How MUCH healing can non-Healers do?

[Sebazy]

For most of MMO history, healing was not a "side gig". In WoW, Vanilla, BC, Wrath, Cataclysm, and Mists (after that I can't say since I pretty much left the game), there was consistent, unavoidable damage, which required consistent healing to counter. Healing wasn't a side gig or optional.

FFXIV by design will struggle to replicate that for a couple of reasons though.

In 'healer centric' MMOs (And even other RPGS such as Baldur's Gate TBH) like WoW and Everquest, you are always scaling yourself to the content. You're not forced to bring X amount of healers, instead you bring what you need. First time I killed Zlandicar in Everquest for Sleeper's keys we had a literal army of dorf clerics. When I killed him years later with some casual friends, we didn't even have a full group, I as the debuffing Shaman was also the sole healer and as such, I had plenty to do.

The other issue of course is that WoW and Everquest both worked on an attrition focused model. You didn't wipe to a 1 shot, you wiped because you ran out of resources or even just bodies.

IMHO the true solution needs to be tackled from multiple angles at once.

Just switching to attrition isn't great by itself as our healing kits aren't that much more satisfying than our damage kits, they are really just a vomit box of cooldowns that heal and little else. Even 3.4 AST with it's time extension mini games gives the current healing kits a run for their money IMO.

Chopping our oGCD heals into GCDs amplifies that issue making significant portions of the kit completely redundant without significant reworks. Why would a somewhat casual WHM press any of it when they could just press Medica II?

As I mathed out earlier, upping incoming damage alone isn't the answer either. With how things work in this game there's a very fine line where healing goes from being trivial to one shotting randoms and there's too little in between to get some satisfaction for healers outside of this tiny band.

If you ask me the solution is as follows:

Switch to an attrition model, at least double our HP, maybe even triple.

Revamp our kits top to bottom with a focus on ability consolidation, interaction within abilities in our kit and emphasising the importance of cooldown usage vs just pressing Medica II be it by resource limitations, accumulative buffs from cooldown usage or just raw throughput limitations. We have 4 healer jobs, try something different on each of them and see what sticks.

Come down hard on the availability of combat ressing. Forcing people to play a little safer is a good bump to lessening the value of raw damage above all else and will be a step in helping ease off the current need to set a fights difficulty by its enrage timer.

Obviously this isn't without it's problems. It's basically going to render old content almost entirely obsolete but frankly, I think it's something that needs to be done for the long term health of the game. The healing situation in FFXIV has progressively gotten worse and worse with every expansion post HW. Either they course correct and deal with the pain or they accept that healing in this game is forever condemned to be unsatisfying and unenjoyable outside of the narrow little window that is early Savage prog.

*Edit* Also, your Everquest comparison claiming that healers just sat isn't particularly fair. As a Cleric in a serious raid? Sure. But you could almost guarantee that said cleric in said serious raid was multi boxing another character. And as a Shaman main, I had enough to do that I generally couldn't multi box and I spent very little time sat down. Depending on the situation I could be baby sitting a mod rod team, pulling bodies, handling debuffs and potentially even CC or even fetching and queuing up mobs.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'll also quickly throw out that WOW addressed their 'healer have too much time to DPS' issue going in to 10.0 by adding 40% more stamina to players (so 40% more HP), and 40% more incoming damage, while keeping healing power at the same. Effectively cutting the healing throughput as a percentage of the HP bar by 40%, across the role.

