Healer role design change?

[Chrystal755]

Healer as a role seems to have very diminishing value the later in the game you go..to the point of current ultimates being cleared without a healer or even less than recommended.

I think healers should be given more of a support role philosophy.

Obviously damage is not strong or constant enough to warrant a lot of healing...and tanks have heals that are comparable to a healer.

Either give healer's more unique utility options, like haste, damage up, crit up, buff timer extensions etc.

or give enemies more debilitating statuses that only a healer can cure/mitigate.

[Zeastria]

1) More damage and dmg you cant prep or know in advance:
a) Damage over time, so that healing is req all the time.
b) Boss target random player and use x ability (random dmg).
2) Only healers should have ress!
3) More to dispell.

Healers should be able to use their full toolkit,
and not just spend majority of the time useing ST dps and OFFGCD when dmgs hits..

This will make it so healers have to heal more often.
They have to use their full toolkit -> this prevent healers to just spam their ST and offgcd when dmg hits.
Remove heal-dps check. however healers should still dps during downtime.

[ty_taurus]

Here are some general thoughts I have on what I'd like to see in the future:

1. Rebalance DPS values between Healers and Tanks to be much closer.
- Healers are currently last in line to get their gear in many premades groups. This would at least allow healers to be interchangeable with tanks in terms of gear priority.

2. Rework the cleansable debuff UI to make cleansable debuffs far more visible, and make cleansing a more common choice.
- Introducing more examples of debuffs that can be removed through Esuna would not only create more opportunities for healers to engage with a non-DPS tool, but would also increase the value of cleansing as utility. The key here is that more debuffs should create choices rather than ultimatums. I'd also like to see White Mage get an OGCD AoE Esuna on a 90 or 120 second cooldown if we were to see these far more frequently as this would allow White Mage to actually compete with utility like Expedient or the healing check negation of Macrocosmos. I know AoE Esuna was a Scholar thing, but Scholar already has Expedient, and I personally feel AoE Esuna is far more a White Mage tool than a Scholar one.

Examples of cleansable debuffs we could stand to use often:

Disease/Reduced Immunity
- Reduces HP recovered. Having something like a 50% healing reduction creates an environment where the healer can choose to heal through it, but removing it might make healing checks easier. Disease also applies a reduced movement speed effect, though not as severe as Heavy, while Reduced Immunity is just reduced healing.

Misery
- This increases the amount of damage taken by the party. Similar to the Disease example and can be ignored through proper mitigation and barrier application, but can also be cleansed for a safer strategy.

Damage Down
- If it can be removed through Esuna, it can be a DPS gain to spend a GCD removing a DPS's attack down. If we change current examples of attack down received through failed mechanics to be cleansable, this also allows healers to better correct their teammate's mistakes, but also doesn't kill the player if left untouched, so the healer can focus on healing if it's big, messy situation.

Poison/Bleed/Frostbite/Pollen/Windbite
- With the increased use of DoTs that must be healed through, making those heavy DoTs removable with Esuna may not be necessary, as again it can be healed through, but offers to opportunity to make the job easier, particularly if a TB DoT goes unmitigated.

Doom/Necrosis*
- I would change all instances of Doom and Necrosis to to removable through either Esuna or by healing the target to full HP. If you create the choice, it allows the healer to decide which angle is easiest to accomplish. This means you could increase the frequency of these debuffs being used on the party without creating a necessity to use Esuna every time.

3. More frequent appearance of chip damage occurring in all forms of content.
- We've gotten to a point where too much of a fight is waiting for a boss to execute on avoidable mechanics and doing nothing else. Others have mentioned boss auto-attacks while casting as well as possibly returning critical hit autos, but there are other solutions as well. Create orbs that must be popped, towers that must be stood in, or AoE/random targetted damage taken from external sources like targetable adds. The damage from these, especially in environments like dungeons, doesn't have to be a lot. Maybe someone takes around 10%-20% of their max HP from these unmitigated, but occur once per 10-15 seconds or so.

4. Approach healers the the same way tanks are handled.
- While there's something to be said about tank homogenization as well, healers are constantly coddled when tanking is far more challenging since tanks often have entire mechanics that only they have to resolve. Healers should have a similar ratio of offensive actions to healing actions that tanks have for offensive actions to mitigation actions. You can still have 1 more simple healer and 1 more complex healer like the tanks, but that shouldn't mean 60% of your actions are whatever flavor of Glare each job is sentenced to.

