[Petition] Have Naoki Yoshida Play Healer and take off the DPS Gloves for a year.

[Nizzi]

Only Bane and ED did and they did it in a very negative and counter-productive way as they restrict the usage of AF heals. And this is why ED got removed twice or at least they tried to.

They removed Bane from SCH in the same expac they removed the Aetherflow cost of it on SMN, so maybe they should've just done that instead? SCH's DoTs weren't preventing it from healing, which is why their removal doesn't make sense. We can argue that ED is bad design for SCH until we go red in the face, but if their stated goal was because SCHs were focused too much on DPS and not enough on healing - why did they bring back ED and leave in Dissipation while removing things like Shadow Flare, Miasma, Miasma II and Bane? Miasma especially was a casted DoT, not preventing SCH from healing anymore than Broil or Bio? Miasma and Bane would fit perfectly in SCH's kit now, so why remove them?

[Sebazy]

I have seen many people here on the forum state that healers in the past had more dps buttons/options but I find that to be staggeringly misleading.

If we go back to the start of ARR: WHM used 3 dots, a single gcd nuke, a single gcd aoe in holy, fluid aura as an oGCD and PoM as a decent self buff.

SCH used 4 dots, 2 gcd nukes (Ruin and Ruin II for mobility), a gcd aoe dot in shadow flare (and would gain Blizzard as a spammable GCD in 2.1), an ogcd aoe dot spreader in bane, an ogcd in Energy drain and a negligible group buff in Selene.

The key difference I think you're overlooking here is that the dots had varying durations as well as some carrying upfront potency whilst others had none. Thunder wasn't worth casting if it wouldn't run its full duration, aero II often was. Even if you hand wave away the the additional buttons as simply dots, keeping a track of 3 timers that were both varied and shorter than what we have now was a good amount of busy work, something that's sorely lacking for most of the game nowadays.

And to anyone that says 'but it's only a tiny regression' I would say: Why have we regressed at all after 4 expansions?

I'm not going to touch the ED discussion as there really isn't a right answer IMO, but bane was a great ability and SCH is far worse off for its loss. More in kit interactivity is a great point though and its something that SE really need to explore further, 6.1's Lily tweaks have put it in an excellent place and my only concern is how it will be addressed with the release of 7.0 and if it'll be overlooked again.

Regarding fairy spam it's not as bad as you might think. I personally started out with macros before switching to gamepad emulation on macro hotkeys with a bank of 9 macro keys on my old Corsair keyboard as to be able to spam the fairy without eating the macro queueing delay. There were all sorts of other solutions as well, free spinning mouse wheels were probably my favourite but I also know that some used foot pedals as well.

Say what you will about how clunky it was, but at least it held our attention

[VentVanitas]

I have seen many people here on the forum state that healers in the past had more dps buttons/options but I find that to be staggeringly misleading. In terms of rotation, healers have always dealt damage through Nukes and DoTs. In the past (HS, ARR) low-level DoTs were incorporated into the rotation of healers because they happened to deal mildly more damage than the spammable nuke. SCH before fairy changes was a mess that required actively using macros for better performance or spam click-on embrace each time you cast a spell throughout the entire encounter. I would bet that it was far worse in terms of gameplay than what we have now.

I'll take SB SCH and all its jank with late Deployment/Bane ticks, Embrace spam, pet action delays and macros any day over the soulless meat puppet we have now calling itself "Scholar."

[tearagion]

I have seen many people here on the forum state that healers in the past had more dps buttons/options but I find that to be staggeringly misleading. In terms of rotation, healers have always dealt damage through Nukes and DoTs. In the past (HS, ARR) low-level DoTs were incorporated into the rotation of healers because they happened to deal mildly more damage than the spammable nuke. SCH before fairy changes was a mess that required actively using macros for better performance or spam click-on embrace each time you cast a spell throughout the entire encounter. I would bet that it was far worse in terms of gameplay than what we have now.

The only noticeable changes might be the removal of Aero 3 which was replaced with Misery in the same patch and Shadowflare of SCH which in essence is DoT again and not an ability that interacts in some shape or form with the rest of the kit. Only Bane and ED did and they did it in a very negative and counter-productive way as they restrict the usage of AF heals. And this is why ED got removed twice or at least they tried to.

Healers of the past also had fewer oGCD healing tools putting slightly more pressure onto the GCD, generally longer cast times, the DoTs were different durations, and Cleric Stance even in its simplest iteration was a 90s buff window to work around. People state it because it's true.

