A question: What makes a Healer "easy/simple" or "hard/complex"?

[NobleWinter]

Heavenward Scholar had a kit that fit the damage and healing profile of encounters perfectly. You spent most of your time dpsing and it was fun. You had plenty of skills to manage to do damage. When it was time to heal you had a few skills but they required thought to be put to full advantage. Your strong heals had cool downs that needed to be respected. You couldn't blow everything on Energy Drains because the same resource was the cornerstone of your healing and you couldn't rely on Succor spam to fill health bars. Every healer should have been made into Scholar with a robust DPS kit to fill the healing downtime in causal content and a healing toolkit that required some actual brainpower to function well. Instead every healer became Astro with a DPS kit so pitifully bare you only had one option. Nuke spam until your dot drops and reapply your dot if it has enough time to be useful. Then healing became bloated with sooooooo many options that there is absolutely no way to fail. Both healing and DPS need complexity for healers. We spend too much time waiting for damage when we could be enjoying a fun mini game like every other class that involves DPS or support. Healing NEEDS to be easy. Everyone fails when healers can't heal well enough. The barrier to entry for healers is healing; not DPS complexity. If your healer can't get the party to survive the first raid wide you disband. Traits and tools that make healing accessible is critical but dps that is fun allows solo content, Fates, and every instanced duty to also be enjoyable for healers. DPS needs to be engaging (not difficult but engaging) and healing needs to be straight forward but not foolproof. You shouldn't be able to hit level 90 relying only on medica 2. The learning curve for healing is non-existent. You causal your way to your first extreme or savage and then get your mind blown by mp management, nuance between skills, and prioritization of tasks. If your cohealer, both tanks, and two dps are dead with one being a red mage who do you revive first? It depends on the encounter and timing. Is it down time or will a buster with a tank swap be coming soon? Do you have a way to revive quickly like Presence of Mind or Lightspeed? Healing can't be super complex even if it's the main job of healing. DPS can range from two or three buttons to most of your kit and encounters can be tuned to allow extreme failure with every option on the scale. This seems like common sense to me but yet we have healing toolkits that aren't accessible and DPS kits that put people to sleep. It boggles the mind.

[Renathras]

Heavenward Scholar had a kit that fit the damage and healing profile of encounters perfectly. You spent most of your time dpsing and it was fun. You had plenty of skills to manage to do damage. When it was time to heal you had a few skills but they required thought to be put to full advantage. Your strong heals had cool downs that needed to be respected. You couldn't blow everything on Energy Drains because the same resource was the cornerstone of your healing and you couldn't rely on Succor spam to fill health bars.

I agree with this.

But not this:

Every healer should have been made into Scholar with a robust DPS kit to fill the healing downtime in causal content and a healing toolkit that required some actual brainpower to function well.

The problems this game has worst, imo, is when they make everything the same. This goes for making all Jobs simple but ALSO for making all Jobs complex. There should be a spectrum. In HW, when SCH was that way, WHM was not and AST was...well...AST.

Moreover, I think the reason for the "no way to fail" is because so many Healers quit the role in HW and SB that the Devs were trying to make it so people didn't have "Healxiety" and would actually que up as Healers more, since there were massive Healer shortages.

As you say, though I don't agree with it personally, the Devs also thought "Healing NEEDS to be easy." But that thought extends to Healer damage kits. They also NEED to be easy, otherwise almost no one will play them. People who want complex damage rotations play DPSers. Giving Healers a mediocre damage kit will just alienate the people who don't like damage rotations (and play Healers for that reason) while also not appealing to people who want a "real" DPS kit, who will keep playing DPSers. It will only please a narrow sliver of the population, like as not. Which could already be achieved by just giving SCH its SB kit back.

when we could be enjoying a fun mini game like every other class that involves DPS or support.

Not everyone "enjoys" damage rotations. Again, if we did, most of us would be playing DPS Jobs. Many people do solo content, FATEs, and instanced duties on Healers and enjoy them. I love playing on Healers now, for example. I do Experts, PotD/HoH solo runs, Extremes, 24 mans, and occasionally Savages. I did the latest Extreme, Ex5, on RDM (since it was the only Practice party up when I had time) and got my clear, and hated almost every minute of it. I did it, but I did not enjoy it. On the other hand, I've healed all the other Extremes and enjoyed those (except Ex3, because Eff that place, lol), and I even tanked a few. But I've never enjoyed DPSing any of them. Did some ZodEx on SMN. It was...meh. I did it for farms and it wasn't abject misery, but I wouldn't describe it as fun. On the other hand, I healed it, even solo healed it on SGE quite a few times, and had a blast every time on Healer.

