Is the "healing portion" of healers hitting a wall in EW?

[Raskbuck]

I can't speak for WoW, but I am also not sure how relevant it is because the healing in FFXIV is relative to the damage in its most punishing state. This typically translates to a 'two-strikes' you're out rule in FFXIV PvE content. IOW, get hit once, you're ok. Get hit again within a minute or two, and you're cooked. The healer has the ability to take away one of those strikes, or bring you back in case you do fail twice before they can fix you. Healers have more than one resource to help them with this, as for what should be obvious reasons, there are 3 to 23 other players they are looking after.

It's just a difference in encounter design, and neither is good or bad as it mostly depends on personal preference. My main gripe with the current healer design is that, once people have mastered a fight, it makes healers lose their relevancy besides handling the occasional AoE or Tank Buster that happen on a very scripted and predictable interval.

Just look at Aglaia for instance. It was fun when it first came out, specially fixing one of those two-strikes you mention. Nowadays it's mostly Glare, Glare, Glare, with the occasional off-GCD heal when an AoE comes. It obviously depends on the player's skill, and whether they are familiar with the encounter or not, but that's the general trend I see. Another example is how some groups prefer to run 1 Tank, 3 DPS for the Expert Roulette.

I like the whole "green DPS" meme as much as anyone else, but if I'm being serious for a moment, at that point I wonder why not just strip the role completely and just handle the healing responsibility to each person like in PvP.

[GeminiReed]

I'm one of the (very?) few on this forum against the idea of healer having a DPS rotation, and would only accept it if it's designed in a away that the DPS and healing channel do not interfere with each others for reason I had stated above. In my experience, if they are to be again given the choice between DPS or heal, the majority of healers I ran into can not be trust to make the responsible choice.

IMO I much prefer healer DPS and tank DPS to a lesser extent to only being required for the hardest content (Savage and Ultimate here). Encounters and healing should be engaging enough on their own merits and not require more DPS tools to be fun. Judging how the Role design team keeps taking away DPS toys from healers I wonder if they're of the same mind and are too polite to insist that healers heal.

Hint to the devs: If that's what you really want you need to stop coddling people who shouldn't be healing. Sure it should be accessible but you've simplified it so much that those motivated to play the role are so bored they're just not queuing. Instead of addressing the queue imbalance you've made it worse.

I like the whole "green DPS" meme as much as anyone else, but if I'm being serious for a moment, at that point I wonder why not just strip the role completely and just handle the healing responsibility to each person like in PvP.

Ugh, please no. GW2's little role-less experiment was wholly unappealing. My gripe has more to do with aggro management than healing but I find a solid trinity works best for the content that I like to do.

[Raskbuck]

Ugh, please no. GW2's little role-less experiment was wholly unappealing. My gripe has more to do with aggro management than healing but I find a solid trinity works best for the content that I like to do.

Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather replace the Glare spam with a Cure spam and play whack-a-mole with my party's HP. That's the healing style I grew up with, and the one I'm used to. We both know that kind of hot take is incredibly unpopular around these parts, though.

Healing should be, in my humble opinion, a game of attrition where you are trying to manage the group's resources before the timer (aka, MP depletion) runs out. But in FFXIV, MP is plentiful and healing impactful. So the only thing left to optimize is movement and DPS.

[Sebazy]

Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather replace the Glare spam with a Cure spam and play whack-a-mole with my party's HP. That's the healing style I grew up with, and the one I'm used to. We both know that kind of hot take is incredibly unpopular around these parts, though.

Is it though? I'd love to see some proper triage checks and it'd be a huge step up over what we have now.

IMHO at least as far as these boards are concerned, the only truly unpopular take is to simply keep things as they are.

[Raskbuck]

Is it though? I'd love to see some proper triage checks and it'd be a huge step up over what we have now.

IMHO at least as far as these boards are concerned, the only truly unpopular take is to simply keep things as they are.

I'd be stocked if we had a proper triage system in my favorite MMO, and I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong. But in a game where DPS metrics is how people measures someone's performance (and worth), I doubt it would be well received.

