Healers need an overhaul

[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!

[Absurdity]

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!

Even GW2 does a better job than XIV, it focuses on healers providing party support instead of just raw healing. You buff their damage mitigation, crit rate, attack power and speed, cooldown reduction and probably more that I forgot about, all requiring you to constantly cycle through different abilities to keep those buffs rolling (some of them even being tied to your damage abilities), and then when people actually take damage for once you still have your healing.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Even GW2 does a better job than XIV, it focuses on healers providing party support instead of just raw healing. You buff their damage mitigation, crit rate, attack power and speed, cooldown reduction and probably more that I forgot about, all requiring you to constantly cycle through different abilities to keep those buffs rolling (some of them even being tied to your damage abilities), and then when people actually take damage for once you still have your healing.

I've never played GW2 but you just described what I'm advocating for. It would be much more engaging than the current model.

My big concern about 7.0 is nothing I have read from Square Enix indicates they understand the issues players are having with how healers are handled in FFXIV. Heck, I'm not even sure if they understand there is an issue at all.

[Zebraoracle]

I've never played GW2 but you just described what I'm advocating for. It would be much more engaging than the current model.

My big concern about 7.0 is nothing I have read from Square Enix indicates they understand the issues players are having with how healers are handled in FFXIV. Heck, I'm not even sure if they understand there is an issue at all.

I honestly do not believe they have any inkling of an idea that there's an issue. Until they decide to move away from the freaking awful 2 minute burst meta, they will never see that there's a problem.

[Renathras]

This would...

And this is an example of everything that's wrong with this discussion and why we won't get meaningful change: The side of the debate that cannot seriously talk with the other, instead preferring to insult the other side and assume their motivations are laziness or badness instead of that they actually like different things.

No one has a problem with "having something to engage your brain", some don't even mind "outside healing". And not everyone is against a "skill ceiling to reach for".

The issues are they aren't for those things LIKE YOU ARE.

MP management is a skill ceiling to reach for.
Choosing the optimal heal for a situation when it actually matters is a skill ceiling and something to engage your brain with that is INSIDE healing.

But those things don't matter to you, because they aren't non-healing, and you seem to want Healers to be about non-healing actions and optimization.

Moreover, different people like different things. To some people, they don't like damage buttons - but they'd love more buff buttons. That seems to be true of a lot of people, actually. Most people don't even mind a few more damage buttons, even those that don't care for damage dealing, but they don't want ONLY a few more damage buttons, as that doesn't address our main issues of not enough healing being needed by encounters and 1/0 Healer clears. It's certainly not an actual fix. "So you won't be bored" doesn't prevent 0 Healer clears unless the thing you're not bored about is something that can't be replicated without a Healer - that is, healing.

I know you know this, because I've told you before, many times. You prefer arguing against caricature and straw men because they (in your mind) are easy to defeat. But this is why you get nothing. Because you aren't willing to see what other people want, and so you can't offer real compromises because of those blinders.

Unfortunately, Yoshi P and the Devs are aware of the opposed arguments. Both the "more damage buttons" and the "more healing requirement" ones. So, too, are they likely aware of the "leave things alone" arguments.

We'll see, in time, what (if anything) they plan to do about it. But for a surety, it probably isn't what you think/want alone/in vacuum.

EDIT:

I just don't understand why the party has entirely more control over who lives or dies than you do as a healer. No party mit? Party dies. You have no say in the matter. Especially annoying in a static scenario where usually the healer is going to be assigning/micro-managing DPS mit anyway.

Cut the middle man out and just give healers these tools back. There was no reason to remove virus/addle from healers and give them to DPS.

So much this. WHM has less accessible party mit than BLM. Let that sink in. BLM has Addle on 90 sec where WHM has Temperance on 2 min...and nothing else. (Yes, Temperance is more powerful, but less available...and we're comparing with BLACK MAGE, it shouldn't even be close enough for that to be a relevant "But ackshually..." in the first place!)

