Has anyone quit healing?

[Renathras]

Yes you did.

I get that you want to make the argument about anything other than the topic at hand, but no, I didn't. I said you would probably be HAPPIER doing something else. It's not some "passive-aggressive" slight. If you enjoy dealing damage but want the option to offer some healing here and there, then you would likely be happier on a Job that functions that way. I had a friend in SB that loved healing 4 mans on RDM, so we'd que as a full party and let him. He liked dealing damage with RDM but he also liked being a healer while also being a damage dealer, which is what the RDM class fantasy is anyway.

It's not an attack on a person to note what they like doing and point out that that kind of playstyle exists in the game already. I'll also say again, I felt that was what SGE was going to be - and what I still feel it SHOULD be - but for some reason they went "DoT+spam" on it and I have no idea why.

D&D

As I noted, you spend a lot of time in (at least old) D&D doing the equivalent of Auto-Attack. Play through Baldur's Gate games as a Cleric, for example, and the VAST majority of your actions will using a slingshot. Most MMOs made around when FFXIV was made and before, healing was the full time Job. In WoW - even current WoW - healers spend far more of their time casting heals than damage spells, and most only have 2-5 damage spells, which is comparable to FFXIV's. This was even more prevalent in older MMOs like Everquest where mana was such a constraining resource and the way things mana regenration worked (and MP5 or "mana per 5 seconds" in WoW from Vanilla through at least Wrath worked similarly) that when you weren't healing or buffing, you were sitting and drinking/resting to restore mana.

This is again you overstating your case. While you can argue that SOME healers in SOME games spend a lot of time dealing damage, that's far from universally true. One doesn't even have to go far to find examples since WoW is still right there and everyone knows what Everquest is.

Yeah, you also believe that

Despite me suggesting it several times, now I'm just going to ask it outright:

When are you going to ask me what I think instead of tell me what I think?

EDIT:

Whence comes this absolute allergy to doing damage?

I hate DoTs and am a borderline pacifist irl. I enjoy healing and helping people and being a synergist, boosting and augmenting the capabilities of other people. I genuinely hate fighting and see conflict as a last resort to be avoided in general. This reflects into my gameplay style where I enjoy buffing and restoring allies, uplifting people, and keeping them on their feet as we collectively confront the challenges in front of us.

And because there are 11 DPS Jobs in this game already. If I really get the itch to beat up enemies, I have MCH, SMN, and RDM that I can play to do that. Why would I want WHM to also do that when I already have those other options?

but that's highly unlikely they'd revisit the old content to change this in the already unlikely event they did it going forward.

It boggles my mind why you people think they'd revisit/change old content - or have to - to make such a change. As I said to the other guy above, they've changed how the combat system works several times now. Not once have they ever gone back and changed old content to reflect that. ARR didn't have the absolute adherence to the 2 minute burst window we now have in 6.1 after the Trick Attack/Mug change basically unified the game around the 2 minute buff window. Tell me, which old encounters did they change to reflect this? What Crystal Tower fight has been adjusted to account for the 2 minute burst window? Which Alexander Savage tiers did they go back and change? What SB Extremes have they rebalanced around it?

When they simplified healer damage kits in ShB while loading us with even more powerful healing tools, which old encounters did they change? When they rearranged levels of learning spells, like giving WHM Solace at level 52 now, what old encounters did they alter to reflect that WHM now has this MP free Cure 2 every 30 then (20 now) seconds?

They've done this at no point in the past when they made combat system changes of any level, from minor to sweeping: Why do you guys keep insisting they'd have to retroactively make such a change now when they've literally never had to do so before?

I've argued against this a bunch of times too. 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.

ONE (or two) more DoTs. Here's the problem, MY ARGUMENT is that we have too many and too powerful oGCDs (which you even noted here), and that encounter design doesn't lean into our GCD healing kits. In effect, we SOMEWHAT agree here. But my solution is to revert to what we used to have in terms of healing and your solution is to revert to what we used to have in terms of damage. Perhaps this reflects our personal philosophies towards gaming (e.g. healing vs damage - and no, this is again not some passive-aggressive slight, I just find it interesting), but whatever the case, it's interesting that we both want some of what we used to have, but different halves of it.

