My take on the simplicity of healers and the healer problem

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Bring your take(s) into this thread, too. Keeps the larger thread alive: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ed-an-overhaul

EDIT: finally able to find time to properly digest the thread. will snip the parts I'm not going to comment.

Fight Design:
1. More vulnerability debuffs instead of damage downs
2. More % damage raidwides or ones that require you to have a shield in order to survive
3. More 1HP drops that require a quick topping off before the actual damage hits.

Point 1 to 3.

I think one of the easier way to make healing raidwides slightly more interesting is to just take... let's see.. no need to look into EX/Savage: that first 90 seconds into pulling Nald'thal in Aglaia felt nice to heal. They need to increase the frequency of players taking damage, not spacing out the instances of damage but spiking it so much it becomes more of a mitigation check rather than a heal check (p6s earlier weeks). This would be a good start before they incorporate anything more on top of it.

WHM:
2. Another aoe regen ability tied to lilies. Can even be as simple as reworking freecure to give a regen to Afflatus heals. This will make Rapture/Solace stand out and not be a Medica/Cure 2 equivalents but with a fancier effect and no cast.

Point 2

Maybe. I don't think people would be against the general idea of getting additional lily spender. A tweaked Afflatus Purgation from PvP for example, would've been a nice addition.

AST:
2. Make Minor Arcana a card you can draw out of combat and allow astro to pick if they want a heal or dmg card.

Point 2

I honestly think they should've just kept ShB's iteration of Lord/Lady and people would've been gucci for the most part vs our current iteration.

SCH:
1. Remove/rework Energy Drain - it should reward you for healing not punish you for using your healing gauge for damage.
2. Make fairies unique again.

Point 1.

Rework? Definitely. Remove? Please don't. Your description of this point fits precisely what a SGE currently is. Let people play SGE if they dislike Energy Drains.

Point 2.

Hell yes. While we're at it, they should make Faerie gauge more interesting as well instead. Having a gauge dedicated only for a single button is just...

[Tiramu]

I don't know if a lot of these are where healers *need* work.

Fight Design:
1. More vulnerability debuffs instead of damage downs
2. More % damage raidwides or ones that require you to have a shield in order to survive
3. More 1HP drops that require a quick topping off before the actual damage hits.
4 An actual heal-through enrage not the 2 soft enrage aoes into hard enrage we currently have.

1.A move away from burst damage into more consistent damage would be a better solution to healing flow.

2. This could affect party comps making a shield healer mandatory.

3. Again, this could affect party comps too much.


4. No feelings on this.

WHM:
1. A party wide shielding ability. - AST has shield, SCH/SGE have regen abilities, so I don't see why not.

2. Another aoe regen ability tied to lilies. Can even be as simple as reworking freecure to give a regen to Afflatus heals. This will make Rapture/Solace stand out and not be a Medica/Cure 2 equivalents but with a fancier effect and no cast.

1. WHMs toolkit is an utter beast. Adding shields on top could make it a bit OP. Why bring a shield healer?

2. I don't think another AOE or single target regen is needed.

I'd rather see an AOE DoT, Cure upgrading to Cure 2 and Medica to Medica 2, and an expanding of our DPS toolkit.

Something like BLMs Umbral/Astral phases where we can lean ourselves into healer or DPS modes and extend DPS abilities with a rotation. I think with WHM being the opposite to BLM this kind of approach would make sense and expand the job more.

AST:
1. Rework Astrodyne - I want the fantasy of buffing my allies, why on earth do I need a selfish buff?
2. Make Minor Arcana a card you can draw out of combat and allow astro to pick if they want a heal or dmg card.

1. I guess it could work.

2. Sure. But it would need an expanded DPS toolkit for it to be useful - maybe something similar to what I said about WHM above?

SCH:
1. Remove/rework Energy Drain - it should reward you for healing not punish you for using your healing gauge for damage.
2. Make fairies unique again.
3. Allow Seraph's Fey Illumination/Whispering Dawn equivalent abilities to match the capstone ability that Seraph is meant to be, rather than it being the same but with a fancy new name.

I have so many issues with Scholar.

1. Agreed

2. Agreed, from a pet class I expect to choose different fairies that have their own characteristics and tools. A regen fairy, a shield fairy and a support fairy.

It would also be cool to order them to cover certain party members. How about a shield fairy you can order to cover a BLM when they have Leylines out?

3. Sure I guess.

I also think it needs stronger tools to recover from emergencies. It can be a pain to recover from bad pulls, and a non mitigating tank can easily wipe a group going too hard in 4 player dungeons.

[Jeeqbit]

1.A move away from burst damage into more consistent damage would be a better solution to healing flow.

One of the best mechanics in the game is an ability called Counter Stance, which does all your damage back to you. I would love to see it in raids because it would mean that in order to attack the boss, you would have to suffer damage back and if you want to make it easier for the healers at a certain part of the fight, you could stop or reduce damage.

[Liam_Harper]

They did remove Energy Drain once and the backlash was so big they rushed to bring it back as fast as possible in the next patch. Scholars love Energy Drain and they get upset when it's taken away.

The issue with Energy Drain is they need to give a similar version to the other healers if they refuse to remove it. SCH stands out like a sore thumb as the only healer that needs to pay heal tax in an environment where every other healer does it for free. I get the idea that SCH is about management, placing your fairy, parts of your toolkit going offline, not overusing Aether heals. But your "reward" when you master it is being relegated to Broil spam for a few % extra dps. Outside of week one clears, you rarely need that extra bit of SCH rdps so it's barely a reward. You just play with a clunky toolkit, try not to use your toolkit and let your co-heal do the bulk of the healing.

