Healers need an overhaul

[flowerfairy]

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Oh no, I don't find "green DPS" offensive. I understand that's what healers are and have always been. That system you say developers have been pushing for years was already ingrained since 2.0. They purposefully shifted away from slow menu-flicking gameplay in 1.x because they tried to appeal to a larger player base.

What I have doubts about is what a traditional healer is supposed to be. Almost everything in that list is already the trait of a healer in any game. You heal only what's necessary, you need to choose the appropriate heal to avoid the death of someone, you sometimes have shields or defense buffs to apply before damage goes out, and sometimes you precast heals to immediate cover the damage that's about to go out (though not as common since we have an abundance of instantaneous heals.) Overheal is also avoided in this game. The only thing that isn't common now is MP management through avoiding casting spells, because a majority of players don't like sitting on their hands with nothing to do.

Basically, a healer can have tools to do all of that, and have better filler rotations. I don't see why asking for both makes you a fake healer. If healers got half of their oGCD heal bloat chopped off and it was replaced for filler rotations, wouldn't that make healing way more interesting since you don't have a bunch of OP cooldowns that come back really quickly?

[Raven2014]

Oh no, I don't find "green DPS" offensive. I understand that's what healers are and have always been. That system you say developers have been pushing for years was already ingrained since 2.0. They purposefully shifted away from slow menu-flicking gameplay in 1.x because they tried to appeal to a larger player base.

What I have doubts about is what a traditional healer is supposed to be. Almost everything in that list is already the trait of a healer in any game.

If you want to simplified it down to the core ... sure. But in 2.0 DPS and Healing was still a choice. You have cleric, which makes DPS very in-efficient outside of it. You had MP management, meaning going all in on DPS would leave you short of MP for actual healing. And they have tripped away even what little there were since. Remember at the beginning of 6.0 where Lily were a DPS loss? God, heaven forbid you to heal with Lily - which is your supposed free heal - which is the reason why your MP regen is lower than other healers ... community cried about this "bad MP economy" because of a self-created MP crisis over some small potency loss. It's always DPS DPS DPS, if healing means loss DPS than people refuse to heal.

Basically, a healer can have tools to do all of that, and have better filler rotations. I don't see why asking for both makes you a fake healer. If healers got half of their oGCD heal bloat chopped off and it was replaced for filler rotations, wouldn't that make healing way more interesting since you don't have a bunch of OP cooldowns that come back really quickly?

Ok, you wrote that and you still don't see why I said what I said? Like ... you're suggesting remove HEALING ABILITIES and replace them with "interesting DPS options" on Healers ... and me saying people just want to play green DPS considered gaslighting?


Uh ... how about making fight where you actually need to utilize the entire kit and even more? How about oGCD is the extras you need for extra oohm and MP economy instead of your bread and butter. How about something like bleed an permanent ambient damage tick instead of something happens occasionally? (btw 2.0 had that). How about tank buster coming harder and more frequent that are beyond the healer oGCD's capacity? How about the damage output usually seen at the end of the 4th floor be used more consistently throughout entire fight instead of being treated as soft-enrage mechanic?

And before you said that is too hard or they have to redesign the game blah blah blah ... like ... look, I already admitted they're moving mountain if they want to retrain the community's mentality at this point. I'm simply telling you my preference because you asked, I can't lie to myself what I like.

[Shurrikhan]

If you want to simplified it down to the core ... sure. But in 2.0 DPS and Healing was still a choice.

No more or less so than now. You healed as was necessary and avoided overhealing unless there was an upcoming AoE that'd kill anyone not topped off (in which case it was better to go a little over than under). That's... exactly the same as today. The changes are solely:

• A slight reduction in the minimum skill required (as relative healing requirements are far less now than then), but you have more (frequently redundant to point of bloat) healing buttons to manage, and
• A more significant reduction to skill ceiling, as there's less to manage outside of healing / less to optimize in throughput towards long-term requirements).

You have cleric, which makes DPS very in-efficient outside of it.

If you start a cast, you have (if not wasting time and thereby throughput) essentially committed to a GCD of either healing or offense. Cleric Stance merely increased that commitment by a single further GCD.

It was not deep. It did not increase "choice" in healing vs. dps. It was simply a bloated and mostly nonsensical shift lever, as if you had to double-clutch before each time you wanted to turn in the other direction.

You had MP management, meaning going all in on DPS would leave you short of MP for actual healing.

Not really. You simply brought a Bard. Outside of an undergeared and/or underperforming run, there was still virtually no reason to ever use a more MP-efficient option like Cure I / Physick, especially if running a SMN.