You want the old damage kits back, I want the hold healing kits/requirements back.

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.

Which is why I've consistently said to change 3 of the healers to reflect this and leave 1 alone. Something you've roundly rejected because you seem to have an aversion to people enjoying the game if they don't like playing as you do/aren't as bored as you are.

It's "clearly" not bad game design? Oh? You're the one advocating for making the other three healers...

I'm perfectly fine with us leaving everything EXACTLY AS IT IS TODAY. I've said this before in this conversation.

However, I also want other people to be happy and have Jobs they enjoy playing. That's the reason I advocate for changing SOME healers and leaving AT LEAST ONE as-is. Something you're adamantly against because you think not having 5,000 buttons and a complex DPS rotation that you need a supercomputer to determine and that Steven Hawking would have difficulty understanding is "a snoozeathon" and anything less than your massive button bloated hotbar juggling isn't "interesting". PvP SCH has less buttons than CNJ - not WHM, CONJURER - yet is very interesting to play because of the interactions those buttons have. And it only has three DPS buttons, Broil, Biolysis, and Mummification, which is less than PvE WHM has now.

As to the skill gap, yeah, that's the option. You can play another Job or you can like the one you're on. And no, I'm not against doing things in downtime. I just don't want ALL OF THE HEALERS to be balanced around that/that downtime to be filled with complex damage abilities and management. Not everyone likes dealing damage. I'm not sure why this is a difficult concept to so many of you.

But how about this, let's make a deal: YOU pick the one healer that we make simple. Now, as WHM is the simplest in the game right now, if we pick a healer other than WHM, that means we'll have to simplify them to WHM's level and leave it there. You get to pick which one though. Which do you choose to sacrifice so that you can have EVERYTHING ELSE YOU WANT AND DENY IT TO ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE TO PLAY AS YOU DO?

SGE? We can get rid of Kardia and replace it with Regen, make Addersgall spenders more powerful and into GCDs that generate Toxicon after 3 uses, remove Plegma...we'd have to do a lot of general reworks of its kit, but I guess we could do it.

SCH? With the Faeries and oGCD kit, it'd be really REALLY hard to simplify it to WHM level. Though I'm all ears for you to propose how we could do it. And keep in mind, when I say WHM level, I mean the healing kit as well as the DPS kit. So replacing proactive healing with WHM's powerful but simple reactive healing.

AST? How? With the Cards/buffs alone, it would be impossible to streamline and simplify AST's playstyle to be comparable to WHM's, even with sharing much (though not all) of its GCD kit.

So which healer gets to be the simple one? Any of the other three right now are more complex than WHM and would have to be simplified to current WHM level. Which do you choose and how would you propose changing them to accommodate that just so YOU can get the other three to yourself?

That is the reason I propose WHM as the simple one - pragmatically, it's already there. It would require the least work to "simplify" as it's already as simple as it can realistically get. Historically, it's ALWAYS BEEN there.

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?

Stop strawmanning and caricature and you might someday understand reality.

No one advocating for WHM's current design is saying it plays like ass.

AND AS I'VE SAID BEFORE:

No less than three Jobs (WAR for Tanks, MCH for Ranged, and SMN for Casters) plays very close to WHM's current complexity level today. That covers all roles. Meaning every role has AT LEAST ONE Job of comparable complexity already. And people love WAR and SMN (and WHM may be the most played Job in the game, but is definitely the most played healer)

[Renathras]

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.

Okay, I'm just going to stop engaging with you because you're clearly a kettle-lover. I'll only say this:

Other people have also expressed they agree with my proposals. I know you WANT TO BELIEVE - because you for some reason SEEM to think that "if no one agrees with you, you must be wrong" is an argument somehow - that no one agrees with me and everyone, or close enough that it doesn't matter, agrees with you. But that's not the case.

