Helare shortage in PF: what would bring you back?

[Rolder50]

The answer is obvious: Make healers less painfully boring to play. Whether that is by making the healing part more engaging by having more damage in the fight, by adding more DPS abilities to kits, or by adding more support stuff like AST cards, I don't care. Mashing 1 with the occasional 2 is just boring.

[ty_taurus]

Snip

On the topic of "support" vs "healer" and what someone prefers: In a vacuum, your example with the tank is perfectly fine. If someone comes up to you and says "hey I want to play a job that soaks up lots of damage and dishes it back out" then it's a logical move to say "well GNB is a tank that is meant to soak damage, and has DPS-like gameplay and deals some of the higher numbers among the tanks." But the issue is that, prior, you were making statements about what other players were liking was Support and not Healer. This came across for many, including myself as a "you're not really a healer. You just think you're a healer" type of argument. As if a "real Healer" does not want to DPS or engage with DPS and anyone who wants to DPS in any regard isn't actually a Healer, but a Support. Perhaps that wasn't your intention, but that's what communicated from some of your earlier messages. It came across as invalidating the thoughts, opinions, and experiences of players like myself and Semirhage.

In fact, to dig into that a little deeper, Healer is a subset of Support--a Support that is able to sustain the party's HP. Not all Supports have to be Healers, but all Healers would be described by most RPG players of the modern era as Supports.

But lets back track to that friend coming up to ask you about a Final Fantasy job to play. What would you say if they said "I want to be a healer that also has a variety of offensive abilities that deal damage and make enemies weaker?" Well that doesn't really describe DNC or BRD, nor RDM or SMN, but that's what the rest of us are asking for. And let's take it a step further and say "I want to be a healer, but I want to focus on just healing and having lots of different types of heals that cater to different situations." We don't have an answer to that either, however that faces a very difficult to resolve issue with the game's core design. Healing requires that players are taking damage, but players don't' really take much damage in this game and that's a problem, because you can't exactly make a playstyle around healing no damage. The game just isn't built to support that. I've talked before about ways to try and get around that with my concept of an AST rework where the cards are GCD, but the job does need to respect that DPS contribution is a major part of what makes each job viable. If a healer were made in such a way that it couldn't contribute to DPS, it would be unusable and undesirable as it would slow down even casual gameplay. But it could be done and create a Healer that feels better for that archetype of player, but there's a limit established by the design of the game in its entirety that prevents this from being fully realized. We shouldn't be pretending that this isn't the case.

On the "Why Play FFXIV" argument: First I'll say that I was speaking to the general "you" and not you specifically with that segment, so apologies if that came across as personal. If you (a person) do not like the GCD system, why play FFXIV? But I am led to believe that's your stance based on what you've talked about. You've said you don't oppose doing damage as a healer, but you also don't want to do more than cast Glare. It's a given that you'd probably prefer healing more frequently, but there's a limit on how much healing this game can realistically ask of its playerbase, and that's not a lot. Having a more engaging set of GCD actions to diversify your gameplay doesn't actually do anything to change the frequency of healing required, so having more DPS buttons wouldn't cause you to heal less. So what's the issue exactly? Why aren't you interested in engaging with more than 1 primary tool if that's not how you feel?

I'd also disagree that ARR was designed to cater to the notion of supporting healing and not DPS on healers. First and foremost is the Conjurer class quests--your introduction to healing unless you skipped CNJ and just waited to unlock SCH. The entire theme of the CNJ questline is that no, you can't just heal. You must also use the elements and strike a balance. Just because lots of people got by not doing damage doesn't really mean anything because most of us had no idea what we were doing, myself included. It took a long time to get a better understanding of how jobs even worked, and WHM was absolutely designed with the opportunity to DPS and maintain its MP. We just sucked at MP management among many other things, and there wasn't a major crowd of people who had years of experience leading the player's general understanding of gameplay and job design. Content wasn't actually that hard back then. I remember people STRUGGLING to clear things like Titan (Hard)--not Titan (Extreme) mind you... It took me two months to clear Ramuh EX, a part of why was because we only had the DF back then and no PF, but still. And we have to acknowledge that the coils are not the savage fights we have today, and their difficulty was all over the place. One of them didn't even have a boss. One of them was a series of minibosses where the main strategy was to wait out the instance timer and let the boss enrage so that you didn't have to deal with Allagan Rot. It was highly experimental and enrage wasn't based on the start of the fight. HW is a much more consistent example of old FFXIV gameplay and game design.