People don't criticize the Fairy control changes because they don't disagree with them, this isn't the 'gotcha' you think it is.

[Sebazy]

Healers of the past also had fewer oGCD healing tools putting slightly more pressure onto the GCD, generally longer cast times, the DoTs were different durations, and Cleric Stance even in its simplest iteration was a 90s buff window to work around. People state it because it's true.

People don't criticize the Fairy control changes because they don't disagree with them, this isn't the 'gotcha' you think it is.

I paid a lot of therapy bills to get over cleric stance

[AnotherPerson]

I have seen many people here on the forum state that healers in the past had more dps buttons/options but I find that to be staggeringly misleading. In terms of rotation, healers have always dealt damage through Nukes and DoTs. In the past (HS, ARR) low-level DoTs were incorporated into the rotation of healers because they happened to deal mildly more damage than the spammable nuke. SCH before fairy changes was a mess that required actively using macros for better performance or spam click-on embrace each time you cast a spell throughout the entire encounter. I would bet that it was far more atrocious in terms of gameplay than what we have now.

The only noticeable changes might be the removal of Aero 3 which was replaced with Misery in the same patch and Shadowflare of SCH which in essence is DoT again and not an ability that interacts in some shape or form with the rest of the kit. Only Bane and ED did and they did it in a very negative and counter-productive way as they restrict the usage of AF heals. And this is why ED got removed twice or at least they tried to.

No, what was staggeringly misleading is the amount of healing that healers had to do in relation to their GCD is much higher in the past than it is currently.
In the past, tanks did not have that much self-sustain nor mitigation. Tanks still had parry/block/blind (flash) as ways to mitigate damage. They had to "cross-class" skills like Reprisal and Rampart for mitigation because Rampart was a Paladin skill and Reprisal was a Dark Knight skill. Even so, the amount of sustain at their disposal was much worse than it is today.

Healers had less skills that were on the off-global cooldown (abilities) that healed themselves, thus -- more of their GCD used Cure/Cure II/Regen/Medica II/Succor/Adloquium/etc. This is largely more visible in Lv 50 Coils.
This is also due to the fact that healing in the past actually had more variance -- enemies can critical hit much more often, making healers actually heal more using their GCD spells.

As a result, the effect of using their main attack skill is much less noticeable. Especially if you include having multiple DoT skills to juggle around with different timers as well.

This means for each GCD skill, the ratio of the GCD spent on healing to DPSing is much more balanced in the past than it is currently. You would be spending more GCDs to heal than GCDs to do damage because you didn't have that many oGCD skills to heal. Instead, we had skills that improved GCD healing instead (Divine Seal, old Celestial Opposition + Time Dilation extending Aspected Helios/Aspected Benefic buff). We even had skills to REDUCE aggro on healing because healing too much was an actual problem (Ex: Shroud of Saints / Luminiferous Aether).

Now, tanks have been homogenized and gained a lot more % mitigation skills, especially once we enter Shadowbringers (a huge homogenization across the board for all roles). Tanks have also gained a lot more self sustain in Endwalker - to the point where they can keep themselves alive without a healer. Healers have such a huge abundance of healing power with healing abilities that majority of the time, they can keep up their single attack skill in each GCD and weave in a healing ability between GCDs instead. As a result, there is a huge imbalance between each GCD for the ratio of healing to DPSing. All the healing was just moved over from GCD skills to oGCD abilities.

However, the damage requirements never went up to account for this -- and by damage requirements, I am referring to unavoidable damage. Damage that must be healed through. Instead, they went down. Auto attacks no longer critical hits. There is much less variance to healing. There is MORE of a demand to mitigate properly - but this is also a party-wide thing if raidwides are lethal. It's not a healer thing when everyone is contributing to mitigation effort (Addle/Feint/Reprisal/Heart of Light/Passage of Arms/Troubadour/Shield Samba/Tactician to name a few).

Mechanics are fine, BUT they generally force healers to either "heal nothing because the party knows how to handle it" or "heal/revive because the mechanic is the type that one-shot a party member".
That inherently means the healer's healing toolkit is entirely dependent on whether the team is playing badly or not playing badly. If the party is playing fine, then healers do NOTHING BUT DPS because of the amount of time it takes for mechanics to resolve is much larger than actual unavoidable damage.

We don't use our GCD to set up stuff like Protect or Stoneskin anymore. We only really use our GCD for damage now. Except instead of having a variety of ways DPS like Aero, Aero II, Aero III, Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare, etc. all healers have is 2 buttons for DPS for most of the fight.

