Healers need an overhaul

[Sunhwapark]

Worst case scenario they think people don't want to heal because it's "too hard" and dumb the jobs down even more.

Which honestly wouldn't surprise me in AST's case.

As much as I want to say "Let's wait and see, it can't turn out that bad, right?" I'd have to be staring at my reflection wearing a clown nose and wig.

I can't even have low expectations because CBU3's healer design will turn up with a full excavation crew just to dig even lower than said expectations.
Sadly it feels like at this rate, healers are gonna end up being the first role to have "Explorer mode" benefits that apply in all levels of content.

I have deep respect for those that are still putting out constructive feedback regarding the state of healers (especially in the healer subforum). I used to love this role alot, but now i just want to reject its existence because I'm tired of this expansion that is essentially the "Shadowbringers 2" experience.

[MagiusNecros]

I think I already posted this in this thread some time ago, so just reminding everyone that Blue Mage can handle Omega Savage raid healing by using only 3-5 slots out of 24 for healer spells. So it still has DPS tools like Moon flute burst windows.


Nothing in the raid design has chanced since to make this playstyle unviable.

Well Blue Mage is the best job in the game and the only engaging healer to play as with good heals and a DPS kit.

It's also prominently used to solo dungeons because BI + Healer Mimic makes Pom Cure a Benediction every cast.

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Low Healer damage would be fine if Healer duties involved Healing/Shielding, buffing the party, debuffing the boss/trash packs(ironically BLU is the only one that can inflict Damage Down and has a castable Silence) and preventing debuffs from occurring or applying affects that removed debuffs without the need to cast Esuna.

Warden's Paean from Bard would be a perfect healer support skill to have.

The way Healers are designed makes it hard to consider picking one up.

[MonsutaMan]

The job system needs an overhaul.......

[Midareyukki]

The job system needs an overhaul.......

I don't suppose this is feasible considering the amount of stuff they've added to the game that relies on the current system being designed the way it is...

That said, they need to rethink their approach. WAR has always (I think?) had really good levels of sustain, and even DRK used to have it before. But they didn't invalidate healers. And healers worked just fine with more DPS tools, they never stopped clearing content because of it. I understand that this then led to a mindset that "healers should DPS and worry about their DPS" and sometimes forego healing entirely. But iirc that was a mindset of really elite endgame players who played in specific groups, it wasn't the total norm. We're long past the days of Cleric Stance hindering healing too. If the issue is Balancing, then that's a different story altogether. But that's why it's important to have members of the dev team who are invested in playing healers, so that they understand what can be done vs what cannot.

Square needs to come to terms with the fact that their design is too simplified and roles are watered down. And that they need to not be scared of numbers being high leading to imbalances. A class can still be very useful even if it does low damage. Many other MMOs have such classes, and it's in fact a major reason why one would take Astrologian. It deals low personal damage but it had really good healing, safety nets and improved peoples' damage output with buffs. They need to not be shy about utility.

And they need to be more creative with said utility. :T Probably a shite opinion, but AST really doesn't need to only give damage buffs on its cards. There's more to buff than just damage. If they're so scared of Balance and Spear being broken again, they can just relegate the damage buffs to Divination and rework the card system to give other things. The more they only focus on stuff "dealing damage", the more watered down the roles will be. Because at this point there's only 2 priorities: "Get Aggro/Heal Low Health" and "Damage when the first criteria isn't an issue". And if you notice, it's ludicrously easy to meet the first criteria unless the devs design some sort of gimmick to make you have to work harder to meet it. Everything else? All about damage, nothing but damage.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't suppose [giving the job system an overhaul] this is feasible considering the amount of stuff they've added to the game that relies on the current system being designed the way it is...

Well, they're going to have to do something about the lack of undermechanical depth and the lackluster job system at some point.

And they need to be more creative with said utility.

All utility is going to be limited to the systems (e.g., undermechanics) available to be utilized. Can't levitate to avoid ground damage when there's no Z axis. Can't earth-barrier to avoid lightning damage when there are no damage types beyond Physical, Magical, and Dark/True/Absolute. And that's not even accounting for the redundancy of eHP or, worse, healing increases in typical content in which healing requirements are so low.

[MagiusNecros]

They probably need a lackluster healing job that doesn't heal and they just DPS and their DPS is redistributed as heals. Just mark a Tank and your ST damage heals the Tank and your AoE just heals everyone while it damages everything.

Seems like a great way to make people play Healer while also killing interest in the others since the only thing that matters is DPS.

Given Sage only going halfway I doubt they would ever fully commit to a Damage Healer of any kind. It's beyond their scope of overly simplistic design of ST, AoE, DoT, 20 healing buttons.

[Midareyukki]

Well, they're going to have to do something about the lack of undermechanical depth and the lackluster job system at some point.