I'm not saying some people are DPSers or anything, but I am saying not everyone loves DPS rotations. I contend that some Healers should have them while others do not, then players may gravitate to the one they find most acceptable.

...but this is an aside we've had in dozens of threads and not really directly on topic, isn't it...

DPS can range from two or three buttons to most of your kit and encounters can be tuned to allow extreme failure with every option on the scale.

In theory, yes. But I've yet to see it happen. Until encounters are tuned with Enrages so generous to Healers doing 100% or 1% DPS - which would be so generous as to make them trivial (and that gray parsing SAM would still blame the Healer if the party hit an Enrage) - then "extreme failure" isn't allowed, and likely won't be.

But, again, I think the solution is a joint one: Make SCH SB again. Make AST SB again. Leave WHM alone. Tune SGE up around the edges. Then launch the expansion and see who gravitates to what and which Healers get played and to what extent. From there, more decisions can be made if necessary, though it may not even be necessary at that point.

Clearly what they should do is this: add damage tools (the quicker fix), under the pretense of 'oh yeh we're doing this so healers have something to do in 7.0, so that by 8.0 we'll have had a bigger time window to work out a better solution (eg, making fights actually do damage)'

Then if/when it turns out that actually, more damage tools WAS the solution all along, just nix the last part and say 'well we WERE going to look into alternatives, but the extra damage options were so well received we figured 'why rock the boat', so we'll be going ahead with adding even more damage options in 8.0'

Firstly: One could argue this for damage changes instead (e.g. encounter damage and oGCD cooldown, potency, and abundance decreasing)

Secondly: We could just do this with one Healer from each category (Pure and Barrier) and then run the test that way. Because if we do it all at once to all the Healers and it DOESN'T work, then what? All of 7.X there's a massive Healer shortage and almost no one can clear any content? That's a pretty big gamble...

Yes the push back is more damage spells because...

*ahem* Yeah, that is an example of the typical response.

(1) Fights wouldn't need to be remade. First of all, they TEND not to make a lot of changes other than a few balance tweaks on previous bosses. Second of all...you didn't really give a reason that fights would need to be remade. If the oGCDs were removed/weakened, you'd need GCDs for those cases you mention, and GCDs we still have. I'm not saying which is faster, I'm saying which is the problem. More DPS spells is a band-aid treating the symptom, not a treatment addressing the cause. It's saying "Encounter design sucks, but with a DPS rotation I'm slightly less bored (and people who don't like DPS rotations now hate playing the game)", which isn't a solution. It's like if you have a snake wrapped around your throat strangling you so you can't talk giving you a notepad and a pen so you can communicate despite the situation. It's not actually fixing anything.

(2) I think is more a case of balance/tuning and that FFXIV is designed to be much more strict and rigid than, say, FFXI is. Though I'm genuinely curious of the logic behind Repose vs Sleep. At one time, when they were Cross-Class, it might have made sense, but they aren't anymore. Casters have Lucid, why don't Healers have Sleep? There's no logic to it that I can tell. We don't have an AOE Esuna...but when do we NEED one? Like......ever? We have other tools besides damage. Mitigation actually is one. A part of me wishes they'd give the DPS mitigation kits to Healers. People certainly are quick to blame Healers when they die due to not enough mit, so may as well let us actually be the masters of mitigation.

(3) Is complex because a lot of people play Healers EXPLICITLY BECAUSE they don't like DPS rotations. I personally don't like DPS rotations. I avoid playing DPSers if at all possible. I will Tank for friends before I'll DPS because their "dps rotations" are slimmed down. I've never played a class in any type of MMO where I enjoyed the damage rotations on it. Ever. I've never found any that I liked, just some I hated slightly less than others, like Cataclysm Arcane Mage in WoW, which didn't play too differently than FFXIV Healers do. HOWEVERR, as I've noted before, the solution may be to mix and match. Give some Healer Jobs more DPS rotations and others less so players who like either can pick the one that matches their preference. But legit, giving Healers complex DPS rotations would probably cause an exodus of Healer players, and some would leave the game entirely since there are no other options. It MIGHT get some DPSers to try out Healing (GNB did with Tanking), but that was ONE Job in the role, not all four. It was what I was hoping SGE would do and was surprised when it did not.