And they have tripped away even what little there were since.

...Which had solely to do with relative healing requirement nerfs to placate anxious healers, reductions to the non-healing-related parts of healer kits, and removal of dependencies on other jobs (Ballad, Promoted Bishop, and Manashift). There was no point at which you were more incentivized to GCD heal wastefully. It's never been anything but a bad idea.

Remember at the beginning of 6.0 where Lily were a DPS loss? God, heaven forbid you to heal with Lily - which is your supposed free heal - which is the reason why your MP regen is lower than other healers ... community cried about this "bad MP economy" because of a self-created MP crisis over some small potency loss.

There are three factors for something to actually be "free":

• It must cost no MP/TP.
• It must cost no offensive potency over time to use.
• It must cost no curative potency over time to use.

See an MP cost attached to any of the other healers' sources of "free" healing? As oGCDs, neither do they cost offensive potency, given sufficient weave space (which all have now). And as oGCDs, casting them does not prevent them from being stacked with a GCD heal in the same global's space if necessary (i.e., no curative opportunity cost / not redundant with normal outputs).

Previously, Lily met only one of those 3 factors. Now it meets two. It still falls short in terms of stackable burst healing. The only reason that isn't being likewise pointed out is because there's virtually no use for that anyways because the burst healing requirements were trimmed so short and tuning made up for what combined throughput would have otherwise been lost to Lily casts being GCDs instead of oGCDs.

It's always DPS DPS DPS, if healing means loss DPS than people refuse to heal.

Except a lack of heals that result in a death results in a far greater DPS loss. If not healing at a given moment would not result in a death or more personal dps loss being required later due to having to heal more at that point, then... yeah, you shouldn't be wasting your time healing.

But your entire purpose, including via not letting people die outside of specific exceptions (i.e., when it would cost more resources in MP, time, and CD value, to fight through a debuff than to just rez after), is to speed up the run. Healing is your uniquely fleshed out means to do so, but your purpose in attending the run remains the same as everyone else's: to do the thing (clear the instance, etc.) as quickly and enjoyably as possible (balancing speed against risk as per the time, goals, experience, and patience your team has).

Uh ... how about making fight where you actually need to utilize the entire kit and even more? How about oGCD is the extras you need for extra oohm and MP economy instead of your bread and butter.

Those advocating for more to do during downtime aren't the people you need to convince to allow additions like that. They clearly have more than enough downtime (enough to get bored of how little depth and variety are available within it). They're merely advocating for at least increased skill ceiling.

You'd need to convince the "don't increase the skill floor" crowd, which, yes, predominantly tend to be those asking for (still) little to do regardless and some of the staunchest opponents against adding (back) any sort of non-healing depth despite still seeming to struggle with the skill floor (such that the space between there and the ceiling is pretty irrelevant to them).

How about tank buster coming harder and more frequent that are beyond the healer oGCD's capacity?

It's not either-or, unless you are asking for harder than Ultimate levels of healing requirements in all content. You can both have more than 2 ST buttons for use in downtime and have less downtime.

So long as there is room for less capable players, there is going to be room (yes, optimizable downtime) between floor and ceiling -- which will only expand as gear increases. The downtime, then, is still going to be a significant component of healer gameplay worth addressing even if it were a fifth its present size.

Ok, you wrote that and you still don't see why I said what I said? Like ... you're suggesting remove HEALING ABILITIES and replace them with "interesting DPS options" on Healers ... and me saying people just want to play green DPS considered gaslighting?

You do realize that healing abilities are literally the oGCDs, the bloated count of which make the skill floor higher than it otherwise would be relative to the meager healing requirements in this game (thus expanding the downtime required to placate/allow for less skilled/coachable players)?

If you want less downtime, especially without increasing the skill floor to the point of excluding a portion of players currently accounted for, the most direct solution would be to trade excessive healing oGCDs for additional actions useful for downtime. That's not mutually exclusive with other changes to healing kits, tuning, or context. It's simply a very easy and reasonable first step that could be taken.

[ForteNightshade]

Remember at the beginning of 6.0 where Lily were a DPS loss? God, heaven forbid you to heal with Lily - which is your supposed free heal - which is the reason why your MP regen is lower than other healers ... community cried about this "bad MP economy" because of a self-created MP crisis over some small potency loss. It's always DPS DPS DPS, if healing means loss DPS than people refuse to heal.

