Healers need an overhaul

[Raven2014]

That's my point: WoW is an anomaly. Next time you pick up, say, Final Fantasy [fill in the blank], clock how much time you cast healing spells versus doing anything else. Pick up something with the RPG tag from Steam or GoG. It could be Divinity, or Pathfinder, or Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, any Bethesda RPG, Tales game, Witcher, Fable, Dragon Age, you name it. When people play these games, they tend to *get* it. Your characters defeat their enemies and save the day. Sometimes your healer spent a little more time than usual healing. Frequently, they were blasting demons instead. I've never heard of anyone shrieking "NO! Why does Wynne from Dragon Age have dirty attack spells!? She's a HEALer! She should be HEALing! What ever happened to Traditional Real Healing where HEALERS HEALED?" Nobody's said that because that's ridiculous. Everyone -knows- how healers generally work. Until they turn it upside down because they want FF14 to be WoW.

First, RPG and MMORPG are two distinct gene. You dismiss WoW (an actual MMO) as a anomoly, yet using a bunch of single player to make your case ... how does that even make sense?

Second, WoW is definitely not an anomaly. If anything, it is the NORM in that regard. Start War Old Republic use it. Tera is meme for it over-exposure armor but generally considered having the best combat system in MMO use it. The healing in Tera is a battle in itself, and that's not because they have to DPS. While I won't say FF14 is the exception when it comes to green DPS, its model is definitely on the minority side among all the relevant MMO.

Also the irony is in almost half of those games (the D&D style ones), healers main purpose is a buff bots, heal second, and DPS is a distant third only useful late game with a min/max build. I enjoy those games a lot. Path 1 + 2 together clocked in 1000h for me on steam. But no, keep those healers away from my MMO please.


On unrelated note: my observation on this forum about WoW is it seems to be like a certain ex-president. Both the people who hate it and love it seem can't help but let it live rent free in their head. It's always funny seeing two sides gaslighting each other over it.

[Sebazy]

Second, WoW is definitely not an anomaly. If anything, it is the NORM in that regard. Start War Old Republic use it. Tera is meme for it over-exposure armor but generally considered having the best combat system in MMO use it. The healing in Tera is a battle in itself, and that's not because they have to DPS. While I won't say FF14 is the exception when it comes to green DPS, its model is definitely on the minority side among all the relevant MMO.

Agreed that WoW has been the template for modern MMO design ever since it landed. It pretty much annihilated it's peers at release (EQ2 and to a lesser extent, FFXI) and moved the genre forwards into a play style that was more sustainable for players but ironically made things vastly more expensive and difficult for developers.

Whilst I commend Yoshida for consistently trying to find the next big thing in side content, I'm really starting to think that the lack of investment in the fundamentals of the core gameplay loop is starting to haunt them now. We're barely midway through the expansion and in my FC and social circle at least, things feel as dead as the tail end of Stormblood. It really does feel like the Pre Expansion blues at the moment.

IMHO it's either going to be because the Criterion dungeon hasn't been that popular (Which is a shame as I've really enjoyed tackling it blindly), or it's because things have gotten stale to the point where it's just not enjoyable for a lot of long termers. My best guess is that it's a combination of the two.

It's depressing that my 'SE needs a healer designer' post has only ever gotten more relevant as time has gone on. That's a significant failure on Yoshida's part IMO.

[Semirhage]

First, RPG and MMORPG are two distinct gene. You dismiss WoW (an actual MMO) as a anomoly, yet using a bunch of single player to make your case ... how does that even make sense?

