Healers need an overhaul

[ForteNightshade]

So I'm curious then, how do you (or any other healer in this thread) feel about healing in the current savage tier? It seems to me (looking from the outside) that there is more of an emphasis on healing given the number of TB and raid wides that apply heavy dots on the party in addition to damage events that seem to only be there to strip shields before a heavier hit (think the sonic screams into a Ruby glow on P5s). Especially when it comes to TBs given most tanks are unable to simply invuln it and call it a day and need to use their own mitigation to lessen the subsequent bleed/dot.

This tier has been a nice step forward in opinion. It doesn't address the post-prog healing gameplay because we still reach a point where we simply outgear P5-7 enough to entirely oGCD them. Purgation is probably the only mechanic in those three fights that may still need a GCD shield but progress is progress. P8S is the first Savage fight in six years we literally can't oGCD heal. I want to see more of this because it's actually making us utilize our full kit regardless if it's a safety clear or a log run.

Of course, this does nothing to address the content below Savage. Which remains a snore. I like the concept of Variant Dungeons but it really highlights how poorly thought out the Healer role is. With a four person comp, healers are entirely irrelevant. That should never be the case, regardless of the content's intended difficulty. So the dev team still has a ways to go in making the healing role interesting again.

Because it is fact. This is the samething as someone accused me of "gaslighting" for simply saying "green DPS".

There were no issue with WHM at the beginning of 6.0 if you look at from a healing respective. It has strong heal, decent MP economy if one ultilize its full kit, while still contribute meaningful DPS. In the absent of FFlog and players are inclined to play the class as it's designed, there would be no problem because there would be no reason not to. The minimum DPS loss wouldn't make or break even the hardest encounter. It's a simple, comfy healing class with plenty of mobility.

That issue was 100% a self-created, artificially constructed by the community because of a small difference that makes no difference in any in-game context, but some ranking on a third party website.

It isn't fact though.

White Mage was the only healer essentially punished for utilizing their own job gauge. Someone wanting their job to be at a competitive level to its respective counterparts doesn't necessarily make them a "green DPS". At least not in the context you're using that term. Furthermore, it wasn't a minimal DPS. In fact, let's review! Grabbing a random top ranked White Mage from P6S. They used Rapture 21 times. At 310 potency from Glare III, this would equate to a 2,170 potency loss throughout the fight. A rough estimation puts that well over 500 rDPS just... thrown away for no tangible benefit. What does White Mage offer the other healers cannot do better without suffering a massive damage loss? Absolutely nothing. Those big "burst heals" aren't relevant. Not only is shield healing and mitigation objectively better than regeneration, Astro can easily handle the load just fine.

In other words, there is no reason to bring a healer whose main gimmick is "healing" at a loss. This isn't a "self-created" problem but a poor balancing one.

The irony here is you bring up FFlogs, which yes, have influenced the community on the whole. It's also the only reason Savage retains any relevancy outside of Ultimate gearing. Without that website, Savage would be entirely dead content within 2-3 months. If not sooner.

[Raven2014]

The irony here is you bring up FFlogs, which yes, have influenced the community on the whole. It's also the only reason Savage retains any relevancy outside of Ultimate gearing. Without that website, Savage would be entirely dead content within 2-3 months. If not sooner.

Bold word considering we're in week 9 and the majority of PF are still trying to prog/clear P8S. As someone who has 1 main in a static but PF on 3 alts, trust me ... I count.

And usually after first clear you need an average of 8 additional week to full gear up (and that's by static standard). Let me tell you, there is a world that exist outside of the static bubble and the top 5-10% and first week/month clearer, and that world have a lot of players. I had something like 200-300 clears on all floors last tier, and I'm someone who don't give a crap about parse. I play for the fun, the loot, the glam, the alt-job .etc. and I can assure you there are a lot like me.

[Maltothoris]

I found this old post from years ago back when Patch 3.4 came out (or as I would call the downfall of FFXIV healer design) https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...xt_of_endgame/

It is really kinda sad that this never really evolved beyond and it is really starting to show its age. Of course the big issue being

S-E relies too heavily numbers buffs. Ability X potency is now increased. Ability Y's duration is now extended. Ability Z's cooldown is now reduced. These buffs are lazy, sloppy, and boring. They often fail to address the issues.

[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.

[ASkellington]

Face it: "we want it to be more engaging", "we want it to be more cool" are nothing but window dressing excuses for people who want nothing more but to play a green DPS with big fat numbers. In short, the majority of healers complain stem from the group of people who subconsciously don't want to play traditional healers

This comment right here is why you were being called out as gaslighting. Not the "green dps" comment. You were essentially saying that we don't want more to heal and we just want to DPS.

Uh, no. We do want more to heal, but we also want engaging down time, because we're always going to have down time, because SE is NEVER going to overhaul the game to make it where we heal upwards of 90% of a fight.

I don't get why people cannot understand that. Look at the top part of my quote. Read it. Due to the way FFXIV is designed, we are going to have time spent not healing. That can be 10% of a fight, that can be 70& of a fight.

Why is it such a problem to ask for that down time to be interesting? Please answer that question. Because from where I'm standing from, it isn't a problem.

[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.