How do people usually determine if a healer is good? I'd be inclined to say it's through a parser, to check a percentile and see which candidate can squeeze the most amounts of Glares as efficiently as possible. Eliminating that metric would likely make it harder for people to sort others based on performance. Damage is, unfortunately, the only thing people seem to care about.

(Edit: I still remember one time, during a Trial, my co-healer did nothing but cast Stone III on the boss. He left all the healing to me in a seemingly unspoken agreement. When the fight ended, a party member commented on his performance and praised him for it. I think that experience stuck with me, despite happening many years ago, and it made me realize healers are just different in this game.)

I've seen all sort of arguments defending the status quo too. From people feeling anxious about increasing the healing requirements, because they feel the average healer wouldn't be able to handle it; to others being content with dealing so much damage to what's normally considered a support role.

[Sebazy]

How do people usually determine if a healer is good? I'd be inclined to say it's through a parser, to check a percentile and see which candidate can squeeze the most amounts of Glares as efficiently as possible. Eliminating that metric would likely make it harder for people to sort others based on performance. Damage is, unfortunately, the only thing people seem to care about.

Simple DPS percentiles are the most obvious metric, but people who are looking more deeply into things will tend to focus more on a players active rate. A player who can keep their GCD rolling through adversity will almost always be a 'better' player than one who freezes and starts dropping GCDs. They will simply be able to react better mid mechanic.

Ironically in the ARR beta when I was picked up by Solitude (who were one of the top EU raiding FC for a good long time), it was actually my habit of preemptively casting and then canceling if it wasn't needed that got me recruited

(Edit: I still remember one time, during a Trial, my co-healer did nothing but cast Stone III on the boss. He left all the healing to me in a seemingly unspoken agreement. When the fight ended, a party member commented on his performance and praised him for it. I think that experience stuck with me, despite happening many years ago, and it made me realize healers are just different in this game.)

A question for you, did you ever see a log of that fight? Healing in this game can be surprisingly deceptive if you're just relying on cast bars.

If we use this P1S log as an example

In that 7 minute fight, the only healing I did with a cast bar was 3 medica IIs (Which is ironically more than I needed really) and the rest of my kit was barely pressured either so if you were listening out for Tetras, watching for Asylum etc, it would have still looked pretty grim.

I actually out healed my co healer by ~20% there and we were both at around 40% overheal.

I've seen all sort of arguments defending the status quo too. From people feeling anxious about increasing the healing requirements, because they feel the average healer wouldn't be able to handle it; to others being content with dealing so much damage to what's normally considered a support role.

It's a tricky situation for sure. There's a million different angles and it's gotten to the point now where no matter what Yoshida does or doesn't do, people are going to be mad over it.

[Raskbuck]

Ironically in the ARR beta when I was picked up by Solitude (who were one of the top EU raiding FC for a good long time), it was actually my habit of preemptively casting and then canceling if it wasn't needed that got me recruited

I remember pre-casting! That brings back some fond memories, and looking back, I feel like I enjoyed healing back then a lot more than I do now. It's still something I do from time to time, even if it's not as needed.

A question for you, did you ever see a log of that fight? Healing in this game can be surprisingly deceptive if you're just relying on cast bars.

If we use this P1S log as an example

In that 7 minute fight, the only healing I did with a cast bar was 3 medica IIs (Which is ironically more than I needed really) and the rest of my kit was barely pressured either so if you were listening out for Tetras, watching for Asylum etc, it would have still looked pretty grim.

I actually out healed my co healer by ~20% there and we were both at around 40% overheal.

I didn't, no, so I concede there could have been something more to it than that. I'm usually very mindful about overhealing, and I let my regens do the work if possible. But, you are right, it's possible there was something more to it than what I remember.

It's a tricky situation for sure. There's a million different angles and it's gotten to the point now where no matter what Yoshida does or doesn't do, people are going to be mad over it.

Agreed. I think healing in general is difficult to design properly without compromising one side or the other.