This game has 4-6 million players. Statistically, about a quarter (let's say 20-25%) of those are healers. Like 50 people are posting in this thread. 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 healers in the game and...50...are posting here. Even if EVERY LAST ONE agreed with you, that's a microscopic number compared to the total number of healers floating around in the game.

But the fact is, many don't agree with you even in this thread. And you badmouthing them and insisting they're part of some inconsequential minority is absurd, especially since, considering FFXIV's more casual focus and casual playerbase, we likely represent the views of the general population far better than you do. The people who enjoy the current system - or at least find it passable - are not likely to come to forums to discuss it, much less complain about it.

EDIT:

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"" ... 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.

This is basically my position as well, from the opposite side. I prefer simple (DPS kit) healers that have more interesting healing kits and actually use them. I love trying to push my healing kit to see how much I can get out of it (e.g. can I heal an entire encounter without using a GCD heal) and seeing what that looks like. But I also want other people to be happy, too. I want people like you to have a seat at the table and a healer you enjoy.

...but I don't want ALL of the healers to change to that and have NONE that I can enjoy, either.

I think the balance is having a few be more complex, a few more simple. It's why I think having WHM stay as is, SGE get a bit of a DPS rotation (my proposal is like RDM's 5 button + a finisher caster rotation) and heal by Kardia swapping, SCH to get a return of DoT gameplay leaning on Eos and oGCD Faerie and Aetherflow abilities for the bulk of its healing, and AST to have a static 1-2-3+oGCD (think simplified MCH) so they have consistent damage flow and can weave Cards and buffs between it reliably. I think this would serve everyone. Would some people have to swap from their favorite Job? Yeah. I'd be giving up SCH, which I've mained since SB and was my second 50 in ARR after WHM, to move to WHM full time.

But in the long run, I think that would be better for everyone and I'd be willing to make that sacrifice for the greater good.

[Sebazy]

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.

I think this point of view stems from the old quote of Yoshida claiming that healer DPS wasn't factored into things back in Gordias? I really can't stress it enough, that just doesn't stand true anymore, at least not in Savage. E8S was irrefutable proof of how things had changed, it was a fight that other than it's add phase really wasn't much of a heal check at all. And since the healing requirements were low it required eye opening amounts of DPS from the healers to beat the enrage.

Whilst current fights aren't nearly as bad, it's still a given that you will need something from your healers. Take P4S p1 as a current example:

P4S p1 requires a raid DPS of ~48000 to beat enrage

The world's 1st speedrun log has 52125 actual DPS done (including LB) if you subtract the healers raw DPS. That's a reasonably comfortable margin over the 48000 barrier, but note that the buff contribution from the healers was roughly 3000 of that, 2200 of which was from the AST's cards. Switch that AST out for a WHM and that margin just halved.

If we take a more average log, I scrolled to one that had a combined rating of 62% for the group as a whole, this clear had a combined actual DPS of 43200 minus the healers. That's not some cherry picked awful log, the DPS were evenly spread with 1 purple, 1 blue, 1 green and 1 grey.

The TLDR is that if you want to clear Savage in it's entirety, you will likely need some healer DPS even once you hit farm status.

Healers being a DPS really isn't that far off the mark. In solo content and MSQ we almost entirely DPS, in endgame dungeons we primarily DPS, in casual raid content we primarily DPS, really the biggest exception to the rule these days is leveling dungeons. This just shouldn't be the case, but it is.

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.

Agreed, SE have been steadily designing themselves into this corner pretty much from SB onwards and I think the healer board is just going to get progressively angrier until Yoshida's team start seriously thinking about how powerful healer's toolkits are relative to the majority of content we do.

[Absurdity]

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.

Maybe it is, I just don't care because I have yet to see anything from them that isn't just based on feelycraft or appeal to authority (the developers know best).

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?

