Healers need an overhaul

[Zebraoracle]

I was discussing this with some friends, and was basically told if I want something to do then to play with bad players...

So healer reward for being a good healer = being punished by having a harder time clearing content due to less skilled players failing mechs. Got it. Great design.

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

I was discussing this with some friends, and was basically told if I want something to do then to play with bad players...

So healer reward for being a good healer = being punished by having a harder time clearing content due to less skilled players failing mechs. Got it. Great design.

Just go do Ultimate - Yoshi P

People proceed to do Ultimate with 1 or no healers in protest.

[Zebraoracle]

Just go do Ultimate - Yoshi P

People proceed to do Ultimate with 1 or no healers in protest.

I've done two ultimates and will soon be working on a third. His statement is so infuriating.

UWU healing related mechs - none. You just heal damage before deadly damage happens as usual. I do not count pressing LB3 as a healing mech.

TEA healing related mechs - 2.5. The hand slaps sort of? I just physis and panhaima it and forget about it though... Esuna throttle off the party. And then J-Waves which were actually fairly fun to heal through.

Wow so many healing mechanics, YoshiP... /s

[Kacho_Nacho]

I was discussing this with some friends, and was basically told if I want something to do then to play with bad players...

So healer reward for being a good healer = being punished by having a harder time clearing content due to less skilled players failing mechs. Got it. Great design.

Isn't that kind of like being a doctor and complaining all they see is sick people? Healers are in the game for those times when things don't go perfectly.

You don't need heal players who do the mechanics. It's self evident.

If you are unable to accept this fact, you will be much happier playing a damage dealer, a role who is rewarded by a party who plays better.

[fulminating]

If you are unable to accept this fact, you will be much happier playing a damage dealer, a role who is rewarded by a party who plays better.

There are games other than ff14 which also have a healer role.

[kyyninen_kirahvi]

Isn't that kind of like being a doctor and complaining all they see is sick people? Healers are in the game for those times when things don't go perfectly.

You don't need heal players who do the mechanics. It's self evident.

If you are unable to accept this fact, you will be much happier playing a damage dealer, a role who is rewarded by a party who plays better.

Doctors don't sit alone in the dark waiting patients like robots in standby. Healing is healers priority, yes, but to have something meaningful and engageing to do while there is no one to heal should be cosidered and designed if battle design can't be changed.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Doctors don't sit alone in the dark waiting patients like robots in standby. Healing is healers priority, yes, but to have something meaningful and engageing to do while there is no one to heal should be cosidered and designed if battle design can't be changed.

I understand that. But, the person I was replying to was complaining that parties need less healing the better they do the content. That's a silly argument because, well... DUH!

Healer do need something more specifically because of this issue. Square Enix isn't going to suddenly pull a 180 and make healing more challenging for the average player, nor are they going to give healers complex damage rotations, for the same reasons. We all know that.

The only path open is to make healing, raises, and buffing exclusive to the healer role. Give tanks and damage dealers debuffs in their place.

Reduce both the length and duration of the buffs so they have to be cast more often. Get rid of all the redundant heals which fill our action bars and have a variety of buffs in their place. As less healing is needed, a healer's value will be measured in how much they improve the performance of the party as a whole.

[Semirhage]

I understand that. But, the person I was replying to was complaining that parties need less healing the better they do the content. That's a silly argument because, well... DUH!

Healer do need something more specifically because of this issue. Square Enix isn't going to suddenly pull a 180 and make healing more challenging for the average player, nor are they going to give healers complex damage rotations, for the same reasons. We all know that.

The only path open is to make healing, raises, and buffing exclusive to the healer role. Give tanks and damage dealers debuffs in their place.

Reduce both the length and duration of the buffs so they have to be cast more often. Get rid of all the redundant heals which fill our action bars and have a variety of buffs in their place. As less healing is needed, a healer's value will be measured in how much they improve the performance of the party as a whole.

This would be great.

It's also the line between the "give us more to do during downtime" "camp" and the "NO! Some people just want to HEAL!" "camp".

Increase healing requirements. Move healing back to the healers. And also give healers a skill ceiling to reach for when they get good at healing. That last part? That's the part that always sticks in peoples' craws. Why? For what reason is that such a controversial statement? Why do we need to "leave one healer as-is", with effectively no skill ceiling and just Glarespamming to look forward to as the endgame activity? It doesn't matter how much you increase the healing requirements; they'll go down over time. There has to be a gap that allows unskilled healers can still clear, and Square wants it to be a generous one in most content.

