Helare shortage in PF: what would bring you back?

[Risvertasashi]

My point is, they've made healing "less boring" and people are quitting in droves. The argument "healing is boring and causing a shortage" no longer adds up. It seems that making healing "less boring" has CAUSED a shortage, not the other way around.

Which also dovetails with what I said: If the people wanting "less boring" healing don't quickly step into the gap and put their money where their mouth was, if there are continued PF healer shortages, then SE is likely to revert the changes, not continue forward with them. So if you want healing being "less boring", those who feel that way, anyway, you collectively have to step up and fill those empty PF healer slots. People who don't want "more exciting" healing sure aren't going to do it for you.

As has been said - you have to look at why people think healing is boring or otherwise unsatisfying. And when you look at that, you'll see SE's adjustments and what players were complaining about doesn't line up.

Don't blame players here.

Unfortunately, based on the healer shortage and P8S being overtuned, I legitimately worry the next tier will be substantially easier. I just can't see the devs looking at the current landscape and finally concluding it's their healer design which is flawed. Nope. It's just too hard.

But, yeah, probably... Oh well.

[T-Owl]

I know what would drive me away: Healers having damage rotations. I'd quick healing in ANY high end content and the healer shortage would get worse.



This is honestly not a bad thing, but keep in mind how WoW does this is by having variations in healers. For example, WoW's Holy Priest (and Resto Druid if Balance subspeced) play almost like a Sylphie WHM in FFXIV today. But they do this alongside having melee healers (Mistwalker, Healadin), and the heal by damage Discipline Priest (RIFT had the Chloromancer, too). And all these variations on healing are allowed to co-exist in the same game at the same time.

There's zero reason FFXIV couldn't do the same, especially since it already did this back in ARR where both the pure healer (WHM) and support heal/dps hybrid (SCH) were accommodated and played in high-end content at the same time.

Wanna know what the joking irony is? Holy Priest has a more involved DPS rotation than most FF14 healers and it is basically the healer whose entire identity is being babies first healer. It has the generic filler in smite, a dot in shadow word pain, a stronger dps instant in holy word chastice but also a nuke with a short dot with holy fire and an execute in shadow word death. And holy word chastice has the benefit of having its 1 minute cd decreased with each smite and in the DF ptr there are some interesting damaging talents in a 30 seconds cd spell that increases the duration of your holy fire nuke and lets you use 3 without cd, therefore spreading it and one where the holy fire dot increases the dps of your filler. Balance affinity on the other hand gives you two dots, a dps spender and basically cleric stance to juggle around. So actually even less offensive oriented healers in WoW have more offensives which are more regularily used than healers in FF14. And Holy Priest isn't even that desirable half the time, but if it would be introduced in FF14 it would be the hardcore dps heavy healer. So your thesis of having your example of an absolute easy mode 1 dps rotation yet competetive dps healer in WoW is wrong. The difference is not how easy these classes are to dps but how well their healing synergizes with their dps. Some classes generate ressources or maintain healing through their dps rotation while others don't synergize at all and instead gain increased dps opportunities through proper maintenance and efficent healing, similarily to FF14.

And again, why are you advocating for your idea? Most Sylphies won't dps even without a dps rotation, having more things to press to dps would actually give them an additional excuse not to do so and in content where healer dps matters, players who can't perform a barebones and simplistic rotation, thats all anyone asks for, probably are not good enough for said content. If you can't press more than 1 button and weave a healing spell on the occasion, you wouldn't have the appropriate skill level to enter as any other role.

My point is, they've made healing "less boring" and people are quitting in droves. The argument "healing is boring and causing a shortage" no longer adds up. It seems that making healing "less boring" has CAUSED a shortage, not the other way around.

Which also dovetails with what I said: If the people wanting "less boring" healing don't quickly step into the gap and put their money where their mouth was, if there are continued PF healer shortages, then SE is likely to revert the changes, not continue forward with them. So if you want healing being "less boring", those who feel that way, anyway, you collectively have to step up and fill those empty PF healer slots. People who don't want "more exciting" healing sure aren't going to do it for you.

Have you considered that the issue may be the difficulty spike and that the issue is, that SE didn't design encounters so far which would slowly raise average healers towards the appropriate skill level? I mean, imagine if you would let DPS players jump from their level 30 rotation where they barely got their 1-2-3 rotation immediately to their level 90 one, where they have to interact with gauges, burst windows and weaving. Guess how many DPS would jump the ship in that case. But then again, what do you want healers to be? Do you want them to be the role of low expectations which can enter high level content at a much lower skill level than any other job and are basically reserved for the least skilled members of a party or do you want them to be a job equally engaged and challenged on all levels of content as others? If its former, I think its the later, the issue is in the difficulty courve introduced by SE. And I can tell you, Healers so far are the only role which in its entirety get easier while leveling up, because their toolkit is fashioned in a way that instead of their gameplay becoming more involved, you get more and more tools thrown at you to weave while dpsing without a change in the games damage profile to let the added tools at your disposal be accompanied with added requirements in healing.

