is sometimes to target the monster and then do target of target. Then you have to pick out what healing skill to use, which typically means prioritizing OGCD heals first before those with mana cost and/or cast times. That's before including the decision to use something that cuts MP costs down or allows instant casting like swift cast.

Cutting back on the total needed healing skill bloat and giving healers a similar design to tanks (only for healing) probably would help with the popularity, but I think the player targeting aspect would make them more complicated to run than a Tank under any kind of situation.

With the GCD being around 2.5 seconds, the time a player has to switch targets is quite generous. You can start casting a GCD action and switch targets comfortably before you are lagging behind your GCD usage. Weaving oGCDs might require a bit more attention, but even with controller, flipping through the 4 other players in the party takes at most 1-2 seconds (Consider that you will always flip through 4 targets at most even in 8 man parties if you start from the bottom or the top of the party list).

I'd say target switching from Tank to Enemy is quite seamless, even with a controller (I'd argue its even faster on a controller as it just requires 2 inputs: Pressing down on the pad, which switches your target to the first member of the party list and then pressing the appropriate action button.)

That being said, fumbling with your target has happened to me on occasion, especially when I play as an AST, which is a problem that is not really expanded by more DPS actions, as you currently are constantly switching between DPS and Healing anyway. It would just increase the variety of the DPS actions you'd press rather than the frequency of healing downtime.

[LeonKeyh]

Healers are problematic anyway just because of having to target something other than opponents. Think about it: If an enemy attacks a player in this game, the enemy is usually auto targeted so there's no need to think about having to move and click the target or tab to it. For healers, there is no equivalent for players. If someone is getting hit by a monster, the fastest way to swap to the player is sometimes to target the monster and then do target of target. Then you have to pick out what healing skill to use, which typically means prioritizing OGCD heals first before those with mana cost and/or cast times. That's before including the decision to use something that cuts MP costs down or allows instant casting like swift cast.

Cutting back on the total needed healing skill bloat and giving healers a similar design to tanks (only for healing) probably would help with the popularity, but I think the player targeting aspect would make them more complicated to run than a Tank under any kind of situation.

That's a decent point. I play on PS5 (with controller), so switching targets is really easy for me, it's definitely designed VERY well. Need to heal the tank? Down Down, Heal and I'm back to targeting the enemy I was targeting.

I don't know if it's an option (I don't think it is), but I used to play Everquest 2 and the "Target of Target" system was quite a bit more advanced than it seems to be in FFXIV. Basically, if you used an ability, it _tried_ to use it on your target. If your target wasn't valid, it would use the ability on the target of your target.

So, what ended up happening is everyone just targeted the tank the entire time. Any beneficial single target spells (e.g. heals) would hit the tank and any attacks would hit whatever the tank was targeting. It didn't require the swapping that you're describing.

I don't want to assume, but I would think that using F# (which I think is default for targeting on keyboard) would be a better way of targeting party members than targeting an enemy and then doing target of target.

[Kolsykol]

Not gonna lie I was a tad bit disappointed with how SGE was basically just the same with an extra ogcd button.
I was hoping it'd be a bit more involved DPS-wise.

[LeonKeyh]

Not gonna lie I was a tad bit disappointed with how SGE was basically just the same with an extra ogcd button.
I was hoping it'd be a bit more involved DPS-wise.

But, but, SGE's version of Assize has CAST TIME! Also they have 1! extra DPS button! (Phlegma) And...and... Toxicon happens more often than Blood Lilies!

[Silver-Strider]

But, but, SGE's version of Assize has CAST TIME! Also they have 1! extra DPS button! (Phlegma) And...and... Toxicon happens more often than Blood Lilies!

I know you're joking but I can't help feel as though this is the actual mentality SE has and it hurts.

[Nizzi]

I think the worst part about Sage is that they gave it a system to let it go full bore with DPS actions in Eukrasia, and then Eukrasia is just an extra button you press when applying your DoT. Why isn't the job focused around Eukrasia? Why give it a gauge element at all if it's just an extra step for 2 heals you never want to hit outside of downtime and then your DoT? They also failed to do anything interesting with Toxicon, Phlegma is just a GCD Assize clone, and Pneuma is just bland. No amount of "dude it's another button that deals the same damage as Dosis!" buttons they add will make this job interesting. You came out with Gunbreaker in ShB. Why not make SGE an actual "DPS focused healer" and then just say "if you don't like it, play any of the other healers" if people complain?

