A different kidn of question: What do you think a Healer, in MMO/Trinity terms, is?

[Renathras]

I don't mean in lore or anything like that. I mean in gameplay. In your mind, what should a Healer in MMO/Trinity terms play like/gameplay be like?

So many discussions we have here, but I think the fundamental disagreements MAY be based on this, but I'm not sure. So I think it might be useful to ask the question and see what the answers are from various people.

Is a Healer supposed to fill health bars of allies?
Buff allies?
Debuff enemies?
Deal as much damage as possible?

A poster here recently said that in all her experience with games, Healers were always focused on damage and not with healing allies, and this seems to be the basis of this person's views of what Healers are supposed to be.

What is a Healer, in your mind, supposed to do in terms of gameplay and mechanics?

[Tint]

In a "Trinity"

I think a healer should fill HP bars, mitigate damage with magic shields and buff their allies.

They also should do damage, but only occasionally.

Keeping everyone alive and then make everyones life easier. Healers should not be a DD but in green. That's not what I imagine when I hear "trinity".


On the other hand when we move away from the trinity... "MMO term"

I think without a real trinity healers should play like the do in PvP here in FF14. They focus on dpsing and have some heals, but first on foremost has everyone their own heals and the healer in the party is just a bonus.

[Icecylee]

There's decent odds this is kind of a disconnect on your part from the vast majority of the frequent posters here, yeah. I suspect you probably play RPGs *far* more safely than the people you're typically arguing with.

To me, as someone with a lot of console and tabletop RPG experience, a healer isn't someone that strictly heals, but is the *go to option* for when healing is required. They're not healing every single little cut and scratch, but they have tools to rapidly patch people up once they're in danger of being punished by the next incoming bit of damage (by being KOd and taken out of the fight). A lot of games don't even have a ton of different healing options, just a couple of basic level ones, and maybe they scale up with levels, and the rest of the kit is devoted to other ways of supporting the party, What those other options tend to be can vary a lot from game to game, and especially class to class if there's ever more than one healer available, but generally they seem to be built on the assumption that they either spend a lot of time buffing or debuffing enemies as a way to serve as an indirect damage torq, or being able to do modest damage directly, with defensive de/buffs generally being something only pulled out for harder boss encounters. And you're doing these non-healing actions a lot, because monster typically aren't capable of outputting enough damage to burst people down to the ground in one round without them already being significantly low on HP, and healing between battles takes the same resources as in battle so it's a more efficient place to do it when possible. Rez effects are a safey net for when you've either misjudged a situation, or taken a gamble and lost, but either way it's a way to course correct after you've fucked up the most important part of your job (Everyone's HP > 0).

Even if you look as far back as one could reasonably go with D&D, they (Clerics) had limited access to healing tools, decent armor/weapon options, and some surprisingly good offensive spell options alongside a smattering of buffs and crowd control options (which often weren't in conflict with healing resources due different spell tiers and not having unified MP). And as D&D has been iterated on and remade, every single one of those points has been reinforced (other than maybe the armor/weapon thing, which is still an option but they've also gained the ability to be lightly armored and more ranged blaster-y rather than melee-y). I'd assume most of the frequent posters have similar understandings of healers, given the sorts of arguments they get into with you.

Fundamentally I don't think MMO healer expectations are really all that different, other than the assumption that you'll typically have a lot more buttons/skills at your disposal and perhaps more of an expectations for your HP fills bars to be varied and interesting, as well as having more liberal access to healing (as fights tend to be much longer, and kits balanced based on being more or less resource full for any given encounter, rather than the slow bleed of non-renewable resources over the course of a dungeon delve).

[ty_taurus]

On a broad scale...

DPS
- The majority of their gameplay revolves around dealing damage.
- May offer some amount of sustain/buffs/crowd control.
- Squishy--can die easily.

Ratio of Damage to Support would range from 100/0 to 80/20

Tank
- Damage dealt is usually low, but often is augmented with effects that increase aggro generation.
- Primarily utilizes personal defensive or evasive buffs or stances.
- Can also sometimes have sustain/buff/crowd control support.

Ratio of Damage to Support would range from 60/40 to 40/60, more often leaning toward the former.

Healer
- Damage dealt is usually low, but often is augmented with effects that reduce the opponent's damage-dealing capabilities
- Must provide some amount of sustain to the party, and usually offers more sustain than buffs/crowd control
- Outside of sustain, generally lean toward buffs or crowd control, but rarely both

Ratio of Damage to Support would range from 60/40 to 40/60, more often leaning toward the later.