AST at least gets some Collective Unconscious and a Neutral Sect AOE shield, but WHM has among the weakest party mitigation in the entire game. Give it Protect/Shell/Wall, for crying out loud! SOMETHING.

This is yet another problem with encounter design - it's shifted away from healing checks (lots of healing needed, WHM's specialty) and into mitigation checks...then given a bunch of mitigation (and healing) to Tanks and DPSers, and taken most of it FROM the Healers in the process. I can understand Tanks having mitigation, but massive healing, too? And DPSers having both? It's a failure of encounter design and Job design. The Healer is who is going to get complained to when people die, so may as well at least give us the lion's share of the mitigation so we can do something about it.

[Aravell]

Unfortunately, Yoshi P and the Devs are aware of the opposed arguments. Both the "more damage buttons" and the "more healing requirement" ones. So, too, are they likely aware of the "leave things alone" arguments.

We'll see, in time, what (if anything) they plan to do about it. But for a surety, it probably isn't what you think/want alone/in vacuum.

I think one thing most everyone can agree on is that the current situation is in need of changing. Those who are fine with the encounter design may dislike the job design, those who are fine with job design may dislike the encounter design, and then there are also people that think both need to change.

There's no way to know for sure how big or small the population of people who want nothing to change is, but it's an undeniable fact that the healer role has been losing players, though everyone leaving for different reasons.

[Eisi]

Unfortunately, Yoshi P and the Devs are aware of the opposed arguments. Both the "more damage buttons" and the "more healing requirement" ones. So, too, are they likely aware of the "leave things alone" arguments.

Yes, but those arguments are not contradicting each other.

The first one, more damage buttons is the argument in favor of casual healers, those who play content with low incoming damage, solo story missions, FATEs and the like. Healers should be fun regardless of the difficulty level of the content they engage in and even outside of parties. A lot of new healers are not comfortable with healing large amounts of incoming damage (aka having a lot of responsibility for the team) and modern MMOs want to make the game fun for casuals as well just in general. Healers shouldn't be the "elite" jobs who only start being fun in difficult group content.

The second one is in favor of more pro healers who want to have more responsibility for other people and feel generally comfortable enough to heal more difficult content, which is also very valid.

I think those two can easily be combined and aren't really at odds. MMOs need both types of player. The "keep things as they are" position I find not to be healthy for the game. It means keeping healing requirements low in all content, aka have healers be effectively dps with a few healing opportunities even in hardcore content, yet keeping the dps kit of what is jobs effectively engaging in dpsing all the time frustratingly boring.

Also healing and dpsing shouldn't be seen as at odds. Players who want to gcd heal without losing out on dps for example should be taken seriously. I think there's probably nothing weirder than healers having to be forced to use healing spells by sheer incoming damage because in any other case than players literally dying it would be suboptimal play. I think that's a ridiculous design decision.

[Renathras]

Apologies for the length, but I think it's a discussion worth having:

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Yes, but those arguments are not contradicting each other.

True, but I think the problem is that a lot of people don't necessarily like the same things.

For example, you say more damage buttons is more fun for casual or new healers. Is it? For some it probably is, but for others, it's not. What is a thing many new healers do? Stay hyper-focused on health bars and not even cast damage spells. Probably being way more focused on health bars than they need to be. But what are they NOT engaging with or taking part in? Oh right, damage buttons. So why would more damage buttons appeal to all of them? Moreover, healing doesn't have to be DIFFICULT to be engaging with the healing side of things. For example:

Imagine for a moment a fight with no in-combat auto healing. Every 7.5 seconds or so, the boss does an AOE 150 potency (vs Healing potencies) damage attack. And every 10 seconds, they hit a single target for 250 potency. And that's it. Just pretend. This is MSQ or something.

That means casual healers would need to use an AOE heal every 15 seconds or so (and the more obsessive every 7.5, so every 3rd GCD), so at time 15, 30, 45, 60, etc (or 7.5, 15, 22.5, 30, etc), and then they'd also need to use a Cure 1 every 4th GCD (10, 20, 30, 400, 50, 60) if they're obsessive, and might be able to risk not doing it until a specific target has been hit twice.

