Healer Survey:

[Estecka]

Gonna add my answers to the reddit asks here, because I don't do reddit.
What are those spreadsheets y'all are talking about? I suppose it's lost somewhere in the thread, but I missed most of the discussion.

Are you satisfied/dissatisfied with the healers currently? What do you like/dislike about them?
Do you believe the healers could be better/worse? If so, what would make them better/worse?
Gameplay sure could be more deep, but sure could be worse. I have not played any other mmo I can draw comparison to, but I think they're fine as is.

To me, healer is the embodiment of support. The appeal is in keeping your eyes on the team, what they are doing and what woe that is about to befall them, and improvise accordingly.
I dislike that there is rarely any meaningful opportunity to make use of non-heal supportive abilities (cleanse, shield, rescue, mitigation). Please let me use my funny utility, give me something to esuna. Did you know that shields can protect you from knockback and debuffs ? Please give me something to shield people from.


Would you stop playing healer if the healers received a few more offensive spells?
Would you stop playing healer if the healers received a DPS rotation on par with a DPS Job (you will still be expected to attend to all your healing duties while also juggling that rotation)?
If it's just a couple of dumb damage buttons, I'd keep playing, but I wouldn't be thrilled. Phlegma and Chain Stratagem are uninteresting, it's just more clutter for my hotbar.

If "offensive spells" also includes offensive buffs like AST card's system, then I'm all for it. I mean, you could turn Draw and Play into GCDs, and call that a part of yout rotation.

With a full-on rotation on par with tank or dps, I'd be a bit more worried:

As dps, I tend to get tunnel-vision onto my own hotbar, which I think is incompatible with healer duties. As healer, I'm more acutely aware of what individual mobs or party members are doing; being able to play my "rotation" on autopilot while the rest of my brain power is redirected to playing overseer feels like a necessity to me.

There's also the matter of hotbar clutter. For healers, every button is potentially a panick button, that needs to be accessible fast and reliably.
For dps kit, I already struggle to put every action on my hotbar in a place where I can easily reach it when needed; I can't imagine merging a healer's full kit into that. Dropping supportive abilities to make some room is a no go for me.

I think tank is a good example of what I don't want to see healer to become.
They're the class I have the most trouble with when it comes to hotbar clutter, and the only reason I can play them at all is because I merged most of my mitigation into a single macro button.

In short, I could be interested in some form of rotation, but only if it's a supportive rotation, not a selfish dps rotation.

[Sebazy]

Gonna add my answers to the reddit asks here, because I don't do reddit.
What are those spreadsheets y'all are talking about? I suppose it's lost somewhere in the thread, but I missed most of the discussion.

They can be found here++

I actually set these up for...

WHM
SCH
AST
SGE

But I haven't posted them anywhere except in this post yet. Figure it'd be too redundant to have both this and Ren's running at the same time.

I'll give a +1 on the meaningful support abilities as well. Go back some years and we used to be able to do stuff like Esuna Warrior's pacification penalty. I really do miss quirks like that. Shielding to protect against debuffs and vulnerabilities even used to be a key mechanic that saw use in Coil (gogo prey), surely that's something worth exploring again now that all healers have some means to single target barrier.

[ty_taurus]

They can be found here++



I'll give a +1 on the meaningful support abilities as well. Go back some years and we used to be able to do stuff like Esuna Warrior's pacification penalty. I really do miss quirks like that. Shielding to protect against debuffs and vulnerabilities even used to be a key mechanic that saw use in Coil (gogo prey), surely that's something worth exploring again now that all healers have some means to single target barrier.

Esuna could very easily become a more prominent mechanic if they just updated the UI on debuffs to be very visible and easier for anyone to notice. I've brought up the FFXII example many times before, but something like this would instantly make Esuna debuffs clear and identifiable to any player:



Esuna is tricky though, because some debuffs aren't worth using Esuna on while others must be Esuna'd, like Doom, but there are things that you could do to make it more interesting and more of a decision healers need to make. For example, if all instances of Doom can either be Esuna'd or removed by healing someone to 100%, you have 2 routes to clearing the problem. Healing it off with OGCDs is the better solution, but might not be as easy in certain scenarios. And if you're dry on resources and need to spam something like Medica/Emergency Tactics Succor to remove it, Esuna now becomes a better alternative potentially.

Or if we look at other debuffs... Heavy for example doesn't need to be removed, but if it's applied during mechanics that aren't impossible to do while heavy but are otherwise more challenging, you have a decision to make, including potentially using Rescue instead of casting Esuna. Paralysis as well isn't always a detriment to physical jobs, though is very helpful to remove off casters, particularly BLM.

EDIT: This also means that Esuna utility on other roles can be actually helpful and another way to help diversify other roles. Bard being able to remove debuffs for the healers can give them a niche that goes beyond raw damage over Dancer and Machinist, but you'd also want for Dancer and Machinist to also have other advantages that Bard does not have where each of them can thrive.