Leaving one healer with its current kit isn't a "focus on healing". It's a mirrored, upside-down focus actually: it's a focus on not having anything to engage your brain outside healing. With healers designed to "appeal to different types of players", you're going to be healing just as much as the others do. You're just going to bonk Dosis over and over again once you're done with it.

All of the grandstanding on here you run into about "designing healers to appeal to people who want to heal" is noise. Press the issue even a little bit, you find out it's always "I want a healer designed to be improvement-proof once I've finished topping the party off". Infer whatever you like about the speaker from there. I prefer Occam's Razor.

[Kacho_Nacho]

This would be great.

It's also the line between the "give us more to do during downtime" "camp" and the "NO! Some people just want to HEAL!" "camp".

Increase healing requirements. Move healing back to the healers. And also give healers a skill ceiling to reach for when they get good at healing. That last part? That's the part that always sticks in peoples' craws. Why? For what reason is that such a controversial statement? Why do we need to "leave one healer as-is", with effectively no skill ceiling and just Glarespamming to look forward to as the endgame activity? It doesn't matter how much you increase the healing requirements; they'll go down over time. There has to be a gap that allows unskilled healers can still clear, and Square wants it to be a generous one in most content.

Leaving one healer with its current kit isn't a "focus on healing". It's a mirrored, upside-down focus actually: it's a focus on not having anything to engage your brain outside healing. With healers designed to "appeal to different types of players", you're going to be healing just as much as the others do. You're just going to bonk Dosis over and over again once you're done with it.

All of the grandstanding on here you run into about "designing healers to appeal to people who want to heal" is noise. Press the issue even a little bit, you find out it's always "I want a healer designed to be improvement-proof once I've finished topping the party off". Infer whatever you like about the speaker from there. I prefer Occam's Razor.

Well said.

You completely miss the point dude.

Let me give an example. I'm going to do the dreaded bad thing here and bring up WoW.

I think you're missing mine. All I'm saying is good parties will always need less healing than bad parties. Complaining that it's bad game design is like complaining that red is red. No matter what any game company comes up with, it will be the case.

HOWEVER, that's not to say something can't be done about it. As you point out, WoW has( had? it's been awhile) a healer having to manage both their mana, their aggro, and cooldowns. I loved it!

Now the question is, what can Square Enix do to bring that same level of engagement for healers? Will they be willing to do a Cataclysm level overhaul to healing in FFXIV? Because that would be what it would take to make healing fun for the veteran healers.

[Zebraoracle]

I think you're missing mine. All I'm saying is good parties will always need less healing than bad parties. Complaining that it's bad game design is like complaining that red is red. No matter what any game company comes up with, it will be the case.

HOWEVER, that's not to say something can't be done about it. As you point out, WoW has( had? it's been awhile) a healer having to manage both their mana, their aggro, and cooldowns. I loved it!

Now the question is, what can Square Enix do to bring that same level of engagement for healers? Will they be willing to do a Cataclysm level overhaul to healing in FFXIV? Because that would be what it would take to make healing fun for the veteran healers.

No, you're definitely missing mine. Sure, good players are going to more often not stand in the bad. But take pretty much most other multiplayer games with healers where they pump out enough unavoidable damage to the point where FF14 healers would be causing wipe after wipe if they only tried to heal with a single oGCD.

In FF14, healers that play with good players and are good players themselves are rewarded with... nothing. They get to spam 1 some more. They are the only jobs actively punished for playing well. Tanks have it kinda bad too, but for healers it's so much more exacerbated.

I've said it before - FF14 healing doesn't give, at least to me, the sense of satisfaction you get from other games. As you and your fellow players get better at the game, you eventually don't finish a tough fight and think "phew, I managed to keep the party up with my healing" and instead think "phew everyone played DDR correctly". When your success as a role is tied more to whether or not everyone played DDR correctly and not whether or not you actually used your kit properly, *that is a problem*.

WoW mythic dungeons are such a wonderful example - the content actively gets harder, the healers are actually constantly challenged, that resto shaman isn't sitting there casting lightning bolt for 80% of the dungeon, he's using the entire kit that was designed for him.

As Renathras said above, it's a flaw with the game's encounter design.

Telling someone to "play with bads" as a means of getting satisfaction from the role is... well, BAD.

EDIT: now that I'm thinking about this, I realize I think Guild Wars 1 healing was probably the most fun healing I've ever had. Considering the creativity you had with putting together builds and the lack of actual tanks and an AI that actively hunted down vulnerable targets... gosh dang that was a fun time. Let's go healer necromancer!