(4) Honestly, I enjoy playing old content on WHM just fine. Again, this is a case of different people liking different things, I think. And there's only one solution that would actually satisfy everyone. And it's not giving all the Healers more DPS buttons...

Boss mechanics, as I've said, are way too spaced out (want a good example? Smileton is ridiculous with it) and again, don't usually hit random party members so you don't even have to do spot healing which would break it up. AoEs are too avoidable. Which usually leaves unavoidable raid wides and tank busters. Well tanks mitigate tank busters and they don't really hurt. And raid wides also, don't hurt. And both always come on a long enough cool down to where you have something up, even in lower levels.

This I somewhat agree with, though. But keep in mind those examples are from casual content for the most part. Don't cast a heal for all of P5S and see how far the party can prog before wiping. Heals ARE needed, they're just needed in short bursts, all at once, via overpowered oGCDs. That's the problem.

That requires a major rework of too many fights for it to be feasible (and in some cases it doesn't need to be that drastic but you get the point) and I don't see SE even MAKING fights in the upcoming expansion like this let alone fixing older ones, which is why we ask for damage.

They wouldn't rework any of them. Just as they haven't gone back and made all ARR and HW fights require EW oGCD toolkits. If you could go into ANY of those old encounters ilevel synced but with your full EW toolkit, they'd be trivial because of the amount of mitigations the Tanks have and how many oGCDs the Healers have. The team don't worry about old content outside of making sure players can still clear it. Any changes like this are forward looking. Prior content you can already unsync and completely one-shot, and the Devs aren't going back and changing it all. That's not the way they work.

[ASkellington]

snip

1. Is still a thing because it doesn't matter if I use a GCD or an oGCD. Damage is still infrequent. For damage to be more frequent, fights would have to change. Healing with Benefic 2 over Essential Dignity or A. Helios over my 4 oGCDs is just as engaging. So yes, fights would need to be rebalanced still if you want healing to be more fun, and that's not even including how our healing kit also would likely need to change.

2. Is on SE's dumb part. And I'm not waiting for them to reintroduce support tools OTHER than mitigation, which was my point. Addle, Feint? I don't care if we have those. They're a press of the button and done really and nothing truly interesting to deal with. We have our own versions of mitigation. I want some support OTHER that mitigation. Where is MP restore? Gone because we have 0 mana costs (another thing that makes healing boring btw). Why DON'T we have an AOE esuna and fights designed around using it? Why again CAN'T we use Repose/Sleep on a boss as a way to Interject? THOSE are the support tools I am asking for and SE stubbornly refuses to give. So again - damage.


3. There is 0 reason why all healers cannot have a Phlegma and another DoT to make solo content less tedious. That isn't a damage rotation like a dps. Do all healers need SCH's dps kit in SB? No. But does it need to stay 1 DoT and 1 nuke? Also no. AST or any other healer can have a small dps kit if there is to be more of a focus on something else or for it be easier, but there is 0 reason for one to stay as it is right now.

I agree with you, however that not all the healers should be brought to SCH's SB level, but ALL of them do need to be changed.

[Renathras]

...

(1) Right, but what I mean is that isn't an argument to change past designs. Leaving them alone makes them no worse than now. Even infrequent, that damage would be addressed by a GCD, thus breaking up the Glarespam. And the goal is to make healing in current content more engaging, not in redoing the entire game - your more DPS buttons solution wouldn't help since you wouldn't be getting them until SB or later content, so you'd still be going 60+ levels before you'd see anything that isn't Aero/Stone.

