General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[Renathras]

Sometimes, the best thing to do in an echo chamber is try to NOT be an echo chamber. One way is to look outside the chamber and see if your collective views match those of the outside world. For one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX-cBCA7114

Have a read through the comment section on this video. Something that stands out to me is how...different...their collective and average views seem to be vs this forum. This isn't to say that can't be an echo chamber as well (though that's less likely since YouTube commenters are probably a more general cross-section of society than specialized forums like this are) or that they're necessarily a majority (though, again, they're probably a more general cross-section), but it's instructive to see those views seen as alien or "contrarian" here are, in fact, likely not either of those things and are somewhat mainstream views when looking at the more general population.

[AmiableApkallu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX-cBCA7114

Have a read through the comment section on this video. Something that stands out to me is how...different...their collective and average views seem to be vs this forum.

The views expressed in the comments add nothing of real value to the views I've seen expressed in the forums or on Reddit, or hold in my own head. It's the same experiences and opinions and arguments, repeated, everywhere.

It's a fool's errand trying to determine what the "mainstream" view is from what is almost certainly the tiny fraction of players that bother to comment on the Internet. And it's somewhat irrelevant since it's not like someone's going to go, "oh, this is a good/bad thing because it's the mainstream view."

What we're ultimately stuck with is SE's own view of healing (as of 2021, anyway):

Mrhappy1227: Healers in Final Fantasy XIV often discuss how often they are casting DPS spells despite being healers. Often nicknaming jobs like White Mage a “Glare Mage” as an example. The Media Tour build has some new healing skills that also have damage components to them. Has the team taken any feedback from the players on improving interactivity with the healers? Whether that be more interesting DPS skills or more prominent healing requirements.

Yoshida: So I totally understand that those healers that have a very high player skill level and they’ve really mastered their jobs go into these different raids or battles and when they do have some downtime between their heals they do cast more offensive spells. Some of them desire to have more technical aspects of it so they are more active and I totally understand that sentiment. But of course the basis of a healer is to heal so I think the development team and I have this thinking of getting that sense of exhilaration from doing really good heal work.

That being said I don’t think we would do any sort of dramatic addition of offensive skills moving forward. By having these offensive abilities some players, like new healers, might feel pressured like “oh do I have to have good DPS while I’m healing?” or some players might be aggressive like “oh hey you have an offensive skill in your kit, why don’t you use it?” and I don’t think that’s optimal either.

Amusingly, while trying to dig that up, I found the "just go play Ultimate" quote, but it's actually everything said before that that's interesting now that Asphodelos is actually out (emphasis is mine):

Q: Healers are currently putting out too much healing compared to damage taken and have few damage-dealing options and limited flexibility in battle. People are even clearing Pandæmonium with tank-only parties. Are there plans to make healers more vital to parties?

A: We hold back on the difficulty of the initial Savage raids of each expansion to allow more people to clear, which goes for Asphodelos as well.

I imagine a lot of comparisons are being drawn between the current encounters and the Savage encounters added in Patch 5.4, but the difficulty will be gradually increased as players get more comfortable with their jobs again.

[Sebazy]

Sometimes, the best thing to do in an echo chamber is try to NOT be an echo chamber. One way is to look outside the chamber and see if your collective views match those of the outside world. For one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX-cBCA7114

Is his view any better though?

Case in point, 2:50 - Regarding adding a DPS rotation: 'It'll create a situation where doing the current raid tier becomes nigh impossible'. Really? Looks like he made his mind up and made a video to try and justify it. Where's the rational behind this statement?

His thoughts on who is complaining seems flawed to me as well. The biggest source of discord seems to be players that have stepped up to Savage/ultimate and then step back down to more casual content such as 24 mans and Extremes and promptly realise little there is to do because there's so little damage coming in.

Lastly, he doesn't seem to realise how inconsistent content is within a given tier. Barb's a pretty solid Extreme, meanwhile Zodiark was arguably one of the worst. And whilst this Savage tier is a great healer check from what I hear (And it's not the first, we've had fights such as Godka in the past that were also excellent fun), they need to be weighed alongside dull car crashes such as E8S.