On the topic of WHM and stagnation: Let me put it this way instead. I don't know how familiar you are with trading card games, but if you take a look at games like Magic: The Gathering, or Yu-gi-oh, you can think of your deck as a representation of what our action list is meant to represent. One of the rules in all TCGs is that you can only have so many of 1 copy of a card in your deck (usually 3). You cannot have a deck that consists of 35 Kuribohs and 5 Monster Reborns in Yu-gi-oh. It goes against the fundamental design of how a TCG is played. Likewise, having one job that largely plays with 5 actions while others regularly engage with 18+ does not make sense and is not good game design. WHM's healing toolkit is too inconsistent because some content may demand a lot of it while other pieces of content will demand almost none of it. This is what I'm trying to say. WHM doesn't need to be hard or complex, and it doesn't even need additional, consistent engagement to be direct DPS. It doesn't have to be DoTs or combos... It can be a lot of different things. Stating that any possible change or additions to its consistent gameplay are all inherently bad and WHM cannot be more perfect than it is now can only mean that you're arguing against the GCD system in my mind. I don't understand how it could be anything else. If that's not how you perceive WHM, then I don't understand why there is resistance to wanting it to have more depth or engagement. It would make more sense to want to argue for a specific direction for that engagement, but not against the engagement altogether.

On why I like DNC: So one thing about me is that I love risk and chance based characters and classes in games, which is a part of the reason why I really enjoyed old AST. DNC's proc-based rotation is a very mild example of chance-based gameplay, but I find it not only rewarding when I get lucky with procs, but it also keeps my rotation feeling unknown. I never know what procs I will or won't have during certain parts of a fight, so it feels more like I'm adapting to something rather than just repeating a rotation. I like that it has a few pieces of healing and Shield Samba. I like using them, and wish I had way more healing power, but I understand that non-healers really don't need more healing in a game with so few healing requirements. I like that me being in the party means someone else who wants to see big numbers gets to see even bigger numbers--that I'm enhancing their gameplay experience in a way. I don't DNC is perfect right now. There are things I think it could improve on, but I like where it is and enjoy playing it for the most part. For example, I feel like DNC could have an alternative Step to Standard Step that does not apply the 5% attack buff but instead does something else. Standard Step's effect lasts 60 seconds, but the cooldown is 30, so it would feel more interesting if I had the choice to opt for a different effect at times since I don't have to worry about my buff falling off. I also think its gameplay between bursts is still quite slow and would benefit form some other ways to gain maybe Fan Dance IVs between burst windows. I've never been a huge fan of gauges that are connected to exclusively 1 action--Esprit and Saber Dance. I'd like more choices in me spending Esprit other than just always going for Saber Dance. Improvisation is still very awkward to use since the channel animation lock makes the window to double weave Improvised Finish very tight, and I often end up clipping my GCD when I try to use it. The synched experience of DNC is very lackluster. Flourish has no business being as late as level 72, having a weaker Saber Dance and Esprit at level 50 instead of AoE filler Fan Dance II would be great, and a lot of the more fun burst buttons aren't available until level 82 at this point.

