Has anyone quit healing?

[Sebazy]

Wasn’t that just an honest mistake though? The guy even posted a screen cap of his search results where you weren’t shown /shrug

[Absurdity]

But that's fine. They aren't the intended audience, not for me anyway. See, a fundamental principle behind the right to free speech is that in an unfettered exchange, truth will eventually win out. So it made my day when one of them admitted they are afraid other people would believe what I post.
That's what these whiners are afraid of.

Duh, of course they would be afraid, just like a parent would be afraid that their kid reads some flat eather's ramblings and actually believes them.

[SargeTheSeagull]

But that's fine. They aren't the intended audience, not for me anyway. See, a fundamental principle behind the right to free speech is that in an unfettered exchange, truth will eventually win out. So it made my day when one of them admitted they are afraid other people would believe what I post.
That's what these whiners are afraid of.

Don't hide your abysmally uninformed and uneducated takes behind the veneer of free speech. I am a complete free speech absolutist. I believe you should be able say whatever deluded hogwash you want and we should be able to mock you for it.

[ThorneDynasty]

Seems less likely to me that they would increase the amount of healing required in encounter design personally

But how? There's nearly a decade worth of entirely scripted content with very sparse unavoidable damage windows. Even if ALL of them bring party down to 1 HP healers will still spend the vast, vast majority of their time DPSing. So how on earth do you "increase the amount of healing required" to the point where the whole healers-should-just-heal dogma any makes sense?

Ever job in this game is a variety of DPS. We all know that's a fact. So why pretend this game is something it's not? Not accepting the obvious is at the core of all the problems with the healer role.

[Semirhage]

I think that you likely would be more happy playing a RDM with Vermedica, yes. But I didn't accuse you of not being a "real" healer. Nor is that "(my) actual point".

Yes you did.

You just did it there too. Apparently I'm akshuwally a DPS main masquerading as a healer, unlike you REAL healers who like spamming healing spells. If you're going to complain about me making personal attacks, don't passive-aggressively suggest that I belong in the DPS camp when I disagree with you on healer design.

I've played HEALERS in nearly every RPG, MMO or otherwise, that I've played since childhood. It IS healing. The only exception are games that have very limited spell slots/use (e.g. D&D), in which case you spend a lot of time doing the equivalent of auto-attacking.

Then I don't know which games you've been playing. Name me a single RPG where you spend the vast majority of your time on a healing class spamming health-restoring spells. I'll wait. In the classic D&D-based ones you ended up mostly healing at the end of encounters, because killing the enemy is more important than keeping everyone at 100% HP. That's how healers work. That's how the definition of efficiency works. That's not just how healing works in FFXIV, that's how healing works in every game that doesn't penalize you for being lower than max HP.

Does the term "Strawman Fallacy" mean anything to you? I believe healers should have damage and buff and debuff tools to use when healing isn't necessary. Maybe you should ask my oppinion on things instead of telling me what my opinion is?

Yeah, you also believe that WHM should play like Dia Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare when healing isn't necessary. What a variety of tools there. Bundles of fun for hours of gameplay.

Which does not require that to be DOING DAMAGE at all.

Whence comes this absolute allergy to doing damage? EW GROSS anything but DOING DAMAGE!! It's part of how every job kit works. It's in fact the most important metric in FFXIV. They could radically shift encounter design to make this no longer true, but that's highly unlikely they'd revisit the old content to change this in the already unlikely event they did it going forward.

And yet that's the main difference between EW healers and ARR healers (at least on WHM), and I've had someone here tell me that WHM in ARR was "dozens" of times more complex.

I've argued against this a bunch of times too. I've heard a thousand times "well it was never particularly complex, so why complain about it now?" Because the kit shallowness has never been a GOOD thing? Because bad design doesn't have a statute of limitations after which it magically becomes good design? Because current encounter design is exacerbating that shallowness? It was certainly more complex than EW WHM was, though not "dozens of times". Weird, it's almost like having fewer oGCDs, more DoTs, and more frequent outgoing damage made things more entertaining. But encounter design isn't the ONLY thing that caused this. The ugly stripping of the downtime kit did it too.

Those of us who call for more interesting damage kits are doing so because we see that Square likes their current beautiful-yet-unengaging-for-anyone-who-isn't-a-DPS cinematic encounter design where bosses teleport to the center of arenas, cast their spectacle attacks for a hundred years, and maybe chunk the tank a few times a fight (which they can just self-heal through). If Square wants to design encounters like this, fine. But give me something to DO. Spamming one button until my eyes roll so far back in my head I tattoo the imprint of my lashes on my brow bones isn't "something to do". It's boring as hell.

It's BAD. ENCOUNTER. DESIGN; I agree. But clearly not BAD. GAME. DESIGN.

You don't LIKE it, and I get that. But that's a different metric.

