Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Payotz]

In any case - "the only thing that can make the healing gameplay interesting"? That's not a statement of fact. You need to add two words on the end of that sentence "...to me." Many others would find the changes I outlined would make healing fun and interesting. Many people - as you note - like healing as it is now and would find a complete overhaul to make it LESS fun/interesting.

I disagree. I did say that many people like it now sure but not because it's "more engaging" than what I proposed, but rather because healing in this game is the easiest and most braindead healing has been across many MMOs.

It's accessible, and it's very easy to find success in it, and there's not much of a skill gap, so new players won't feel too bad for actually being mediocre, so they can feel better about themselves and act like they actually know what they're doing or are talking about. It's very much in line with Yoshi-P's entire mindset of "Pick Up and Play", where you don't really have to master anything to find success in the game.

The problem with healing is the same the problems with tanking. It's both low skill floor and low skill ceiling, and the "complexity" is derived from DPS Rotations, which has nothing to do with their roles.
This is akin to Samurai not having to build stickers to Midare and turning Midare to a GCD you can spam every 2.5 seconds, but then making it so that Third Eye actually gives you stacks of "Recovery Midare", and then you'd have to position yourself near the tank because now, every stack of "Recovery Midare" would heal the tank. It's nonsensical.

I think a more measured approach to thread the needle is the answer, and to actually do things like make Ultimates a completely different, much more intensive healing experience. That's absolutely necessary for "Go play Ultimate" to actually be an answer of any kind.

It wouldn't, because we would go back to the initial problem, wherein healers will now have a high skill floor, but the skill floor is also the skill ceiling. Sure that's a lot more interesting than the current state of healers, but that's not really the goal here. The game needs the skill ceiling, and it won't get there with healers with the current design, regardless of how many numbers you crunch.

The overhaul I suggest would introduce ramping and healing rotations to healers, similar to how SAM ramps up to a Midare/Tsubame, Instead of having powerful healing spells available 24/7 like Medica 2/ Medica and Cure 3, the healers would have to do their healing rotations properly in order to gain access to those spells. It would require you to think about healing itself, rather than it being an afterthought like it is now (and it always has been) wherein you optimize your dps more and you relegate your healing abiltiies to a spreadsheet; And this will in turn make healing engaging, because everytime you have to think in a video game is the time where you are engaged.

A good example that I have is Disc Priest healing in a raid setting, wherein the spec heals through the buff called Atonement that lasts for 18 seconds, as 40%(give or take) of all damage you deal to a single target would be transferred to anyone with Atonement as healing:

Weak single target heals would apply as much Atonement to as many peopel as possible without the buff running out
Power Word: Radiance(can only apply Atonement to five people and you only have 2 charges every 20 seconds) would be used to apply Atonement to everyone else
then you use a cooldown to extend/buff Atonement or you forgo it completely for an emergency ramp
then you DPS the living shit out of the target just so you can heal everyone through the massive multiple raid wides that are coming out.

It's simple in concept yes, but there's multiple ways to fulfill every single step in that series of events, including the DPS portion.

That's what I think the game needs for healers. Engaging healer-related gameplay that's not simply just "extra DPS buttons", and that's what I personally want in a healer overhaul.
And frankly I don't think this is feasible as it will need every encounter in the game to be reworked, and will result in everyone else to be too scared to heal resulting in lower healer numbers.

A lot of people would complain about this, not because it's less engaging, but simply because it's too hard.

[Saraide]

The overhaul I suggest would introduce ramping and healing rotations to healers, similar to how SAM ramps up to a Midare/Tsubame, Instead of having powerful healing spells available 24/7 like Medica 2/ Medica and Cure 3, the healers would have to do their healing rotations properly in order to gain access to those spells. It would require you to think about healing itself, rather than it being an afterthought like it is now (and it always has been) wherein you optimize your dps more and you relegate your healing abiltiies to a spreadsheet; And this will in turn make healing engaging, because everytime you have to think in a video game is the time where you are engaged.

A good example that I have is Disc Priest healing in a raid setting, wherein the spec heals through the buff called Atonement that lasts for 18 seconds, as 40%(give or take) of all damage you deal to a single target would be transferred to anyone with Atonement as healing:

Weak single target heals would apply as much Atonement to as many peopel as possible without the buff running out
Power Word: Radiance(can only apply Atonement to five people and you only have 2 charges every 20 seconds) would be used to apply Atonement to everyone else
then you use a cooldown to extend/buff Atonement or you forgo it completely for an emergency ramp
then you DPS the living shit out of the target just so you can heal everyone through the massive multiple raid wides that are coming out.

It's simple in concept yes, but there's multiple ways to fulfill every single step in that series of events, including the DPS portion.

That's what I think the game needs for healers. Engaging healer-related gameplay that's not simply just "extra DPS buttons", and that's what I personally want in a healer overhaul.
And frankly I don't think this is feasible as it will need every encounter in the game to be reworked, and will result in everyone else to be too scared to heal resulting in lower healer numbers.

A lot of people would complain about this, not because it's less engaging, but simply because it's too hard.

Yea it is strange that you never build up anything in terms of healing abilities. At most it's 'is this skill on cooldown or not'. The darkest dungeon devs have massively revamped their approach to healing for the second game by making almost all dedicated heals need some kind of condition met first (target has to be below a certain threshold, target has to have another buff applied to it first).

