Healers need an overhaul

[elioaiko]

Needlessly said, healers in this game has been a hot topic.

The irony is that in any game with "healers", 9/10 they have dps buttons and are meant to balance both.

The double standard of "you should only heal because you're a healer"–you can literally do both. No buts, no ifs, no whats. If there is a timer (enrage, then you need to put in dps as a healer. Point blank.

In nearly every game I've played, healers are chosen/picked for either CC, buffs, debuffs or strong enough to solo heal and even then, you're still contributing when no healing is required.

Healers have been asked to be overhauled for years and the devs are at a crossroads, embrace the green dps that their combat design corners the healer design into or alienate the playerbase even more. No one is happy with the state of healers.

1. It's boring because there's no real depth pass AST (and even then they dumbed down cards). No one sticks around because it's way too easy. What dps would want to cross over and spam one button for dps?

2. They refuse to expand on their dps kits because that would prove the heal-only purists wrong and cause even more drama. Nor do they want to admit that they've pretty much ignored healers in favor of dps–the majority of their playerbase.

3. Healers have to compete with each other because there's no utility pass a two minute buff and some cards ala AST.

And really a lot of their issues boil down to the fact that the combat design they've curated over the years has no more depth other than 2min buffs and dps enrage.

They got rid of aggro management, weapon resistances, role to job flavored skills. Everything feels samey and the irony is that people are only realizing that the devs have zero creative energy anymore because they're starting to show in their dps changes. Sad because tanks and healers have long been told to shut up and deal with it but when their precious jobs get the dumb down hammer, it's war.

Interested in seeing how the devs will handle this. Will they finally hire new creative blood or continue to hurt the playerbase with their lack of communication and fear of experimentation.

[Lauront]

2. They refuse to expand on their dps kits because that would prove the heal-only purists wrong and cause even more drama. Nor do they want to admit that they've pretty much ignored healers in favor of dps–the majority of their playerbase.

It's strange to me that SGE wasn't used as a testing mechanism to see how players would respond to a healer with an actual dps rotation - my guess is it would be very popular if it did have this. Instead, it's pretty much the same as the rest.

[Nethereal]

It's strange to me that SGE wasn't used as a testing mechanism to see how players would respond to a healer with an actual dps rotation - my guess is it would be very popular if it did have this. Instead, it's pretty much the same as the rest.

I think the overhead for the development team knows what they want, something that already "works".

I think the devs have gotten lazy, they only have 4(?) people developing and balancing all these jobs and none of them main/play healer and they've shown consistently that they don't understand how healers in this game function/play.
I also think the feedback is curated not only from outside sources but inside sources probably censor themselves as well.

The dev team has simply gotten lazy imo or overworked. They simply refuse to hire more staff to get the job done.
There are far too many examples:

•Going Blade having more initial dps(390) than Rage of Halone(330) from level 54 to until you got Royal Authority at level 60(420)
•Aero 2(60, 30s, 200mp) simply being a better Dia(60, 30s, 400mp)
•Medica 2(1000) heals more than cure 2(800) on a single target
•Blood Lily(1,240) is a straight dps gain from Glare(290) below level 82
•The fact macrocosmos interacted the way it did with the kill mechanic in p3s(It was a dev oversight don't pretend they actually know what they're doing)
•Warriors get access to Surging Tempest through Mythril Tempest at level 40 despite it being designed to be accessed at level 50(never addressed, just another dev oversight)

There are probably a few more I missed but put simply nobody being paid to run this game is producing A+ Quality anymore. When was the last time we even had a new event that wasn't recycled?

I said it in another post:

Sage was just a developer "f*ck you." to the community, specifically the healer community because they begrudgingly had to give SCH Energy Drain back after they took it away.

So they just copied SCH without Energy Drain, did a few touch ups and released it as a new healer, 2 birds 1 stone. They even advertised it as the "dps healer" for that chef's kiss.

[Lauront]

•Going Blade having more initial dps(390) than Rage of Halone(330) from level 54 to until you got Royal Authority at level 60(420)
•Aero 2(60, 30s, 200mp) simply being a better Dia(60, 30s, 400mp)
•Medica 2(1000) heals more than cure 2(800) on a single target
•Blood Lily(1,240) is a straight dps gain from Glare(290) below level 82
•The fact macrocosmos interacted the way it did with the kill mechanic in p3s(It was a dev oversight don't pretend they actually know what they're doing)
•Warriors get access to Surging Tempest through Mythril Tempest at level 40 despite it being designed to be accessed at level 50(never addressed, just another dev oversight)

There are probably a few more I missed but put simply nobody being paid to run this game is producing A+ Quality anymore. When was the last time we even had a new event that wasn't recycled?

I said it in another post:

Some of the names were just weird as well. Glare to Glare 3, Holy to Holy 3. I thought these were just media tour errors but... nope.

[AwesomeJr44]

Some of the names were just weird as well. Glare to Glare 3, Holy to Holy 3. I thought these were just media tour errors but... nope.

Glare 2 and Holy 2 were the combo actions planned for healer but Yoshi P wanted more dev focus on his favorite job, so WHM didn't get them added in.

[Sebazy]

It's strange to me that SGE wasn't used as a testing mechanism to see how players would respond to a healer with an actual dps rotation - my guess is it would be very popular if it did have this. Instead, it's pretty much the same as the rest.

This should be printed out and stuck to Yoshida's door. DNC was a missed opportunity too. Yoshida's team need to take a long hard look at the healer experience in this game top to bottom and I can only see threads like these continuing to get louder and louder until something changes. The problem is.....

I think the devs have gotten lazy, they only have 4(?) people developing and balancing all these jobs and none of them main/play healer and they've shown consistently that they don't understand how healers in this game function/play.

It's more the second IMO. As I detailed here, I don't think Sato's team has forgotten what made ARR's WHM and SCH gel together so well, but rather the game has just gotten too complex for them to devote sufficient time to the role. Calling them lazy is unfair imo, they are anything but to manage as long as they have with the increases in job count, complexity and player demands over the years. I'm not sure if the blame is with Yoshida stubbornly believing they are still up to the task or if SE's finance and HR aren't willing to let him spend the sort of money required to fix it, but it's almost certainly one of those two things that's ultimately to blame for this situation now.

[Nethereal]

I'm also more inclined to think they're overworked.

It's so common in companies to simply not hire more people to develop a better product because overworking staff and producing B tier or C tier product is good enough already.