Do we really need two healers per alliance in 24 mans?

[Liam_Harper]

We definitely don't.

The only reason we have 2 is because Alliances are all about pretend challenge. The mechanics are designed to bait and kill first timers, then you just scrape everyone off the floor with infinite Raises and beat it anyway first pull. This means you get your weekly chore out the way quickly and see the story, but also has the illusion that it was somewhat difficult on your first run because you died a lot.

It's poor design in my opinion, that leads to redundant safety comps like 2 healers, low damage intake and the whole thing becoming boring after a few runs when everyone knows the trick to each boss. But since ff14 players are allergic to wipes or having to play even moderately well, here we are with one player in the group simply existing as an occasional "just incase" in the background and everyone being fine with that.

[EorzeaWanderer]

Sorry for veering somewhat off-topic, but it has always bugged me how the game uses inconsistent terminology for these groups, namely the phrases "Alliance A", "Alliance B", and "Alliance C".

That doesn't make any sense. You don't have three "Alliances", you are a single "Alliance" of three "Parties" who banded together for this duty (which should be labeled "Party A", "Party B", and "Party C").

My apologies, rant complete, resume healer discussion.

[Risvertasashi]

Sorry for veering somewhat off-topic, but it has always bugged me how the game uses inconsistent terminology for these groups, namely the phrases "Alliance A", "Alliance B", and "Alliance C".

That doesn't make any sense. You don't have three "Alliances", you are a single "Alliance" of three "Parties" who banded together for this duty (which should be labeled "Party A", "Party B", and "Party C").

My apologies, rant complete, resume healer discussion.

I mean, post it in the localization section and a dev there might actually go "Hmm that's a good point", lol

[ThorneDynasty]

2 healers can heal EVERYONE twice as much as 1 healer.

No they absolutely can't. You can only heal up to full health, which a single healer can do easily do in alliance raids. 2 healers is just a ridiculous amount of wasted HPS as you are constantly sitting on all your cooldowns.

[AnotherPerson]

No they absolutely can't. You can only heal up to full health, which a single healer can do easily do in alliance raids. 2 healers is just a ridiculous amount of wasted HPS as you are constantly sitting on all your cooldowns.

I think what they mean by that is that having 2 healers double the amount of AOE healing at their disposal - rather than have 1 healer designated to 4 players, AoE Healing heals the entire party. This means you can have 1 healer covering for 8 players rather than 1 for 4 as in dungeons. The second healer also covers the 8 players using AoE healing instead of covering 4 players.

So instead of the split being:
1 healer per 4 players = 1x4 -> healing output for 4
2 healers with 8 players = 2x4 -> healing output for 8

Which would make "healing output distribution normalized" to a certain extent..

You have the current resulting healing output of:
1 healer per 8 players. 1x8 -> healing output for 8
2 healers per 8 players. 2x8 -> healing output for 16


Effectively it "doubles" the amount of healing at their disposal by increasing the exponential growth of the healer's healing output. 2 players can outputting healing enough for 16 as opposed to 2 players outputting enough healing for 8 players.

[ThorneDynasty]

It's still the entirely wrong way to frame healer contribution, and probably how you'd end up with bandaid solutions like "debuff AOE heals in 24-man". As if this issue doesn't more or less exist in all content with party healing to speak of, considering it's still the same 2 healer setup in all of it.

Like sure, nerfing all party heals would mean at least I'm not constantly overhealing when playing with an uncoordinated co-healer, but at the same time... nothing actually changes about how I deal with unavoidable damage situations. It's not like I currently refuse to hit whisper or blessing even though I know it's probably going to net overhealing - there's not really a reason not to when it's just sitting on cooldown otherwise and the heal kits are so bloated saving them for an emergency would be ridiculous. Meanwhile the ability to crisis manage in situations where you are the only healer left is suddenly mostly gone, which are currently the very rare situations where being the healer is incredibly fun.

[Saefinn]

I'd rather that 2 are needed. But you are right that 2 are not needed. I would rather the content be adjusted to justify 2 healers than to remove a healer from each alliance...I know it won't happen.

The way I've been able to enjoy SGE is by playing it wrong. The healing requirement for Aglaia is so low that I cannot even do that because I am left mostly to Dosis spams, the one thing I feared would happen once I got good with SGE.

If there's any argument for healers to have better DPS options it is Aglaia. It's bad enough that our roles as healers in most content is cheap.
Every job except healer jobs get to make full use or near full use of their kit regardless of the content they do. That's all we ask. It could be that you adjust the content and the kit, or heck give more abilities dual purposes (maybe with a toggle like Eukrasia) or more to do when we can't use one part of our kit or a combination of all those things.

[LeonKeyh]

No they absolutely can't. You can only heal up to full health, which a single healer can do easily do in alliance raids. 2 healers is just a ridiculous amount of wasted HPS as you are constantly sitting on all your cooldowns.