Yes, provided that they address the past content that relies on it, is what I'm saying
Because it'd always be better if they reassessed their system. Issue is, it takes them forever to address issues with past content, often even not being addressed at all. And there's quite a fair bit there because most past content is still expecting X things to be able to happen. Hell, ARR NPCs still use skills that got culled or reworked since Stormblood xD Which is hilarious.
Even if it's just expanding the roles a bit, there's still bosses that rely on some skills being used, some LBs, even LB generation itself.

The issue isn't that it isn't doable. Because it is. The issue is that... well... this is Square Enix ^^; and there's a lot they'd need to go back and check.

All utility is going to be limited to the systems (e.g., undermechanics) available to be utilized. Can't levitate to avoid ground damage when there's no Z axis. Can't earth-barrier to avoid lightning damage when there are no damage types beyond Physical, Magical, and Dark/True/Absolute. And that's not even accounting for the redundancy of eHP or, worse, healing increases in typical content in which healing requirements are so low.

True. At one point I was talking to my friends and I pointed out how you can't have the same sort of stuff from FF11's classes like Corsair and Scholar. Because some stuff just doesn't exist. But I still went through it for the hell of it and compiled some stuff that they do based on what we could have in FF14. Stuff that right now we don't do:

COR skills:
- Autoattack Evasion
- Increase to attack range (finnicky)
- Increased healing received
- Increased defence
- No MP cost (finnicky, needs to be limited on classes whose gimmick revolves around MP like PLD or BLM)
- MP Restore (Remember when BRD and casters could do this? Pepperidge Farms remembers...)
- Double Attack/Double Hit
- Movement Speed
- Instant Casts (though it's useless on physical attackers)

SCH skills:
Penury: Reduces the MP cost of your next spell
Celerity: Reduces the cast time of your next spell
Accession: Have party members share in on your next heal, like an AoE Kardia. But the cost of the heal is doubled.

Obviously, having stuff like "barfire" isn't going to work in this game. Damage is either Magical, Physical or that weird third version in ARR/HSW. But they could honestly be creative with these things. Also, there's no need for a Z Axis: FF12's Float allowed you to do just that, it was just programmed to ignore some stuff. You weren't really floating. BUT :P this one's just a curiosity, pay no mind.
Now, I won't say that this MUST be what they must add in terms of utility. As you can see, I even labelled some as being problematic. I'm not saying that I'm right in this, just that I think the current system needs "more". But I'm not a game dev, they're the ones that would need to think hard on this. And again, some stuff are things we used to have, like MP Restore tools.

Otherwise, we'll need to rework different jobs to get out of the super strict system we have going on. Especially with healers. Before SGE came out, a lot of people wanted a healer that worked off of dealing damage. With the way SGE works right now, it's totally doable to rework it into something along those lines. They just need imagination and to not be so strict. Because what I said before was that their strictness is causing the current system to only care about damage numbers and healing numbers (both ours and the enemy's). And such a strict system will water down roles just as much as simplifying classes waters down jobs. The problem is getting them to understand that and take on the work, given how past content would need to be adjusted to it.

[Shurrikhan]

They probably need a lackluster healing job that doesn't heal and they just DPS and their DPS is redistributed as heals.

That would almost certainly be awful for the game. It wouldn't improve the other healers in any way despite now ensuring, on the basis of job parity, that intensive (i.e., any significant amount of damage-sacrificing) healing would forever remain a non-option in future fight design.

A job with complete healing uptime is one that has no available healing burst beyond the degree to which its damage can burst, which is incredibly minor compared to the difference between, say, free healing alone and both free heals plus at-offensive-cost heals together.

Sure, that job could fit less annoyingly into the dry-as-dust healing environment, but it'd also fetter us to that environment, all while still being no more interesting as a healer.


A degree of damage-to-healing effects is fine, but to tie all the job's healing to its damage dealt would render that job's healing effectively static and passive, which means it has to be balanced around a particular combined damage and healing, same as anyone else, but then wastes much of that combined performance if healing requirements fall short and is then literally incapable of trading damage for further healing if the requirements exceed its balancing point. It's just one further fundamental issue (an inability to trade between outputs despite varying needs) in place of another (an excess of tools for a capped need), the latter of which is much more solvable by tuning than is the new problem created.

We don't need that many more offensive tools, necessarily, for healers to be significantly more interesting, and each addition past some critical juncture of skill synergies or the like will tend to see diminishing returns. And then there are just plainly inefficient ways to spend those buttons, regardless -- arguably worse, even, than our excess of GCD or oGCD heals given the low shared needs they both meet. There's little to no difference, for instance, between being forced to cycle Glare, Glare Snidely/Brighter, Glare Smugly/Brightest in an equally dry-as-dust 1-2-3 combo and just spamming Glare outright. We simply need there to be more going on, especially in areas of playflow more independent of the given content, when playing a healer.

