What exactly is the design philosophy underlying the healer role?

[LeonKeyh]

Accessible is being extremely charitable. Also, your last statement is a conclusion "by being accessible (your word, not mine) more people will play healers" - maybe, maybe not. Which thereby threatens your desired outcome- i.e. DPS queues are quicker.

Why should a job be designed for people who are not good at it? Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for bad job design in any way. However, while there are people who are are good at every job, in many cases a person will tend to play a job they like, which is generally one that they are good at. So why would a job designer look at those people who really can barely function at a job and make decisions that limit everyone else ?

I'm fairly sure that most (admittedly unofficial) censuses have shown an increase in healers/tanks being played after they slaughtered their gameplay. I'm not sure how a more balanced community "threatens" DPS queues being quicker. Reason why DPS queues are slow is because most people play DPS and there aren't enough healers/tanks to fill the parties that DPS wants. Current DPS queues are extremely reasonable.

For example, let's say there are 100 Tanks, 100 Healers, and 200 DPS running a particular queue (I know it's unlikely, just trying to explain why this makes DPS queues quicker)

That is exactly 100 parties worth of people, so, if people are queuing nonstop, they'll basically have instant queues.

Now, if there are 50 Tanks, 50 Healers, and 300 DPS there are 200 DPS that don't have tanks/healers. That means those DPS players at front of the queue need to sit around and wait for the tanks/healers to complete their duty (anywhere between 1 minute and 30 minutes), the ones at the back can wait upwards of 60 minutes. I realize that the queue is never this exact and people are never all queuing at the same time, but this makes it easy to see how important having a fairly balanced community is for DPS queues.


Why should it be designed for people who are not good at it? Well, it SHOULDN'T, but it very clearly is being designed that way to get more people to play healers and tanks to get queue times lower. The secondary "issue" with the "design" is a lazy attempt to balance the jobs by...basically making them more or less the same. From a community standpoint, there definitely ARE people who play healer because of the... "design", they're the ones that screech anytime anyone brings up the fact that the healers are not engaging. Also, most community members complaining about healing....are still playing healers... so SE is getting exactly what they want.

[IDontPetLalas]

I'm fairly sure that most (admittedly unofficial) censuses have shown an increase in healers/tanks being played after they slaughtered their gameplay. I'm not sure how a more balanced community "threatens" DPS queues being quicker. Reason why DPS queues are slow is because most people play DPS and there aren't enough healers/tanks to fill the parties that DPS wants. Current DPS queues are extremely reasonable.

For example, let's say there are 100 Tanks, 100 Healers, and 200 DPS running a particular queue (I know it's unlikely, just trying to explain why this makes DPS queues quicker)

That is exactly 100 parties worth of people, so, if people are queuing nonstop, they'll basically have instant queues.

Now, if there are 50 Tanks, 50 Healers, and 300 DPS there are 200 DPS that don't have tanks/healers. That means those DPS players at front of the queue need to sit around and wait for the tanks/healers to complete their duty (anywhere between 1 minute and 30 minutes), the ones at the back can wait upwards of 60 minutes. I realize that the queue is never this exact and people are never all queuing at the same time, but this makes it easy to see how important having a fairly balanced community is for DPS queues.


Why should it be designed for people who are not good at it? Well, it SHOULDN'T, but it very clearly is being designed that way to get more people to play healers and tanks to get queue times lower. The secondary "issue" with the "design" is a lazy attempt to balance the jobs by...basically making them more or less the same. From a community standpoint, there definitely ARE people who play healer because of the... "design", they're the ones that screech anytime anyone brings up the fact that the healers are not engaging. Also, most community members complaining about healing....are still playing healers... so SE is getting exactly what they want.

Your queues may be reasonable, I won't dispute that, and I don't monitor queues on my datacenter very closely at all so i won't comment. The basic concept of how queues work isn't difficult to understand, neither is the concept of alt- which is why it is difficult to measure how many of those jobs are actually mains and how many are alts, unless you go to some additional sites that look at gear and additional information. Even then it isn't so easy.

the comment about 'screeching'- why even go there? and I do understand your point about SE "getting what it wants" although I disagree with those calling for a boycott of healers, although i do sympathize, I just don't think that SE is that smart with respect to healers.

[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.

[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.

[Selvokaz]

In my opinion, there are two types of Healers,

Sustain Healers: Sage and Scholar

and

Pinch Healers: White Mage, and Astrologian.

Of course, Regen and Shields apply as well as designations for healers, but let's focus on the other aspect right now.