Welcome to Final Fantasy XIV, where DPS is the only metric which matters. This isn't the dev team catering to community demands but the community itself adapting to the lackluster healing requirements content has in this game. On numerous occasions now Yoshida has made no secret he and the dev team as a whole believe, ignorantly, believe healers predominantly GCD heal or they simply don't want to "pressure" the baby raiders who want to spam Medica II and can't understand why that's not good enough. Content is simply too scripted and the outgoing damage is laughable up to and including Ultimate. You mention "traditional healers." Explain to me how I'm supposed to be a "traditional healer" in Algaia where I've literally pressed Dosis 500 times? If there's a magical way I can make content deal more damage, please, do tell.

"Just go to Savage then!"

I have. I healed every single fight last tier on Sage, in Party Finder without pressing a single GCD shield. I cleared phase two with a combined 97%. That means my White Mage co-healer and I were among the top end of players. Yes, by that point gear out-scaled the content but it was also a pug. Not to mention, what exactly are healers supposed to do when they inevitably out scale the content? I can't make the fight hurt more.

This tier is no different save for P8S. There's an adjustment period to be certain but once you work out the mitigation sheet, you're casting maybe 1-2 GCDs at most in P7S. That isn't to say this tier is bad. Frankly, it's the best tier we've had since Creator from a healer perspective. Unfortunately, it's left a good chunk of the "traditional healers" screaming because they suddenly can't get away with just shielding every AoE with Prognosis and thinking that makes them a good healer. Good players don't just value "DPS, DPS, DPS". They value a healer who can DPS efficiently while still keeping the party alive. Why would I want a 2% DPSing Sage who may be great at overhealing everything when I can have a 85% DPSing Sage who heals just enough to keep everything else but will also help kill the boss? Both Sages will clear but only one is actively contributing to the group's intended goal: deplete the boss' HP.

The irony is almost every poster on this forum and on the discussion reddit have asked for increased healing, be it in the form of unpredictable damage, more tank busters or just higher damage overall. We've been told no because it's too hard for the casual players. We're asking for DPS buttons now because there's literally nothing else we can ask for. They won't add debuffs, they won't increase healing, they won't add buff or resource management. DPS is all that's left. In fact, here's a quote from Yoshida himself:

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.

But of course we do have the new job, Sage, which will allow for this unique gameplay where if you land an attack it heals at the same time. Or if there’s like a particular barrier ability that you cast and once that’s depleted it increases the resource which could lead to an attack which is very unique. I think players would be interested in trying that out for sure.

Don't tell us to ask for more "fight where you actually need to utilize the entire kit". Tell Yoshida because he seems to think those fights would make the game to challenging and cause stress on healers. Guess which section of the playerbase that refers to? It's not the DPS healers but the Sylpies who struggle to heal 24 mans.

[Raven2014]

Welcome to Final Fantasy XIV, where DPS is the only metric which matters.You mention "traditional healers." Explain to me how I'm supposed to be a "traditional healer" in Algaia where I've literally pressed Dosis 500 times? If there's a magical way I can make content deal more damage, please, do tell.

I already did though? Either you missed my point or you actually didn't read them.

I already stated:

- I am actually green DPS. I don't like it much, but I'm fully conform to the gaming norm. When I'm in party I will make sure I play to the most efficient as the class/role designed for, regardless of my opinion.

- That the games for years had been designed to ingrain the players base with the green DPS mentality.


I merely mentioned "traditional healing" as my prefer preference, as my wish and dream how the game would be designed. I think people are so vitriol and hostile toward my reference that they just skimped through and press me on stuffs that I had never said. To be clear, if you're in my Algaia run and you spam medica, I would consider you griefing. While I would not initiate the vote kick, I wouldn't blink if the party decide to kick you either. I do not ask people to spam heal in current contents. I wish content would be designed where spamming heal is a necessity.

Is ... that ... clear?

[Semirhage]

I already did though? Either you missed my point or you actually didn't read them.

I already stated:

- I am actually green DPS. I don't like it much, but I'm fully conform to the gaming norm. When I'm in party I will make sure I play to the most efficient as the class/role designed for, regardless of my opinion.

- That the games for years had been designed to ingrain the players base with the green DPS mentality.


I merely mentioned "traditional healing" as my prefer preference, as my wish and dream how the game would be designed. I think people are so vitriol and hostile toward my reference that they just skimped through and press me on stuffs that I had never said. To be clear, if you're in my Algaia run and you spam medica, I would consider you griefing. While I would not initiate the vote kick, I wouldn't blink if the party decide to kick you either. I do not ask people to spam heal in current contents. I wish content would be designed where spamming heal is a necessity.

Is ... that ... clear?

There's a litany of things wrong with the halcyon days of "traditional healing" as it's bizarrely defined by the Sylphie crowd.