(2) I'm confused. You were complaining that we don't have more to do that isn't damage or healing, then complain that you don't want THAT not-damage thing. If we had fights designed around using Esuna, an AOE Esuna would trivialize them. I agree it'd be nice if we had fights that used Esuna, but fights that use Esuna would mean that we SHOULDN'T have an AOE Esuna. How is using an AOE Esuna in response to a debuff any different than using an AOE Afflataus Rapture in response to a damage wave? It's not. We dont' use Repose/Sleep on bosses as an interrupt because NO ONE interrupts bosses. Tanks have interrupts and don't use them on bosses because bosses don't have anything interruptable, and if they did, a Tanks oGCD would be the optimal tool to use, not a cast time spell that everyone would tell you you're bad for using just like people say PLD's using Clemency or RDM's using Vercure are bad. My point is you're asking for something other than healing to do...and then limiting it from the things we can actually have that aren't healing and saying the only thing you'd accept is stuff you know isn't going to happen. It's a tilted argument from the start.

(3) Solo content isn't tedious to a lot of people. There's zero reason all Healers NEED those. I think the problem here is that you think that all Healer players want what you do and feel the way you do. Many players find WHM, for example, fun and engaging. People solo Deep Dungeons on it, do MSQ on it, etc, and don't find it tedious or boring. It's explicitly WHY I think we should change SOME Healers but not ALL of them, so that both types of player have at least one they enjoy playing on. There's only one Healer in the game that has 1 DoT + 1 Nuke, and that's AST.

(4) When I say I don't think they all need to be changed, I'm genuine in that appraisal. It's not laziness or even familiarity that makes me think WHM is in a good place. I genuinely believe it IS. I think the encounter designs are wonky and that all the Healers should have less powerful oGCD tools. I won't repeat my full analysis here, but I genuinely believe that oGCD tools should be of two types - weak but commonly available tools (largely to augment GCDs, in some cases as quick semi-emergeny tools like Tetra or Benison could be) and powerful but rarely available tools (like when Benediction was a 6 min or whatever CD ability that you carefully planned for or only used in response to emergencies). That is, things you use alongside your GCDs (small/short) or things you save and use for emergencies or carefully planned events (big/long). The rest of the healing should be more GCD based, which also would mean things like MP would actually matter, and Jobs like Casters having that SB MP transfer ability would make sense and allow for skill expression and utility in other Roles as well. WHM MOSTLY has this going for it, with the only exception being that Lilies are MP free, but that's an acceptable compromise to me. I'd like it if WHM's other GCDs generated Blood Lily as well, so that the trade off between Medica and Rapture was MP and immobility vs mobility at the cost of consuming a resource, but that would make it a meaningful choice on the part of the WHM as to which to use as opposed to the automatic decision that Rapture is automatically better, or if it's about to be up, Assize and just forget using a GCD entirely. Further, as discussed in this thread, WHM is the Healer right now that has the least reliance on its spam GCD damage button; an unexpected thing that I don't think anyone really saw coming.

Note that this is also a place where Healers COULD be more distinct from each other, less homogenized and less samey. I liked the WHM/SCH dichotomy of ARR, which worked because WHMs were GCD direct healers while SCHs were more combat oriented Cleric stance with Lustrate/Eos oGCD side healing. The two worked well together and the two appealed to COMPLETELY different types of player...and pretty much everyone was happy with it. Both could clear lower level/casual content, and in hard team content, each had a place and stood side by side while appealing to disparate player types. This wasn't some other MMO, this wasn't 1.0, this was ARR. And it worked. SCH as an oGCD Healer focusing more of their GCD effort on DPS while activating oGCDs for healing, WHM as a GCD healer (which is still is today via Lilies, people just tend not to think of those as GCDs because they're instant and feed into Misery, a damage spell) focused more on party health bars and doing light filler damage when their attention wasn't needed on healing.

WHM is the only one more or less where it needs to be right now, I think. The only straight up change I think it really NEEDS is to make Plenary a lesser (5%) damage reduction so WHM has as many mits as AST does, even if they're different types. This is the single and only area it cannot compete with the other three Healers since they ALL have at least relatively available mit and WHM does not. Once Temperance is burned, that's it, they're reliant on someone else in the party to mitigate for the next 120 seconds.

If I was going to make any more changes, the second change I'd make is for all WHM GCD heals to generate 1/3rd Blood Lily, and the third I'd make is to make Cure 2 a straight upgrade (same cast time and MP cost) of Cure 1. I think it'd be 5-7th change on my list before I would even get into DPS spells, and it would probably be something like make Assize a GCD with a 40 sec CD and 2 charges, and to add a low level "Water" spell that is an AOE CNJ would get around level 15 or so that upgrades to Holy at 45 so low level WHM's would have an AOE tool. (I think of FF9's Vivi's Water spell where it makes a big sphere that floats up then bursts - kinda like Holy does.)