[Zeastria]

As someone who have played healer in mmos for over 17years..
the very reason why i play healer is to heal and keep my team alive...
if i wanted to do dps..i would have played dps..( but I find dping boring..even on dps job..)

A Healer to me is someone who keeps the team alive, buffs them and prep for big moments in the fight...
Healing in FFXIV is most fun when you get a team where nobody knows shit and take a lot dmg
so that i can heal more than dpsing :3

[Casti_EL]

From my own experience and views on it (having played FFXI, FFXIV, WoW) I would say for me (looking at the typical party setup in all the games, lore behind healers, etc) a healer's primary responsibility should be defensively supporting the party: replenishing health pools, removing debuffs, buffing party members, raising the more unfortunate party members, etc. Secondary to that I would say is offensive supporting - attacking the enemy, applying debuffs, etc.

However, there are those that will disagree and I agree that the faster you kill an enemy, the less healing is required; so there is the argument that they should focus on dps primarily (though dead party members can't dps). That said, when I view it in those terms they're not really playing a healer role - just supportive dps with healer based support.

I suppose it boil downs to the encounters and the capabilities of your party - above all a healer should be adaptable to the situation.

Obviously, this is just my own point of view.

[ForsakenRoe]

My view is this: Healers focus on keeping the party alive, with extra duties like mitigating damage, debuffing enemies to deal less damage, buffing allies to deal more damage/beneficial effects as the game's system allows. However, that's all part of the overall 'duty' of the healer. And that 'overall duty' is the same as the other two roles of the trinity: do what is necessary to aid the team to successful completion of the content. And yes, that means that if there is a dead GCD where you do not need to heal, there are no buffs or debuffs to refresh, nothing else that takes priority, it means 'do damage, even if it is really weak', because every little helps and there's times where the boss enrages at 0.1%. As a personal anecdote, my first clear of P8S was so close, the enrage had finished it's cast and people were dying in that staggered fashion. And my last action was a swiftcasted Glare. Had I not done that, it's entirely possible that we'd have actually wiped.

Dealing damage is part and parcel of being not just a healer, but a team player in a team game. We don't tell the tanks to 'only keep aggro, damage is the DPS's job', we don't tell supports to only stand in lane and leech XP from the carry, we don't run around as Lifeline in Apex Legends only pressing her Tactical to heal people. No, we also find time to do damage as tank, harass the enemy laner as the support/set up ganks, and shoot at people in Apex, even as Lifeline. We do what we have to, to raise the chance of success for the team. Even if it's not necessarily in the name of the Trinity Role we're assigned. After all, we don't complain that Melee can heal themselves with Bloodbath, do we?

[Semirhage]

A poster here recently said that in all her experience with games, Healers were always focused on damage and not with healing allies, and this seems to be the basis of this person's views of what Healers are supposed to be.

This is the Sylphie caricature of what regular Healer subforum posters say.

Healing allies is what you do when you have to. Your *job* is finishing the encounter successfully. If that means everyone's alive at full HP, your job is done. If that means everyone is sitting at 1 HP, you've also done your job. You've just likely done that job more efficiently than the person who finished the encounter at full HP. This has been the case for as long as health bars and healing powers have existed. This is how the core gameplay loop of the typical RPG works.

There is a sliding scale of healing required for every given encounter. Assuming your party is capable of succeeding without huge amounts of luck or cheese, this scale ranges from "frantically pulling out every trick you can and finishing on fumes" to "none at all". This sliding scale is massively dependent on player skill. In non-MMO RPGs, it's actually pretty common for "none at all" to be possible for incredibly skilled players, even on the highest difficulty settings, for nearly the entire game. Even RPGs with a reputation for skull-splitting difficulty can frequently be finished with barely any healing at all.

In MMOs, the scale moves up a bit. Most fights last far longer than they do in offline and small-scale multi-player games, and they make much more use of damage that can't be avoided or mitigated through tactical positioning or preparation. There aren't potions of fire resistance you can use to completely nullify half of a boss's attacks, no invincibility combos you can use to tank an enemy fighter as a "squishy" wizard, no chain stuns you can abuse, no builds with absurd dodge chances you can use to avoid 100% of damage from trash.

Healing does need to happen in these scenarios, and it's incredibly important that it does happen. Dead party members are a failure state if you could have done something to save them. But just as there is a world of difference in healing requirements between someone who crawls to the end of a Baldur's Gate core difficulty run with a party of six and a full belt of healing spells and someone who can cackle across the finish line on max difficulty with difficulty-boosting mods soloing as a Sorcerer, that skill gap exists in MMOs too. What's the Sorcerer player going to do when they've achieved victory with snappy, skillful, and judicious healing output?

Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare.