Seems to me like we're just looking from one echo chamber into another. There's no grass there either.

[T-Owl]

Nerd Rage, not in a good way

I mean, you are regularily writing entire walls of text with no other content than bashing gamer girls and just insulted me as a narcissist, which I yet again reported you for. Forum Moderation is pretty bad btw, I'm pretty sure if you talked like that to people ingame, you probably wouldn't have a FF14 Account anymore at this point

Then explain to me, where I'm actually wrong. You over and over demand, that the most iconic Final Fantasy Healer remains a job which performs 80-90% of any given encounter by presson one single button, which is by far below the requirements of successful play of any other class. Higher healing requirements don't seem to be it either, considering that keep on mentioning the increased healing requirements in the current tier as the reason why healers drop out of PF. So what utility to you see in a healer having a 1 button dps rotation with scarce healing requirements which often enforce less involvement than most dps and tank classes offensive dps kit, outside of feeling entitled to a simpler role in this game.

you also argued with how things where back in ARR, but most classes were actually alot easier during ARR. Most classes had little in terms of a ogcd toolkit or even something like a cauge to manage and where mostly busy with playing their gcd combo rotation with a few extra buttons. Most classes gained in complexity over the course of the last few expansions. Sure, some classes also lost it again or where simplified afterwards again and lost out on some complexities, but overall most classes got more abilities, ogcds to weave in and mechanics introduced over the years which made them more complex and difficult to play. Even tanks while losing the complexities of aggro management get offensive tools added to them each expansion. It is only healers which became absolutely more simplified and one note to play over the course of the last expansions.

[EaMett]

Have things really changed that much from the decline over 6.0? It feels like much of a muchness to me with the only change being that this savage actually needs competent healers, except it feels like large swathes of the competent healers gave up over the course of Shadowbringers and early Endwalker. (Obviously, I'm not all seeing on this one, but I am privy to a large portion of the high end raiding scene on Ragnarok as a member of Entropy and yeah, the last few years have been dire).

I started this tier late so I might be off here but I felt like this tier was more about having competent party mitigation than it was about having competent healers. (I'm willingly ignoring week 1 here because it was a bit of an anomaly, and I didn't get to experience it past the 3rd floor).
Like I said though, this was my first time tackling the tier slowly due to a variety of factors so it might've just been me experiencing a different gearing rate.

I will concur though with the sentiment that in the higher-tiered groups, most healers I've known on the Aether end have decided to swap roles since they weren't enjoying the current healers. And groups looking for healers had to lower their expectations and onboard healers whose skills didn't necessarily match the party.
The healers I do know who are sticking with it are mostly doing it because they enjoy their statics and nobody can find competent replacements for them. RIP. They definitely play anything but healer outside of static duties.

I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of healers in PF is a combination of higher-tiered healers not wanting to heal outside of obligations (as opposed to PFing on healer like they might have done before), and the healers currently left feeling anxious about PFing this tier so not bothering. I also wouldn't be surprised if SE took note of that last point and made future content easier again; Wouldn't put it past them.

[Sebazy]

<snip>.

The same story here really, my group had a big AFK chain and we haven't been able to start prog yet, hopefully next week as long as our butt doctor isn't in the desert somewhere =(

Also in agreement with the second sentence, the day my static breaks is the day I stop playing until big changes happen with healing IMO. I did half a tier as Dancer to help another group I've tagged along between tiers and it was entertaining enough, but DPSing just isn't my bag, nor am I good enough at it to play at a level I'm happy with =P

It'll be a shame if they take that avenue really. I wonder if a better approach would be for them to look back at fights like A3S where the overall DPS check wasn't actually that huge, but the fight had specific burst phases where you needed to really step up for a specific mechanic such as Hand of Pain. This would allow them to pressure the group for DPS at key points without forcing healers down the mindless glare uptime wormhole for the full duration of the fight.