[ForsakenRoe]

Yea it is strange that you never build up anything in terms of healing abilities. At most it's 'is this skill on cooldown or not'. The darkest dungeon devs have massively revamped their approach to healing for the second game by making almost all dedicated heals need some kind of condition met first (target has to be below a certain threshold, target has to have another buff applied to it first).

The one heal that has a condition like that (beyond MP or gauge costs) is Essential Dignity's healing being scaled based on missing HP. Which just incentivizes players to ignore the HP of the ally for as long as possible. Why heal them for 400p when they're at 80% HP, when I could wait until they're at like 10% and the move has scaled to be like 1100p strong, that's three times as effective!

[Renathras]

We have. I recognize you...

Posting on an alt? Don't recall you at all. And if that's your take on my posts, you didn't read them.

Considering I have considerable "game-know-how" and don't advocate "to lobotomize Job designs further".

But if there is one thing I'd like to request like I did back in the DPS-Subsection...

Oh wait, no, I remember you know. Yeah, I definitely remember you...
Give me no post cap and sure, I'll make all posts shorter instead of bundling replies to several people. Make it happen and I'm game.

I think the real takeaway is the seeming agreement that there is a problem in need of fixing. Unsurprisingly, the solution one favors colors how one describes what the problem is (tanks/DPS are busted with their mits and heals! no, it's the encounter that's busted for not dealing enough damage! no, healers need more interesting downtime! etc. etc. etc.).

Yeah, this is true. As Sebezy said:

Rather it's a lot of different perspectives on what the problem is.
...
It's a combination of the above and more that's gotten us to this point.

Speaking of: I agree with that. It is a multifacited problem.

I disagree. I did say that many people like it now sure but...

Many people do find it fun, interesting, and engaging.

And no, a more measured solution wouldn't be "high skill floor also the skill ceiling". That's not how that would work.

And for the record "ramp up" healing is a higher skill floor. That's why many games don't do it and just give Healers access to all their heals directly.

I do think it would be neat to see different variations on Healers, like SGE being a Disc Priest was honestly what I was thinking when they announced it. The problem is FFXIV's fight/encounter design and balance don't allow for it well.

EDIT:

...

When group A has members asking for a thing and group B has no members asking for a thing AND the thing doesn't actually benefit group B, trying to say it was done for group B and not admitting it was done at all for group A is kind of missing something.

As I said to you - that you didn't read - the midcore is who it was done for. Not "casuals". "casuals" doing Praetorium don't need buff alignment and may not even be using buffs. Same for "casuals" in Lapis Manalis or "casuals" RPing in Limsa or "casuals" farming NMs in Eureka. Those people aren't who these changes were for.

[Sebazy]

I do think it would be neat to see different variations on Healers, like SGE being a Disc Priest was honestly what I was thinking when they announced it. The problem is FFXIV's fight/encounter design and balance don't allow for it well.

Agreed, at the risk of sounding like a stuck record. SE have the absolute perfect job/sacrificial lamb to throw under the experiment bus for this and it boggles my mind that they haven't had the bottle or been willing to put in the effort to at least try it for an expansion.

Take AST, throw it's DPS kit literally in the bin. Let them spend GCDs buffing team mates with some less efficient method of converting that into raw damage as needed for solo/msq content. Drop a 'totem' and throw cards at it to pulse an AoE or something. What matters is having a completely left of field healer that doesn't just slam nukes for the bulk of their GCDs like the rest. If it's really bad, there's 3 more healers for people to fall back on. If it's borderline, tweak it Creator style and see what happens. If it rocks, look at what can be done for another healer like Sadge.

[ForteNightshade]

When group A has members asking for a thing and group B has no members asking for a thing AND the thing doesn't actually benefit group B, trying to say it was done for group B and not admitting it was done at all for group A is kind of missing something.

As I said to you - that you didn't read - the midcore is who it was done for. Not "casuals". "casuals" doing Praetorium don't need buff alignment and may not even be using buffs. Same for "casuals" in Lapis Manalis or "casuals" RPing in Limsa or "casuals" farming NMs in Eureka. Those people aren't who these changes were for.

Says the person who still is missing the point themselves. You're so close too. One more time, from the top!

Per your example, Group B not asking for a change and the change being made for them aren't mutually exclusive.

You are correct something is missing. That something is the dev team perceiving their was a problem to begin with and attempting to fix it based on the assumption players who weren't utilizing buffs correctly were only doing so because they were confused when to use them. Therefore, making everything lineup would seemingly fix this perceived problem. We've seen them do this time and again in various forms. Kaiten is a prime example. Yoshida was criticised on the actual stream from JP of all demographics for that change because nobody asked for it. Nor did they like the Ninja changes accompanying it. Once again, the dev team perceived Kaiten was an issue for casual players and essentially fixed a problem that never really existed .

No mate. Your argument just wasn't good to begin with. But keep insisting I never read it. Like I said, whether you want to attribute the changes to "casuals" or "midcore" despite the fact both can raid, which you seemingly ignored, the perception from the dev team is what matters here. And it doesn't change literally anything I said. To summarize it for you, the dev team created a solution to a problem they believed existed based on players not utilizing buffs correctly and overcorrected without making adjustments to crit variance or considering the impact of larger potency abilities, which created an even bigger problem than the one they attempted to fix that didn't even exist

All this circles back to your original post trying to put blame on the raid community. That's it. You blamed raiders instead of the dev team. If you want to call them midcore instead, well, we're back to semantics again because midcore players aren't struggling with buffs. You're conflating things... again. The whole purpose of these changes is to try and incentivize casual players to give raiding a shot and to make the barrier of entry easier.