[MagiusNecros]

Healers should be healing, buffing and debuffing. Damage should just be a bonus and not factored for encounter designs when you aren't doing those things. Healing too easy? More heal checks and each failed mechanic needs to give vuln stacks. Fail mechanics enough times get inflicted with a noncleansable doom. Make someone have to raise someone for poor play.

But you know I think the devs really have something awful with the 2 minute meta so maybe we need a 2 minute Healer meta where you need to burst heal every 2 minutes as well when we introduce Raidbusters where if the Healers don't bring their A game you die.

Or play Ultimate.

Healers are screwed big time because like tanks you only heal/mitigate as much as you need to and then you just DPS because DPS is all that matters in this game.

If introducing a pure DPS healer is awful for the game I think that just is a symptom of a much larger problem that should be addressed namely that there are not Tanks, Healers or DPS roles but rather Blue, Green, and Red DPS.

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Since Healing isn't a big priority in 95% of the content there really is no need for 20 heals and 3 DPS actions if BLU or WAR can do the same content with anywhere between 2-5 heal actions and 20 DPS actions.

Only time I wager Healer is super duper engaging is when you tell players to stand in orange so you can heal more or in high level fights where taking one hit takes out more then 50% of your health.

More players drop healer because the jobs just aren't fun. They are boring. So they will gravitate towards what they feel is more fun and rewarding which generally turns out to be doing more damage. Because the game is once again all about DPS.

And if you want some amazing changes to Healers in 7.0 the majority of the playerbase will be required to stop playing Healers and play a different role and the more vocal is going to have to scream like a Warrior to see anything happen.

I think the devs need to go back and A: Play some old FF games or RPGS in how healers function and B: Be forced to play Healer jobs over the dev cycle.

[ty_taurus]

FFXIV was designed, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to have healer gameplay revolve around memorizing boss patterns and responding to them, responding to party mistakes, and dealing damage in-between. These are the three core aspects of how this game is foundationally designed--foundationally meaning not negotiable. You cannot change this without redoing how encounter design is handled on a fundamental level.

Why?

By the very nature of damage and mechanics being scripted in a specific way, the player now knows three things about damage: when it will happen, when it can happen, and when it doesn't happen. Because we have this knowledge, this assures that healers will be promised a certain amount of time to DPS. Healing can only ever be required around and after when damage will happen and when damage can happen. Some of this need can bleed into the windows where damage doesn't happen; however, it is feasibly impossible for a healer to require the entire duration of when damage doesn't happen in order to recover from when damage does happen or when damage can happen. The only way this can occur is if the healer is not healing or preparing for those when and can scenarios.

Healers were designed from Day 1 to be able to DPS. I'll repeat that this CANNOT be undone without redesigning the entire approach to encounter design which also means redesigning every encounter that has been created up until this point. Anyone that does not like this is disputing with how the game is designed foundationally. It's like the situation with FFXVI being an action RPG rather than turn-based. You have every right to not like that it's an action RPG, but playing it anyway and then complaining that it's an action RPG is silly when you made the choice to play that game. The same is true for how healers are designed to DPS. It is built into the game's structure in the same way that action combat is for XVI.

How the developers have approached this truth is the problem. Given the formula of combat being a combination of when damage will, can, and won't occur... there are too many examples of content that is far too gentle on the when damage will and can occur for the amount of healing tools they have given healers. Newer content is finding itself in a better spot, but previous content of all difficulty levels has largely been far too gentle, such as Smileton for casual content, Zodiark for EX content, and P1S for Savage content as examples.

Where healer design utterly fails is addressing gameplay for windows in which damage doesn't happen, which is also represents the largest window of the three windows, especially in more casual content. Take solo content where it is literally 100% of the time as healing requirements do not exist in solo instances to avoid DPS players being locked out. Even though damage does technically occur, NPCs handle the healing for you.

Good job design would dictate that every job, regardless of role, should have an engaging rotation or selection of options available to them during all three windows.

Healers need to address the lack of gameplay provided to them during windows where damage doesn't occur, whether that is direct damage or indirect damage. You can create a healer who can potentially redirect their damage contributions through other players, but the healer needs to have a way of managing that in an engaging toolkit to enable something that creates such an experience. That said, direct damage in the form of a DPS rotation is the dominant answer for how to provide good game design for those windows.

The design team to this point has been actively fighting this reality despite the game existing the way it does because of them. Why they do this is, I imagine, to try and not take any sides on opinions about healer design. But as stated earlier, they cannot truly appease the players who want healers that do not DPS unless they are willing to redo encounter design across the entire game and rework the solo leveling experience to compensate. Trying to not directly tell this collection of players that what they want cannot be achieved is killing the role as we know it in the name of not pushing away a small number of players. The only solution that will genuinely improve the quality of healer design involves accepting this reality and reworking the healers to compliment how this game has be foundationally designed. Until this happens, healers will forever clash with the game's core gameplay.