10.1's coming out in like 2 weeks, and they're doing the same process again, by 25%. The gear scaling was so fast, that ONE RAID was enough for them to end up in the same dilemma as before. I've been seeing talk about how it feels too much 'like FFXIV healing', where you could previously leave people at 30% and let raidwide HOTs tick them up, now anytime anyone's below 65% they are at risk of getting oneshot by a mechanic. They say too much focus is being put onto raidwide mitigations like Aura Mastery and PW:Radiance (sound familiar?) Surely this should show that 'make more GCDs be devoted to healing' is probably not the solution. If it doesn't work in WOW, where more GCDs are ALREADY devoted to healing compared to here, I don't see why it'd help us here, especially given the current encounter format. We'd have to not only rework the healing model to be different, but also then rework it MORE because even WOW's model doesn't solve it either. The amount of 'rework' to make this work would be so big, it'd make the healing gameplay basically unrecognizable. And I don't think anyone wants to wake up and have their gameplay completely flipped over, overnight. We can look at the SMN feedback average for evidence of what happens in a situation like that

edit: correcting some typos that were bothering me, I had a pizza box in the way when first writing

[Semirhage]

You may not recognize it (somehow?) but it's been true for 20 years, if not longer; as long as the Trinity has existed (which is from AT THE LATEST 2004) it's been true in some form or another. Even before then, before there were clearly defined roles in gaming, there were often setups that had leanings. Baldur's Gate in the 90s, for example, often would have people specialize in healing since it was strictly necessary to have available.

And what do you do when not casting heals? Well, in Baldur's Gate, Clerics and Druids would use Slings. You would...literally be autoattacking, with your autoattack being throwing stones. In Everquest, you'd /meditate (/sit, basically). In WoW you'd basically always be casting a heal - Holy Paladins in Wrath would Beacon one Tank, target the other, then spend the next 10-20 minutes pressing Holy Light, breaking it up occasionally to use Judgement of Light/Wisdom if in 10 mans. In 25 mans, you'd usually have a Prot and Ret Paladin doing both of those for you, and the other Judgement (the one that did a heavy or stun or whatever) was useless.

I think the issue is more you're used to games where Healers aren't all the same (and often where they had customization - in BG, for example, you had the choice of spells to use from your spellbook in your various slots, and in BG2, you had Kits, or basically specs), so you could pick one that was more support and combat focused. In other words...my "4 Healers" idea you constantly attack because you want what it offers, in effect, but you want it for the one Healer you suspect would be the one that wouldn't have the gameplay you wanted.

What are you talking about? Baldur's Gate required healing? Clerics and druids sat around with slings when not healing? Did you even play that series? You can solo the hardest difficulty on any class. ANY. Yes, even the ones that have access to the single Cure Light Wounds you get from plot progression. Clerics and druids had access to incredibly powerful attack and disabling spells too.
Holy Word? Nature's Beauty? Flamestrike? Entangle? Glyph of Warding? Storm of Vengeance? Call Lightning? Insect Swarm? Summon Deva? Iron Skins? Righteous Magic? Hold Person? Command? Prayer? The entire Turn Undead mechanic? I remember memorizing *maybe* one healing spell per spell level. If it had one, and if it was a useful upgrade.

Baldur's Gate attrition healing, that's funny.

There's a theme here though. If you know how to play a game efficiently or skillfully, you notice your outgoing healing goes down. I happen to dislike attrition healing models, because I think they lean too hard into Spamming Healing Is Good. IMO it's okay for games to tacitly acknowledge that healing requirements vary widely with player skill levels by giving people something to do when they've finished healing for the moment. Whence comes this intense requirement that the reward MUST be spamming Glare? No additions, anything more is too much!

There's a rich history of RPG clerics with a whole lot of strong, fun spells you just glossed over in favor of "lol slings", because that's what clerics do at low levels. And what do you know, FFXIV healers play like level 2 clerics too! Your "4 healers" idea leaves one of them playing a lot like a level 2 cleric, because....reasons. Hey, you know what's weird? In those games where you could customize classes, none of them stopped their leveling progression early on just because some players "would like being SiMpLe"

Attrition healing is part and parcel of the history of World of Warcraft, not "MMO history". I've never played an MMO where I didn't spend around half my time buffing, attacking, throwing out debuffs, etc. And that's quite fun! When the downtime activity is actually varied, and not sleeping on the Glare key, because healers that frankly aren't skilled enough to handle it are mad at any reminder they're not that good at healing.