It's "clearly" not bad game design? Oh? You're the one advocating for making the other three healers interesting while keeping WHM a snoozeathon. So riddle me this: if this happens, you know there's going to be a skill gap. There's already one. And it's huge. Keeping WHM the boring crayon-eater healer while actually fixing the other three just codifies that skill gap in the job design. So what happens when someone plays WHM and gets actually good at the game? There's going to be a large gulf between the amount of downtime a skilled healer and an unskilled healer can create for themselves. Soooo...the other three healers get to be fun during their downtime, and WHM gets Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare because that's "good enough" for them? Tell them to swap to a different healer because this is the designated playpen for crappy healers? What is this refusal to consider downtime? No, don't make the downtime interesting! Anything but that!

I've said it a thousand times and I'll say it again. WHM is the only job in the game that people regularly, REGULARLY completely flip their standards for good game design and argue that being designed to play like ass on purpose is the ideal state. You argue for designing literally ANY other job in the game like it and you'll get shrieks of rage, cries of horror. Why would anyone want a gameplay loop so boring, so unrewarding, so utterly lacking in choice, so dull in downtime, such a shallow noninteractive healing kit?

[Renathras]

...

I think that MOST PEOPLE agree the situation isn't great. As much as I've been attacked for not agreeing that "moar dps buttons!" is the answer, I've stated many times now that I agree with the assessment that healing now is sub-par and could be better. I've even made SEVERAL DIFFERENT suggestions on how to deal with it, that could even be combined/employed together. For example, having a simple, medium complexity, and two high complexity healer kit Jobs, which could also be done while weakening oGCD kits, while also increasing frequency of smaller unavoidable damage would address all thee problems discussed.

...but since I'm not saying make EVERY healer complex with GNB's worth of DPS buttons, apparently I'm a "Sylphie" (whatever that is) and must be attacked and destroyed. And here I'm the one trying to approach a middle ground that will allow everyone to be at least somewhat happy. /shrug

Oh, and I do love healing's secondary function being buffing rather than damage. You'll get no complaint with me on that. I love PvP SCH's Adlo/Bio as buffing/debuffing utility.

I also agree that the line between DPS and healers is blurry as is, so pushing more that way is probably not healthy for the game's battle design, either. It's why I encourage variety instead of just making them all the same thing that pushes out the bulk of the player base.

EDIT:

Neat.

And it doesn't look like you're getting anywhere with convincing anyone on anything about your singular views, however, either.

So perhaps you should stop talking past people and making caricatures of their arguments and actually listening to THEM and what THEY are saying, not the strawman you want to PRETEND they are saying?

Overall, the idea here was to give AST GCD tools that would replace a lot of your direct DPS in order to simulate a more passive-focused healer so that people who don't want to be DPSing 80%-100% of the time with their GCDs have a healer whose playstyle respects the importance of DPS contribution, and that's really the key factor here. The content of XIV demands healer DPS contributions as often as they currently are. We can create a passive healer, but they MUST contribute still. They just need to be able to do that indirectly.

I don't disagree with this. My issue with AST (other than aesthetics) has always been the randomness of the card effects and the wacky APM to use them well. Making GCDs for that would be an interesting way of getting around that problem.

I remember one of my pitches for Chemist (before FFXIV's healers got all homogenized, so back in SB or so) was that they had the normal slate of heals, but then they had "short duration, weaker effect potions" (basically like tinctures) that they could throw on party members. Something like +3% stats for 10 sec, incurs a 60 sec debuff so they can't be chain medicated (so you have to cycle through party members, not just buff the SAM over and over again), with the class having 1-3 different potions each on a cycling 20 sec or so CD.

There are tons of ways to do this, but the takeaway is that there very easily could be a buffer healer playstyle. They're already more or less doing this in PvP.

[MintnHoney]

And it doesn't look like you're getting anywhere with convincing anyone on anything about your singular views, however, either.

Yes, because me agreeing with others, but not you, means I'm so alone with "my views."

So perhaps you should stop talking past people and making caricatures of their arguments and actually listening to THEM and what THEY are saying, not the strawman you want to PRETEND they are saying?

You know, there's this really neat little kettle I'd like to introduce you to. When it gets heated it makes noises, kinda like you, and I told them about you, they think you'll really hit it off together well...

[Renathras]

Gotta love how some of the whiners here just can't believe there's more than one person posting to the forums who enjoys playing healers and doesn't agree with them. Oh, and they also can't believe that anyone who disagrees with them isn't a troll; they literally can't imagine that anyone could sincerely enjoy being a healer as the role is today.

Caricatures aside, this does seem to be the case. This thread is filled with instance after instance of people insisting that anyone who likes current healers is either horribly bad at the game, a troll, a new player who just doesn't realize it sucks yet, or some combination of the three. The unwillingness to consider that some people genuinely enjoy it is mind boggling.

I won't play psychologist over it, I just find it disconcerting.

For my part, I believe there are SOME open minded and compromise capable people here, and those are the people I'm more interested in talking to. Not the actual trolls who think they are fighting trolls (when you strayman falacy someone's position as those three people did mine, you're not a serious person, you're a troll). Those people are impossible to reason with and are beyond and immune to reason, compromise, argument, fact, or anything that doesn't agree with them 100% - even partial agreement isn't sufficient unless they're temporarily allowing it to make it seem like people who disagree less are more isolated (e.g. they take people in the middle and pretend like all those people agree with them even when they don't so they can ostracize people who agree with them less, but as soon as the less agreement folks leave, they'll turn on the middle for not agreeing with them ENOUGH)

But there are other people interested in genuinely brainstorming things, other solutions besides "more dps buttons = more skill/less boredom/better design", and those people are the ones to talk to.