Because MMOs grew from single-player RPGs. Hence MMORPG. If you want MMO examples, how about Aion? I remember healing in SWTOR. I spent a ton of time debuffing + dealing damage and miraculously, my parties stayed alive through it. The entire RPG genre family looks askance at "pure healers". "Pure healer" classes are the ones you tend to replace in most games. They're just not that useful as you get more skilled. It's just how the zeitgeist of the game style works. Killing things has a functionally infinite ceiling on usefulness. Health bars do not. Eventually you get good enough at filling the health bars that your utility ends. And then you do other things. Constantly spamming healing spells is boring. Healers are fun because you weigh options and multitask with them. If you want to spam spam spam one task, go play a DPS and stop trying to ruin the healing role. Hyperfocusing on one(ish) task are what DPS are good at: they have a theoretically infinite ceiling on refining their one task and getting better at it.

Also the irony is in almost half of those games (the D&D style ones), healers main purpose is a buff bots, heal second, and DPS is a distant third only useful late game with a min/max build. I enjoy those games a lot. Path 1 + 2 together clocked in 1000h for me on steam. But no, keep those healers away from my MMO please.

D&D style games see healers as buffbots first, DPS second, healers third if you're actually good at them. Casting healing spells in combat is something you want to actively avoid. You want to patch people up after everything is dead.

On unrelated note: my observation on this forum about WoW is it seems to be like a certain ex-president. Both the people who hate it and love it seem can't help but let it live rent free in their head. It's always funny seeing two sides gaslighting each other over it.

Funny, I don't often bring up WoW until other people do. I have no interest in that game, but good lord do its disciples love to invade other MMOs and wail and screech and gnash their teeth demanding that the entire design paradigm be upended to make it more like WoW. It's happened in every. Single. MMO. I have ever played.


MP and aggro management is interesting insofar as it enables/adds flavor to choices. In a better system, I'd love to see 'em. In the current one? Good riddance. There's no point to punishing players for just playing the game. And GOD no, I wouldn't want old Everquest-style "MP management" anywhere near me. Sitting on your butt in the middle of combat for 8-10 seconds at a time is somehow even more boring than spamming Glare.

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

Well yeah, it's because Sylphies don't have compelling arguments. Just rewordings of "HeALeRS sHOuLd HeAL OnLY", then they pitch fits when people dare to disagree with that simplistic stance. Make healers interesting to play. Not boring spammy snorefests. What a novel opinion, how dare we agree that healers should be improved. NO! Keep them as they are! They're in the best state ever! Spamming one button over and over and over again is a good start, but we need to make them even more boring to finish perfecting them.

[Sebazy]

And GOD no, I wouldn't want old Everquest-style "MP management" anywhere near me. Sitting on your butt in the middle of combat for 8-10 seconds at a time is somehow even more boring than spamming Glare.

Off topic, but as a Shaman main and hardcore raider, I ended up on a model M keyboard and even then, I still polished my 8 key (cannibalise) smooth over all those years

Everquest's style of combat had it's place, but that was in a time where we were on average much younger and could merrily afford to waste entire days on a raid or camp. A modern day raid is done and dusted in the time many EQ raids took to simply prep and setup.

Back on topic:

Constantly spamming healing spells is boring.

If you can count dual purpose abilities as healing, it can be done in a way that's enjoyable. It just requires inventive approaches. SWTOR did this well, Warhammer did it to perfection.

Abilities like current Lilies, Earthy Star and Macrocosmos show that they understand the theory, but haven't got to grips with it yet for whatever reason.

[Midareyukki]

Back on topic:

If you can count dual purpose abilities as healing, it can be done in a way that's enjoyable. It just requires inventive approaches. SWTOR did this well, Warhammer did it to perfection.

Abilities like current Lilies, Earthy Star and Macrocosmos show that they understand the theory, but haven't got to grips with it yet for whatever reason.

Yes, please. Especially on White Mage.

It's jarring when most of your spells are just some variation of Cure but special™
- Cure 2? Stronger cure
- Afflatus? Instant cure
- Tetra? OGCD cure
- Cure 3? Cure 2 but AoE
- Medica? AoE cure
- Medica 2? AoE cure but with regen tacked onto it
- Benediction? Full Cure
- Plenary? Putting cures on your cures

Other jobs are just as simple, but at least they have special effects that don't make the similarities as jarring!
Astro has delayed cures, cures that scale, cure after mitigation... and Scholar and Sage have mitigation, shields, safety nets and heals as well.