[Renathras]

...

Yeah, the argument of "We can't change healing! That would require changing all old content and that's impossible! But we can change DPSing and that wouldn't change anything!" seems, at best, likely incorrect, and at worse, a fig leaf to cover for the lack of a counter-argument. They've made so many changes to healing and not gone back and changed old content at this point as to prove the argument wrong. And even when examples can be cited to tweaks to old content, all that proves is that they can easily do that with a healing change now.

I think the issue is Roe REALLY wants more damage buttons, not more healing requirement (that requires the GCD), and so will oppose any change that would do the latter rather than the former. There's a real fear that, if they did the healing change, and it worked, they wouldn't get their more damage buttons. It's always couched as a fear for the casual player, but considering how often casual players are derided, it's unlikely that's the genuine intent.

I make no claims about what that means for the type of healer they want to be, only as a matter of what the fear is and why such animosity to a different kind of change is expressed.

What are you talking about? Baldur's Gate required healing?

Yup, it did. You could sub a lot of healing with potions (and later, more powerful abilities and some wacky stuff like Thieves being able to Use Any Item), but until you were well equipped and leveled, you had to heal from time to time in some way or in some form. 100% yes. No one was making their first playthrough on a solo Kensai.

And the rest I also addressed.

"World of Warcraft...and Everquest...and Star Wars: Galaxies...and Final Fantasy XI...and Wildstar...and RIFT...and Everquest 2...and Vanguard...and Final Fantasy XIV 1.0...and Final Fantasy XIV 2.0...and largely Final Fantasy 3.0..." sounds a lot like "MMO history" to me.

It's NOT as true in Action RPGs, stuff like TERA. But mainline MMOs have long used this model, and the ones running still do in at least some form. You're trying to give your argument more weight and authority than it has. For years, games tried to DEVIATE from it, BECAUSE it was the dominant paradigm of the entire genre. The only argument is that in some cases, it was a Quaternity rather than Trinity with a Control/Support element, like arguably Everquest games and games like Guild Wars (1) and stuff like what Pantheon's trying to make now.

Guild Wars 2 tried to completely break from it, but ended up accepting it at higher levels of play. I saw a YouTube video once of why the Trinity is so prevalent that made the argument Humans/players tend to slot themselves into roles over time anyway, even in games that allow a lot of free building and customization. Role systems largely just streamline this process. The creator noted that games often do this (soccer was an example of having your normal DPS and having your Tank goalie), and video games are no exception. Roles in multiplayer games allow players to quickly and intelligently sort themselves. Even with BLU groups in FFXIV, they sort themselves into Tank, DPS, and Healer roles, they don't just yolo it for the most part with all of them carrying tank, healing, and dpsing abilities and using all of them. They slot themselves into roles and use Ethereal Mimicry to signal their roles in the party.

I get you DON'T LIKE IT, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been the prevalent form of the healing role for more than two decades.

It's also WHY the 4 Healers Model is so important - because it's why those other games didn't have the problems FFXIV healing has today where there's no release from the playstyle if you don't like it. Don't like WHM? You can play AST. It plays like WHM. Or you can play SCH. It plays like WHM. Or you can play SGE. It plays like WHM. For instance, if you didn't like the Cleric's healing spam in Everquest, you could (once they were viable, anyway), play a Druid or Shaman if you preferred more of an offensive side-focus or a buff/debuff side-focus. In WoW, Holy Paladins had a slate of side-buffs with a simple healing model while Druids were all about consistent uptime on HoTs. Shamans had a buffing side-game that leaned more towards offense over time. Disc was for leveling until 40 (when you got Shadowform in Shadow spec) and Holy was a "dabbles in each of the other styles and combines them" healing model. The point is, you could pick a different one if you didn't like the type of healing you were getting from one of them because they didn't play identically.