Except it doesn't actually work. As you said yourself, the content was designed for completely different healing kits and the job changes over several expansions have made the content so laughably easy that we would go right back to the original problem, being bored as a healer in the majority of content, if they left old content alone while only balancing the job kits around the increase in outgoing damage in new content.


What a lot of the "give us more dps abilities" crowd are arguing for is a solution that makes healers more engaging to play in all content, not just the newest expansion fights, while also keeping the amount of needed developement time to a minimum.

[ThorneDynasty]

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

Then you are quite simply misinformed. Most of healers' time is spent DPSing, by huge margin. Get over it, it's fact. "Increasing incoming damage" won't chance that, only a complete overhaul of the entire game would. Still waiting for a realistic proposal on how to go about that.

[Nethereal]

Mintnhoney lives rent free in their head.

[LeonKeyh]

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.

I don't know, that's why I said "It seems less likely to me that they would increase the amount of healing required." ? Did you misread my statement? There are ways to do it, but I don't really trust SE to do it right or at all.

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.

Just don't fall into Silverbane's meta-commentary trap. They're absolutely right about what they're saying but you're the only one on "that side" of things that are actually making any good points about the position. Don't think that they're a victim of what you've been a victim of.

For all of Silverbane's blustering about meaningful discussion their point is "Well I like it, so it shouldn't change." followed by complaining that nobody is having a meaningful discussion (despite everyone describing facts and what is wrong and ways to fix it).

[ThorneDynasty]

I don't know, that's why I said "It seems less likely to me that they would increase the amount of healing required." ? Did you misread my statement? There are ways to do it, but I don't really trust SE to do it right or at all.

Yeah, my bad, my brain did a dumb.

[Renathras]

Just don't fall into Silverbane's meta-commentary trap. They're absolutely right about what they're saying but you're the only one on "that side" of things that are actually making any good points about the position. Don't think that they're a victim of what you've been a victim of.

For all of Silverbane's blustering about meaningful discussion their point is "Well I like it, so it shouldn't change." followed by complaining that nobody is having a meaningful discussion (despite everyone describing facts and what is wrong and ways to fix it).

I've been more or less avoiding it thus far, have I not?

Silverbane is right about one thing, though: Many people DO like healing in the game. The people that like it generally aren't coming to forums to complain about it, leading this place to become a seeming echo-chamber that is very likely overstating complaints against it and understating support for it. It doesn't help when people do come out pretty hard with the personal attacks when someone DOES wonder to this place that likes healing and expresses that they like it. As you've noted, I'm making good points, yet look at some (many?) of the replies to me that are more interested in caricatures - even as I reply calmly explaining what I'm saying and not what they're insisting I'm saying - instead.

And my own position isn't "Well I like it, so it shouldn't change" (and hers seems not to be, either). It's "many people do like it, so any changes should leave at least one healer untouched for the people that enjoy current day healing". I've gone even further, proposing changes to the different healers based on their capabilities and playstyles (e.g. how AST should have a 1-2-3 to ensure a constant rotation that they can plan Card plays around vs SCH being DoT focused because of both its past and that it can lean on Eos and her oGCD support abilities as well as Aetherflow to heal while maintaining DoT uptime, and SGE having a RDM/BLM-lite rotation due to leveraging Kardia to heal instead and so it using a damage rotation with Kardia swapping/augmenting abilities and its healing efficacy being based on how skilled the player is with their DPS rotation seems a natural fit - and is arguably what SGE in PvP is already doing, admittedly with a simpler rotation) and which should be left alone AND WHY - WHM due to it traditionally being the easy one anyway, only ever having 1 more DoT (if we don't include 2.1 allowing Thunder to be cross-classed OR count SB where they also had Aero 3...which I still miss the animation of to this day), and being the base/"easy" healer that many healers get their start with before branching out as-is.

.

EDIT: I've been attacked for suggesting that ANY healer be allowed to stay as it is; even though the alternative (with these Devs) is likely for them ALL to remain as they are.