How tedious. How mind-numbing. Being good at healing is supposed to be rewarded, not punished. "Healers" don't spend the majority of their time not healing. Good Healers do. Because that's what gaining skill at healing means. Because that's how RPGs work. What's the hallmark of a skilled healer? Healing as much as possible, or as little?

FFXIV simply refuses to believe this simple fact, and so rewards downtime with a tedious, braindead activity. How could anyone possibly want their downtime to be entertaining? Easy. Because you do it a lot. Because it's the natural consequence of becoming better at healing. That's just how it goes.

A healer's primary responsibility is to keep the party alive. That's only where the fun *begins*, though. Watching your Medica 2 fall off when everyone's at 90% HP is a mark of pride. You don't want to see your regen ticking on fresh unbloodied party members. That's a sign that you effectively wasted everyone's time with that spell. Figuring out how to drag a party through a fight on ramen noodles and coupons while still contributing to the battle is the path to getting a black belt in healing. If you can do that, you can do anything. I'd like Healers designed as if people a hundred times more skilled than I will ever be will be playing them; it makes an unattainable but lofty goal. Healers in FFXIV are designed as if keeping health bars at 100% all the time is the endgame, and after that you did it. You won. You mastered healing, no more is to be gained here. Have a Glare.

[Irenia]

I think that the platonic ideal in a trinity system would go something like this, given an arbitrary "threat" which brings "chaos" if left unchecked.

A threat appears. The DPS neutralizes the threat.
If the threat cannot be neutralized immediately, the Tanks contain the threat until the threat is neutralized.
If the threat cannot be contained completely, Healers manages the chaos the threat brings until either the threat is contained again, or it is neutralized.
If too much chaos exists, the players lose.

Because the capabilities of the threat varies between them, the Tanks and Healers must have some capacity to do work in the categories above. Tanks need to be able to neutralize threats somewhat. Healers need to neutralize and contain threats somewhat.

After all, sometimes only the worst parts of the threat can be contained, and it just spits chaos everywhere, so most of the Tank's ability to contain is going to waste. Sometimes it is difficult to contain, but there is so much concentrated chaos such that a containment breach is a game over, so Healers need to be able to pivot from controlling chaos to containment. And of course, neutralizing the threat is the end goal of the party, so the DPS will appreciate any assistance in that department.

As far as healing/damage/buffing/debuffing as a Healer's duty?
Healing can be Containment or Chaos Control.
Damage is always Neutralization.
Buffs and Debuffs can be any of the three.

But that's all mechanics in the abstract. Aesthetically, there are many different healer fantasies. You have the D&Desque warrior cleric, fighting and healing on the front lines wielding magic, mace, and shield. You have the priest, filled with holy magic to both harm foes and bolster allies. The all-caps [HEALER], standing behind the party and behind the scenes making their allies unkillable overpowered juggernauts. The tactician, always having the right tool at the right time, which includes healing, of course. The field medic, whose practical knowledge can be used to heal and bolster...or harm and hinder.

14 is interesting because in a party, everybody is responsible for containment, and that chaos only occurs when people play "badly" relative to what the content expects. In this environment, Healer's neutralization tools, while weaker than the DPS, should be interesting, and in my opinion, they are not.

But at the end of the day, the healer is a jack of all trades, and they are a master of chaos control, or getting people back up on their feet. It's just that in this game, chaos only happens due to player mistakes or lack of knowledge.

[Osmond]

Hmm…….. Since we have now 4 healers, 1 have to specialize as an identity. I can’t pick one, only to make me reconsider my choice so I ended up choosing all 3, but more of their own speciality. It’s why I want SCH to be a high potency shield healer that uses big debuff abilities on the enemy that the party can exploit during burst windows. WHM, a pure healer with strong regen overtime. AST , a pure healer that gives strong card buffs to the party. SGE, a shield healer that provides strong mitigation with high DPS.

I’m fine if SCH has the lowest DPS in the healer kit, but the trade off is tools like chain stratagem. Just need something more SCH can do to weaken enemies or a boss that make dmg taken not as painful for tanks, but also make dmg received more satisfying when dmging the enemy.

I can see ppl have a problem with the healers feeling mostly the same. I think that deviation can make a difference on making the healers more fun to play I guess.

Edit: I try not to compare other healers from MMOs to this because.......most classes can heal themselves through most buttons in the game so a legit healer is non-existent and I can see why most ppl say that are annoyed pressing 1 GCD, 1 oGCD, 1 AoE DPS tools. From the comments I kept reading, that's the conclusion I kept popping in my head and I don't even bother trying to argue against that. Not try to outrage that demand to the devs to make that happen, only to complain about that too if that gets implemented.