I think that's the important piece in all of this: That our Healers all play identically to one another. You heal damage with an oGCD that may differ on paper but largely has the same effect, in extremis a GCD that has the same or similar effect to the other's GCDs (in the case of AST and WHM, EXACTLY the same as they directly ripped off WHM's GCD kit minus Cure 3 for AST), and your attack rotation is identical across all of the Healers as a DoT + spamnuke + either an oGCD on CD (WHM), GCD on CD (SGE), oGCD on resource generator CD (SCH), or...uh...Earthly Star (AST).

It's the homogeneity of kits that's the problem. In WoW, if all the Healers had played like Holy Priest, it would have been a problem. Same if they all played like Holy Paladin. But it was fine for the "one button wonder" Holy Paladin to exist since there were three other Healers, and they all played differently.

...

I always find it dubious when people say "this won't work" when it literally has worked in this same game.

ARR healing WORKED THIS WAY. And as Icecylee said, was fun and enjoyable. And we've talked about this before that most of you enjoyed SCH during that era as well. Not only would it work, we know it would work because IT HAS worked.

Moreover, we have the more DPS option in our history as well. We know that DIDN'T work. We know it didn't because of Gordias and Cleric Stance and how it almost killed the game. We know it would be the more massive of the two changes in truth. We know that it would alter how the community views Healer dps because it already DID. We know people would be attacked and toxicity would increase because it already DID.

All of these things are knowns, not hypotheticals.

IMHO the true solution needs to be tackled from multiple angles at once.

This - specifically this - I agree with. It's why I think the 4 Healers Model is the way to go, because it hits several at once just by virtue of how it works. Secondarily, the oGCD weakening/culling and GCD focus by Healers, removal of free healing by Tanks and DPSers, and shunting mitigation to Healers would all be parts of the solution. The 4 Healers Model would also include giving several of the Healing Jobs more robust DPS kits, appealing to those types of players. The commonly mentioned encounter design changing to more consistent, but smaller, amounts of damage over the current big spikes separated by large amounts of dead time change also comes in here. That slate of proposals, taken together, would probably fix most of the healing issues we have now.

And the casual WHM spamming Medica 2 isn't a good counter - you've argued yourself, regarding the more DPS buttons changes, that casual Healers would just not engage with those buttons and nothing of value would be lost. That would apply here in the case it worked, anyway.

If you ask me the solution is as follows:

Switch to an attrition model, at least double our HP, maybe even triple.

Revamp our kits top to bottom with a focus on ability consolidation, interaction within abilities in our kit and emphasising the importance of cooldown usage vs just pressing Medica II be it by resource limitations, accumulative buffs from cooldown usage or just raw throughput limitations. We have 4 healer jobs, try something different on each of them and see what sticks.

Come down hard on the availability of combat ressing. Forcing people to play a little safer is a good bump to lessening the value of raw damage above all else and will be a step in helping ease off the current need to set a fights difficulty by its enrage timer.

I don't think our approaches are entirely incompatible here, though. I mean, reading this, it's not too dissimilar from what I've suggested, other than you want to focus more on CDs while I think general healing should be more GCD focused but CDs should be more rare to accommodate them being more impactful. Which...maybe be us saying the same thing in two different ways, honestly? Heck, you even mention your own version of 4 Healers.

I'm not sure there's as much daylight between us as it might sometimes appear if you really hold these positions.

[ty_taurus]

I don't believe that the only solution to good healer gameplay requires converting future content into attrition healing while abandoning all existing content, nor do I think having a more GCD focused resource system is inherently negative. We do need changes, but there are things we can do within the encounter design model that can create a far healthier environment for players of all skill levels.

First, I propose a phoenix down rework. You can hold more than 1, can use them during combat with a 2 minute cooldown on the GCD, they do not share a cooldown with other items, and they have no cast time. Additionally, phoenix downs cannot be used in high end duties, and the option to disable them is added to the duty finder settings. Once per day, you can claim 1 for free for clearing any roulette. There is a palpable pressure on healers to not fail in group content out of fear of dooming the other members of their team, or force them to clear with 1 man down. This also means if this pressure is factored into the difficulty of the healer role by the design team, that they can now more comfortably increase the skill ceiling of healers.