First, that's not how "healers" work in the vast majority of RPGs. When's the last time you played something other than an attrition healing model MMO where the goal was to spam healing spells as often as possible? Healing is a means, not an end. You perform that task until it's done, and then you return to doing something productive. If that amount of time is half the fight, then it's half the fight. If it's two GCDs out of an entire 11-minute encounter, then it's two GCDs. Like it or not, there will always be downtime. If there weren't, the role would be the hardest in the game by a country mile. You'd have to play perfectly in order to keep the party alive, and Yoshida is plainly uninterested in doing that (as am I). He wants people who aren't skilled at the role to be able to pick it up. Large windows of downtime aren't some boogeyman people who are actually good at healing invent from thin air. They're the logical outcome to the existence of a skill allowance.

Second, spamming healing spells is boring. This game's healing kits, with VERY few exceptions, aren't interesting at all. They don't interact with one another. They're a hodgepodge of "push health bars rightward" spells. What's the meaningful difference between Druochole and Taurochole? I don't mean the potency difference or the small mitigation on one of them, what's the meaningful difference between them? Oh, they do basically the same thing, and the content in which the game will punish you for choosing one over the other barely exists? Yeah. Afflatus Solace and Tetra? Who cares? Healing in this game for more than a GCD or two at a time boils down to entertainment barely above Medica, Medica, Medica, Medica. It's so engaging I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open.

What is this ludicrous balking at making the downtime interesting in the slightest? Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare is B O R I N G. It's boring. I'm going to be doing it whether the healing requirements are Expert Roulette levels of pathetic or "so very engaging" like the current savage. Dedicating a few more of my GCDs to dipping into the boring, noninteractive healing kit isn't how you make healing engaging. You create kits that have actual interactivity and choices. But that's the exact opposite of CBU3's design philosophy when it comes to the combat system for the last several expansions, so instead they listen to the crowd screaming "the problem with healers is that they're not HEaLiNg enough!". Yeah, that's the problem. Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare will totally be fixed if I have to throw a Medica 2 in there somewhere. The "DPS healer mentality" isn't something ingrained by the developers, it's how a skilled healer plays in any RPG. Overhealing is stupidity. Performing useful tasks is how you gain skill. This is how logic works, not some spooky "mentality".

Also what's this hilarious BS about "MP management" on WHM? A job would have to have choices in their kits in order for MP management to be interesting at all. There's nothing interesting about Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare whoops I'm out of MP just from making the singular correct choice available to me.

[Rolder50]

First, that's not how "healers" work in the vast majority of RPGs. When's the last time you played something other than an attrition healing model MMO where the goal was to spam healing spells as often as possible? Healing is a means, not an end. You perform that task until it's done, and then you return to doing something productive. If that amount of time is half the fight, then it's half the fight. If it's two GCDs out of an entire 11-minute encounter, then it's two GCDs. Like it or not, there will always be downtime. If there weren't, the role would be the hardest in the game by a country mile. You'd have to play perfectly in order to keep the party alive, and Yoshida is plainly uninterested in doing that (as am I). He wants people who aren't skilled at the role to be able to pick it up. Large windows of downtime aren't some boogeyman people who are actually good at healing invent from thin air. They're the logical outcome to the existence of a skill allowance.

I mean, there's a good example with WoW, both the retail and classic versions. Heck knows I actually enjoy healing in those games because it has that model. In retail it's still more or less expected that you do damage with downtime if mana permits but those occasions are few and far between. Of course it helps that the groups over there are more dynamic, and if you have too many healers for a fight you can have them swap to their DPS spec no problem. Parses are also generally ranked on amount of healing done, rather then damage, which is nice.

[Aword3213]

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just do what I do. Leave them be and let them keep on agreeing with each other in circle

[Sebazy]

just do what I do. Leave them be and let them keep on agreeing with each other in circle

Looks at the tags

Yeah, because we are the toxic ones right?

[Kacho_Nacho]

I wish content would be designed where spamming heal is a necessity.

I feel the same. I miss how I used to heal as a holy priest in WoW.

Knowing how to triage was the most important skill you had because you couldn't just spam spells all the time. You'd run out of mana.

The whole healing game centered around the player using the best heal/damage/support spell for the situation and knowing when and when not to cast it.

Sometimes, you had to heal like crazy. Other times, you had to hold back because you knew the next part would need big heals. Mana was a precious resource.

Not casting a spell was as meaningful a choice as casting one. Because, if you didn't cast for five seconds, your mana would start regenerating.

In short, you had to make choices. This kept you engaged and that's what is missing from healing in FFXIV.