Overall, we can start with one thing at a time, let people become comfortable with that change, and gradually work on the others. Start with a healer kit rework and the improved debuff visibility, and gradually introduce more damage and debuff application into all difficulty thresholds until we strike a healthy balance for the average player.

[ForsakenRoe]

2. Rework the cleansable debuff UI to make cleansable debuffs far more visible, and make cleansing a more common choice.
- Introducing more examples of debuffs that can be removed through Esuna would not only create more opportunities for healers to engage with a non-DPS tool, but would also increase the value of cleansing as utility. The key here is that more debuffs should create choices rather than ultimatums. I'd also like to see White Mage get an OGCD AoE Esuna on a 90 or 120 second cooldown if we were to see these far more frequently as this would allow White Mage to actually compete with utility like Expedient or the healing check negation of Macrocosmos. I know AoE Esuna was a Scholar thing, but Scholar already has Expedient, and I personally feel AoE Esuna is far more a White Mage tool than a Scholar one.

Examples of cleansable debuffs we could stand to use often:

On the subject here, I agree with the examples, giving a WHM the choice between 'esuna this doom, or use Bene to remove it' gives choices, will you need that Bene for something else later, or can you afford to use it now kinda thing

But the reason I'm quoting this part is the bit above, of AOE Esuna being WHM's 'thing' to compete with Macrocosmos or Expedient. And while it 'could' be a useful utility in a world where cleansable debuffs are way way more common, I have an idea for it. Rather than making it a 90/120s CD that is flat, bland, boring, just throw it out with no thought to it's use, make it a lily spender. That way, it's still damage neutral (you get blood lily from it), but it has to be thought about, as it's going to cost you a Rapture. Picture the scene, a Doom that can be cleansed by getting players to full HP OR Esuna'd, everyone is at not-full-HP. Do you spend the lily on the Esunaga and remove the dooms easily, or do you use it on a Rapture to heal people, and remove the dooms that way, while also restoring HP? What if the Rapture is not enough to get them to full? Then the Esunaga would be the better option because the doom would kill them, and you'd have to 'waste' a GCD heal to get the rest of the HP filled. Decisionmaking moments

Also in comparison to AOE Esuna, Macro and Expedient are busted strong IMO, if we're talking about power level/impact on the raid. Having it be a 20s 'with opportunity cost' seems more fitting to me than a random 90s CD. Like if we picture, lets be real, the only Esuna-check in the game right now, Throttle, if it were a 90s you would just press it there and then. With it being a lilyspender, you'd at least have to consider the fact you're down one lily and factor that in to later parts of the phase.

edit: oh yeh, as a lily spender it'd also proc the heal effect of Plenary Indulgence, making it possible to AOE heal for 200p while also cleansing everyone. 200 doesn't sound like much, but un-powered Horoscope does 200, and that's a 60s CD like PI

[Zarkovitch]

Healer should only have raise and have it instant cast due caster should be dpsing not raising. That would kill 2 bird 1 stone with caster balance and healer support ability.

[Shurrikhan]

Here are some general thoughts I have on what I'd like to see in the future:

1. Rebalance DPS values between Healers and Tanks to be much closer.
- Healers are currently last in line to get their gear in many premades groups. This would at least allow healers to be interchangeable with tanks in terms of gear priority.

I feel like this depends primarily on how we see the value of (i.e., how we should "tax", as they are non-situational and non-optional) healers' "free" sustain (Lilies and oGCDs, be they mitigation, heals, or both), especially relative to what all tanks bring.

Tanks already bring with them hugely increased heal-efficiency due to even just their passive %mitigation¹. Though that passive value has diminishing returns in two-tanks scenarios because only one can tank at a time, their actives mitigation tools are more like those of healers: they do not waste each other except to the extent that they'd have excess coverage (or, in healers' case, there is not enough damage taken for both to use their oGCD sustain tools on CD without overhealing).

¹ While additive eHP increases like pre-traits Thrill of Battle grant further eHP, they do not increase the relative value of HP consumed over their duration, unlike mitigation like Rampart [a 25% eHP and efficiency increase], etc.