SGE I think is close-ish. I feel like Toxicon needs to be damage neutral so that SGE using its GCD barriers (maybe heals, too, but definitely barriers) can actually generate more of it. Outside of that, a second short duration Kardia it can place on a second target (basically a variation of Synastry/WoW PLD Beacon of Light that lasts for ~3-4 GCDs), as well as an AOE one. Basically give it those tools on shortish (45-60 sec?) CDs so that they can actually do most of their healing with Kardia augmented a bit by Addersgall and have their big CDs be big/long CDs as outlined above, possibly with a touch of pruning. SGE having a damage rotation is a fine thought, and would work well with the extra Kardia options, but isn't strictly necessary for it to be where it needs to be, it's more an added bonus if we're extra frisky.

SCH and AST, on the other hand...are NOT where they need to be.

They are the ones casting their Broil/Malific the most, and they are the ones with weird optimization and battle systems. SCH has Ruin 2 but no reason to use it.

SCH has the most powerful and extensive oGCD kit in the game aside from MAYBE AST yet doesn't use Ruin 2 to employ them nor has a second DoT to use with its lesser need/reliance on GCDs and more free GCD slots to burn. Hell, a 15 sec duration SHADOW FLARE (GCD 2.5 sec cast) would give them SOMEthing (and, bonus points, work in AOE too!), as would Miasma and/or Miasma 2, etc.

AST has the simplest GCD rotation of all the Healers, yet its oGCDs are too powerful to make meaningful gameplay choices with them, and its Card system we've talked about at length needing adjustment. Many people would even agree that AST doesn't need more damage buttons as they'd overwhelm its players, what it needs is a more interesting Card system and a more effective way to use them. It's one reason my suggestion for AST is to make Cards on the GCD to give them a bit more time between all the target/retargeting they need to do, and this would also making having more interesting Cards that require more thinking WORK.

I'm not being a contrarian when I say it:

I don't think all the Healers DO need to be changed.

I think SCH and AST absolutely do.

I think SGE might need some changes but also largely works.

I think WHM is more or less where it needs to be and would take it as-is, though I'd accept a few tweaks that give it more engagement with its GCD HEALING kit.

[ASkellington]

snip

1. Leaving them alone still makes them just as boring. Bosses STILL have too long of wind ups, still hit like a wet noodle and still have too many dodgeable aoes. That isn't going to change without an overhaul. Just because I'm more engaged in lower level content doesn't mean I am properly engaged. As I've said. A good chunk of content feels like Old Praetorium. And I've already said what would make healing more engaging. Which would require a rework. Just because I now GCD to break up my nuke doesn't not make healing suddenly engaging. I'll also add that making our healing tools more engaging means absolutely nothing if the bosses themselves are still boring.

2. Makes me wonder if you even read what I said. I'm asking for support options outside of mitigation "Feint/Addle" and gave examples of how SE could do that. Healers already have mitigation. Even WHM (Temperance). I don't think we need more, but if want to give healers more sure. I want other support tools that other MMOs give to either support roles or healers and that's on SE for one, not making any (outside of Expedient) and two, not making any boss mechanics that can use them. As I've said.

3. AST isn't the only healer that has 1 Nuke and DoT. Misery, Toxicon, Assize, Lord of Crowns, and Energy Drain don't count. Why? All but Lord are tied to healing in some way and Lord is RNG. Who made this stipulation? I did. When I asked for all healers to get a Phlegma-like ability and another DoT. None of them but Assize counts for that and like I said, its tied to healing. I want a straight up damage option. Are Misery and Toxicon more interesting? Yes. Do I think with tweaks they could be the answer I'm looking for? Sure. Is that what I'm asking for? No. Stop saying that they are.

Also we can debate back and forth on whether or not all healers need to have extra dps buttons. My stance is yes. Its always going to be yes. And I still see 0 reason why none of them can't get another Phlegma or DoT.

4. We're never going to agree on. Period.

All healers can stand to have more engaging healing kits, but they ALL can stand to have more engaging dps kits when healing isn't required.

What would you do with SCH and AST?