On Communication and Humor vs Snark: It's tough because the language choice makes a huge difference, and ultimately you're standing in a position of opposition to most of the people on these forums--frustration opposition some might say, and that's going to make it a lot harder for people to read something meant to lighten the mood as that instead of something blunt or condescending. Maybe it's difficult to understand this from where you're standing, but many of your arguments have come across as unreasonable or elitist, and perhaps you see that the other way around, but it naturally makes it difficult to gauge someone's sincerity when that's your perception of someone's stance, from either side of the argument. From my perspective, I feel like there's a barrier between your perspective and mine that is almost like a language barrier in regards to how difficult it is to overcome. I cannot wrap my head around seeing the current healer design as anything other than a complete and total failure to listen to the community, failure to compliment the way the game is inherently designed, and failure to deliver on the gameplay side of job fantasy with how utterly homogenized the healers are. And these are all especially true of the WHM--the most skeletal, bare bones job in the entire game that has outright been denied legitimate growth and development for the third expansion in a row, laying on the floor like an emaciated child getting fist-fed flower petals by the developers of FFXIV. The new lilies are breadcrumbs in the drought that is WHM's design. That may sound like an alien language to you. Bask before the Sanskrit Rosetta Stone that is my hot take on WHM. Yes this is needlessly dramatic.

[Reinha]

I want to be able to play my one main job in all battle content, and I can't do that as a healer when it's the only role that physically puts me to sleep. Like face on keyboard asleep in any normal content. I don't want to get savage gear for a healing job if I have to play some other undergeared job outside of savage/extreme.

I don't understand how it got to this when I remember using GCDs to heal all the time in sastasha and after, or else the party would die. Noobs like me could handle it just fine. Now there's f-ing nothing to do. Being able to do some dps should be a reward for good play and high gear, not something you can do with 90% of your casts at minimum item level.

[ASkellington]

It's mostly well known that PF savage has a healer shortage currently. Whether this is because of the pure/barrier split, or an influx of new players not wanting to heal, or just healers not enjoying healing anymore I'd like to pose a question.

What would bring you back to healing and if you don't currently heal, what would make you want to heal?

• Make the healers more distinct.

AST and SGE are clones of WHM and SCH. They aren't distinct in healing styles what so ever. Both of them have elements in their kit to make them more distinct that SE is either unwilling or afraid of doubling down on. For example, AST has Exaltation, Earthly Star and Macrocosmos for unique (ish) delayed healing. Why isn't the healing kit focused around that? Or AST being a regen healer in general?

For SGE, why can't it be similar to Disc Priest in WoW where Kardia impacts more than just their base spell? Why doesn't it effect their dot? Why don't they have an AOE equvilant?

• Adjust our kit to match current battle content.

There are way too many healing abilities on too short a cooldown for the amount of outgoing damage that content offers. In raids I feel redundant as if my cohealer is good, I'll be spending most of my time using Malefic. Why would I use Celestial Intersection that I have two charges off, when I can pop Exaltation on my Tank every 60s because that's when the tankbuster comes? Why do I have Synastry if it isn't going to work with my oGCDs?

On top of this, too many abilities are on the same CD and all of our oGCDs have 0 mana cost. Why? Part of what makes healing fun for many people is managing our mana to where we don't run out, and saving our better heals for when they're needed and being appropriately punished if we blow them too early.

SE needs to look at the more unique healing elements of all healers, remove the excess and replace it with either more dps, more buffs, or a mixture of both and give appropriate mana costs or CDs or both to them.

Good healers are always going to have some down time. Stop ignoring that part of our gameplay, acknowledge that it exists, and give us something to do when we have it.

• This is going to make me sound snobby, but stop making the healing role for people who don't heal regularly and make the healing role for healer mains.

The above points address this, but I want to go into further detail here. The healing role has too low of a skill ceiling because of the two points I made previously, and the reason why is because SE is catering to

1. new players
2. and also not having a dedicated healer in their dev team

I'm not saying there shouldn't be an easier adjustment into a very stressful role. However, much like BLM kept its difficulty curve and had tools added in to keep their dps uptime if the player knew how to use them, the same care should be given to healers and arguably the rest of the classes in the game.

SE is also going to have to realize that certain healers are going to be harder than others and instead of making them easier by removing that difficulty, let them be hard because there are players who want that difficulty.