I get that WHM is meant to be straightforward in design, which is why it works. But without any further effects, you're really better off choosing the better spells until they're on cooldown rather than have to choose your approach.

[Raven2014]

If you can count dual purpose abilities as healing, it can be done in a way that's enjoyable. It just requires inventive approaches. SWTOR did this well, Warhammer did it to perfection.

Same thing in Tera, as a healer you can help party member dodge damage (by give them an ifram teleport), provide buff, cleansing, MP recovery, not to mention healing come in many different forms. Healing is so simple that if you think about it, would it make any difference for a healer to heal a group of 4, of 8, of 12 or even 20? I think the answer will be no because the majority of the kit is basically a one size fit-all, fire and forget abilities. In other games, the complexity of healing scale with party size.

Buff in FF14 is also extremely simple comparing to many of its peer. Like it always come at specific time, and you basically just press one button. In other games often there are both on demand buff and full up time buff that the healers have to manage and maintain, adding cleansing duty (which notarious lacking in FF14 so whenever it shows up once a blue moon it feels like a gimmick), actually have to manage your MP and the healer basically would have a full pallate. Can they still DPS? Sure, but that would be like the last item on the list, instead of something on the fore-front like FF14.


People only say "more healing is boring" simply because they don't envision the healer role as anything else but just casting a spell to top people off. Someone had mentioned it before, the healing model in FF14 is boring isn't because they have one DPS button, but because it's too one dimensional. Hell, the fact that "oh I don't have cleanse on my hotbar" is a meme should tell you something. While I agree the healing in FF14 can use more "engagement" and should be more "interesting", I simply don't believe DPS focus in the way to go. In fact if I can be so bold, I certainly will claim FF14 is the one MMO where I see healer does the most DPS while also have the most simple healing model.

I wouldn't have a problem if the dev drop their pants and just scrap the trinity system and adapt a model like Guild War, then I would change my expectation accordingly. But for a game that bill itself as using the trinity, having essentially a Red DPS, a blue DPS, and a green DPS just feel ... wrong.

[Sebazy]

I wouldn't have a problem if the dev drop their pants and just scrap the trinity system and adapt a model like Guild War, then I would change my expectation accordingly. But for a game that bill itself as using the trinity, having essentially a Red DPS, a blue DPS, and a green DPS just feel ... wrong.

The point about healing various sizes of party is a good one. One way to make healing more interactive and involving would be to have more of a focus on triage. Right now AoE healing is powerful, abundant and cheap. So much so that even fights like E12S pt 1 are quickly forgotten even though they threw huge amounts of AoE damage at the raid over the duration. Making AoE heals powerful but on much longer cooldowns whilst forcing us to have to prioritise who we heal is one avenue that could be explored. It's this process that made healing vanilla WoW PvP so engrossing for me IMO.

Onto the last point, I really don't think SE needs to drop the trinity system, but a rethink almost to that kind of scale does need to happen if these thick cobwebs are going to be shaken off. A heavier emphasis on hybridisation and buff abilities is a great way to further engage healers. Again, Warhammer Online's Warrior priest is probably the best example of this at least out of any MMO I've played.

[Shurrikhan]

The point about healing various sizes of party is a good one. One way to make healing more interactive and involving would be to have more of a focus on triage. Right now AoE healing is powerful, abundant and cheap.

One age-old suggestion has been to split a portion of the AoE healing. For instance, if a Medica were to do 300 potency per person and then split 200 across all wounded allies in range, it's down to as little as 325 each across 8 people (despite doing its maximum total potency, 2600).

The idea would be to allow AoEs still high total potency without letting them outright replace need for target selection following most raid mechanics.