I'll never main SCH for that reason. It's a fun job to learn but it offers me nothing at endgame. I want to use my toolkit and as a Sage I'm meant to use my full toolkit. It's comfy, it never shuts off because I ate a fairy, I have a ton of free mobility and I'm meant to press heal buttons. Why would I sacrifice all that for a few % healer dps unless we're on a very tight enrage? It's not a reward.

If all 4 healers had Energy Drain equivalents it would become more interesting because now both healers need to carefully coordinate and manage their toolkit. You'd both press heal buttons, but both do it as efficiently as you can. You can't dump all the work on your co-heal anymore.

But SCH in a world where it's the only healer with tax and too many fights have low heal requirements just isn't fun to master. Your goal is to play your job as little as possible.

[Tiramu]

One of the best mechanics in the game is an ability called Counter Stance, which does all your damage back to you. I would love to see it in raids because it would mean that in order to attack the boss, you would have to suffer damage back and if you want to make it easier for the healers at a certain part of the fight, you could stop or reduce damage.

That could be cool, but wouldn't it just equate to more burst damage?

I feel like the issues healers have right now is that battle design and healer design aren't designed in synergy. Battles are geared towards low sustained damage with occasional burst damage. So a healer in a competent group is mostly DPS'ing, then handling occasional burst damage and spot healing when DPS take optional damage. But healers toolkits are designed for healing heavier, sustained damage and occasional DPS'ing in between. Which is a bit back to front. They should either design healers around the current battle mechanics or adjust the battle mechanics so that healers are more pure healers than green dps.

[IDontPetLalas]

That could be cool, but wouldn't it just equate to more burst damage?

I feel like the issues healers have right now is that battle design and healer design aren't designed in synergy. Battles are geared towards low sustained damage with occasional burst damage. So a healer in a competent group is mostly DPS'ing, then handling occasional burst damage and spot healing when DPS take optional damage. But healers toolkits are designed for healing heavier, sustained damage and occasional DPS'ing in between. Which is a bit back to front. They should either design healers around the current battle mechanics or adjust the battle mechanics so that healers are more pure healers than green dps.

See the part I highlighted? I don't disagree at all with your conclusions, however there are extensive posts and threads that have gone into why a re-design of the battle mechanics makes less sense than remaining consistent with the current game design ( i.e. battle mechanics) and ensuring that the healer toolkits are aligned with it.

So that means likely remaining with the low sustained damage and predictable high damage. I would still like to see the use of existing skills being put to use- esuna checks for example, to spice things up.

[Semirhage]

1. WHMs toolkit is an utter beast. Adding shields on top could make it a bit OP. Why bring a shield healer?

Why not? You already don't need to bring a regen healer because the shield healers are overpowered.

[VerdeLuck]

1. WHMs toolkit is an utter beast. Adding shields on top could make it a bit OP. Why bring a shield healer?

This isn't the problem you think it is. WHM currently does super high heals yes, but nothing requires it. Aside from players messing up mechanics there is no reason to use any of those buttons.
I rarely hit Cure 3 outside of Savage, outside of Savage or week 1 prog I have to fight overcapping on lilies constantly. The content just doesn't need the kind of healing WHM has.
That creates this problem where the things it brings are useless to most high end groups but it also doesn't have the things most of them really want which is contributions to mitigation, shielding, and the 2 minute burst window.

You could draw a similar parallel to old Paladin where it had great Physical tankiness but terrible magic tankinesss, making it great for dungeons and casual content but terrible for high end play. Sure it was a beast in casual content and could technically clear high level stuff, but it really didn't have what people in the game were looking for.

[Tiramu]

See the part I highlighted? I don't disagree at all with your conclusions, however there are extensive posts and threads that have gone into why a re-design of the battle mechanics makes less sense than remaining consistent with the current game design ( i.e. battle mechanics) and ensuring that the healer toolkits are aligned with it.

So that means likely remaining with the low sustained damage and predictable high damage. I would still like to see the use of existing skills being put to use- esuna checks for example, to spice things up.

I agree that adjusting healers to the current mechanics is more viable, which is why I want to see a proper DPS rotation adding to healers.

This isn't the problem you think it is. WHM currently does super high heals yes, but nothing requires it. Aside from players messing up mechanics there is no reason to use any of those buttons.
I rarely hit Cure 3 outside of Savage, outside of Savage or week 1 prog I have to fight overcapping on lilies constantly. The content just doesn't need the kind of healing WHM has.
That creates this problem where the things it brings are useless to most high end groups but it also doesn't have the things most of them really want which is contributions to mitigation, shielding, and the 2 minute burst window.

You could draw a similar parallel to old Paladin where it had great Physical tankiness but terrible magic tankinesss, making it great for dungeons and casual content but terrible for high end play. Sure it was a beast in casual content and could technically clear high level stuff, but it really didn't have what people in the game were looking for.

It wasn't really Cure 3 that I was thinking about, its so niche. More that you can have a pretty consistent 2 stack regen on the entire group and a 3 stack on the tank if you want to. Plus Afflatus heals, Tetra which as strong as most emergency heals on other healers on a 60 second cooldown and Benediction. For AOE healing, your regen stacks and a Medica 2 is going to cover most mid damage raidwides and Rapture will cover anything nastier. Its quite beefy compared to the other healers without adding shields on top of that. Heck we even have a small shield we can plop on the tank.

[Tiramu]

Why not? You already don't need to bring a regen healer because the shield healers are overpowered.

I think a WHM with AOE shields would just be too much.