Next, we increase the frequency of damage taken within the current structure of how content is designed, this includes everything from dugneons to savage. Right now, too many bosses won't even deal unavoidable damage to the party more than once or twice during an entire fight, meanwhile healers largely generate free healing resources every 20 seconds, lilies, addersgall, aetherflow... I've been watching some old videos of A4S runs, such as this one, and while A4S is not the best example of good fight design, I do want to note the regular appearance of orbs that must be popped and the use of untelegraphed damage through Laser Diffusion which randomly hits different players throughout the second half of the fight. In easier content, the damage dealt by these types of regular mechanics can just be chip damage, maybe around 10% of any player's HP or so, but can add up slowly while giving healers more things to actually heal.

I'd also want to see more debuffs come into play that offer healers a decision to make about how to handle it. Take Disease for example, a debuff that reduces the amount of HP restored to the target. It can be healed through, or removed through Esuna. By having this occur frequently in everything from dungeons onward, it creates more opportunties for healers to find their own path through a given fight. Doom I would also include more often, but change it so that every instance of Doom can either be Esuna'd or removed by healing the target to full. This makes it easier to resolve for any healer, but also creates a choice for the healer.

Lastly, I'd rework the healers to have optimized gameplay be about maintaining DPS uptime. Standard heals should feel powerful to use, having no MP cost, low or no cast times, and no cooldowns, but come at the opportunity cost of your damage. Meanwhile your more advanced tools aren't as strong and have resource costs (gauge costs, MP, cooldowns, or a combination of the 3), potentially longer cast times, but can be performed at no loss of damage, either through a system like the blood lily or addersting, or by doing DPS neutral damage as well like with Pneuma and Macrocosmos. Managing MP can also change from being an automatic system that refunds your MP taxes through use-on-cooldown actions to a choice that must be balanced with your healing resources to maintain your offensive momentum. Since your standard DPS skills and safety net heals have no MP cost, there is no fear of bricking yourself due to ambitious MP usage. Essentially, all the consequences fall entirely on the healer's ability to maintain their uptime, not their ability to heal and keep the party alive. Uptime is also not required at all from healers in nearly every aspect of FFXIV, and even when it is required, there's still breathing room to drop uptime for recovery in savage and ultimate.

These three key points can certainly create an environment that would feel different to what we currently have in a way that allows skilled healers to push their gameplay without preventing novice healers from keeping up with virtually every aspect of the game shy of savage and ultimate.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeah, the argument of "We can't change healing! That would require changing all old content and that's impossible! But we can change DPSing and that wouldn't change anything!" seems, at best, likely incorrect, and at worse, a fig leaf to cover for the lack of a counter-argument. They've made so many changes to healing and not gone back and changed old content at this point as to prove the argument wrong. And even when examples can be cited to tweaks to old content, all that proves is that they can easily do that with a healing change now.

I think the issue is Roe REALLY wants more damage buttons, not more healing requirement (that requires the GCD), and so will oppose any change that would do the latter rather than the former. There's a real fear that, if they did the healing change, and it worked, they wouldn't get their more damage buttons. It's always couched as a fear for the casual player, but considering how often casual players are derided, it's unlikely that's the genuine intent.

I make no claims about what that means for the type of healer they want to be, only as a matter of what the fear is and why such animosity to a different kind of change is expressed.

100% projection, especially the second paragraph.

I think the issue is Ren REALLY wants more healing requirement, not more damage rotation complexity, and so will oppose any change that would do the latter rather than the former. There's a real fear that, if they did the damage rotation change, and it worked, they wouldn't get their more damage buttons 'press Medica until clear' gameplay. It's always couched as a fear for the casual player, but considering how often casual players are derided, it's unlikely that's the genuine intent.'