SCH I don't play but:

• Selene is a glorified recolor. Make her different.
• Fey Gauge needs more actions to interact with it.
• Bane. You can even give the trait to Deployment Tactics like PvP.
• Perhaps as a fix to pet issues, give SCH the Closed Position as a trait to where fairy skills are casted from both the SCH and the fairy, but obviously don't stack.

AST:

• Cards - 1) make them different, either give 6 six back with changes or give the 3 support back (Bole, Ewer, Spire) with cahnges, separate them by Melee/Ranged and keep Divination as RR Balance, 2) fix the seals system by making the seals combination actually matter with certain combinations giving a supportive buff (still keeping Divination as is, 3) remove the cards and rebrand AST as Time Mage the healer and burn the last set of bridges give time manipulation abilities (delayed damaging spells, Time Dilation to work on HoTs/DoTs and maybe buffs).
• Change AST from being a WHM but better clone - focus hard on regens/delayed healing OR give back Noct sect, remove Neutral sect, and allow it to be toggled in combat giving advantages and disadvantages for both (Diurnal has 0 mitigations for example) that a good AST will optimally use, but a not as good AST will not struggle.
• Skills I personally want to be addressed - CO/CU, CI, Synastry, Earthly Star, Undraw

1. CO/CU - this I think would be fixed in several different ways, but ultimately it comes down to a flaw with all healers: cool down for both is 60s, mechanics I would use both are ~60s, I end up never using one (CU) as a result and thus it becomes a dead skill in most content, because what one can do... the other can also do with differences that ultimately don't matter. Fixes I would like to see is changing the effect of one or again, changing the CD to something that isn't 60 or 120 seconds.
2. CI - Exaltation is a better CI and fits thematically with AST being a delayed healer. Without Nocturnal and even with it, I would rather see it changed into something else or modify into being a weaker Exalt (same CD) that trait upgrades.
3. Synastry - Either remove the skill or make it work on all single target abilities (excluding cards if they stay single target)
4. Undraw - Remove.
5. Earthly Star - This is the nittiest of picks but I don't care, reduce the size from 30y to 20y. All the fun was taken out of it now that it covers the entire arena. And honestly, there was no reason for it to be this big.

Pain points:

Lightspeed - I don't want a second charge. While I understand the reasoning for it (so it isn't locked into the opener and can be used for movement) 2 charge abilities feel less fun to use. While I will concede that AST could use this change now, I don't want them to keep it and I would also like to revisit ED and CI (if it stays). 2 charges are nice to have in W2W. They're less as nice when most of the time I don't even need the first one.

GCD vs oGCD cards - No to GCD cards. Removing the seals system or changing it to be an secondary support would fix the high amounts of BS targeting underneath the Divination window, which is the main problem with AST. Making them GCD doesn't fix the fact that you need to target a player and then retarget the boss. Making them AOE like in PvP probably would.

[ForsakenRoe]

The problems this game has worst, imo, is when they make everything the same. This goes for making all Jobs simple but ALSO for making all Jobs complex. There should be a spectrum. In HW, when SCH was that way, WHM was not and AST was...well...AST.

Moreover, I think the reason for the "no way to fail" is because so many Healers quit the role in HW and SB that the Devs were trying to make it so people didn't have "Healxiety" and would actually que up as Healers more, since there were massive Healer shortages.

As you say, though I don't agree with it personally, the Devs also thought "Healing NEEDS to be easy." But that thought extends to Healer damage kits. They also NEED to be easy, otherwise almost no one will play them. People who want complex damage rotations play DPSers. Giving Healers a mediocre damage kit will just alienate the people who don't like damage rotations (and play Healers for that reason) while also not appealing to people who want a "real" DPS kit, who will keep playing DPSers. It will only please a narrow sliver of the population, like as not. Which could already be achieved by just giving SCH its SB kit back.

I read all the other posts since this one I'm quoting but I have to ask about this specifically. Emphasis mine, just want to find out how you square this assertion with the data you posted in that other thread a while back, which says:



At least, if I'm reading it right, that HW was the highest level of healer playerbase we've ever had and while there's currently an uptick of sorts, we've never been close to what we had back then? People quit in SB, I'll agree on that, the data says that too. But HW? It seems that, if these numbers are to be believed, HW was the peak of 'people want to play healer' and we've never had it anywhere close to as high as back then ever since, even with a new healer class being released