Healers need an overhaul

[GrimGale]

The tragedy of healing is, optimizing healer gameplay necessarily means trying to interact as little as possible with your healing kit.

Imagine a class where actually maximizing your contribution to the team means hitting 80% of your kit as little as possible.

SCH exarcerbates this problem with Energy Drain, where you want to use your Aetherflow stacks on ED and touch your oGCDs as little as possible.

WHM solved this issue by making lillies DPS neutral. SCH is now the healer that gets punished for using its kit to heal.

[Deceptus]

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.

Not OP but even casuals can see how badly healers are designed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the kits, realize what synergizes with what, and what their weaknesses are.

[Allegor]

Not OP but even casuals can see how badly healers are designed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the kits, realize what synergizes with what, and what their weaknesses are.

Even the most casual of Syphies can't deny that pressing 1111111111111111, whether that's Glare or Cure, or worse, not press anything at all, is objectively bad design, even if it's "easier" (effortless)

[LeonKeyh]

Even the most casual of Syphies can't deny that pressing 1111111111111111, whether that's Glare or Cure, or worse, not press anything at all, is objectively bad design, even if it's "easier" (effortless)

Nah, apparently it's a blast.

[CosmicCoqui]

Miss the days of cleric stance.... Joking aside wish they would make it more fun then just dot-> spam attack spell-> use ogcd for healing/other stuff and repeat

[Jovakim]

So I came across this Bellular video titled: "Why FFXIV's Jobs Are More Fun Than They've ANY Right To Be!"
And while I was watching it, I couldn't help but keep saying to myself: "But healers don't have that, dammit!"

I recommend a watch. This video can (unintentionally) illuminate why healers need more stuff to do during downtime, and how we simply don't have the nice "rhythm" that those fighting game players seem to get from the other jobs.

I decided to leave this comment there:

For a video talking about the jobs having a rhythm, it's quite insulting to see the White Mage icon being predominantly displayed in the thumbnail.

You see, healers don't get to have any sort of rhythm for their DPSing, and since downtime happens for 70-90% of most fights, you'll be pressing nothing but one button (Dosis/Glare/Broil/Malefic), over and over and over. All else you'll get are some sprinkles every 30-60 seconds (like the one DoT, Assize, Cards, etc.).

Sure, it's cute that Sage gets to press two buttons to cast shields, but how many times are you going to use them when you have a plethora of oGCDs that will mitigate a similar amount, if not more than the shielding? And after that? It's back to Dosis spamming.

Astro is the only one that falls off the norm and gets to press more than one button during burst phases, but that's only every two minutes. And after that? It's back to Malefic spamming.

What I'm trying to say is simple: if FFXIV has the "special sauce" when it comes to job design, then they decided to deliberately make healers as flavorless as they possibly could.

[Shurrikhan]

So I came across this Bellular video titled: "Why FFXIV's Jobs Are More Fun Than They've ANY Right To Be!"
And while I was watching it, I couldn't help but keep saying to myself: "But healers don't have that, dammit!"

Neither, arguably, do a slight majority of jobs, relative to past iterations. I think that's what's come to bug me about Bellular's XIV vids. That level of skew / purposely avoiding the negatives in a review for any other MMO would rapidly have one called a shill.

Matt still lives rent-free in my head for saying earlier that it's a good thing that only XIV AoEs' floor indicators, not their animations, match their activation times ("because they can be freer with more elaborate animations" or such)... ignoring, of course, that not all AoEs go off precisely when their floor indicators disappear and that having AoEs go off when their animations appear to actually deal that damage absolutely does not require their animations to be simplified.

Or, for this latest vid: A 2.5s GCD would not be necessary for double-weave if they didn't just purposely add your round-trip ping to every animation lock. A 1.8s GCD would then already be wholly sufficient, allowing the game to offer, say, 10% of each secondary stat by default and bring that awkwardly long 2.5s GCD down already to a more reasonable 2.25. Or, if they just hadn't trimmed toolkit growth over 1-60 down to a trickle, the GCD wouldn't feel insufferable over ARR. But instead, it's just "Australia, Latin America, sorry you can't play Machinist... Sorry, that's just how it is." Punishing player ping in that way is not a net-neutral decision with unique affordances; it's wholly negative.

[IvoryHawk]

Giving healers a 123 combo still won't satisfy any of you that are complaining for one, you'll then complain that the rotation is too flat and want something else, such is the way with giving an inch, healers are fine as is imo.

[anhaato]

Miss the days of cleric stance.... Joking aside wish they would make it more fun then just dot-> spam attack spell-> use ogcd for healing/other stuff and repeat

I'm not joking. Bring back cleric stance.

[anhaato]

Giving healers a 123 combo still won't satisfy any of you that are complaining for one, you'll then complain that the rotation is too flat and want something else, such is the way with giving an inch, healers are fine as is imo.

You're right it won't satisfy us because that's just another form of brainless button mashing, we want more buttons to press during downtime that require more thought than 111111 or 123123123