[Raven2014]

Uh, no. We do want more to heal, but we also want engaging down time, because we're always going to have down time,

Uhm have you been reading all the discussion/argument following that post? The majority of them are asking the healer kit to be strimed down and replacing with DPS abilities, that doesn't sound very "wanting more to heal" to me. And this is hardly the first time I joint this thread, I usually take 2-3 months break between each spark of discussion, but the narrative and content never really change. That's a conclusion I reached from more than just what often brought up in these discussion, but also a very obvious trend and mind set that appears pretty much all aspect of the design.

Like I said, I put the 'cause majority of this mind set on the developers that for the last 6-7 years that have mold the expectation of the players base. Regardless that doesn't change the fact of what it is. You may have noticed one of my reply I had reaffirmed it, if stating what I consider to be the truth is considered gaslighting, then I guess that can't be helped. It is not my intention, but it is a fact. In fact I don't think any one had actually refute the comment specifically, rather just give a bunch of reason why it is that way.

because SE is NEVER going to overhaul the game to make it where we heal upwards of 90% of a fight.

And ... that doesn't sound like my problem? First I don't know why I should change my personal preference over what you guys believe SE is thinking. Secondly ... I looked around and I see people constantly ask for things that SE never delivered ... have that ever stopped you people asking year after year? I don't know why you and yours somehow think I should stop asking what I want ... just because it doesn't conform to your own wish?

Hell, one person a couple page back even mock me as a "boomer" for liking thing that way. Like I said I'm not a boomer, but even if I were one, that doesn't make my preference any less valid than yours.


And you have been given plenty of examples in the last few page (majority did not even come from me) of why even without a focus on healing, there are many many other way to keep healers busy. I simply want to be engaged in a gameplay that identifiable to the role I choose, and not having it conflate with another. I play and enjoy SMN, but I don't want a SMN light when I play a healer. Which if you think about it, that would probably be exactly what healers become after "taking away the bloat healing kits and replace them with a simple DPS rotation".

[Sebazy]

Uhm have you been reading all the discussion/argument following that post? The majority of them are asking the healer kit to be strimed down and replacing with DPS abilities, that doesn't sound very "wanting more to heal" to me.

In fairness, I think you're misunderstanding the point of that suggestion.

It's not so that we have less healing, but rather that it's not so effortless to heal at the last second because we've got multiple layers of instant cast and resource free AoE healing at our disposal. Far too much for the majority of content it must be said.

You could say that it's the rose tinted glasses effect for 2.0. ARR was a different era to heal because we couldn't 'Oops teehee gigglesnort' at the last second and drop some variety of Tetra, Indom or whatever on a short cooldown and at little to no meaningful cost. We had to pay attention in high HPS situations and even pre healing wasn't just acceptable, it was the safest way to handle many encounters and mechanics.

Even really simple bosses like T1 were intensive to heal during prog because we had to carefully balance and pace our healing output. This tier has been a positive step forward for sure, but even then for the most part it means that we're back to having to keep regen up some of the time and actually have to pay attention to the tank's HP bar. It's still pales compared to Coil prog though IMHO. Was this era perfection? No of course not, but the simple act of healing was *VASTLY* more enjoyable overall to me than what we have now for what it's worth.

[Raven2014]

Even really simple bosses like T1 were intensive to heal during prog because we had to carefully balance and pace our healing output. This tier has been a positive step forward for sure, but even then for the most part it means that we're back to having to keep regen up some of the time and actually have to pay attention to the tank's HP bar. It's still pales compared Coil prog though IMHO. Was this era perfection? No of course not, but the simple act of healing was *VASTLY* more enjoyable overall to me than what we have now for what it's worth.

And this is the same thing I have been saying:

- Healing used to be more involved than this. We used to have MP management, we used to have ambient damage, we used to have aggro management .etc. I'm not exactly asking for the moon here. The majority of things I mentioned at some point, existed in this game abeit in a fairly primitive form. They simply were cast aside in favor of DPS centrist model.

- Why Esuna is so under-utilize? Why is it whenever we have a DOT mechanic, it's simply a matter of overpowering it with healing? Why do Ultimate Impulse + Hell Sting or Dominion + Aigonina or Quietus + Pulsar not become a more standard healing mechanic rather than soft enrage mechanic?

- Why does all of our AOE are simply a bubble with a radius? Where is a jump/chaining healing mechanic (like the old Rickochet), what about dropping healing orbs on the ground? What about combo effect on healing?

[flowerfairy]

This comment right here is why you were being called out as gaslighting. Not the "green dps" comment. You were essentially saying that we don't want more to heal and we just want to DPS.

I think that’s what they’ve been intentionally ignoring. More downtime buttons does not mean less healing. I never said that I didn’t want more heal-intensive mechanics, but what I did say is that only adding that to future fights won’t fix the fundamental issue healers face in every crevice of the game, not just endgame.

The point is that we have a bunch of oGCDs that are extremely powerful AoE heals and they all come off cooldown really fast. This is actually more DPS centric then what I’m asking for. I want there to be meaningful choices between either doing damage or healing the party. That’s what well-designed healers and supports do across any genre of video games.

I want the healing tools we have to be more significant than a bunch of generic X potency heals. This doesn’t make me any less of a healer… It’s gaslighting, plain and simple. It’s invalidating what I want as a healer player, even more so than you keep claiming that we’re doing to your ideas (which we aren’t, we’re telling you we asked for it before and SE refused.)