It's still the entirely wrong way to frame healer contribution, and probably how you'd end up with bandaid solutions like "debuff AOE heals in 24-man". As if this issue doesn't more or less exist in all content with party healing to speak of, considering it's still the same 2 healer setup in all of it.

Like sure, nerfing all party heals would mean at least I'm not constantly overhealing when playing with an uncoordinated co-healer, but at the same time... nothing actually changes about how I deal with unavoidable damage situations. It's not like I currently refuse to hit whisper or blessing even though I know it's probably going to net overhealing - there's not really a reason not to when it's just sitting on cooldown otherwise and the heal kits are so bloated saving them for an emergency would be ridiculous. Meanwhile the ability to crisis manage in situations where you are the only healer left is suddenly mostly gone, which are currently the very rare situations where being the healer is incredibly fun.

Oh goodie, a pedantic argument. Hooray.

If you healed less whenever using those cooldowns....you'd have to use more of the cooldowns.

I didn't say that it was the end-all be-all of solutions. Sure let's talk pie in the sky about completely changing how all encounters and the healer role work in the game. That's definitely worth talking about because it's likely to happen. SE has shown that they're aware that they need to completely redesign everything.

[Saefinn]

Oh goodie, a pedantic argument. Hooray.

If you healed less whenever using those cooldowns....you'd have to use more of the cooldowns.

I didn't say that it was the end-all be-all of solutions. Sure let's talk pie in the sky about completely changing how all encounters and the healer role work in the game. That's definitely worth talking about because it's likely to happen. SE has shown that they're aware that they need to completely redesign everything.

This is why I've generally asked for:
- More DPS/DPS support options. Downtime is a thing, to stop it being a thing is way too big of a job. Let's accept it and fill it. Make it engaging.
- For future content, design encounters to make better use of our healing kits.

The devs:
- We won't improve DPS options on healers, we don't want healers to be shoehorned into DPS. But we have designed SGE to be more challenging, go try that.
- We won't make healing more engaging. We want it to be accessible. The game just isn't balanced to what our kits offer.

I take their advice and play SGE. For SGE to be engaging I have to play it badly (and I do for that reason). I tried playing SGE well and found my use of Dosis increase. I Toxicon fish so that I spam Dosis less. But in Aglaia, there's not enough damage to even justify trying to get Toxicon procs. So it's just a Dosis spam for the most part.

I really hope they change their mind. Because the only solutions without redesigning elements of the game (which would be a huge undertaking) require them to do what they said they won't do. I think there's been plenty of suggestions from the community that would retain accessibility whilst adding enough complexity for experienced players. And the great thing about adding better DPS options is that it is not needed for the vast majority of group content with healers. But IMO it does need to be accompanied with the goal of more mechanics for healers to heal...just tweaked appropriately for the level of content...because we are healers and thus want to actually heal.

[Rilifane]

This is why I've generally asked for:
- More DPS/DPS support options. Downtime is a thing, to stop it being a thing is way too big of a job. Let's accept it and fill it. Make it engaging.
- For future content, design encounters to make better use of our healing kits.

The devs:
- We won't improve DPS options on healers, we don't want healers to be shoehorned into DPS. But we have designed SGE to be more challenging, go try that.
- We won't make healing more engaging. We want it to be accessible. The game just isn't balanced to what our kits offer.

Which makes me wonder:
what do they want us to do?

They constantly lowered indirectly lowered the healing requirements by keeping the incoming damage itself roughly the same but progressively buffing heals while also giving everyone, healers and non-healers, more tools to heal and mitigate damage.
They also explicitely stated that they do not plan to increase them because they want to keep healing easy, relatively failsafe and accessible.
So that means actively healing the majority of the time isn't what they envision for healers, they think it would be too stressful for new and learning healers so they keep the healing requirement at a minimum.

They constantly deleted dps buttons, going so far as taking away ED, because they do not want healers to get shoehorned into dpsing and believe that by reducing the amount of buttons dedicated to dps it will make clear that healers are not supposed to dps and that it's pretty much optional. They also stated that they do not expect healers to dps (and I don't mean that out-dated quote about HW raids, I mean their more recent statements about the role in general).
So that means that actively dpsing isn't what they envision for healers either.

They constantly deleted more and more forms of support, replacing them with buttons dedicated to healing.
So they probably don't see us as supporters that multitask either.

What, then, do they envision for us?
I genuinely want to know but I don't get it. What is their vision for healers? What do they think healers do or should do?

When I compare that to other games, most noteably WoW, Rift and SW:TOR, there was always a very clear expectation of healers. You noticed from the toolkit and the content design what the devs want healers to do and how they constantly tweaked things to account for that. That doesn't mean that balance was always perfect or there weren't issues but they had a clear vision and they also communicated said vision through the toolkits, the content and several statements; they gave healers clear weaknesses that punished you for trying to make it into something that it's not supposed to be.
And here I feel like the entire role is stuck in this obscure limbo of not really being anything in particular and just existing to lower the chance for a wipe.