Sustain Healers either through action or automatically continuously heal their party members, always giving them heals indirectly thus making the burden of keeping them alive less stressful overall. Sage does this with a combination of its shields and its offense imparting minor healing to the primary target of its Kardia ability. While Scholars Fairy regularly/automatically cast healing spells on party members who seem to need it the most, as well as the scholar itself buffering members with shields. This allows both jobs to regularly assault enemies with dps. There downsides, in my opinion, is their limited (by resources), ability to pinch heal. Yes using their job's limited resource gauges they can momentarily give out strong instant heals, they cannot, however, sustain it for too long.

Pinch Healers, the white mage, and AST excel just that, healing in a pinch, both have potent healing abilities that can take a party member from low to near full hp relatively quickly, though the White Mage does it way better than AST. Thanks to AST's Lightspeed she can dump Benefic II instantly multiple times over the duration of Lightspeed this is her path to Pinch healing supremacy but Lightspeed has a long cooldown, and if mismanaged really limits her ability to be a pinch healer. In a similar vein, WM has Presence of Mind which increase the speed they can dump out a lot of GCD healing like AST but not instantly, still, their OCGDs for healing outnumber AST and thus these are her path to healing supremacy.

Now that I think about it, Pinch could probably better be described as Burst healing.

So yeah, those are the design underlyings of the current healer role in my opinion.

[AmiableApkallu]

If you want to ponder the design philosophy of healers, start with the design philosophy of combat.

Damage comes in two forms: avoidable and unavoidable. Nominally, healers exist to mitigate incoming damage and restore HP after damage hits.

A party playing well reduces avoidable damage to zero. DPS playing well reduce the amount of time available for damage to go out (mobs and bosses die sooner rather than later). Tanks playing well make it more predictable who receives damage (the tanks) and reduce it (mitigations). In other words, a party playing well works to eliminate the reasons for having the healer role in the first place, a profound sort of anti-synergy that tanks and DPS do not suffer from.

Thus, healers and their kits are designed to accommodate some amount of mistakes and some minimal level of player skill, including that of the healers themselves. To arrive at a different design, you'd necessarily have to recalibrate how damage goes out in combat and recalibrate the minimal skill level required to clear content.

[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.

[IDontPetLalas]

In my opinion, there are two types of Healers,

Sustain Healers: Sage and Scholar

and

Pinch Healers: White Mage, and Astrologian.

Of course, Regen and Shields apply as well as designations for healers, but let's focus on the other aspect right now.

Sustain Healers either through action or automatically continuously heal their party members, always giving them heals indirectly thus making the burden of keeping them alive less stressful overall. Sage does this with a combination of its shields and its offense imparting minor healing to the primary target of its Kardia ability. While Scholars Fairy regularly/automatically cast healing spells on party members who seem to need it the most, as well as the scholar itself buffering members with shields. This allows both jobs to regularly assault enemies with dps. There downsides, in my opinion, is their limited (by resources), ability to pinch heal. Yes using their job's limited resource gauges they can momentarily give out strong instant heals, they cannot, however, sustain it for too long.

Pinch Healers, the white mage, and AST excel just that, healing in a pinch, both have potent healing abilities that can take a party member from low to near full hp relatively quickly, though the White Mage does it way better than AST. Thanks to AST's Lightspeed she can dump Benefic II instantly multiple times over the duration of Lightspeed this is her path to Pinch healing supremacy but Lightspeed has a long cooldown, and if mismanaged really limits her ability to be a pinch healer. In a similar vein, WM has Presence of Mind which increase the speed they can dump out a lot of GCD healing like AST but not instantly, still, their OCGDs for healing outnumber AST and thus these are her path to healing supremacy.

Now that I think about it, Pinch could probably better be described as Burst healing.

So yeah, those are the design underlyings of the current healer role in my opinion.

I saw the line about an AST dumping aspected benefic and WHM having more OGCDs than an AST in the case of an emergency, and sorry, I had to say 'what"??? I'm thinking ED, CI, CU, Macrocosmos, Exultation, Horoscope, etc...

I don't even go to the shield healers "continuously heal", I would agree that they are more pro-active as they don't want to get into specific situations that require burst heals, however when SE split into pure and shield healers there has been a fair bit of discussion as to where the end result made any sense.

[GoatOfWar]

The design philosophy of healers is the same as that of McDonalds. Cheap, accessible and easily consumed. But of shitty quality. They want as many people to play the role as possible so it's all of the aforementioned. It's easy to play, easy to find groups with and has very little room for mistakes or optimisation. If you're looking for a quality meal you should go to a real restaurant. Or in FF's case, play dps jobs instead. You will have to wait for your turn, but the food is great and of good quality in proper resaurants.