White Mage Attraction

[vetch]

You know what WHM has that actually been a niche ability? Presence of Mind - literally speeds up your GCD casts. Wow, something different and synergizes well with White Mage's GCD-gameplay! Why is it not used for GCD Healing? That's because we have so much healing that it will rarely ever be used for GCD healing. That's why it becomes Glare x300, but we already press Glare for most of the fight because we have so much healing power in regards to the content's overall damage. Nothing changes except Presence of Mind becomes a DPS skill on cooldown. No versatility.

Just pause for a moment to think - if damage was actually high enough where Presence of Mind actually was an ability we use to determine whether we should save the ability for a very fast damage-heavy duration of a fight, then it would be different.
The reality is that, the skill doesn't work like that. The gameplay doesn't work like that.
This is why healer gameplay sucks. There is no real thought to damage - so healing in the game is very uninspiring.

You can actually use PoM for healing if you roulette into Stone Vigil, where you have Cure 2 but not Holy, with a tank that pulls wall-to-wall. It's exciting! And versatile! For 0.5% of content.

[Punslinger]

...especially when the "the community" game design assigns zero utility to healing and mitigation.

FTFY.

The "community" assigns zero value to healing because the game design assigns zero value to healing. In most scenarios that most players will encounter, healing is not necessary. When everything except for two Savages and three Ultimates can be cleared without healers at all, that is a pretty strong sign that the game design does not prioritize, require, reward, or value healing. So why would any rational player place a value on something that the game doesn't value?

When every fight is on a static script, and when healer kits are absurdly overpowered relative to the pitiful amount of incoming damage, and when avoidable mechanics are frequently one-shots or give a damage down debuff, and when enrage timers are tuned as they currently are, the game is practically screaming at you, "I want you to DPS, not heal!"

[AmiableApkallu]

In most scenarios that most players will encounter, healing is not necessary.

Most scenarios that most players will encounter will involve normal mode content with standard party comps of players of average skill playing their jobs and mechanics less than perfectly.

But anyway, a rational player would place value on healing so that the game design itself might come to value it. Why would a game designer ramp up damage so high that a healer would find it necessary to use GCD heals when the players complain that "GCD heals are a DPS loss"?

[vetch]

Most scenarios that most players will encounter will involve normal mode content with standard party comps of players of average skill playing their jobs and mechanics less than perfectly.

But anyway, a rational player would place value on healing so that the game design itself might come to value it. Why would a game designer ramp up damage so high that a healer would find it necessary to use GCD heals when the players complain that "GCD heals are a DPS loss"?

Your horse and cart are backwards. The community has developed an emphasis on green DPS as a response to FF14's design degenerating to value DPS so nakedly. If enrages had stayed as loose as they were in ARR, outgoing damage as high, and healer design as difficult to DPS effectively with, then you wouldn't even need to explain to players that healing is important; they'd know it (as they did know it) from having experienced the disastrous outcomes of healers DPSing away when they should heal.

You can't blame players for learning how a game works and adapting their behavior to be better at it -- that is the point of playing a game.

[Liam_Harper]

Why would a game designer ramp up damage so high that a healer would find it necessary to use GCD heals when the players complain that "GCD heals are a DPS loss"?

Unnecessary GCD heals are a dps loss. Big difference. No one has a problem using a GCD heal when it's genuinely needed.

[AmiableApkallu]

Unnecessary GCD heals are a dps loss. Big difference. No one has a problem using a GCD heal when it's genuinely needed.

In the parlance of the game, /doubt. The "community's" favored formulas say otherwise.

[AmiableApkallu]

You can't blame players for learning how a game works and adapting their behavior to be better at it -- that is the point of playing a game.

Yes and no. I can certainly appreciate healers determining how best to play the game as it is given to them, and I can still insist that it's a travesty that they don't fight harder to demand that the game evolve (or return to its roots -- apologies for having played FFXIV for ~1 year) so that their nominal role be valued.

[Semirhage]

Your horse and cart are backwards. The community has developed an emphasis on green DPS as a response to FF14's design degenerating to value DPS so nakedly. If enrages had stayed as loose as they were in ARR, outgoing damage as high, and healer design as difficult to DPS effectively with, then you wouldn't even need to explain to players that healing is important; they'd know it (as they did know it) from having experienced the disastrous outcomes of healers DPSing away when they should heal.

You can't blame players for learning how a game works and adapting their behavior to be better at it -- that is the point of playing a game.

Pretty much this. And you can say it until you're blue in the face, but the FFXIV community (especially in the general forums and places like lolReddit) will eternally Motte-and-Bailey the hell out of a defensive reaction to it. Point out that game design encourages something, and you're a brainrotted elitist sweatlord obsessing over optimization strategies when you should just chillax and enjoy overhealing that's just not that big of a deal maaaaaan. Who cares that WHM sucks so badly, everything is viable.

But gosh, healers being designed like shit is such a weird insurmountable problem. Can't be because they're badly designed, only parse pigs care about things like reward systems or a job gauge that rewards casting healing spells whether you healed intelligently or not. Who concerns themselves with the game teaching bad habits?

You'd think WHM being dead last place in performance with regularity is indicative of a set of problems with its design, but that's clearly just an obsession with orange logs talking.

[Semirhage]

In the parlance of the game, /doubt. The "community's" favored formulas say otherwise.

This is also an issue of intra-role imbalance. You can have tradeoffs, or no tradeoffs. Why do AST and SGE just have a crapload of completely free heals that cost them zero DPS? In a game where the DPS race is the point of basically every encounter, your potential DPS is a huge boon. Why bring a SnoozeMage with few oGCDs and a bunch of lossy GCD heals when you have another option that can heal for free and lose no DPS? Would you like a $5 piece of cake, or a $0 piece of cake?

Yeah I know the way this discussion normally ends is "lol bro who cares it's just five bucks it doesn't matter in the end why do you care so much" Because proportionally, 5 is infinitely more than zero.

One of the big things that has kept WHM an unattractive pick from a numbers standpoint is that, for the longest time, Square decided that WHM's "niche" was healing throughput. This might be a workable identity. In a different game. Because Square Enix has also made it abundantly clear: they want all party comps to be viable, and by viable, they mean comfortably so- not clearing by the skin of your teeth at the absolute skill ceiling, but clearable in a midcore, relatively chill party. One of the knock-on effects from this design consideration is that healers must all have healing throughput that comfortably clears everything. So if everyone has a massive amount of healing throughput as a baseline, what's the point of having -even more-? Making a class that's easier for someone really bad at healing to clear something I guess? It's not an advantage that makes WHM attractive to a skilled player. It's a safety net that makes them less attractive the more skilled you get.

[Supersnow845]

Yes and no. I can certainly appreciate healers determining how best to play the game as it is given to them, and I can still insist that it's a travesty that they don't fight harder to demand that the game evolve (or return to its roots -- apologies for having played FFXIV for ~1 year) so that their nominal role be valued.

It’s not like 14 healers wouldn’t want more healing, ask any savage 14 healer who Parses even a green what they think is wrong with healers and you’ll get 2 answers

-damage is too boring
-there isn’t enough healing to justify my kit

The first one is both the homogenisation of healer DPS and a facet of the second one, we would be happy to accept more healing if it was actually introduced but we instead are forced to ask for more DPS options because square utterly refuses to raise the amount of healing needed in the game to the point where you don’t even need a regen healer till like phase 6 of a current ultimate even in chill level parties

Give us one or give us both but currently we are stuck with neither