And healers have been consistently told that the developers will never increase damage to the point where we need to consistently heal. So, we're left in a state where healers have been using the same GCD attack skill (Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis) as much as tanks auto attacks these days.

[QooEr]

SCH before fairy changes was a mess that required actively using macros for better performance or spam click-on embrace each time you cast a spell throughout the entire encounter. I would bet that it was far worse in terms of gameplay than what we have now.

you quite literally did not need to embrace spam to clear any content. embrace spam was reserved for only the highest of optimization for speedkills and parse runs. if anyone didnt want to do it, even for their ultimate reclears, they could simply choose not to and the fairy AI could do its job just fine

literally the epitome of optional complexity, yet somehow thats bad?

[Katoar]

snip

Old Cleric stance goes against the very concept of current healers which is to heal while dealing damage. Switching MND stat to INT is a thing of the past where healers were either spamming DPS GCDs or Healing GCDs.

Cleric stance as 5% dmg buff was probably removed as it brings nothing unique to any of the healing jobs.

And to anyone that says 'but it's only a tiny regression' I would say: Why have we regressed at all after 4 expansions?

DoT based gameplay did have its own merits. However, I do not share the opinion that healers have regressed after 4 years of expansions. Today, instead of tracking multiple DoT timers, you track your oGCDs heals so that you can press your nuke more. It is simple and seemingly shallow but choosing to press your nuke instead of healing with GCD can end up being a choice between risking the death of your tank/party or playing it safe and eating the DPS loss. When in a savage party you also have to take the possibility of your co-healer healing or not healing and adjust accordingly and the presence or absence of party mitigation depending on what type of party you have entered. These are things you have to keep track of as they directly impact your gameplay.

snip

I don't see a problem with healing being handled by oGCDs. Healers are effectively creating "downtime" for themselves the better they utilize their heals so that they can focus on DPS-ing.

[pikalovr]

Please be mindful of others. A lot of people on the forums don't agree with his arguments, however this doesn't mean his point is not valid. He has made multiple valid points, that were demeaningly dismissed with "Oh, look Sylphie"

all of his points are shit as multiple people keep disproving them but go off ig. and a few potental good ones doesn't mean the rest are absolute shit takes cause they are if 90% of them are shit takes i'm gonna say he's coming in here with shit takes cause he is plain and simple

[Xtrasweettea]

DoT based gameplay did have its own merits. However, I do not share the opinion that healers have regressed after 4 years of expansions. Today, instead of tracking multiple DoT timers, you track your oGCDs heals so that you can press your nuke more. It is simple and seemingly shallow but choosing to press your nuke instead of healing with GCD can end up being a choice between risking the death of your tank/party or playing it safe and eating the DPS loss. When in a savage party you also have to take the possibility of your co-healer healing or not healing and adjust accordingly and the presence or absence of party mitigation depending on what type of party you have entered. These are things you have to keep track of as they directly impact your gameplay.

You had to track all of those things... even with the extra dots or unique buffs from cards.

Tracking OGCDs are not difficult. The game gives you a flexible UI that you can slot in those pretty icons that happen to show you cooldown time.

Can a GCD be life or death? Yes it can. Will it be most of the time? No.

Need to work with a co-healer? You will adjust or they will. If you are unsure of your co-healer, bring your own.

I am not even close to being the world's best healer in FF14, but I even know that we have regressed as a class (oddly enough in a game where progression is vertical). It is honestly insulting.

Especially since none of those things you mentioned are even hard once a player gets used to the basics of the class and content. This game is so forgiving on casual and mid-core content. Tracking things in FF14 shouldn't be hard for healers in this iteration.

Especially when I can recall all of the things we had to track manually in FFXI. Each spell in FFXI had their own cast time and cool down. There were no pretty icons. You had to either pop open your spell menu or used /recast <spellname>. GCD didn't exist. No passive mana regen either, you had to /heal or rely on other players with a Refresh ability/spell, rare/expensive gear, Ethers, or Juice. All the while manually tracking buff timers because there were no icons to show you what buff someone had (you only had the combat log to show you when something falls off) and standing in what you may think is a safe spot because enemies didn't place orange markers for mechanics (you had to guess/know). Oh, and wipes mean you lose hours to months worth of progress (counting on the content and the player). Wipe in an exp party: WHM may be a few hours loss of progress, DPS could be weeks due to wait times. EXP parties are casual content in FFXI.


Now my back hurts, great. Where's my walker and blue robe?