I had no issues with the 'overwhelming HPS requirement' that Barb EX apparently had week 1. I've cleared TEA before the statsquish. I've done 'hard healing requirements', I've done my time in jail with the Living Liquid. If we ramp 'healing requirements' to the point where I agree that it is a good change, you won't be able to keep up. Nor will most casual players. I don't suggest 'more damage buttons' because I'm desperately married to the idea of 'more damage buttons'. I suggest it because I cannot foresee a way to solve the issue the role faces, that doesn't screw casual players over in some way, and 'more damage buttons' happens to be the least impactful to those players' day to day. Again, if you care to actually read my post, you will note that I talk about how, in prog, we 'not-real healers who ask for more damage options' are completely fine with saccing our damage to put up shields for safety, or to put a Medica2 out to help keep people alive. And that I often do so even in my BIS gear, because if I have a choice between 'risk one GCD greeding for a stupid colored number on a stupid 3rd party website' or 'put up an extra shield to be safe and get the clear more smoothly', I very often end up taking option B because wiping means another 6-8 minutes of being in the fight praying nobody makes a mistake.

I quit Ret Paladin in BFA within a month of it's launch because it'd have dead times in it's kit where no buttons were available to press. The one thing that pisses me off more than anything else in an MMO is standing there, having nothing to do or press to contribute to the fight. I hate when mechanics that force downtime so the player can solve them, like High Concept or Devour. So the idea of 'how healers should be, cos thats how they were in the past', of standing around waiting for bloody MP5 ticks, is abhorrent to me. Other people want to stand around like targetdummies for the boss, whatever, if I was there and waiting for MP5 I'd be wanding the boss to at least help with damage (and getting Judgement of Wisdom procs to help get my mana back faster). It's a cooperative game, with a timer to beat on the content (enrage), so you bet your bottom dollar that if I can safely help my team to beat that timer in some way, I'll do that.

No, what I think is happening here is that YOU are scared that if they make healers have a more complex damage rotation, even if by one skill, you will be attacked by some imaginary boogeyman elitist for not using that skill in the content you do that does not require you to use that skill. Oh woe and despair, for Ren is unable to farm the new EX trial because he refused to use Banish, and got kicked from the party because the fight took 20 seconds longer! Ignore the part where you can clear an EX trial without using your DOT as a healer even once. Stop projecting, you could spend the time you spend here on this forums arguing with evil elitist toxic Samantha practicing your class more, clearing tougher content, and eventually having the same realization that most of us already got past: 'you don't need to heal all that much in this game, really'

stuff

See, this is better, rather than just saying 'we need to damage less and heal more because healers should heal', actual details on how to go about implementing that. The points can be debated in their efficacy, a solution amicable to all can be worked on via consensus. There's stuff to agree and disagree with, like I agree that Phoenix Downs are pointless as it stands, and should see a rework of some sort to help alleviate the burden of 'if the healer dies we're just screwed'. However, I'd argue to make it a shared charge system, so you can get, say... One Down at the start of the fight, and a charge is added every 5 minutes. (no inspiration drawn from other games, honest) This way, healers are still the 'go to resurrection' machine, but in an absolute emergency someone can get the healer back up. And it doesn't 'devalue' the utility of the RDM being able to res, as while everyone can res via the PD, the RDM remains unique in that it has 'healer style ressing'. I assume SMN will lose it's res at some point though

More uses for Esuna would be very welcome, and it would also open up BRD's skill to being considered a valued utility more too. One of the main criticisms of Shake It Off originally was the lack of debuffs to actually use it on, hence it's rework into Veil 2. If WAR had kept it's 'pacification after Berserk' effect, Old Shake would have been lauded as the best thing since sliced bread. Able to get rid of the pacification, without having to beg the healer via obnoxious macros? Wow sign me up

And I've also called for 'the trash basic GCDs' to be zero MP cost (on SGE at least), so as to reduce the burden on casuals of 'oh no I'm panicking, oh no I've screwed up my MP economy because I was panicking, now I'm panicking more aaaaa'. It also creates choices for the healer.