At the end of the day, it's up to the Devs. But it is important to understand that a large portion of the player base likes healing as it is. And they aren't all bads, trolls, and/or newbies. At the very least, the change side should acknowledge that and offer some compromise that isn't "Well, you can just be suboptimal by not using all the damage tools and just not run hard content and it won't matter". The irony is that these same people note how tone-deaf it was for Yoshi P to say "If you want a challenge, just run Ultimates", yet they're doing the inverse of that "If you don't like complex, just don't run anything harder than normals or have a group carry you".

The fact no one seems to realize they're doing the very thing they decried Yoshi P for doing, and something the Devs' design post SB has directly opposed, seems not to register...

[Nethereal]

EDIT: I've been attacked for suggesting that ANY healer be allowed to stay as it is; even though the alternative (with these Devs) is likely for them ALL to remain as they are.

At the end of the day, it's up to the Devs. But it is important to understand that a large portion of the player base likes healing as it is. And they aren't all bads, trolls, and/or newbies. At the very least, the change side should acknowledge that and offer some compromise that isn't "Well, you can just be suboptimal by not using all the damage tools and just not run hard content and it won't matter". The irony is that these same people note how tone-deaf it was for Yoshi P to say "If you want a challenge, just run Ultimates", yet they're doing the inverse of that "If you don't like complex, just don't run anything harder than normals or have a group carry you".

The fact no one seems to realize they're doing the very thing they decried Yoshi P for doing, and something the Devs' design post SB has directly opposed, seems not to register...

I'm fairly certain any post pertaining to liking the way current healing is will be be rebutted unless it simply is: "I like the way current healing is."

And even those posts might attract a certain ire not particular to the originator but from the people who flock in agreement with the sentiment.

While I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt way too many people who have said "I like the way healing is, *insert argument*." have been eventually found out for simply being narcissist's whose argument essentially boiled down to:

"I like the way it is, play with bad people if you want your job to be good, I don't care if you're not having fun, deal with it."

Sage was the perfect time for the devs to actually try something new especially with how they were touting it as the "dps healer" the sheer lack of recognition to even call it that or maybe the hubris tells us a lot about how job development in the future is going to be, at least for healer.

While I understand my fellow healers dislike to having a class stay the 'basic b*tch' If the devs ever do make healers good again there's a high likelihood that one healer is going to stay with the original design to appease both sides or in 6 years the 5th healer might be of the opposite current design.

In regards to the population that likes the way healing is, if it was a competition most of them would be "bad" or ranked extremely low, as is the rule of competence.
Incompetence will always be in more abundance than competence.
In terms of the amount of trolls in said group can't say there's anymore than usual in any particular group.

Using the above we could say that most healers who like the way current healing is simply don't understand the way current healer functions in the total or simply don't care to follow the way the game wants you to play it and just have fun with it regardless of consequence.
Such players would do just fine with any change as long as GCD heals remain intact as they do not strive to improve in any particular way or direction that doesn't include their enjoyment.
They don't run anything harder than normal already and groups already do carry them.
So it really wouldn't matter because they simply wouldn't change even if the buttons they pressed were changed.
What would change is people would more often recognize now how incompetent they are by the games standards but no more than people recognize free style SAM and ice mages so no biggie.

I wouldn't put completely misrepresenting the question intentionally or otherwise, giving a non answer in addition to dismissively shutting down said question on the same level as:

"Yeah it could be harder than it was before but not any harder than any of the dps classes or tank classes, healers are the only class that is infantilized by the devs."

Now if you disagree with the above that's a whole other can of worms.

The difference between the two comparisons you make is that one person doesn't understand the question in its entirety and probably gave a non-answer intentionally, has not experienced and probably has no experience in general about healing and is relegating a group to a specific corner of the game if they want to find enjoyment.

Whereas the other group understands both sides of the argument as they have been the noob and risen to the "elite hardcore raider" and are advocating for complexity across the board so everyone can have fun everywhere.

That's just my take though and I'm probably going to be quitting after I finish this next ultimate so~