[Rilifane]

snip

I feel like Synastry is one of these outdated abilities that needs a good look and be brought up to match the current class and encounter design.
Same with Deployment Tactics and Dissipation.
The core concept is good but it needs some work. Deploy is good if a Spreadlo is vital for the party's survival but it's usefulness is extremely limited and it's the first skill you stop using outside downtimes. Same with Synastry. It was fantastic for healing both tanks if at least one didn't mitigate properly during tornados on e6s but I don't even remember when I last used it outside leveling content and said situation in e6s. Dissipation also suffers from being outdated with the heal bonus only affecting GCD heals (which WAS good many, many years ago) and SE adding multiple fairy skills after that makes the 30s too long to justify 3 stacks and increased GCD healing.
In difficult 70s content like UwU, all those skills were much stronger and got used more frequently but they're stuck 2 or more expansions in the past and it shows.
And while we're at it, stop marrying Zoe to Pneuma, SE. That skill deserves better.

We've just reached a point where we still carry a lot of junk in our toolkits that reflect the gameplay of eras past that never got adjusted to match the current gameplay.
It's useless to deny that oGCD healing rules supreme and desperately keeping skills that support GCD healing when the encounter design itself doesn't will not make experienced healers suddenly GCD heal when they could get the job done without dropping their Glaroilificosis spam.
There are far better ways to add interaction and synergy to a kit that don't try to shove an outdated gameplay style down our throats.

For example, I feel like DNC could have an alternative Step to Standard Step that does not apply the 5% attack buff but instead does something else. Standard Step's effect lasts 60 seconds, but the cooldown is 30, so it would feel more interesting if I had the choice to opt for a different effect at times since I don't have to worry about my buff falling off. I also think its gameplay between bursts is still quite slow and would benefit form some other ways to gain maybe Fan Dance IVs between burst windows. I've never been a huge fan of gauges that are connected to exclusively 1 action--Esprit and Saber Dance. I'd like more choices in me spending Esprit other than just always going for Saber Dance.

This is what I dislike about Fey Gauge and many other gauges as well. You could just scrape them and nothing of value was lost because there is no real decision making involved. It boils down to "just don't overcap" and dumping everything else during burst in case of dps - or just ignore it even exists on SCH unless the tanks are getting wrecked. BLM is a good example of a job gauge done right as the individual elements affect each other and tie into your gameplay, especially when using Transpose lines. You interact more with it instead of less as you get better, that's what I like to see with job gauges.
But Esprit, Ninki, Kenki etc are just glorified charge systems.

And I like the idea for an alternative Standard finisher. There is a small risk to it because it can quickly happens that you slightly drift Standard and using the alternative finisher would mean dropping the buff even if only for a few seconds. And that's a good thing. I think this idea of branching combos (which this essentially boils down to) and Mudras is something SE could utilize more in general to add depths, decision making and interaction without adding buttons.

[T-Owl]

As I've said, AST is the healer I play the least, so I mostly am leaving it up to AST players to argue what they would like best for it. But I feel like AST is the healer that most needs a continuous, set, predictable rotation (e.g. not filled with procs or things that change it up) since they have to do so much with Cards and oGCDs during their burst that having to fit that in around a lot of other mental juggling might be a poor fit. That said, again, I'm not an AST main, so they may collectively WANT that. But at least on paper, I could see it benefitting from a straightforward rotation.

The rest we disagree on so...I'll just leave it at that.

How do we disagree? I think it is an obejctive reality that if one healer would have just a one button spam without any added complexities, while already being the healer who due to lilys already deals with an easier, slower pace of healing where others heal in a very fast paced manner inbewettn gcds, it would become a healer that is deliberately kept simplistic and without the ability to develope any complexities or depth for the sake of weak players. If it then could compete with healers who have to put in minimum effort to perform, it would kinda mean it is the healer for people who want to put minimum effort. I mean, why do you want this model? Why is it important that there is a class, the most iconic healer role class in the franchise none the less, who plays on a lower level of effort than any other class and role and reaps the same benefits?