² Given that tanks weren't taking much less damage even with their 20% mitigation Role-wide passive, this one can more or less be thought of as a non-tank nerf that simply increases the party's dependence on tanks, more so than a tank buff, but still, that has further increased the relative value of tanks.
Personally, I'd prefer to see that removed and boss tankbuster (and maybe auto-attack) damage reduced accordingly, but that's more in the interest of reducing bloat, now that the devs don't have to pretend to former (bad) turtle-tanks that they lost nothing with the removal of old tank stances. The gameplay would be identical apart from the punishment of a tank dying once in a blue moon being very faintly less.

At present, I feel that the combined offense+sustain of tanks too greatly exceeds that of healers, and while tanks auto-balance part of that sustain (sadly, the least interesting part -- their passive mitigation)... they probably should be nerfed somewhat in addition to healers' offense being buffed (since their sustain already frequently encounters bottlenecks / redundancy and therefore buffs to sustain would not increase their value in practice).

Tl;dr: Yes, buff healer offensive ppm, but also probably decrease tank sustain (in the sense of effective mitigation+healing).

2. Rework the cleansable debuff UI to make cleansable debuffs far more visible, and make cleansing a more common choice.

This I'm more on the fence about. Personally, a hard cleanse seems about the least interesting way to deal with nearly any¹ debuff, to the point I'd often prefer that Esuna did not exist, as its presence actually dumbs down options otherwise available.

¹ The exception to this is "mechanic goes off on cleanse," where the healer then consumes a GCD to basically act as a Duty Action, in the interest of net rDPS increase by freeing up positioning.

Some examples of things I'd rather not see cleansed:

Simple DoTs - The most common form of cleansible debuff. This could actually require a decent bit of healing that, especially amid healing-intense situations, could require a preemptive HoT/Barrier if the target is known or blanket (blind/raidwide) sustain if not... and perhaps some saved up oGCDs to compensate for continually bad crit-luck. Or... it just takes the healer seeing the blue-line-highlighted icon and hitting the "Nah, let's not do this mechanic" button. The latter, despite its button cost, makes the mechanic less engaging and wastes its potential, in turn, to make the healer's kit more engaging.

Doom - Again, you could race the timer to heal the player up despite everything else that's going on in that time, perhaps even having to make the split-second choice between sacrificing that player or risking one or more death elsewhere... or you could hit the discrete "No mechanic, tyvm" button.¹

¹ Now, if you pair the Doom debuff in some way with something else, like a non-cleansable DoT that deals more damage the lower the victim's HP is... then the decision isn't so easy/automatic, and the Esuna becomes an emergency useful but optional means of trading out one risk for another.

Fully Undoable Mechanical Debuffs - This would be like Allagan Rot being created every 10 seconds and normally needing to be passed on within the next 10 seconds... or... just cleansed, with no penalty for doing so. I don't want Esuna to be a way out of a mechanic. I don't want my responsibility as a healer to be to dumb down fights.
Heck, I'd be fine with having ppgcd low enough that spending a GCD to Adlo a melee so they could maintain uptime standing in a fire would be worthwhile, but that needs to be a sort of situational fungibility and a deliberate decision, not something depended on to axe whole mechanics.

On the other hand, though, I'd be fine with more minor mechanics or annoyances being healer-cleansible, so long as their being cleansable neither noticeably dumbs down the healing nor the mechanics (a Lily-spending AoE Esuna onto a raidwide 10s Heavy, for instance, is basically just Expedient but potentially more versatile, depending on what else in that fight can be cleansed), as that allows for attentive prioritization (helping the 'carry' carry harder or one's 'weakest link' in the given mechanic or period to pose less risk).

I guess the one thing I really don't want, though, is for a behavior akin to "I see Cleansible = I cleanse." I want those to still be decisions, even if that means often leaving Esuna weak enough to be merely competitive on average.

3. More frequent appearance of chip damage occurring in all forms of content.

Aye. Not much more to be said here. Just... increase the healing requirements where they wouldn't make the existing bursts of damage overwhelming anyways, giving us more to/with which we'd feel like we're really responding/engaging.

[ForteNightshade]

1. Rebalance DPS values between Healers and Tanks to be much closer.
- Healers are currently last in line to get their gear in many premades groups. This would at least allow healers to be interchangeable with tanks in terms of gear priority.

