A summary of healer issues

[ForsakenRoe]

I think there's a misunderstanding going on here. Overwatch refers to their characters as Tank, Healer and Damage because Blizzard has a history of making an MMO. But the Healer could just as easily be called 'Support'. The Tanks could be 'Defender' or 'Guardian' or whatever synonym. Getting hung up on what 'being a support vs healer is' doesn't really get us anywhere. Why is the word 'Healer' or 'Support' being given such gravity, that it dictates what the role MUST do? Does Omniknight or Oracle in DOTA not count as a 'support' because they have a skill that heals allies? Are they instead a 'healer', in a game that doesn't use that term anywhere else? What about the League analogues (i dont play idk names), are they 'healers' or 'supports'? Lifeline and Wattson in Apex can restore allies HP and Shield respectively, does that make them healers?

By this logic, the solution is actually to rename the role to Support. We sure as heck aren't 'healers' if we're spending like 50% of our GCDs on nonhealing stuff, or using damage amping kit like ChainStrat or Divination. And hey, if the devs believe the same thing about the role's design (it needs more healing tools because it's a healer), renaming it to Support might actually get them to think 'oh hang on, there's more to designing a job than 'another AOE healing tool'

[Banriikku]

As far i know in Overwatch there is no healer, only support and if you play like a healer you are a bad player. IN OW you have Support and if you are pedantic there is also flex but does not matter for the argument.

In FF14 i have the feeling we have a extreme DPS favored encounter design but the classes (WHM, SGE, SCH, AST) are build with "healer" idea in mind. The healer idea is simply put a class that extemly focused on healing and keeping the party alive while the DPS department is nonexistent or only to a extreme minimalstic degree there.
SO we have "the healer idea" as a job, while the encounter is DPS favored which leads to 98% Dosis cast in a full extreme fight and this is just bad design. But sadly so it seems on a fundamental level that we just can't make healer class to supporters. The encounter design needs a change first... (while they are at it : Kill the 2 minute meta pls).

[ForsakenRoe]

As far i know in Overwatch there is no healer, only support and if you play like a healer you are a bad player. IN OW you have Support and if you are pedantic there is also flex but does not matter for the argument.

Right, they play like supports, they have support kits, and playing like a 'pure healer' is kinda griefing.

But the role is called 'healer' in OW, not support. Which is my point, the word 'healer' or 'support' is too broad in overlap to get hung up over. Trying to justify why healers in FFXIV cannot have more 'support' stuff with 'because the role is called healer, not support' is really not-sensible imo, because we're in the same boat here as OW: heal allies when they need it, help kill enemies when they don't. Issue is, in OW there's gonna be people in need of healing a lot more often than here in FF, due to it being PVP and this being strict spreadsheetable fight timelines

[Banriikku]

I think Support is the role but healer the name. We keep the healers as they are and we get an Enocunter Design change so that healing to that exten is needed or a more support role BUT this would also need a encounter design change first.
All encounter are build around DPS and low utility. If you are adding utility in form of a supporter the encounter would break. I dont say "no to supporter in FF14" but SE needs to aknowledge that the enocunter design is failed and needs a rework that first or all healer changes will be for naught.

[ty_taurus]

This is an argument of semantics, and one that is arbitrary. A “healer” is any “support” that restores HP. “Support” characters/classes have low overall damage in exchange for brining utility—non-damage related effects that make encounters easier: healing, mitigation, crowd control, mobility, cleansing, dispelling…

The only difference it would make if the role was labeled “support” is that we might’ve seen it also include jobs like bard, dancer, and red mage, and those jobs might’ve offered more support than just increased healing effects and a cleanse on bard, a little extra healing on dancer, and increased healing/mitigation and instant raises on red mage.

[Banriikku]

Semantic ? No, i try to make the diffrence clear:
Healer is healing focused and DPS is an afterthought
Support is supporting and DPS is an important part of the kit

And as i stated earlier, the encounter design ist the problem or the job design. A question that gets one of two answers depending of your viewpoint:
1. The Job needs more in line with the encounter, therfore more DPS and utility
or
2. The encounter Design needs to change to make "full heal " work

Also we dont talk here about DPS with support option, we talk about healers and how SE could change them for the better. Sure we can look what is possible but to take away from other jobs.. i dont think that is necessary, not after SE tries to strip everything away from all jobs.