People are already disliking Summoner for how easy and simplified it is compared to other jobs and how it played in the past.

[Wilford111]

I know this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, but it's true. They made healing slightly more difficult this tier and that's why they are so scarce. You can push this narrative that healing is boring or whatever, but we all know the true reason. Don't @ me.

[ForteNightshade]

Those things are all why I play FFXIV. Should I, loving those things, coming to the game when it DID accommodate old-school GCD healers, suddenly abandon the game because some people on an internet forum have told me it's no longer designed to play that way even though the Devs are clearly trying to keep it that way for WHM by the very design it has today with the Lily system?

Not necessarily but either you learn to adapt to learn to play something else. Plenty of people have seen their preferred job reworked to the point of being unrecognizable. In fact, HyoMin posts a lot less here because she fell out of love with not only the healer design but the gutting of Stormblood Bard and Dancer's changes. I, myself, dropped Samurai entirely because I dislike the whole looping aspect introduced in Shadowbringers. Dark Knight has only barely curved out an identity after years of not having one. And let's not get started on the disaster which have been Monk and Machinist. Then you have Summoner, which is essentially one giant reset button on the job.

Simply put, the healer gameplay you want doesn't exist. Even with the Lily system, you're still expected to primarily focus on damage and heal enough to keep people alive and little else. Tossing up extra Medica IIs and constantly keeping the tanks topped with Cure II doesn't make you a good healer. It's just wasteful. While you can fault "some people on an internet forum" all you fancy, the actual fault lies with the dev team for insisting healing has to be so accessible it's downright child-proof. Good players don't arbitrarily decide they don't want to heal. They assess whether it's necessary and work within the game's systems. Case in point, look at Piety. Why do healers never want any of it? Is it because they're just greedy DPS wannabes or has the math determined that very low or zero extra Piety is actually required?

[AmiableApkallu]

Those things are all why I play FFXIV. Should I, loving those things, coming to the game when it DID accommodate old-school GCD healers, suddenly abandon the game because some people on an internet forum have told me it's no longer designed to play that way even though the Devs are clearly trying to keep it that way for WHM by the very design it has today with the Lily system?

The problem for some is that they've seen the long-term trend in this game's design, and they've given up on combat ever throwing out more damage for healers to contend with. (I suppose this current raid tier is the exception that proves the rule?) That's why they keep coming back to healer DPS, because we see jobs get tweaks and reworks of their kits all the time.

If I look at my tank toolbars, I get the idea that a tank deals damage and occasionally pushes a mitigation. That's not wrong. If I look at my healer toolbars, I get the idea that a healer heals and occasionally deals damage. That's backwards from reality, especially when a run goes well.

[ForsakenRoe]

(I suppose this current raid tier is the exception that proves the rule?

the damage this tier was very welcome. i say WAS, because it's going through the same fate as every tier's damage, it hurts like hell, then people get more and more gear, then it becomes more and more trivial to fix up. P7S raidwides hit like a freight train on week 1, now i can just lilybell it and that's enough, the coheal can save their stuff for the next one. Same with last tier, Curtain Call was a 1:40 nightmare of constant medica spam for me (cos us WHMs have 3 lilies and then we got nothing else but medica spam), but for the fun of it i went in with my BIS on AST instead, and had enough tools to heal through it that i think i used maybe 4 GCDs total to heal across the entire phase, compared to WHM needing like 16. Also, the phase got cut short in the AST run because people have more gear. We've had 4 years of raids since Creator's difficulty locked in where 'Savage' should be in terms of challenge, and every time, we've hit the same point where damage is less threatening and healer DPS filler time gets to around 80% of our in-combat experience. We've got healer mains tired of spamming glare quitting on one side, and 'healer mains' who joined the role BECAUSE it does nothing but spam glare, suddenly having to heal, and have mit plans, and it's too much so they go back to DPS, quitting on the other.