That wouldn't change the gearing priority. Healers were dealing comparable damage to tanks in Shadowbringers yet the same priority persisted. It's due to the role being in a unique position to gain damage since Healers are the only job that change their rotation from prog to re-clears. You'll press significantly less GCDs, thus you'll deal more damage whereas tanks will basically be completely static save for the occasional "safety Tomahawk"

Even with that aside, there's simply no reason for healers to do the same damage as tanks in their present state. They're pressing one button compare to the juggling Gunbreaker deals with or the oGCD fest Dark Knight has. Besides, gear priority is static dependent. Plenty on the more casual side and even some midcore do FFA.

[ty_taurus]

Even with that aside, there's simply no reason for healers to do the same damage as tanks in their present state. They're pressing one button compare to the juggling Gunbreaker deals with or the oGCD fest Dark Knight has.

It's almost as if I said "Healers should have a similar ratio of offensive actions to healing actions that tanks have for offensive actions to mitigation actions. You can still have 1 more simple healer and 1 more complex healer like the tanks, but that shouldn't mean 60% of your actions are whatever flavor of Glare each job is sentenced to." in the same post that you quoted.

[ForteNightshade]

It's almost as if I said "Healers should have a similar ratio of offensive actions to healing actions that tanks have for offensive actions to mitigation actions. You can still have 1 more simple healer and 1 more complex healer like the tanks, but that shouldn't mean 60% of your actions are whatever flavor of Glare each job is sentenced to." in the same post that you quoted.

And it's almost like I said, "Healers were dealing comparable damage to tanks in Shadowbringers yet the same priority persisted" in that same post you quoted. Not to mention explaining that said priority exists for more than one reason.

Putting aside the snide remarks, they're never going to design healers with the same offensive toolkit tank do. After ten years that much is pretty apparent. Even if they do relent, which I think they should, and give back some offensive options for healers. It will come in the form of another DoT or maybe a second Glare equivalent. Otherwise, you might see something comparable to what Astro has now with cards. We're never going to have healers weaving the absurd amount of purely offensive oGCDs Dark Knight does.

Not only do they simply not want to design healers that way, it also runs into several problems with fight design. Imagine Dark Knight had to heal in between its burst windows or even Warrior had to delay IR Fell Cleave to keep the party alive? A lot of players won't want to trade their damage for heals. We already see that now, especially with White Mage. They're not pressing Rapture during any burst windows, party be damned. Another issue is general mechanic design. Unless every new button added is an instant cast, healer movement will become more of an issue. Both scenarios result in them taking a damage loss... which circles back to the crux of my point: healers will always be expected to sacrifice damage which is the primary reason they're last in gear priority. That won't change even if they had Warrior's rotation, which is about as far as SE will ever go.

None of this really matters though because it's mostly the higher end statics that have a gear priority. Like I said, you can have plenty of groups who don't. So this isn't really a problem that needs addressing.

[ty_taurus]

Putting aside the snide remarks, they're never going to design healers with the same offensive toolkit tank do. After ten years that much is pretty apparent. Even if they do relent, which I think they should, and give back some offensive options for healers. It will come in the form of another DoT or maybe a second Glare equivalent. Otherwise, you might see something comparable to what Astro has now with cards. We're never going to have healers weaving the absurd amount of purely offensive oGCDs Dark Knight does.

My original post was about what needs to happen to fix the healer role. Whether or not the design team ever will is an entirely different conversation, which is why I feel it was disingenuous to criticize one point with a problem that I already answered in the same original post. If you don't think that will ever come to pass, then that's a different conversation. I also thought Red Mage would never come to pass prior to Stormblood because it didn't match the holy trinity format established by XIV, and here we are. People are allowed to change their minds after all. They changed their minds about bow mage. After the release of Super Smash Bros Brawl, the producer stated Animal Crossing would never get a fighter added to the series because it wouldn't make sense. Fast forward 4 years and Villager was the first newcomer announced for the 4th game. People change their minds sometimes.

Not only do they simply not want to design healers that way, it also runs into several problems with fight design. Imagine Dark Knight had to heal in between its burst windows or even Warrior had to delay IR Fell Cleave to keep the party alive?

Um... Tanks already have to weave mitigation and healing in the middle of their rotations and burst windows now. You don't think tanks have to manage things like Reprisal, Divine Veil, Shake it Off, or other kinds of tools regularly? Even DPS do that. I do that as a Dancer all the time. Sometimes I even need multiple healing/mitigation cooldowns during my buff window. Anyone who thinks healers are playing some different type of game than the other two roles just isn't playing healer correctly.