[Rilifane]

I'd happily take the 12s dot, 18s dot, 30s oGCD and filler spam from ARR over anything we have today. Because those dot durations alone make all the difference and that rotation would be considerably more involved than what we have now.
It would be more like 234111213112111324111213 than 2311111111111 repeat ad nauseum.
And no, the Misery every 60s tops doesn't make it suddenly exciting, sorry. It's either a button you get for pushing buttons you have to push anyway for healing/ mobility or you just dump Lilies to have it ready for burst.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Even from a glance, both P1S and P2S just pales in comparison in term of incoming damage to P5S & P6S. Bringing that up only further suggests people are both unprepared & in general simply uninformed how important those mits in their disposal.

For a small comparison with first 2 floors’ generic source of damage:
• Ericthonius’ tankbuster hits for 85k physical damage vs Proto-Carby’s first part tankbuster hitting for 83k magical damage with sustained DoT afterward.
• Hippo’s “Murky Depth” hits for 41k magical damage vs Hegemone’s “Hemitheos Dark IV” hits for 76k magical damage.

Now compare those two values to every role’s max HP at the time.

Failure to mitigate tankbuster in P1S means uncomfortable burst damage… that can be fixed right away. Look at WARs self healing themselves while their healers just toss 1 oGCD & go back sleeping with their Glaroilfisis. Failure to mitigate tankbuster in P5S means uncomfortable burst damage & hemorrhaging tank for the next several GCDs. Oh and, these are for both tanks & prevent ‘tankbuster invuln cheese’.

Meanwhile raidwides in P2S can be taken with minor mits (5-10%) or sometimes none at all, but that will put your squishier party member at the risk of getting one shotted by high damage roll. P6S is different beast by straight up being higher than all non-tank’s max HP at the time. 5-10% won’t suffice. This requires a party to spread their mitigation use more properly or they will run to risk of running out of mitigations. And no, at that number not even 1 Succor as a buffer will save you without mits.

If I’m blamed, I want it to be warranted. I want it to be my fault.

Not because that SAM who says they can’t Feint because they’re too busy focusing their rotation; not because that RDM thinks Magick Barrier is insignificant; not because that WHM who’s unable to comprehend that Lilybell can be used as an extension in moments where they can’t reach all members; and on top of that, when you think you could politely ask those people to use their tools, being told to “lol just GCD shield more” to compensate these uncooperative behavior gets mentally exhausting really quick.

“Accommodate to the stupid, and life will find ways to be more stupid”, basically.

[GoatOfWar]

More damage buttons. I'm completely burnt out.

[ty_taurus]

Have you considered that the issue may be the difficulty spike and that the issue is, that SE didn't design encounters so far which would slowly raise average healers towards the appropriate skill level? I mean, imagine if you would let DPS players jump from their level 30 rotation where they barely got their 1-2-3 rotation immediately to their level 90 one, where they have to interact with gauges, burst windows and weaving. Guess how many DPS would jump the ship in that case. But then again, what do you want healers to be? Do you want them to be the role of low expectations which can enter high level content at a much lower skill level than any other job and are basically reserved for the least skilled members of a party or do you want them to be a job equally engaged and challenged on all levels of content as others? If its former, I think its the later, the issue is in the difficulty courve introduced by SE. And I can tell you, Healers so far are the only role which in its entirety get easier while leveling up, because their toolkit is fashioned in a way that instead of their gameplay becoming more involved, you get more and more tools thrown at you to weave while dpsing without a change in the games damage profile to let the added tools at your disposal be accompanied with added requirements in healing.

That's basically what I was trying to get at when I said "unprepared." The damage we've gotten this raid tier is fantastic. It ups the demand for healing a lot without dramatically changing the formula for combat, but it's also extremely new, at least unless you were raiding back during Alexander. But even then, healing was quite different in that time. People came from expecting one Panhaima would resolve all your problems, and now it doesn't. Your Earthly Star will now only get you so far, and that's not what the entire rest of the game has been like for years.

[SargeTheSeagull]

I think it's a combination of every complain healers (and to an extent tanks) have had since 5.0. Healers having nothing interesting to do when everyone's near max HP, every "heal" check being actually a mitigation check due to how hard and rarely things hit, more new players getting into savage having no idea how their role actually works, actual heal kits being practically interchangeable, the list goes on really. One thing is for sure, a MAJOR problem is the difficulty spike for healers. You go from being literally not necessary in dungeons and only slightly useful in trials and normal raids to being damn near the most important person in the party in extremes and savages. Yeah, the difficulty spike isn't great for tanks or dps either but healers have it way, way worse in that regard.