Turns out, when SE makes a role as training-wheels-assisted as possible, yes it will maybe attract some DPS or Tank mains to it. And when they add more damage to raids, and the training wheels are off, not everyone who has been riding that bike for 2 years is going to be adjusting to the fact there's now no training wheels, so they fall off. And they go 'F#k this, i dont want all this responsibility' and go back to their original roles. So now we have a neutered design for a role, to attract players who will come in, play the role for a bit until it actually challenges them, then they leave. A revolving door of 'mains' coming and going, and SE will see that people are leaving and instead of understanding that these players were never going to stick with healer in the first place, they'll likely double down and remove even more 'stress' from the role. Maybe the next thing is that they'll make Piety affect how much HP you restore, maybe they'll halve MP costs on all spells because the Medica2 spammers cried that they ran out of mana and it caused a wipe.

This is why me and (probably) many other healer mains ask for more nuanced DPS rotations rather than more damage: the healer mains who are actually super good at the game can use that to optimise, new skill ceilings and skill expression. the healer mains like me who are 'kinda ok-good' will appreciate it cos it means the raid DPS time is more interesting, maybe I'll get it a tiny bit wrong and i wont be 100% optimal but that's ok (god knows my dot uptime sucks), and the revolving door healers can ignore the new complexity entirely. They can (assuming SE balances it in a way similar to how i've illustrated in some other posts) just keep spamming glare and get 80% efficiency. And the curebot healers, who's only DPS contribution is when they accidentally hit the boss with Assize, they dont DPS in the first place. If they dont use their current 1 button, why would they get angry about having some more to not press?

tank toolbars, healer toolbars

Exactly. Imagine a tank that hits one GCD, then a second GCD 12-13 times in a row. That's where we're at on healer right now. I'm not asking for GNB or 'PLD spreadsheet lmao', even just WAR level complexity would be a huge leap from where we are. WAR has, in it's main filler rotation (single target) a 123, a 4 to apply a 30s buff, fellcleave to spend, a 10s OGCD, a 30s OGCD, 2 charges of Infuriate to instantly get another FC (or Inner Chaos later) and a once per minute Primal Rend. So 9 buttons in total. But these buttons interact so much more than healers. 123 vs 124 is a choice between 'do i need to refresh my buff timer or not', Fell Cleaves can be pooled if needed to burst down an add for example, or to pile into the end of the raidbuff window. Infuriate gets it's CD reduced when you spend gauge so you can get ANGRY more often, leaning into the job fantasy.

Again i'll point to my suggestion for WHM (yes i'm self-shilling again), where we'd have our dot every 12sec (maybe 15sec for better GCD alignment, now i think more on it), Water/Banish every 5th GCD, and a gauge that fills as we use Glare Banish and Dia. Spending that gauge is a huge GCD heal, and gives 3 buffs with a stack each. Those buffs then upgrade Glare Banish Dia into Quake Flood and Tornado, giving them more impactful VFX and totalling up bonus potency to an exact refund of one Glare, the one spent on the healing GCD. it's only 2 extra buttons (Banish and 'new heal GCD) but it'd add a lot more interplay into the kit, it'd mean I resort to Medica spam on Curtain Call a little bit later, it'd mean we're expressing the lore of the class, cos it seems to have completely forgotten it's 'nature' roots (heh roots) with the exception of Aquaveil, everything else is twinkly lightshow. We're currently at this rotation during downtime (for the most part, yes i know about pooling misery for burst window etc), but we could have something more akin to this? I know the Aero's aren't in the exact right places but it's an example, and I cant visualise GCD timers vs the Aero DOT timer. Anyway, just look how many less times we're casting our filler Stone/Glare, just by adding one new button and tweaking some timers. And yes, the Water and Aero lines up on the same GCD sometimes, and Aero is prioritised because it's total potency is higher than Water in my pitch. But, there could be times (end of fight for example) where that Aero wont have time to finish ticking, so Water would be the better choice. Room for skill expression, crazy idea I know