That's super lax healing. Someone could just spam Medica and take care of it without a problem. More optimization focused people would spot heal with Cure 1, or save until a person was hit 2-3 times for a Cure 2. It's not HARD, so it doesn't make new healers uncomfortable, but it breaks up the Glarespam since they have a lot of other healing to do.

"But what about oGCDs?"

The game doesn't teach you about oGCDs. Or weaving. Ever watch a super new player heal? They treat oGCDs like GCDs. And, regardless, you only have so many oGCDs in a 1 minute time period.

But the point of this exercise is to more demonstrate how consistent healing needs can be added to encounters that AREN'T uncomfortable for even novice healers to heal. The most novice healer is probably going to address this problem with a Medica every 10 seconds, or upkeeping Medica 2 every 15 seconds and occasionally spot healing someone with Cure 1. Hardly overwhelming. It's ENTIRELY possible to increase healing needs in even casual content without making new healers run for the hills.

...moreover, that entire argument is predicated on the thought that new healers AREN'T afraid of damage rotations. Interestingly, no one that proffers that argument ever justifies that assumption other than, when called on it, a hand-wave about how "if they don't do enough damage, it doesn't matter because no enrage", failing to explain how a healer TOTALLY NEW TO THE GAME, who doesn't even know what an oGCD or weaving is, is supposed to have arrived at the conclusion they don't need to do any damage or engage with this DPS kit and shouldn't feel bad or bothered by not touching it at all.

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I think the fundamental disconnet is what people find fun.

As a Healer, I've never found damage buttons fun. It's why I don't play DPS unless I need to and rarely play Tanks. "Oh, I perfectly pulled off this burst opener and did 500k dps. /yawn How was that different than last expansion where I did 230k DPS doing the same thing?" I don't get a dopamine hit from that. It's not fun. It's tedious.

Some people enjoy it. It's the reason I propose the "4 Healers model" because I explicitly recognize that.

What boggles my mind is why the people who like DPS (but want to play Healers) arguing the contra position seem incapable of realizing that some people GENUINELY don't enjoy pressing DPS buttons or seeing red numbers on the screen instead of green numbers. Like, is it so hard a concept to believe that some people legitimately don't find DPSing fun? Why is this such a hard ask to just acknowledge?

That is, for casuals (okay, I'm more mid-core, but same thing for the purpose of this argument; I only VERY rarely do Savage content and only do a bit of Extremes), not all of us find it "fun" to press damage buttons. Therefore, "Healers should be fun regardless of the difficulty level of the content" isn't solved by "more damage buttons". "more damage buttons" isn't, as it turns out, "the argument in favor of casual healers".

Indeed, most of the people I see make that argument (most, not all, but most) are people that are Savage raiders complaining about THEM - not casuals, hardcore raiders - being bored. It's "the argument in favor of hardcore healers", not casual ones.

Most super causal players seem to enjoy Healing as it is right now, shockingly. I find causal content pretty enjoyable right now, honestly.

Now, understand what I'm NOT ARGUING here:

As I said, SOME do want more damage buttons and a damage rotation. Some do. Which is why I advocate having one or two of the Healer Jobs work that way.

But what of those that do not? Do they just get told to pound sand?

What is the harm, then, in having of the other two Healer Jobs that they do not? Giving one a buff gameplay style and the other leaving it with the gameplay style it has now would address all players at once. Indeed, it's the ONLY solution that does.

The second one is in favor of more pro healers who want to have more responsibility for other people and feel generally comfortable enough to heal more difficult content, which is also very valid.

Again, incorrect. I'm sorry, but you're just wrong here. Most of the "more pro healers" are making the "more damage button arguments". I'm one of the most casual healers on the Healer forum here, and I'm one of the few consistently asking for more damage to heal rather than more damage buttons to be added. So it seems to be the exact opposite of what you say, at least from my experience.

People like me who enjoy healing and not damage dealing are the ones that want more healing to do. It's not a "pro/hardcore" vs "casual/midcore". It's a "healer" vs "support" vs "hybrid" vs "DPSer" mindset.