The first thing I'd do is bring back something resembling damage rotations on healers. After that I'd actually give healers some identity. WHM and AST's actual heal kits are basically identical despite what the experts on youtube who don't even heal savage would tell you. As are SCH and SGE's. I've played wow for around six months now and i'm blown away by how varied the healers (and tanks for that matter) in that feel and I want some of that in 14. I want sage to heal by putting kardia on party members and using a gigabrain rotation. I want WHM to just throw out insanely powerful GCD heals. I want astro to be the HoT master and good at applying barriers while giving useful cards. I want SCH to be barriers, barriers and more barriers and to have a bunch of DoT's that get powered up the more barriers I apply.
The next thing i'd do is decide whether healers should be GCD focus or OGCD focused instead of the weird mix we have now. Back in HW OGCD heals were exceptionally rare with each healer only really having around three ergo GCD heals were the default. Now using a GCD to heal feels punishing despite being necessary in savage. Some sort of damage refund on healers would be nice, I put a reply on a thread about that a day or two ago. Honestly the entire role needs to be reworked but there are some bandaids they can put on to at least help if they aren't willing to rework.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

It's kinda amusing to see what's going on right now.

Like a Patch earlier, some healer were complaining about "We have not enough to heal, healer is useless / Give us DPS button to press". And now that healer finally got something to heal, they just vanished, like it's too hard somehow. Don't get me wrong, for some people, this kind of damage is still not enough to entertain them, but like Rein_eon_Osborne said, the damage done by Tank Buster and Raid Wide comparing to the last tier is a huge jump in term of difficulty, that require a teamwork of a whole other level. If the last tier was a Savage, this one is a Savage + (Not Ultimate, cause we are no where near, but still, the difficulty take a good step up).

I know many people that just stopped trying P8S because they don't get it, or think they can't do that. "Too hard" they said. You say we have a shortage in term of healer, I think we have a shortage of everything actually in savage.

Going back to the main subject. I think that healer's need some "True" Identity. Getting Pure Healer and Shield Healer is good, the problem is, it's kinda the same things when you switch from WHM to AST, or from SCH to SGE. Identity isn't determined by the "Ressource" job use, like Lily for WHM or Fairy Gauge for SCH. We need something that actually make a Healer unique, like : "This one can do that, but this one can't". If WHM regen people, why AST is awfully similar ? Of course, their Ultimate heal is really different, like the WHM can withstand multiple Raid Wide (Aka Centaur 1 for P8S) with ease, but for an AST it's a little trickier.

Remember like how they were really different on P3S ?

WHM got the advantage on Fountain of Life, but AST can cheese the "1HP Heal malus" Mecanics (Because of the millions of damage taken)

Those two ability is a good step forwards tho, maybe we can try to imagine something out of this.

[ty_taurus]

It's kinda amusing to see what's going on right now.

Like a Patch earlier, some healer were complaining about "We have not enough to heal, healer is useless / Give us DPS button to press". And now that healer finally got something to heal, they just vanished, like it's too hard somehow. Don't get me wrong, for some people, this kind of damage is still not enough to entertain them, but like Rein_eon_Osborne said, the damage done by Tank Buster and Raid Wide comparing to the last tier is a huge jump in term of difficulty, that require a teamwork of a whole other level. If the last tier was a Savage, this one is a Savage + (Not Ultimate, cause we are no where near, but still, the difficulty take a good step up).

I know many people that just stopped trying P8S because they don't get it, or think they can't do that. "Too hard" they said. You say we have a shortage in term of healer, I think we have a shortage of everything actually in savage.

Going back to the main subject. I think that healer's need some "True" Identity. Getting Pure Healer and Shield Healer is good, the problem is, it's kinda the same things when you switch from WHM to AST, or from SCH to SGE. Identity isn't determined by the "Ressource" job use, like Lily for WHM or Fairy Gauge for SCH. We need something that actually make a Healer unique, like : "This one can do that, but this one can't". If WHM regen people, why AST is awfully similar ? Of course, their Ultimate heal is really different, like the WHM can withstand multiple Raid Wide (Aka Centaur 1 for P8S) with ease, but for an AST it's a little trickier.

Remember like how they were really different on P3S ?

WHM got the advantage on Fountain of Life, but AST can cheese the "1HP Heal malus" Mecanics (Because of the millions of damage taken)

Those two ability is a good step forwards tho, maybe we can try to imagine something out of this.

Yeah I think it's really cool when one healer stands out as having a really useful tool for a particular fight or mechanic like that. Macrocosmos and Expedient serve that purpose well. Lily and Panhaima kinda serve a unique purpose but they don't feel quite as special unfortunately. Benediction would work really well if we had more fights where you have to heal up a 3rd party, like in Shinryu EX, and I suppose it does combo well with when GNB or WAR use their invulns, but SGE kinda feels like its in a spot where it's great because of all the mitigation it brings, but doesn't really shine anywhere else.

[Supersnow845]

I think it’s unfair to say that we shouldn’t make healers more complex considering this tier has made the 5.0->6.1 healers flee savage healing considering it was the 5.0 changes that caused a good chunk of the healers who could have healed this tier flee and be replaced with people who treated healers as “baby’s first savage role”

Making a role as engaging in savage as it is in fell court of troia is going to drive away exactly the kind of people who could wether this kind of difficulty jump and leave you with a PF full of healers who can only heal when P1s is the upper limit of the healing requirements