It's hilarious to me how much Yoshida was saying "uh we've made Sage for those high skilled players who want a more DPS focused healer, please check it out in Endwalker" in all the interviews and live letters leading up to 6.0, and then this is what we got. Seriously, do these developers play their own game? Even SCH is more DPS focused than SGE lmao

[Silverbane]

Have you healed a savage tier when it was current?

Why do you think that question is relevant?
After all, how much of the subscriber base of FFXIV subscribers don't do savage tier content when it's current?
Not much, right?

Someone posted that end-game content like savage is just a sop thrown to a small number of players to give them something to do until the next content release. If that's the case, then SE making the business decision to keep the vast majority of the subscribers happy by not optimizing the combat system for content that only a small percentage of the player base even attempt can't really be argued with.

So players doing savage and ultimate get to do it with a battle system optimized for casuals, because profitability trumps everything in game design. I submit that if players who want to run savage can't find a way to enjoy doing it with a casuals-optimized kit, this isn't the game for them: you can't get chateaubriand at Red Robin, so if that's what you gotta have, go to another restaurant.

But to answer your question: years ago, I was a member of static and we cleared some harder end-game content. However, because being in a static was more scheduling hassle, drama, and time commitment than it was worth to me, I'm not doing that anymore. So because trying to clear savage content without being in a static impresses me as masochistic, I don't.

But then, I'm also not insisting that SE make changes. I'm happy with things as they are now, I was happy with things as they were in the past, and I'll be happy with whatever SE does in the future ... or I'll find another game to play. Maybe that's just a skillset I have that some others here lack: finding ways to enjoy the games I choose to play, without insisting that the games change to please me.

[IDontPetLalas]

Why do you think that question is relevant?
After all, how much of the subscriber base of FFXIV subscribers don't do savage tier content when it's current?
Not much, right?

Someone posted that end-game content like savage is just a sop thrown to a small number of players to give them something to do until the next content release. If that's the case, then SE making the business decision to keep the vast majority of the subscribers happy by not optimizing the combat system for content that only a small percentage of the player base even attempt can't really be argued with.

So players doing savage and ultimate get to do it with a battle system optimized for casuals, because profitability trumps everything in game design. I submit that if players who want to run savage can't find a way to enjoy doing it with a casuals-optimized kit, this isn't the game for them: you can't get chateaubriand at Red Robin, so if that's what you gotta have, go to another restaurant.

But to answer your question: years ago, I was a member of static and we cleared some harder end-game content. However, because being in a static was more scheduling hassle, drama, and time commitment than it was worth to me, I'm not doing that anymore. So because trying to clear savage content without being in a static impresses me as masochistic, I don't.

But then, I'm also not insisting that SE make changes. I'm happy with things as they are now, I was happy with things as they were in the past, and I'll be happy with whatever SE does in the future ... or I'll find another game to play. Maybe that's just a skillset I have that some others here lack: finding ways to enjoy the games I choose to play, without insisting that the games change to please me.

I read that last line and i couldn't help think about these customers a few years ago - see https://www.ladbible.com/news/ryanai...ilets-20220215 . i wouldn't call that a skillset necessarily, more of a coping mechanism, or at its worst- in some games - thankfully we are not at that point Stockholm syndrome.

[Martynek]

Maybe that's just a skillset I have that some others here lack: finding ways to enjoy the games I choose to play, without insisting that the games change to please me.

The game used to appeal to us, back in... well, up until 2019, at the latest. Earlier depending on who you ask.
Then we had people demanding that the game changed to please them. Something which you're treating as utterly unreasonable, but oh, it's all okay, all wonderful when it's to your benefit, isn't it!
And so the game we enjoyed got ruined to appeal to a far less invested demographic. Naturally, few of them actually stayed around, and of the ones who did stay around, even less of them decided to stay in the healing role after realising how utterly vapid it is.
We aren't asking for everything in the game to be the exact same way it used to be. You can have a nice, simple, easy brain white mage. It would just be nice if we could put together a raid group without making a quarter of the group suffer.