And we have 4 Healer Jobs, enough to cover all four of those bases. I'm content to just have one that suits me (probably WHM, I suppose).

I think those two can easily be combined and aren't really at odds. MMOs need both types of player.

I agree. Hence, again "4 Healers model".

The "keep things as they are" position I find not to be healthy for the game. It means keeping healing requirements low in all content, aka have healers be effectively dps with a few healing opportunities even in hardcore content, yet keeping the dps kit of what is jobs effectively engaging in dpsing all the time frustratingly boring.

This is, again, incorrect/a disconnect.

Even the people who ARE arguing to not change ANY of the Healer Jobs want encounter designs changed. I haven't seen a single person in any of these kinds of discussions saying "don't change anything". You're arguing against a position which does not exist/a strawman, here.

Also healing and dpsing shouldn't be seen as at odds.

They always will be because they're a fundamentally different mindset on the part of the player.

If you see someone in a crowd attacking people, what is your response?

(1) Confront the person and try to distract them from harming anyone else?
(2) Attack the person and try to take them down?
(3) Hope someone else does that and try to care for those with life-threatening wounds from the attack to keep them alive until ambulances can get there?

Some people would do different things in different situations, but it comes down to kind of what your focus is on, saving lives or ending them, as it were. And note I don't consider any of the answers to be the wrong answer and do think the context of the situation is relevant (e.g. does the person have a gun or are they merely strong/armed with a dangerous melee weapon; etc), but the two are distinct in terms of how you think and approach them. Going from one to another often requires one to "switch gears", which some people do really well and others only grudgingly.

Players who want to gcd heal without losing out on dps for example should be taken seriously. I think there's probably nothing weirder than healers having to be forced to use healing spells by sheer incoming damage because in any other case than players literally dying it would be suboptimal play. I think that's a ridiculous design decision.

Agree with this 100%. It's one reason I really like WHM in ShB/EW. Instead of going the "maintain DPS weaving oGCD healing", it goes the other way, actively using GCD healing (Lilies) and that actually being a DPS increase over not doing so (if you put Misery in the burst windows). It's a tidy solution to that problem.

It's kind of ironic to me that WHM plays the most distinctly of the Healers, yet is often maligned for doing so. And it boggles my mind why anyone would want to go back to SB WHM when it was worse in every way possible. "Aero 3" wasn't THAT good of a spell, and we could always just add Aero 3 in 7.0 and otherwise leave the Job alone other than tyding up a few things that don't make sense (e.g. Cure 1 upgrading to either Cure 2 OR to Esuna [which would also heal for Cure 1's potency], Medica upgrading into Medica 2 [which is always an HPS gain, even on the first tick], give it a bit more partywide mitigation [my favorite pitch on this is giving it Protect traits into Proshell traits into Plenary Indulgence which gives 5% physical, 5% physical and magical, 5% physical and magical + its current AOE heal boost, respectively, as it traits up as you level up; this would give WHM a parallel to Collective Unconscious that has a very WHM flair and addresses the one glaring hole in its current kit], and imo all their GCD heals should nourish the Blood Lily, as this would actually make WHM able to use more than just Lily heals without "being suboptimal"). I'd be fine with that, though I honestly hate DoTs and always have.

As I said before, we have 4 types of people that play Healers, in large part (oversimplification, but one that captures most everyone):

1) Those that enjoy healing and not doing damage/damage rotations.
2) Those who enjoy buffing (and healing).
3) Those who enjoy healing and doing damage.
4) Those who enjoy doing damage and want some healing utility for their friends.

We have four Healer Jobs. And they're already kind of primed for this; WHM, AST, SCH, and SGE are ALMOST set up for those four. It's like in The Matrix where Morpheus points out 3 ships, 3 crews, 3 objectives.

And the thing is, FFXIV did this before:

ARR.

In ARR, WHM was (1) and SCH was (3) and it worked pretty well with most people pretty happy with it.

There's zero reason we can't do that again, this time with 4 Healers to address those other two categories of people, too.