EDIT:

Speaking of such caricatures:

Duh, of course they would be afraid, just like a parent would be afraid that their kid reads some flat eather's ramblings and actually believes them.

Appeal to ridicule is also a logical fallacy. As is guilt by association. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which fallacy this is.

Yes, because me agreeing with others, but not you, means I'm so alone with "my views."

You realize I'm also agreeing with others, right? So by your own definition, I'm not alone with my views, either. "appeal to consensus" is not a valid argument, anyway, but you don't even have that going for you. I'll not dignify your stupidity after that with a response.

But how? There's nearly a decade worth of entirely scripted content with very sparse unavoidable damage windows. Even if ALL of them bring party down to 1 HP healers will still spend the vast, vast majority of their time DPSing. So how on earth do you "increase the amount of healing required" to the point where the whole healers-should-just-heal dogma any makes sense?

Ever job in this game is a variety of DPS. We all know that's a fact. So why pretend this game is something it's not? Not accepting the obvious is at the core of all the problems with the healer role.

We don't all know.
It's not a fact.

The only time it actually is relevant is in content with enrage timers, which are the vast minority of the content in the game, and even then only in minimum ilevel gear. A first clear of Erik probably needed healers to DPS. In ilevel 600 gear, you could probably have both healers AFK the entire fight and clear enrage comfortably. If every Job in this game was a DPS, then there wouldn't be blue and green icons and roles named something other than DPS. This is such an absurd argument that needs to die so we can actually talk solutions.

.

As for your first question:

This wouldn't be the first time they changed paradigms. Go do Crystal Tower fights at level circa 2013. The healing requirements and design were very different. Some fights had continuous tick damage that you couldn't address by cycling through a healing play of oGCDs...which you also didn't have. They haven't had to redesign that content with modern healing tools, they just left it in the game. Alexander Savage broke guilds. Those fights are still in the game (a bit nerfed back in HW, but they haven't been re-addressed since then, even with Jobs learning abilities at different levels and the like). How is that possible?

Because it just is?

If they did this, it would only be in Savage/Ultimate content, and to a lesser extent Extremes. They would leave the rest of the game alone because - why wouldn't they? They've shown a history of leaving normal content (non-Ex/Sav/Ult) alone when they make changes to design overall. No one will care if normal content is still easy because...it always kind of has been with only a few exceptions (like Aurum Vale when current). The challenge stuff has always been Ex/Sav/Ult, and that's where you'd get the changes.

Though admittedly a big part of it - as I've noted - is healers have oGCDs out the wazoo that are more than powerful enough to cover all healing needs without ever having to cast a GCD heal. I've healed entire 4 mans, 8 mans, even some Extremes without casting any GCD heal other than just for the hell of it in downtime. oGCD healing kits should not be that powerful while ALSO having so many oGCDs you always have one up for any damage that does come out excluding waves of party mistakes.

[MintnHoney]

You realize I'm also agreeing with others, right?

Now, see, you're trying to conflate agreement over the sentiment of wanting to and enjoying healing with agreement to your proposal and views.

But that's neither here nor there, I suppose.
Enjoy that kettle, I hear she's hot.

[Nizzi]

As much as I ideally think every healer SHOULD be more than 2-1-1-1-1-1 spam for downtime, realistically SE would absolutely keep one or two ""simple"" as they are very adverse to having jobs with higher skill floor, whether those are perceived or not. (I don't believe readding a DoT or two or adding another attack or two would do much of anything for the skill floor, but I digress)
As unfortunate as it may or may not be, the fact does exist that there are people who like these healers; the problem is that all types of players aren't being appealed to as they are on other roles, right now it's just one group of people who like their healers "simple" when there really should be "simple" and "slightly less simple".
They've done a very bad job at trying to understand what the various camps of different healers want, and it seems like they've really thrown their hands up and completely given up on trying to understand that at all; they seem to even have completely misunderstood what healers wanted with a "DPS healer" (though I think that was an intentional misunderstanding) and they don't get why so many people complain.

This is kind of how I saw it before SGE's tooltips were out back in ShB; it would really suck if SCH was intentionally kept boring and another job was the one that got to have the fun I'm looking for in the role because I love everything about Scholar, but I was fully ready to hop over to SGE and just let the other healers be what they currently were. If somehow WHM became the more engaging and appealing healer and SCH kept getting worse and worse, I'd probably play WHM. It would suck and I would wish I was playing SCH, but I'd also just be happy that there was something that was engaging beyond what every healer currently is. At this point, this is the only balance I can see us ever achieving in this role, for good or bad. I don't want people who enjoy healers currently or enjoy them casually to kick rocks; I just want a seat at the table as well.