Picture: you're a WHM, you need to AOE heal something like J-waves, do you A: Lily which is damage neutral (but limited to 3), B: Cure 3, which is damage losing and costs MP, but is stronger, or C: Medica1, which is also damage losing, but MP free? Maybe you purposely use Medica first, and keep your MP for later when the damage stacks are building up, then swap to Cure3. Maybe you use a couple of Cure3's to start, then use Lilies to get a zero-MPcost window, to restore a bit of MP so you can Cure3 more without running dry. Stuff like that



Basically, contrary to what some people imply about me, I'd be completely fine with all of the healing the game asks of me to be in the same style as Barb EX or Living Liquid's Splash spam. The question is, how much damage does it do, and how many GCDs are going to be forcibly dedicated to countering the damage? How do you make a design like that forgiving for casuals, but still engaging for veterans? How do we avoid falling into the same trap we have now, where vets can almost completely ignore the damage being done in casual content? Very few if any people are actually talking details and numbers on that, just 'oh it'd be good if we did this' wishful thinking

[Icecylee]

ARR healing WORKED THIS WAY. And as Icecylee said, was fun and enjoyable. And we've talked about this before that most of you enjoyed SCH during that era as well. Not only would it work, we know it would work because IT HAS worked.

Moreover, we have the more DPS option in our history as well. We know that DIDN'T work. We know it didn't because of Gordias and Cleric Stance and how it almost killed the game. We know it would be the more massive of the two changes in truth. We know that it would alter how the community views Healer dps because it already DID. We know people would be attacked and toxicity would increase because it already DID.

This feels a little disingenuous since it seems *far* more likely that Gordius being massively overtuned on account of the devs listening to the top 1% of coil raiders saying it was too easy and then overcompensating on Savage, while making normal undertuned as hell for the people that thought Coil was at a good difficulty level, were bigger issues than healers getting more more DPS button (which also came with more free healing, as well!). More interesting dps kits don't necessarily have to come with higher damage requirements from the group.

FWIW the stuff I liked most about ARR healers is the stuff you seem to hate tho - the juggling act of trying to eek out every last bit of dps while party HP bars dip down to 10% before addressing them, and playing around Clerics (i'm one of the weirdos that liked clerics stance) with timely precast regens and stoneskins, and knowing when you needed to back out and play a little safer, The higher healing requirements and need to dip into GCDs wasn't the main draw, it was all the context surrounding it and adapting on the fly. The most frequent and varied damage buttons were kind of important, too.

all this

I mostly agree with all of this, though, and it mirrors a lot of ideas I've had towards potential reworks lately too. I think we'd probably be better off limiting Phoenix Down's to 1 per person in savage rather than just outright removing them though? It felt like it worked pretty well in the criterion dungeon, anyway (and maybe we wouldn't need caster rez insurance taxes either if PDs were something everyone had access to). Spreads the burden of fucking up a bit more around the party, but also places a cap on how often you *can* fuck up in total.

[Silver-Strider]

This feels a little disingenuous.

That's their entire MO.
It's ok for him to use Hyperbole but is quick to call others out for the same. There's no real good faith argument to be had with him.

He wants to suggest that Gordias was why Healers had to lose their DPS actions and completely disregards that SB existed with more DPS actions as well. The mental gymnastics they do just to faceplant would be almost hilarious if it wasn't so persistently wrong

[Sebazy]

And the casual WHM spamming Medica 2 isn't a good counter - you've argued yourself, regarding the more DPS buttons changes, that casual Healers would just not engage with those buttons and nothing of value would be lost. That would apply here in the case it worked, anyway.

I think you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. Being able to use Medica 2 as a crutch to the point where it renders the rest of the kit invalid is like having a DPS kit that does less DPS than simply mashing the Glare button. Neither is a good situation in my eyes. It's just not good design nor does it make for compelling gameplay in the long term.

