General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[ty_taurus]

Outside of just healing, I've seen others describing EW thus far as feeling a bit tired--feeling those pre-expansion blues and we're only in 6.28 due to the content coming out feeling very short lived. I feel this a bit too, but I also just feel really anxious to see if 7.0 will do anything to address the healers. Not saying I have much hope that it will offer something I want, but I've grown really tired of not being allowed to play the role I want to play for over 3 years now and I feel this internal pressure to want to hit the fast forward button and see when healers become at least tolerable again. SB AST and SCH weren't perfect, but I was content with them even if I wanted more from them. With all the heat coming onto job design philosophy overall, SE really has to decide where they want to go from here on the game as a whole as a lot of prominent names in the FFXIV circle are feeling tired of EW's stagnancy.

There's a part of me that feels like something will have to give on healer design as well if they are capable of addressing these concerns and I just wanna be done with EW's gameplay model and move onto the next thing. I've not felt this way before about past expansions as a whole, and it really makes me sad that I feel this way. I've taken breaks before and have no problem with that of course, it's just even then I'd think "I'll come back in a couple months and see the new content" whereas now it's more like "Damn, it's still well over a year before 7.0 comes in and maybe/hopefully fixes some of this."

[ForsakenRoe]

There's a part of me that feels like something will have to give on healer design as well if they are capable of addressing these concerns and I just wanna be done with EW's gameplay model and move onto the next thing. I've not felt this way before about past expansions as a whole, and it really makes me sad that I feel this way. I've taken breaks before and have no problem with that of course, it's just even then I'd think "I'll come back in a couple months and see the new content" whereas now it's more like "Damn, it's still well over a year before 7.0 comes in and maybe/hopefully fixes some of this."

I'm only raidlogging at this point too, the real problem is that for the most part, when SE does something as an 'experiment', that experiment doesn't ever seem to be written off as a 'failure' it's just re-run until it sort of works. Which can be fine for some things, look how many times they redid Diadem before it became 'kinda ok I guess' tier. But the idea of 'Pure healer VS Barrier healer' is a failure in my view, and it should have been obvious it would be from the moment it was announced, as they tried thinking the same thing with tanks and rolled it back before it even got past the design pitch phase. The big problem here (and I really do mean big, with zero hyperbole or exaggeration) is that if they carry on with the 'failed experiment' path and double down on trying to enforce Pure vs Barrier, it'll just get so so much harder to undo all of that when they finally realize how non-functional the idea is. Of course, there's a chance they actually manage to pull it off in a satisfying way, but so far I've seen zero evidence they can manage something like that. SCH SGE still is a crazy strong combo, and WHM AST is a literal meme.

At this point, I'm checking out 'the other MMO', and having a very good time levelling healers there. Healers with completely different feelings to one another for their gameplay, they got melee healer, HOT healer, plain jane 'i press heal hp go up' healer, daamge-to-heal healer, new expansion's bringing a new one that has a load of time related skills like 'the next 3 spells you cast are stored. press this button again to replay them instantly, ignoring their CDs and resource costs', 'macrocosmos but you dont have to press it in advance of the damage', or 'the next damage instance the target takes is split. 50% is dealt instantly, 50% as a 10sec DOT'. IDK how much of the design limitations for SE is 'engine cant do that' and how much is 'we need to try and make the healers as similar as possible so it's easier to balance them' but their direct competitor is a game with an engine held together by spit and prayers at this point, and they've got so many more functionalities they can play with for their class designs.

Maybe a tiny bit of hyperbole, I feel like we're starting to see a shift. Originally it was FF as the underdog, who started their road to redemption by listening to the fans and working hard to win back trust. Now it almost feels like, with the mass exodus of streamers to FF, and the lawsuit stuff, it's like the shoe is on the other foot: it's the 'other MMO' that is down in the dirt, and is now starting to climb back to its feet (while the theme music plays in the background for hype). My question is, if FFXIV is known for being 'the MMO where the devs listen', how do people at media tour interviews like MrHappy keep raising the point over and over that healers have bland DPS rotations but are expected to use them by the enrage timer? How does it keep coming up at Live Letter Q+As? How many times do these people have to ask the question 'healers are in a bad spot, how are you going to fix them' before we hear an answer beyond 'hmm well...uhhh... let us collect some more data please'?

[ASkellington]

There's a part of me that feels like something will have to give on healer design as well if they are capable of addressing these concerns and I just wanna be done with EW's gameplay model and move onto the next thing. I've not felt this way before about past expansions as a whole, and it really makes me sad that I feel this way. I've taken breaks before and have no problem with that of course, it's just even then I'd think "I'll come back in a couple months and see the new content" whereas now it's more like "Damn, it's still well over a year before 7.0 comes in and maybe/hopefully fixes some of this."

This was me last expac going into EW. You have more hope than I do. That said, 7.0 is likely going to break whether or not I decide to stay subbed, even if I do like the RP community I found. FFXIV being story focused is fine to a point, but it is still an MMORPG and part of the MMORPG experience is whether or not your battle design is decent to great. Healers in this game aren't even decent at best.

Especially if YoshiP wants to bring in single players to the game. That works for DPS and it kinda works for tanks. But for healer? 86 levels of mostly 2 dps buttons when this game has solo encounters is ubsurd and on this alone I can't fathom why anyone thinks Healers are "ok".

And no "go level another job" is no excuse for the dev team to be lazy, neglectful or that oversightful of that single metric.