What exactly is the design philosophy underlying the healer role?

[Liam_Harper]

If I were to take a swing at the philosophy of healers today, it could be wrapped up in a single word, "Accessibility."

Simple DPS kit makes it accessible for healers to be able to DPS (if they want to).

The thing is, dps literally doesn't matter below Savage so simple DPS toolkits don't really affect accessibility.

I can understand their intentions with why things hit like wet noodles and GCD heals are overpowered, that makes the role itself accessible. Even though I disagree and it's a bad direction, I understand the thought process. But I don't get why they're so against more dps buttons. It only affects experienced players. And then they add filler like Krasis and Protraction instead, that no one asked for and barely does anything. It just doesn't make sense.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The thing is, dps literally doesn't matter below Savage so simple DPS toolkits don't really affect accessibility.

I can understand their intentions with why things hit like wet noodles and GCD heals are overpowered, that makes the role itself accessible. Even though I disagree and it's a bad direction, I understand the thought process. But I don't get why they're so against more dps buttons. It only affects experienced players. And then they add filler like Krasis and Protraction instead, that no one asked for and barely does anything. It just doesn't make sense.

I still stand by my own opinion that they did this to lower the barrier entry into higher difficulties fight, which is just weird af since that very difficulty should’ve been there to be a measure for players to gauge whether said content is for them or not.

Krasis & Protraction honestly feels like “We don’t want you to think we’re ignoring you but whatever here’s your crumbs.”-kind of button.

[Liam_Harper]

I still stand by my own opinion that they did this to lower the barrier entry into higher difficulties fight, which is just weird af since that very difficulty should’ve been there to be a measure for players to gauge whether said content is for them or not.

Krasis & Protraction honestly feels like “We don’t want you to think we’re ignoring you but whatever here’s your crumbs.”-kind of button.

Yep, that's absolutely the reason. There's a lot of discussion about "they did it for new players!" but the reality is the sole reason is to boost participation in endgame content without directly nerfing it. The entire role is torn apart simply so they can hand the tiny bit of difficult content we have over to casual players.

Krasis and Protraction are their way of making no real changes to healers but pretending they did. Strong new heals are overkill and they don't want to add dps, so they have no choice but to add pretend filler and one lv90 skill.

[Nizzi]

The design philosophy is one of mediocrity and neglect. The developers don't care and have never once set out with the intention of designing any of these jobs with how the encounters are designed and how the game wants you to play them, nor have they ever set out to design any of these jobs in a way that the actual people who main them want. Healers are designed by DPS mains who take DPS players complaints regarding healers as the golden source of healer feedback. If they have a vision, it is so far removed from objective reality that it would be more of a comfort to hear that they simply don't give a shit rather than hearing they've actually tried to put any thought into these jobs. The design is so obscenely awful that any actual good ideas still present within these kits are there not because of meaningful design decisions, but because the developers have been too incompetent to remove them yet. If you want a vision of the next 10 years of XIV, all you need to do is look at Sage and remember that Yoshida unironically believes that that boring, sterile trashpile of a job is somehow the high skill "DPS" healer for players who want more to do.

Through healers you pass into the city of woe, through healers you pass into eternal pain. Abandon all hope, ye who heal in XIV.

[Punslinger]

If you want a vision of the next 10 years of XIV, all you need to do is look at Sage and remember that Yoshida unironically believes that that boring, sterile trashpile of a job is somehow the high skill "DPS" healer for players who want more to do.

"A fun, engaging healer role? I don't want it! I want healers to only spend GCDs on healing and nothing else! Even after the Ultimates are on farm, I want healers to do nothing but heal, for ten years at least!" - YoshiderP, probably.

[Supersnow845]

The design philosophy is one of mediocrity and neglect. The developers don't care and have never once set out with the intention of designing any of these jobs with how the encounters are designed and how the game wants you to play them, nor have they ever set out to design any of these jobs in a way that the actual people who main them want. Healers are designed by DPS mains who take DPS players complaints regarding healers as the golden source of healer feedback. If they have a vision, it is so far removed from objective reality that it would be more of a comfort to hear that they simply don't give a shit rather than hearing they've actually tried to put any thought into these jobs. The design is so obscenely awful that any actual good ideas still present within these kits are there not because of meaningful design decisions, but because the developers have been too incompetent to remove them yet. If you want a vision of the next 10 years of XIV, all you need to do is look at Sage and remember that Yoshida unironically believes that that boring, sterile trashpile of a job is somehow the high skill "DPS" healer for players who want more to do.

Through healers you pass into the city of woe, through healers you pass into eternal pain. Abandon all hope, ye who heal in XIV.

People who unironically think that sage is difficult actually make me laugh, it’s so broken in dungeons that I cannot believe it was actually balanced that way, the class is brain dead and you get so much power from it that it makes me worry even after this many years of forum complaints square still has no idea the problems we have with healers

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

People who unironically think that sage is difficult actually make me laugh, it’s so broken in dungeons that I cannot believe it was actually balanced that way, the class is brain dead and you get so much power from it that it makes me worry even after this many years of forum complaints square still has no idea the problems we have with healers

Didn’t the dev themselves had mentioned something like “We feel that maximizing damage while minimizing the amount of time spent on healing is not something a Healer role should do.”(paraphrasing) sometime in the past? CMIIW.

Honestly it’s both unsurprising & quite depressing considering how much contradictions in that statement in comparison to their thought about SGE.

[Supersnow845]

Didn’t the dev themselves had mentioned something like “We feel that maximizing damage while minimizing the amount of time spent on healing is not something a Healer role should do.”(paraphrasing) sometime in the past? CMIIW.

Honestly it’s both unsurprising & quite depressing considering how much contradictions in that statement in comparison to their thought about SGE.

I honestly believe the start and end of their design philosophy with SGE was “people want a DPS healer but we can’t isolate our cure 1 spammers so let’s make the healing as inconsequential as possible then everything else can just be the rework we were going to give SCH”

[SenzorialBoundries]

design philosophy is to give you the illusion of healing heavily scripted encounters. Was looking at some logs of mine in p4s the most gcd heals i pressed with whm were 5 for the whole encounter. A whooping 5... 2 medica 2's and 3 cure 3's. (i didint count lillies since using a lilly is the same as casting a glare.)

[Gemina]

design philosophy is to give you the illusion of healing heavily scripted encounters. Was looking at some logs of mine in p4s the most ogcd heals i pressed with whm were 5 for the whole encounter. A whooping 5... 2 medica 2's and 3 cure 3's. (i didint count lillies since using a lilly is the same as casting a glare.)

Those are all GCD heals...

If you were using that many GCD heals, I can definitely see why you used so little oGCD heals. Not that I blame you, GCD heals are far more fun to use.