[Sebazy]

That's a good suggestion for the party bar, I like it++

Esuna is tricky though, because some debuffs aren't worth using Esuna on while others must be Esuna'd, like Doom

This is a bigger issue than SE realise IMO. A new player will go through the game generally seeing cleansable debuffs that aren't worth the GCD to Esuna for the most part, but every now and again we'll get a Throttle or Doom. Your hud element would go a long way to make it more apparent how important something is to cleanse, but I also think SE should pull their belts up and experiment with making poisons/bleeds actually worthwhile to cleanse as well. The majority of them aren't much more than our standing regen. And don't get me started on paralyse, if there's one thing that got neutered harder than SCH's damage kit, it's Paralysis debuffs =(

[ty_taurus]

That's a good suggestion for the party bar, I like it++



This is a bigger issue than SE realise IMO. A new player will go through the game generally seeing cleansable debuffs that aren't worth the GCD to Esuna for the most part, but every now and again we'll get a Throttle or Doom. Your hud element would go a long way to make it more apparent how important something is to cleanse, but I also think SE should pull their belts up and experiment with making poisons/bleeds actually worthwhile to cleanse as well. The majority of them aren't much more than our standing regen. And don't get me started on paralyse, if there's one thing that got neutered harder than SCH's damage kit, it's Paralysis debuffs =(

If you've not played FFXII, that icon flickers slowly and cycles through each debuff on your party members. You also see an icon near the health bar above their head, and the name of the debuff pops up on the character who receives it when its applied, not to mention most debuffs have a visual effect on your character. Poison turns you purple, slow turns your character's shadow red, oil turns your character mostly ink black, etc. Some combination of these elements could also go a long way at communicating what can be Esuna'd vs what can't, like a Vuln up.

As for Paralysis, I always Esuna it off BLM first, as well as SAM, SMN, and RDM since it can interrupt cast times, and for BLM that can be devastating potentially since it ruins your rotation timing, and with their long cast times, it's very likely to occur. Other jobs, I don't always remove it because it's not really a problem for MNK or DNC. It can techncially interrupt them but it isn't likely too and they have mobility to get out of AoEs. But it depends on the situation. If it's a single target Paralysis, then usually I'll do it regardless, but if the party is paralyzed, like in Puppet's Bunker, by the time I get to other jobs, it's probably not worth casting Esuna since the timer will be running out anyway.

[RyuDragnier]

If you've not played FFXII, that icon flickers slowly and cycles through each debuff on your party members. You also see an icon near the health bar above their head, and the name of the debuff pops up on the character who receives it when its applied, not to mention most debuffs have a visual effect on your character. Poison turns you purple, slow turns your character's shadow red, oil turns your character mostly ink black, etc. Some combination of these elements could also go a long way at communicating what can be Esuna'd vs what can't, like a Vuln up.

As for Paralysis, I always Esuna it off BLM first, as well as SAM, SMN, and RDM since it can interrupt cast times, and for BLM that can be devastating potentially since it ruins your rotation timing, and with their long cast times, it's very likely to occur. Other jobs, I don't always remove it because it's not really a problem for MNK or DNC. It can techncially interrupt them but it isn't likely too and they have mobility to get out of AoEs. But it depends on the situation. If it's a single target Paralysis, then usually I'll do it regardless, but if the party is paralyzed, like in Puppet's Bunker, by the time I get to other jobs, it's probably not worth casting Esuna since the timer will be running out anyway.

I feel like they should make Paralysis something you WANT removed quickly. Like making it so it has a 50% chance of interrupting your attacks, so it's a hindrance to everyone. This would encourage not only using Esuna quickly to remove it, but incentivizing people doing the mechanics to avoid it, as it's that much of a hindrance now. Slow is definitely something you want removed because of how bad it is, but I feel like every status ailment should pose a terrifying threat in its own right. Silence and Pacification are already 2 status effects that people dread getting hit with, why not make them all dreadful?

[ty_taurus]

I feel like they should make Paralysis something you WANT removed quickly. Like making it so it has a 50% chance of interrupting your attacks, so it's a hindrance to everyone. This would encourage not only using Esuna quickly to remove it, but incentivizing people doing the mechanics to avoid it, as it's that much of a hindrance now. Slow is definitely something you want removed because of how bad it is, but I feel like every status ailment should pose a terrifying threat in its own right. Silence and Pacification are already 2 status effects that people dread getting hit with, why not make them all dreadful?

The part about that which I think is troublesome is we have raidwide paralysis cases (though extremely rare), and it's not exactly a fun experience just casting Esuna 8 times. Perhaps if we expand upon debuff cleansing as a form of utilty though, that could be better. But the issue is if it's that dreadful, then it becomes a mandetory Esuna rather than a choice or a decision that needs to be made. The worse it is, the sooner you want to remove it as well, so it can feel quite binary in that regard. The best cases are situations where you need to decide how to approach a problem, such as Rescuing a heavied ally rather than Esunaing the heavy off them.

Or perhaps you include things like Warden's Paean that prevent debuffs, so timing an effect like that before you see a debuff coming could also play into more interesting decision making.

[Rilifane]

That's a good suggestion for the party bar, I like it++



This is a bigger issue than SE realise IMO. A new player will go through the game generally seeing cleansable debuffs that aren't worth the GCD to Esuna for the most part, but every now and again we'll get a Throttle or Doom. Your hud element would go a long way to make it more apparent how important something is to cleanse, but I also think SE should pull their belts up and experiment with making poisons/bleeds actually worthwhile to cleanse as well. The majority of them aren't much more than our standing regen. And don't get me started on paralyse, if there's one thing that got neutered harder than SCH's damage kit, it's Paralysis debuffs =(

Honestly, the entire party frame is a cluttered mess of unimportant but emphasized information and vital information getting de-emphasized for whatever reason.
The grouping is terrible, the vertical and horizontal eye movement is far too high and unintuitive, the contrast between elements but also background and elements is terrible and especially for people with some form of impaired vision it's just horrible.

I'd be all for placing more importance on cleansing but they really, really need to step up their game with the party frames. Much older games, single player and MMOs alike, did a lot better job with grouping, proper emphasis, customization and accessibility options. And the design of the debuff/ buff bar on the party is one of the major offenders here.