I don't think our approaches are entirely incompatible here, though. I mean, reading this, it's not too dissimilar from what I've suggested, other than you want to focus more on CDs while I think general healing should be more GCD focused but CDs should be more rare to accommodate them being more impactful. Which...maybe be us saying the same thing in two different ways, honestly? Heck, you even mention your own version of 4 Healers.

I'm not sure there's as much daylight between us as it might sometimes appear if you really hold these positions.

I do agree, it's why I find it funny when you've pulled the 'you just want to DPS more' card at times. I genuinely don't. However, thanks to my time working at EA/Bullfrog, I gained a pretty good insight into how much game design is steered by the bean counters and top brass rather than the actual game designers.

I genuinely don't think we'll ever see even remotely challenging healing in FFXIV at this point because from a commercial perspective, it just doesn't make sense. We have a model in mainstream endgame content where our aoe heals are powerful enough to keep up with single target damage on a tank, and aoe damage is so low that we can easily cover it with our single target heals. Basically it's pretty hard to actually fail at healing. Rather it's failing at mechanics and avoidable AoEs that kills people. If you're pressing buttons and dodging the bad, you're almost certainly healing plenty enough. Pulling that rug out from underneath the casual player base and going back to a time like early ARR where people had to get through Titan HM just for a basic relic weapon would cause a riot IMHO.

This coupled with how dull solo content is as a healer is why I'm resigned to thinking that better downtime gameplay is the path of least resistance all told. It doesn't even have to be pure DPS either. Both Warhammer Online and The Old Republic managed to offer up meaningful and enjoyable healer gameplay in spades even in those times when your HPS wasn't being pressured.

I totally agree that going with 4 completely unique and diverse healers to see what sticks is the best move SE could make to start getting out of this corner, but again as I've mentioned elsewhere, I honestly don't think Yoshida has the resources on hand to actually pull it off. IMO they would need to hire another studio to brainstorm ideas for them, then have Sato's team pick and choose what to implement and integrated into the game proper.

[AmiableApkallu]

Lastly, I'd rework the healers to have optimized gameplay be about maintaining DPS uptime. Standard heals should feel powerful to use, having no MP cost, low or no cast times, and no cooldowns, but come at the opportunity cost of your damage. ……… Essentially, all the consequences fall entirely on the healer's ability to maintain their uptime, not their ability to heal and keep the party alive. Uptime is also not required at all from healers in nearly every aspect of FFXIV, and even when it is required, there's still breathing room to drop uptime for recovery in savage and ultimate.

These three key points can certainly create an environment that would feel different to what we currently have in a way that allows skilled healers to push their gameplay without preventing novice healers from keeping up with virtually every aspect of the game shy of savage and ultimate.

(Emphasis mine.)

I'm not sure how it makes sense to tie consequences to something that doesn't actually matter in the vast majority of the game's content and to something the game itself does an abysmal job of providing feedback on (you really need a friend furiously scribbling down your damage numbers in a spreadsheet). Consequences should be felt.

Consider BLM Ley Lines. You can feel the faster cast times standing in them. You can "lol, that was a bad idea" when you see that you plunked them down in the path of mechanics. You can imagine, "if I knew the fight better…." The button has an element of fun, an element of failure, and an element of nudging you towards better play. This design works because in the vast majority of content, that failure is enough to be felt, but it's not fatal to the encounter. The nudge towards better play is enough to trigger a self-improvement instinct without making you feel like you must figure out what's Optimal and Perfect.

GCD heals with MP costs function similarly. You can see HP bars go up. You can fret about your MP after spamming the button for 42 GCDs in a row. You can imagine, "if I didn't spam the button and tried something else…." Trading the MP cost for a damage cost breaks the design in the vast majority of content where optimal damage simply doesn't matter. The heals become freebie buttons devoid of any real weight. That might be great for novice anime healers who are so fearful of failure that they've grown allergic to DPS buttons, but there's a big gap between them and connoisseurs of high-scoring spreadsheets.